Bowling Through India

by Justin Brown

  ‘Doubled?’ Brendon asked. ‘Since when?’

  ‘Three hundred million people in the last seventeen years. An extra twenty-two million people a year. That’s an Australia every year.’

  Wasim was our new guide. He possessed a ready smile and a trendy pink shirt with brown pants, a little tight around the bum. We headed towards our new Goldfish Bowl, another white van with ‘TOURIST’ plastered over the front, amid early morning bedlam at Varanasi railway station. News had filtered through of a bomb that had torn through a New Delhi-bound high-speed train travelling in north-east Assam State, killing five passengers. A little-known militant tribal group, the Adivasi National Liberation Army, had claimed responsibility. Adivasis, the majority of whom worked on tea plantations, wanted the government to include them on the list of Scheduled Tribes, which would make them eligible for more benefits. As we tried to watch more of the report on a shop owner’s fourteen-inch TV set, people in the railway station continued to yell, curse, laugh, beg, sweat, heave, push, pull, tug, wait, hawk, eat, snatch, hug, peer, spit, jostle and pray.

  In other words, just another Tuesday morning in India.

  Here is where I attempt to explain why Varanasi, or Benares as it was formerly known, is considered the godliest, holiest, most spiritual place on earth. For a start, it’s the only point where, after leaving the Himalayas, the Ganges River turns and flows directly south to north, which it does for about ten kilometres. This is believed to be the Mother Ganges turning towards her Himalayan home. Hindus believe that each range in the Himalayas represents a flowing dreadlock of Shiva’s hair. Shiva is pretty important, if his title Lord of Destruction is anything to go by. Legend has it that Shiva married his first wife, Meenakshi, after she lost her earring and he helped her find it. (A likely story.) When she died, he cremated her in Varanasi, but because she had married a guy with a fair dose of religious clout, she would go directly to Nirvana. (For those of you who — like me —associate Nirvana only with Kurt Cobain, the actual meaning is moksah or liberation.) By cremating his wife in Varanasi and guaranteeing her liberation, Shiva also guaranteed that any Hindu cremated on the Ganges would never have to go through the cycle of rebirth again. (Which can be a right bloody hassle, let’s be honest.) Varanasi has been a literal tirtha or crossing place of the Ganges for at least five thousand years. Metaphorically, tirtha also refers to a crossing point between heaven and earth. Hindus believe that in Varanasi the membrane separating heaven and earth is at its closest on the planet.

  Our first memory of Varanasi, however, was of watching a man pissing into a roadside pile of rubbish. We were caught in a traffic jam shaped like an egg timer. For some reason, the busiest stretch of road was also the thinnest, with a swathe of Tata trucks carrying coal trying to squeeze through gaps half their width.

  And yes, as you guessed, the horns were back. ‘Thought something was missing,’ laughed Stew.

  ‘Back in Toot-land,’ I said.

  Meanwhile, the Urinator was still attempting to finish his business. It was turning out to be the longest piss in the world. He kept nervously looking behind to see if his bus was still there. The driver beeped. The Urinator kept pissing, shaking his member in a futile attempt to hurry things along. But he was still pissing. The driver beeped again, slowly edging forward. Now, when the Urinator turned to look at the full bus, he didn’t move just his neck but his whole body, urging his whole being to excrete what liquid leftovers still remained. Rush hour commuters, ourselves included, couldn’t help but look at his member. It was like witnessing the aftermath of a car crash: you knew you shouldn’t look, but had to. The Urinator didn’t care. He had a job to do. The traffic was now moving. His driver had no choice but to join them. Shake, shake, shake went the Urinator. He wouldn’t have time to finish so tugged a few final times on his run to the bus, poking his member away only once he reached the steps.

  ‘No rules,’ I said to Reece.

  ‘No rules,’ he confirmed.

  We drove past a main-street abattoir where buffalo were being forced into a prehistoric-looking killing chamber. There was so much blood and frenzied activity that I wanted to go in for a look, but that would really have tipped Wasim over the edge. Our carpet-shop-loving guides struggled enough as it was with our bizarre leisure activities; they hardly needed an ignorant city boy asking if he could watch a bull being slaughtered.

