Red Card

by Kautuk Srivastava

  ‘You don’t know?’ snorted Puro.

  ‘No!’ said Rishabh, exasperated. ‘What the hell is going on?’

  He had to wait a good minute for Puro to stop laughing before he heard the news. Tamanna had apparently shown up to school sporting a hairstyle so terrible that it made Hitler’s comb-over look fashionable. The reviews were in:

  ‘A stunning disaster’—Rahul Rawat

  ‘Like a rat ate her hair while she slept’—Aurobindo Ghatak

  ‘Is that a scrambled egg on her head? Oh, it’s her hair’—Dhriti Karekar

  Puro’s voice suddenly dipped. ‘In fact, if you turn around right now, you can see the horror at first hand,’ he whispered.

  Rishabh whipped around and saw Tamanna Vedi and, like always, the air exited his body in a dreamy sigh. To his mind, she was like the Mona Lisa. Not in the way that she had a high forehead but that she was mysterious, and he wanted to look at her all the time. She had slender legs, thin arms and an angular face on which sat a nose so sharp it deserved a sheath. Her eyes always twinkled, and he used them to navigate the corridors every lunch break, like a Phoenician sailor pursuing the North Star. And, unlike the majority of the batch, puberty had only done her favours. While the rest of them had turned into pimply ogres, Tamanna had returned after the eighth-standard summer vacation with a suspiciously tight-fitting pinafore.

  But something was different about her that day. Rishabh knew this because he had mapped the topography of her face through countless hours of sneaky glances. His eyes immediately went to her hair. Usually her locks were long and free-flowing. When left open, they made little waves that lapped against her face. Most of the time, they were shackled by a scrunchy into a jaunty ponytail. That day, however, there were neither waves nor a ponytail. The reports had been accurate; half her hair was indeed missing. However, they had been wrong in calling it ugly. To Rishabh’s eyes, even the bowl-shaped crop of her curly, stringy, Maggi-like hair looked nothing short of wondrous. She’s so fashionable, he thought, she’s . . . gorgeous.

  Rishabh was a little biased. Heavily biased, actually, because the truth was that he pined for Tamanna with that intense, hormonal, butterflies-in-the-stomach adolescent love that leaves gawky boys slack-jawed and speechless. He had contracted young love all at once in the seventh standard, when he had seen the prefect Tamanna as she manned the bridge on the second floor. And he’d developed a crush proper when she had told him to walk silently as he passed. Why can’t I feel my stomach? he’d wondered. And why is the world suddenly all pink?

  For weeks he had dreamed about her, and his knees wobbled each time he passed her in the corridors, but he hadn’t had the courage to tell her how he felt. She’d found out anyway, though, because he had made the mistake of telling Puro about it.

  ‘Don’t tell anyone, but I love Tamanna,’ he had said.

  That’s when Rishabh found out that the fastest way to tell everybody was to tell somebody not to tell anybody. Sure enough, the next day when he’d come to school, the corridors erupted in wolf whistles and a chant of ‘Tamanna, haan-haan-haan?’ She had made fleeting, embarrassed eye contact with him before pivoting and walking off with a soft goose-step. He wondered what it meant. He never asked, and she never said.

  Three years passed, and even now, in the tenth standard, theirs was a great, unfinished love story—a hot topic of gossip, speculation and even betting (the odds were in favour of Tamanna slapping Rishabh if he eventually did ask her out). Which is why Rishabh had been the first person everyone had flocked to after seeing Tamanna’s fresh mop.

  ‘I like it,’ said Rishabh, a touch dreamily. ‘It frames her face perfectly.’

  Puro scanned Rishabh’s for irony and, spotting none, sputtered with laughter. ‘You know what? You should tell her that!’

  ‘No, I can’t. What will I say to—’ But before he could finish that sentence, Puro yelled out to Tamanna.

  Rishabh watched in horror as she and her posse of three girls came to a halt. Tamanna was always surrounded by these girls, whose only job, it seemed to Rishabh, was to leer at him and spit to Tamanna, ‘He’s looking at you again.’

  ‘Yeah?’ said Tamanna to Puro in a voice that sounded like an angel’s harpsichord.

  ‘He wants to tell you something,’ blurted Puro, pointing at a rapidly shrinking Rishabh before pushing him forward.

