‘It’s over there,’ calls Rishabh, pointing at a spot a short distance behind Ajinkya.
‘Thanks very much!’
In the second half, they eviscerate the Banyan boys. Floyd grabs a goal and Puro gets a second. Towards the end, Rishabh tries hard to get on the scorecard but can’t seem to put the finishing touches to a strike. The match ends at 4–0.
Sanghvi leaves to applause from the other teams watching from the stands. Some of the boys on the sidelines are pointing and laughing at the Bodhi players. Ajinkya waddles up to Rishabh and taps him on the shoulder.
‘Good game. All the best for remaining tournament,’ he says with a wide smile on his face.
‘Thank you, man. You guys also played well.’
Ajinkya snorts. ‘No, no! We know we don’t play well. We don’t have ground in school. We like to play so we practise on the side. But there is no support only. Today also we all just bunked school and came.’
‘That’s crazy.’
‘Yeah. Because we listened to lot of good things about Sanghvi School. So we wanted to see. And we are all loving to play. So we played. We are happy we came. Thanks, haan, and all the best once again.’
Rishabh watches him join the rest of his team. The Banyan boys stand shivering in the rain, picking up their half-eaten sandwiches and their animated conversations. They are laughing and joking, enjoying their day out with their buddies. Looking at them, Rishabh feels no joy of victory. The Banyan boys have lost but they aren’t beaten.
Off the field, the Sanghvi team felt the exertion in their legs. A throb of pain escaped their toes when they yanked off their muddy studs. On the field, Dingreja Educational Society narrowly defeated Hemu Vilasbhai Patel School. DES, who were among the favourites, made heavy work of their first round. They missed chance after chance and played a box-to-box game that was thoroughly entertaining for the spectators, but must have been tiresome for the players.
The most decisive outcome was provided by Kamani Krida Public School. The team in orange met MES High School in their first round. The MES boys didn’t know what hit them. Within the first five minutes, they were three goals down. KKPS showed them no mercy. They went at them with the same rabid energy from the first to the final whistle. It was as if they were making a statement. With an 8–0 victory, everyone got it.
The buzz right after the match was about two boys in particular: Eklavya Bhamtekara, the KKPS centre midfielder, who had scored one and set up three goals, and Nagesh Kataria, their striker, who’d scored the three goals that Eka had set up. When the duo’s notoriety reached Sanghvi’s 5 A dressing room, Rishabh and Puro had to get a better look for themselves.
They found them lounging near the cash counters, their wet clothes draped on the backs of their chairs. Eklavya was a big lad. Easily topping six feet, his long limbs spilled over the tiny seats. He had a broad, chubby face. His large front teeth prised his lips open into a perpetual half-smile. He flapped his right foot from side to side, his eyes glazed in a relaxed stupor.
Then he rose and looked around lazily. In a moist voice, he slowly called, ‘Prateek.’ No one replied to his croak. So he repeated it a little louder. When he still didn’t get a response, he leaned over, picked up one of his studs and, with wicked force, flung it towards a boy sitting cross-legged on the floor, a few feet from him. The stud slammed into the boy with an ugly thwack. Rishabh and Puro winced. Prateek howled in pain.
‘Pass the water, you deaf piece of shit,’ spat Eklavya.
Prateek scowled but didn’t retort. He quietly passed a bottle to Eklavya.
‘They’re on the same team, right?’ whispered Rishabh. Puro nodded.
‘Can’t pass the ball. Can’t pass the water bottle also. Why did we bring you here, Prateek?’ said a tall, dark, skinny boy with a venomous sweetness in his voice. ‘Be more . . .’ the boy wound up his wet jersey and slapped it across Prateek’s back, ‘attentive.’ The lash seemed to echo for a full minute.
Suddenly Puro gasped. ‘What’s he doing here?’
‘You know him?’ asked Rishabh.
‘Nagesh Kataria. He was with me in one of the athletics meets. I was with the under-12 lot, and he was in the under-15 category,’ said Puro.
‘So?’
‘That was four years ago.’
‘Oh! He’s overage?’
‘One hundred per cent. Just look at him!’
Rishabh now began noticing Nagesh’s overaged-ness, and the more he looked, the more signs he spotted. There was the chiselled musculature, the tight abs stacked over his stomach. He had the bristly goatee of a man, which, combined with his lean, bony face and beady eyes, made him look like a billy goat.
‘How old do you think he is?’
‘Old enough to go for The Da Vinci Code on a real ID.’
‘And he’s still in school?’
‘Does he look smart to you?’
They watched as Nagesh struggled to open a Tupperware box. It seemed like the concept of a lid had him baffled.
‘What about Eka?’
‘I’m pretty sure he’s ancient too,’ said Puro.
‘Should we complain?’
‘Yeah, we should tell Ghadge Sir,’ resolved Puro. ‘Can’t let these grandfathers get away with it.’
Twenty minutes later, Ghadge Sir was vehemently shaking his head. ‘They haeo submitted proper documents. You don’t think about other player. Jusht you worry about your own game,’ he said in a tone that prompted no further discussion.