  ‘Look at the poor fucker,’ said Stew the farmer, watching a cow do everything she could to avoid an inevitable end. ‘They fucking hate the smell of fucking blood.’ (His swearing was still at fever pitch.) The Goldfish Bowl continued its way past rubbish dumps and into the welcoming arms of the holiest city on earth.

  ‘Still a shit-hole,’ said John, clearly having not changed his views on Varanasi.

  ‘Oh, come on, John,’ said Reece. ‘It’s like coming home!’

  ‘To you, maybe,’ replied John. ‘To me, it’s a shit-hole.’

  It is one of life’s wonders how breakfast and a hot shower can erase any unease caused by a fourteen-hour train ride. As we waited for the Goldfish Bowl in the hotel forecourt, we felt relaxed and happy. That is, until Reece approached Brendon with the look of a school teacher about to give one of his students a serve.

  ‘I’ve been meaning to say this for a while,’ said Reece, pointing to Brendon’s bare knees. ‘You shouldn't be wearing half-pants.’

  ‘What do you mean, half-pants?’ Brendon asked.

  ‘Shorts,’ said Reece.

  ‘Why the hell not?’

  ‘It’s disrespectful.’

  ‘Disrespectful, my arse!’ I said.

  ‘Do you see any Indians wearing half-pants?’ Reece asked.

  Brendon and I looked around. Long slacks everywhere.

  ‘It’s like wearing your underpants in public,’ said Reece.

  ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘I’m not. Look at John, he’s been to India. He knows you don’t wear half-pants. Isn’t that right, John?’ Reece asked, looking around for his second cousin.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ said John, unwavering, in the distance. ‘Worst pollution in the world and you can’t suck on a cigarette when you’re checking into your hotel. Rack and ruin, I tell you.’

  For the rest of the trip, Brendon and I decided that we would wear half-pants whenever possible. Not out of disrespect for the Indians; more out of spite for Blanket Boy.

  Brendon had heard via one of his mates there was a cemetery in Varanasi where the locals often played cricket. This was a sitting duck for five blokes who favoured finding exotic locations to whack a six over drinking tea in silk shops. Finding the cemetery, however, was easier said than done. Our taxi driver did manage to find a cemetery but it was frequented by dead people, not backyard cricketers. Not that it stopped us looking for players. Wading through knee-high grass, we voyeuristically hovered over headstones. Three dodgy-looking locals loitered. Several headstones had been pinched, and the ones remaining were neglected or smashed. A ‘caretaker’ soon saw the whities with the cameras and cricket bat and saw an opportunity. After a chat in Hindi with Blanket Boy, it was confirmed that he caretaker wanted money from us.

  ‘What for?’ John asked.

  ‘He’s the caretaker. He thinks we should pay him for the privilege.’

  I looked around this overgrown, desolate, depressing final resting place. ‘How about he caretake it then?’

  It was our lucky day, Reece having discovered from our driver that there was another cemetery in town. ‘You want to go there?’ he asked. ‘Or you want to go see carpet?’

  ‘Cemetery please!’ we said in unison.

  Our driver shook his head and put his van into first. As we crawled through another litter-filled mass of mess and mayhem, I tended to side with John: Varanasi wasn’t exactly Vienna, but knowing we would be on the Ganges by nightfall excited every one of us. A few windows were left open in the Goldfish Bowl and a sweet, slightly sickly aroma soon filled the space between us.

  ‘Wha
t is that smell?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s a smell covering another smell,’ said John.

  ‘It’s life!’ said Reece.

  ‘It smells like shit,’ said John.

  Despite thinking we were homicidal maniacs, our driver came through with the goods, parking outside the nondescript, run-down entrance to the second cemetery of the morning. He then, via Reece, introduced us to Mr Thomas, the cemetery’s Roman Catholic priest and caretaker. The irony didn’t escape us that we were about to play cricket, in a cemetery, in the City Of Life. Indeed, in one of the holiest cities on earth, where most locals choose cremation over burial, it seemed incongruous to be standing in the middle of a cemetery. But then, this cemetery was hardly a going concern. It was used by the British Army, and all soldiers as well as any immediate family were buried here. What we didn’t realise was that Mr Thomas had been trying to stop the cricket-playing so he could make it a more reputable place. Until we arrived.