  The posse sniggered as Tamanna looked on awkwardly. Too much time had passed for Rishabh to remain silent any longer. Something had to be said, but his brain seemed to have shut down the machinery. Puro nudged him, and some words came unstuck.

  ‘Your hairstyle. It’s nice,’ spoke Rishabh as if it were the first time he had ever spoken.

  Tamanna smiled, and he felt his stomach unknotting. ‘Thank you,’ she said in Lata Mangeshkar’s singing voice.

  Now, it would have been a perfectly sweet compliment if he had just left it at that. But her smile changed everything. Rishabh reacted to that smile like a slam poet reacting to snapping fingers. I must go on, my words are clearly magic, he thought.

  ‘It’s not at all like what people are saying about it,’ he insisted.

  ‘What are people saying about it?’ asked Tamanna, concern dancing on her eyebrows.

  ‘Oh, you know, like a rat bit through your hair. Anything they are saying, haan! How is this an omelette? Maybe scrambled egg, but it’s not even that—all rubbish they are saying.’

  Behind Tamanna, Preetha Mahadevan rolled her eyes, Krupa Iyer sucked her teeth and Suman Bagh smacked her forehead with her palm. That’s when Rishabh realized he had made a mistake. Tamanna breathed deeply and stalked off, her shapely chin bobbing in anger.

  ‘But I really like it!’ Rishabh yelled after her. ‘God promise!’

  Fortunately, the bell shrieked through the corridor, stemming the flow of any more stupid words from his mouth.

  Many years later, Rishabh Bala would remember how the windy, flaky rain was pattering down from the skies when Sadashiv Ghadge, the physical education teacher, sent word for the football team to assemble in the gymnasium. They left their tiffin half-finished and tore through the corridors, joyously running to answer the call. It was always good news when Ghadge Sir summoned them for an ‘impor-tent announcement’.

  It was about time, too, that they got an ‘impor-tent announcement’, felt the fifteen boys who made up the school football team. Two weeks into the new term, and they were still without a coach. Their last coach had left for a more lucrative salary at another school. They had been badgering Ghadge Sir for a replacement almost every day, but all they’d get out of him was ‘Yes, yes, I wheel get you coach.’ And every day, the football team had been jealously watching the cricket and basketball teams train while wondering when they would get on the pitch. So when Ghadge Sir called them to the gymnasium that afternoon, fifteen boys shared a single thought: coach. They were excited to meet the new man and wondered if the one to lead them to glory had finally arrived.

  Puro, the captain, went in first. The others crowded around him. Ghadge Sir looked up from his desk and gave them a weary nod. They tumbled into his office.

  ‘You are all here?’ said Ghadge Sir.

  ‘No, sir,’ said Puro.

  Just then Aurobindo came huffing down the corridor and skidded to a halt.

  ‘Yes, sir, now we are,’ added Puro.

  Ghadge Sir gave Aurobindo a withering look. ‘Alvase late.’

  ‘Sir, where’s the new coach?’ asked Rahul, keenly scanning the room for a football coach–shaped person but failing to find one.

  Ghadge Sir’s big bearlike face soured, and he swatted the comment aside with disgust. Then he gently put on his bifocals and riffled through some papers on his desk, found the ones he was looking for, inspected them and got up, grumbling. Chatter had broken out among the boys. Speculation about the nature of this ‘impor-tent announcement’ was on in full swing.

  ‘Boys, keep quiet,’ began Ghadge Sir, hitching up the waistband of his t
rack pants till they bordered his enormous paunch. ‘I haeo call you here to tell you about Subroto Cup. It is happen in phipteen days. You boys want to play?’

  A chorus of yeses and a choreography of nods went around the group. The Subroto Cup was a national-level tournament—one of the oldest and most prestigious—that was hosted on a waterlogged ground in Ambarnath each year. The winners of the tournament became the proud holders of an ornate silver trophy that was so big and heavy that it had brought down many a trophy cabinet in its forty-six-year run.

  ‘Good. Then I am giuing you phorms. I want philled back latesht by Whedneshday. Undershtand?’ said Ghadge Sir.

  ‘Yes, sir!’ came the unanimous cry.

  ‘And giu with three pashport photographs. Okay?’

  ‘Yes, sir!’

