There was a new arrival in their Colony and also in their team. But he was irritating at times. He could never stop comparing Amit with some Sikandara from his previous place, Nai Ki Mandi.
He plays Cricket like you, so also foot ball, and also Badminton………. And also ……..
These issues need to get sorted out fast. A match got fixed and the teams clashed. Sikandara was valiant on the football field but he lost as a leader. He was the only good player in his team and they got slaughtered in no time.
His team got added to the list of the defeated teams that included boys from the refugee Colony, the teams next to the big field (which were perennial competitors to get the central pitch of the field), team from the back rows in the colony, team from the double storey quarters and so on.
One of the team was difficult to beat. They lived close to the police lines; they played as reserves to the training policemen and had bigger boys on their roll. That football match was played over 90 % in Amit’s half. The Center forward was playing in the defence, just to stop that flood gate to open on their goal post. They ran and ran like dogs in the first half and were down 1-2. The second half would have been a massacre.
But there were two saving graces. First, two teams had only one watch, and the person from Amit’s team who had the watch was also the extra player they had, so he was made the unwilling referee. Second, the opponent’s 10 men were in Amit’s half- each realizing an opportunity to become a hero by shooting into the goal. Even 10 men in Amit’s team were defending the goal, the eleventh standing in front of the rival goal- too tired to run back to defend his goal post.
OK that should be an off-side, but if the referee is yours and too busy in your half- the match moves on. In a span of three to four minutes, the football was kicked full blooded from the defending side to the other side and twice, the dead man kicked the ball and beat the goalie both times.
The referee was smart and soon blew the final whistle. The loosing team kept complaining that the second half was too short but who cares, the match was won. The winning team kept lying all over the field, too happy and too exhausted to walk back.
Growing boys, atleast some of them, are like warriors. They want to increase their territory, their area of dominance. When the leader of the other area gets beaten, the whole team surrenders. If their best can’t fight they can’t even stand.
But that was a different age when boys got worried, if they read that Bruce Lee had strong muscles when he was 12 and wondered if 14 years is too late to be not that strong. So they doubled their pushups.
Though some people grow up planning to be all conquering emperors, their teachers would blandly disagree, “His bother getting into IIT is fine. But him!!!! Hmmm………….Every child is different!!!”
But accidents occur in life. Amit never realized how he got the third rank in School in Board- a decent recognition. He changed his school as he did not take registration fee and then everything changed.
But, that desire to expand the dominance keeps burning. People may get into the civil services, just with the belief that they would fight everything wrong and change the systems. They could take a strange job in a B-School, believing they would build a new corporate empire where their friends could join them.
But time teaches the futility of the desire to grow beyond reach. It takes time to realize that it is not their fault if they couldn’t make an empire; this is a different age, a different time. No more when 14 years old were taken as kings- for a 5,000 strong city town to become part of history- because they were the best or atleast good.
But the lost years do teach a lot. The value of a vacation spent with parents in hill station during the summer vacations, which never came back in mighty offices and positions. And the immeasurable wealth of being close together as a family during the festivals; of having someone next to you when you are unwell, sad, lonely or disheartened. One gets to start loathing the fights fought all alone, for things no more important.
And then having already walked a long way on that road one could feel it just worthwhile to search for a true friend and nothing else; someone who could be close in every moment of life. One who could plan a track for the next summers, someone who could discuss the rhyme of the next lines in the poem, or prepare a new album of the stamps and coins collected over years, or prepare a cup of hot coffee on a winter evening as they watch the lights in the city from the balcony while the light music plays, or maybe even help focus the star correctly in the telescope.
For no money can buy joy as much, no conquest could be as powerful. Only experience tells what to fight for and what to let go; and when the horizon of action tries to touch the sky and when it tries to fit in a small home.