  Before long, the dead puns came flooding out: ‘We’ll have some stiff competition today.’

  ‘I bet the game will be dead boring.’

  ‘People will be dying to play.’

  Mr Thomas soon herded us through the cemetery gates, past his modest but tidy hut. Another boy grabbed our bat. ‘Match?’ he yelped. ‘Match?’

  ‘Yes,’ we said. ‘Match.’

  Sprinting over to where the makeshift pitch was, the boy pushed whoever was batting out of the way. We soon joined him and within minutes a multitude of kids surrounded us. They came of the woodwork like meerkats. Some, especially the older boys, would make most international sides; their style and flair was enviable. And yet, amid such lunacy, gravestones and tombs:

  MARSHA

  DT OF BIRTH — 22.8.96

  DT OF DEATH — 23.9.98

  IRENE

  DT OF BIRTH — 4.1.98

  DT OF DEATH — 7.1.98

  WITH LOTS OF LOVE AND KISSES, PAPA AND MUMMY

  We ambled through the grounds, fascinated, saddened:

  MARIA

  The beloved wife of Edward Robbins who died at Benares on 24th October, 1858, aged 42 years and 7 months. She died as she had lived; a true Christian, a fond and faithful wife, and affectionate mother.

  IN MEMORY OF:

  Caroline Aldus Robbins, infant daughter of the above, who died on 2nd October, 1858, on the passage up the river Ganges, from Calcutta to Benares. Aged 11 months.

  The fact that cricket was played above dead ancestors didn’t seem to bother anybody. After all, tombstones make for perfect stumps. And why not play on top of people’s graves? Is it any more disrespectful than burning a body then throwing it into the drink? Indeed, one got the feeling the soldiers buried here would have endorsed their sacred place being used for the sacred game.

  As usual, the match took an age to start. But at least the kids were willing to play for the Black Craps. Maybe the thought of actually playing was worth being embarrassed for. Whatever their reasoning, Stew and I were ecstatic: finally we had some depth. While they taught us the local rules (‘third row of graves is four runs’), proud mums ordered their kids to go away and put on their Sunday best. They returned with combed hair and ironed trousers up to their armpits. Their taller, older, scruffier-dressed counterparts looked as though they were designed for cricket. They breathed the game. As soon as a ball was tossed their way, they took on the personas of Ganguly, Laxman and Dravid.

  We bowled first, and badly. Square cuts soon ricocheted off tombstones. Sixes gave the crows something to worry about. Their opening batsman, Anu Khan — high back-lift and exquisite footwork — walloped us over goats, past buffalo lazing in the midday sun and finally, and to our horror, right into a make-shift rubbish dump in the far corner of the graveyard. The result: they batted like Australia; we bowled like Zimbabwe. Blindfolded.

  India scored sixty-seven for four on a goat track. It seemed a formidable total. The outfield was stony, dry and dusty. The pitch wasn’t much better. But this was their ground — they knew every quirk. Goats and sheep grazed, unfazed. Kids in school uniforms gathered on stone walls surrounding the cemetery. World Cup-style celebrations ensued whenever a wicket was taken. Every one of these kids wanted to succeed. They wanted it bad. And even though they’d never admit, as often seems to be the case in a selfish game like cricket, they secretly hoped their mate would get out so they too could face the Kiwis.

  Typically, while all of this nonsense was going on mid-pitch, Reece continued to be smothered, swamped and harassed by locals. Today it wasn’t only his shortcomings with the scorebook which were to be tested, but also his patience. A woman who, when not blocking his view of the match, kept asking for money, claiming that a shot by one of the Kiwis had struck her son in the face. He even had the scratch to prove it. She dragged her son over by the arm, squeezing it so hard as to make him cry. ‘You hit my son!’ she said. ‘Pay doctor’s bills!’ If nothing else, she deserved brownie points for inventiveness.

  Reece’s perpetrators had now become his allies: ‘Get away, woman, he’s just trying to score!’

  Alas, these off-field antics didn’t stop the Black Craps losing, managing a paltry forty-four. All this in spite of the fact that John thumped an aerial straight drive so far that it careered over the long-on boundary and ended up on the surrounding train tracks. Lost ball and a proud jig by John. He then showed his true New Zealand colours by self-destructing very next ball. But at least he had his moment in India.