  The only person who didn’t seem enthused was Puro. Rishabh spotted his jaw working. It was a sign that Puro was indeed concerned. As the din subsided, he spoke up, ‘But, sir, how will we play without a coach?’

  Ghadge frowned. These boys just didn’t let up about the coach. ‘How many times I haeo sed, I wheel get you coach, I wheel get you coach. Coach is growing on trees or what? Giu me some time. This Subroto Cup, you want to play or not?’

  ‘We want to, sir, but—’

  ‘Then phill the phorms and submit phasht. Purohit, you only collect and bring. Okay?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And don’t worry. I wheel get you coach bephore the match.’

  Ghadge Sir distributed the forms and dismissed them. The boys buzzed with anticipation as they filed out of the gymnasium. They were going to play again! Another chance to finally win a trophy had presented itself.

  ‘What if we win the Subroto Cup?’ said Pinal Oza.

  ‘Puro won’t be able to lift it,’ said Abel Floyd Thottapalli.

  ‘But he’ll easily fit in it,’ offered Rahul.

  They laughed and jabbered on as they made their way back to class. The bell rang; tiffin boxes were clanged shut, desks thumped and chairs scraped into place. Rishabh looked out a window and studied the ground. The restlessness he had been feeling in the past month seemed to have cooled. They were set to play at last; the year had finally begun.

  The next Monday, the boys submitted their forms with three photographs each. Ghadge Sir filed them away but when asked about procuring a coach, he winced with annoyance once again. ‘I wheel get bephore tournament. Now don’t ashk one more time,’ he chafed.

  Three days crawled by, each heavy with the anticipation of a coach’s arrival, but a coach never came and those days of practice were lost. The last bell rang on Thursday and as a sea of students filled the corridors, Purohit told Rishabh to meet him at Upvan Lake at seven o’clock that evening. They could meet at leisure because it was one of those rare days when they didn’t have tutorials.

  At 6.45 p.m., Puro rang Rishabh and told him to get ready. The latter sprayed on deodorant and dashed out. He sprang up the hump of road that separated their houses. He jogged past the medical store, the dry-cleaners, the kirana store, the municipal corporator’s bungalow and the ice-cream parlour before coming to a stop at the gate to Nataraj Heights. Rishabh stood there in a blue French jersey with ‘Zidane’ and the number ‘10’ written on the back.

  The two boys continued up the curving road, rounded the bend and ascended until they felt the cool breeze of Upvan Lake in their hair. Rishabh always thought that Upvan was a lake only in the most generous use of the word ‘lake’. At less than a kilometre in radius, it was less a lake and more a pond that had let itself go. What the boys found even more amusing was that at the entry to the lake was a board that read ‘Beware of crocodile’. Rishabh thought this was fitting—if Upvan could be a lake, then any garden lizard in it could be a crocodile.

  Puro leaned over the railing and cast an ominous look across the water. ‘What are we going to do, my boy?’ he said. ‘Only ten days left, and we haven’t trained even a single day.’

  ‘Isn’t Ghadge Sir finding us a coach?’

  ‘Who knows, yaaaar,’ said Puro. He bent down, picked up a stone and hurled it into the water with all his strength. It landed with a distant plop. ‘All I know is that we can’t win the cup like this,’ he continued. ‘Our last training session was in April. It’s July. Look at the team. We haven’t played together in so long. Stamina is zero. Fitness is finished. Look at Aurobindo—the only running he does is to McDonald’s. We’re going to lose again. Fuckin’ hell!’

  Rishabh shared Puro’s frustration. Every decade, with some luck, a school was blessed with a full complement of players. A batch arrived that seemed predestined for greatness. And after many decades of sporting drought, theirs was the batch that was unanimously dubbed the Golden Generation. Ever since they had broken into the under-14 team in the sixth standard, Ghadge Sir, their former coach, Amar, and every passing spectator had reported goosebumps on seeing them play. It had been predicted that when the boys came of age, they would sweep every trophy. The years had passed, and though they’d improved and matured each year, the only sweeping they had done was of the dust that gathered in the empty trophy cabinet.

  ‘Let’s start coaching them,’ said Rishabh. He was angry in the way that made foolish ideas seem appealing.

  Puro looked at him and saw his stern eyebrows. ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning you and I coach the bloody team. Remember the exercises Amar taught us?’