  Our ‘depth’, which initially excited a weakened, some would say desperate, Black Craps side, consisted of two boys who couldn’t hit the ball if it had a bell on it. After John’s departure, Stew and I were left to pick up the pieces but, needing more than twenty from the final over, my cemetery-dwelling batting partner, obviously playing for his average, batted as though we were here for a five-day match. Needless to say, our PC ‘let’s give everyone a bat’ theory backfired. India had once more, very cleverly, given us their worst players and we had paid the price. Our opposition, on taking the final wicket, high-fived and celebrated like world champions, taunting and jibing as only winners can.

  After a whipping of epic proportions, one player stood out as Man of the Match: Anu Khan, the jandal-wearing master blaster with an unbeaten fifty-two and a selection of shots most international players would give their right arm for. But what really secured the award for him was that when during the third over of the game Vicky split in two, he ran off to get a new one. He returned in record time, probably because he happened to be batting at the time. When presented with his Auckland Aces hat, Anu pulled it on as tight as a swimming cap, and smiled like a loon. A half-century and a half decent souvenir — not a bad day.

  SCORECARD

  Gyan Paul, Chowki Chungi, Fulvariya, Kabistan, Cantt. Varanasi

  INDIA

  Anu Khan not out - 52

  Sanjay Khan bowled Emtias Khan - 0

  Abdeen Ahmed lbw bowled Faruk - 0

  Aklah Ahmed bowled Faruk - 4

  Rinku Kumar bowled Stew - 0

  Jamil Khan not out - 0

  Khalik Ahmed run out - 0

  Extras - 11

  Total - 67

  Bowling: Rahul Paul 0-15, Faruk Khan 2-10, Emtias Khan 1-8, Tiger Pathan 0-10, Stew 1-13, Justin 0-11

  BLACK CRAPS

  Faruk Khan lbw bowled Abdeem Ahmed - 18

  Emtias Khan caught Anu Khan bowled S. Khan (wouldn’t get off strike!) - 9

  Tiger Pathan caught A. Ahmed bowled A. Khan (wouldn’t get off strike!) - 4

  John stumped Khalik bowled A. Kham (we’ll never hear the end of that six.) - 6

  Justin not out - 0

  Extras - 7

  Total - 44

  Bowling: Anu Khan 0-7, Sanjay Khan 1-13, Abdeen Ahmed 1-5, Aklakh Ahmed 1-5, Jamil Khan 0-9, Khalik Ahmed 0-5

  India wins match by 23 runs. Series drawn at 3-all.

  As I faced a few more practice deliveries (or, truth be known, chucks), the ringleader approached me and asked if w
e could please play another game. I agreed to a shortened version as long as they bowled and didn’t continue to throw the ball, a la Murili and Harbhajan. (This seemed to be a habit with Indians, particularly in the backyard form of the game where a tennis ball was used.) Just as I was about to inform the others, however, I saw everyone crowd around John. No one was laughing. John was on his phone, which wasn’t uncommon. What was odd was that he wasn’t cavorting about with a smile on his face, telling stories to the recipient. He lightly kicked the dirt and moved around the cemetery as if to find some privacy. Even though I didn’t know the incoming news, an eerie vibe wafted through the cemetery. A stillness prevailed. Reece shooed away small children keen to get a glimpse of John’s mobile.

  He had now been speaking for more than ten minutes. Something was wrong. Stew approached me, his eyes a mixture of confusion and sadness. ‘Did you hear that?’ he asked. ‘Anna’s dead.’

  Anna, John’s ex-wife, had been living in Cairo for the past two years. Apparently, the previous evening she had gone to sleep in her apartment, not knowing that a candle was still burning. Some time during the night her home caught fire and she later died of asphyxiation, her golden retriever, George, by her side. Their daughter, John’s only child Nicola, was back in Auckland, completely unaware of what had happened.

  This was all too weird. Twenty minutes earlier we had been parading about like idiots. We had laughed and joked and hit tennis balls up trees. Now, walking back to the Goldfish Bowl, we thought about Anna. And death in a cemetery. And our own families. And the trip. And John. And holy shit, can’t life just change in a split second? A cemetery, for Christ’s sake. In the City of Life.