  ‘The two exercises? “Shot on goal, shot on goal” and “Pay the fees, pay the fees”?’

  ‘We’ll come up with new ones. At the very least, let’s get everyone running. Do rounds, get match fit. We can set up five-a-side games.’

  ‘You think it’ll make a difference?’

  ‘Look, I don’t know if we’ll win, but I know we have to try.’

  Puro fell silent. The dark water shimmered in front of them. Finally he spoke. ‘And why should anyone listen to us?’

  ‘Everyone will listen to you. Captain’s orders.’

  Puro laughed. ‘You’re mad or what? No one will train because I said so. I’m Abhay Purohit, not Zinedine Zidane.’

  Rishabh Bala’s eyes lit up. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘They won’t listen to me.’

  ‘No, after that!’

  ‘I’m not Zidane?’

  ‘They don’t know that!’

  Puro looked at his friend, concerned. He was pretty sure everyone knew he wasn’t a retired bald French footballer. ‘I’m sorry?’ he asked cautiously. He had read that one mustn’t provoke lunatics.

  ‘I’ll tell you!’ said Rishabh, dragging Puro away.

  In the middle of the lake, there was a shallow ripple.

  ‘Guys, do you know what this is?’ said Puro, holding up a lime-green file. Fourteen pairs of eyes blinked back at him.

  ‘This file has Zidane’s training techniques. Every drill, every set and every repetition he ever did is in this file.’

  The fourteen pairs of eyes widened simultaneously.

  ‘How did you get it?’ whispered Floyd.

  Puro looked at Rishabh, who nodded supportively. ‘Rishabh and I, we found it on the Net.’ Floyd nodded. It seemed a plausible explanation. Puro, seeing that the ruse was working, went on. ‘We have ten days left. We need to follow this for these next ten days. If we do exactly as is written, down to the last crossing–heading exercise, for ten straight days, there is no way we will not win!’

  Puro threw his hands up in the air, and as he did so, the pages slipped out of the file—first a few and then the whole bundle—and wafted to the ground. Floyd picked up a sheet.

  ‘It’s blank,’ he said sourly.

  ‘This isn’t Zidane’s training technique, it’s Puro’s brain!’ said Rahul, holding up a spotless sheet.

  ‘Not this one,’ said Khodu Madon, the burly stopper, while scowling at a page. ‘On this is written, “Run three rounds. Defence drill. Passing drill. Shooting practice.” . . . Rishabh, this is your handwriting, no?’

>   But Rishabh didn’t hear Khodu because he was busy arguing with Puro about the filing of the papers.

  ‘I bought the file. You had to file them.’

  ‘I thought you already did it.’

  ‘I told you I hadn’t.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘Why didn’t you check?’

  ‘I wouldn’t need to check if you’d done your job!’

  ‘Fellows,’ began Khodu. They turned to look at him. He shoved the single page of instructions into Rishabh’s hands. ‘You dropped this. Call us when we have a real coach.’

  Khodu pushed through the team to leave, and others began following his lead. They shook their bowed heads and their shoulders sagged as they shuffled away. Then, suddenly, from behind them came a fierce growl. ‘GET BACK IN HERE!’

  It was Puro, his eyes aflame under his hooded eyebrows.

  ‘All of you, here, right now. We will coach you, and that’s final! I am captain of this team. I am submitting a team sheet next week, and if you’re not here for training then you sure as hell won’t be on that sheet. Got it?’

  Khodu thought of saying something but, on seeing Puro’s blazing eyes, remained silent.

  ‘So can we start this bloody session?’

  All fourteen boys stood rooted in place. Then a booming voice went up from the back. ‘Let’s do it,’ said Sumit, stamping the ground with his studs.

  ‘Yes, coach,’ said Rahul, winking as he stepped forward.

  The heads now nodded, the shoulders straightened and the majority mumbled in agreement.

  ‘So plan B, then,’ whispered Rishabh.

  On the second day of training, the new coaches faced their first test. The team was on the field, in the middle of stretching, when Govind Sir, the coach of the cricket team, strode up to them and told them to clear off.

  ‘Cricket has the ground right now.’

  ‘Yes, sir. But we just need a small area of the ground. Just the patch near the goalposts,’ said Puro, still bent midway from touching his toes.

  ‘Who has given you permission to train here?’ asked Govind Sir.