Their next game was an hour later, against Abhinav Vidya High School. The Sanghvites began warming up under a light rain. The tiredness that they had eased out of their muscles seemed to have returned with interest. On the pitch, St Mary’s ICSE was playing Stanislaus. Rishabh’s gaze shifted from them to the Abhinav players, who were limbering up at the other end of the ground. He stumbled mid-stretch.
They were terrifying to look at. In Rishabh’s estimation, they were each the dimensions of a standard gulmohar tree. Their maroon jerseys seemed to have to strain to contain their bulging proportions. One boy among them was bigger than all the rest and no less than Frankenstein’s monster himself. Each of his thighs was like a king-sized mattress, and he lumbered about on them, jiggling them to scary effect.
‘What’s so interesting?’ asked Dave, who was stretching next to him.
‘Man, they look scary,’ croaked Rishabh. ‘Just look at the size of that big one in the middle! He’ll squish Puro.’
‘If he catches him.’
‘They look tougher than us,’ said Rishabh.
‘That’s what they’re saying about us right now,’ said Dave. ‘Look.’
‘Don’t point, bey,’ hissed Rishabh, following Dave’s finger. Two Abhinav players were staring at them and talking in low tones. They didn’t look confident at all.
‘We’re the home team!’ said Dave. ‘We’ve just scored four goals.’
‘Yeah, but against a team from Bhiwandi.’
‘Doesn’t matter. I’ve seen them play. The only way they’ll win is if they join our school,’ said Dave. ‘And last I checked, admissions aren’t open.’
Rishabh laughed. The next stretch really loosened his hamstrings. He felt a surge of affinity for Dave. He was a good personality to have in the trenches because he was never fazed. In fact, the worse things became, the funnier he found them. Like that time when the football team had been dragged to the vice principal for breaking a sixth-standard classroom window. Rishabh had made the mistake of standing next to Dave, who’d delivered a whispered reply to each of Janaki Srinivasan’s rhetorical remarks.
‘How could you do this?’ thundered Janaki Ma’am.
‘You just have to kick a ball. It’s not that difficult,’ whispered Dave.
‘How reckless are you boys?’
‘Sometimes I open my eyes during prayers,’ muttered Dave.
‘Should I put a stop to your playing?’
‘Okay, everyone, time to retire,’ purred Dave.
It had been all he could do to not burst into howls of laughter right in a hissing Janaki Ma’am’s face. All that dread that he had felt while walking up to Janaki Ma’am’s room seemed to disappear. Suddenly, it wasn’t the vice principal deriding them for wrecking property; it was just a batty old lady losing her sanity over a silly situation. The more she spoke, the funnier Dave’s asides got until Rishabh turned red in the face with stifled laughter and had to pretend to have a coughing fit just to get some of it out. He had left the room feeling glad that they had broken that window.
He felt that same joy now. He looked around him and saw the determined faces of his teammates, and his fear was diffused. He wasn’t alone, he realized. If he felt overwhelmed, he could voice his apprehensions—from the corner of his mouth—to people who were going through it too, and they could take heart from each other’s limited strengths. Or, at the very least, take laughter from Dave’s bluffed bravado.
As it turned out, it was their mammoth size that proved to be Abhinav’s undoing. They were lumbering and slow and couldn’t keep up with Sanghvi’s quick passing. Though they ran out comfortable 2–0 winners, Rishabh hadn’t really felt at ease during the game. Every time he got the ball, he could see their towering maroon outlines bounding towards him. It made him empathize with every human character in Jurassic Park.
After a tentative first half, during which he’d teetered on the brink of bad form, he had made amends by providing the assist for Hriday Lokhande’s crucial second goal. Lokhande had been the revelation of the match. He was a quiet, hard-tackling, harder-working defensive midfielder, whom the Mongoose had unearthed to shore up the defence when Khodu left. He was a mysterious boy; so soft-spoken that Rishabh often wondered if he got overlooked only because people genuinely forgot he was around. He had been subbed in for Floyd as the Mongoose had been looking to consolidate their lead but he had ended up extending it.
They had no more matches that day. It took the team a while to lift their bodies off the desks in their dressing room. Everyone ached and sputtered, groaning as they scooped up their things. The coach entered the room and clapped his hands. They slowly surrounded him.
‘Well done, men. We’re in the quarter-finals. Three matches,’ he held up three fingers, ‘we are three matches from being champions. Now, I want you boys to go straight home and sleep. No TV, no reading, no music, nothing. Your muscles need complete relaxing. Understood?’
The coach really didn’t have to remind them to sleep. Some were carrying out his orders while he spoke.
‘I want everyone to report at 9 a.m. sharp tomorrow. Got it? Purohit, you are in charge of this. Okay, good job and get moving,’ finished the coach, clapping his hands and motioning them to pick up the pace.
Puro and Rishabh shared a rickshaw ride home. Puro was quiet for most of the journey.
‘What did you think of the last game?’ asked Rishabh.
‘Your second half was better. The assist was good.’
‘I know, the first half . . . I don’t know what happened . . .’
‘You need to be more consistent, buddy,’ said Puro. ‘We all do,’ he added, a little too late.
Fifteen minutes later, Mrs Bala gave Rishabh a withering look as he made his muddy way through the hall and to his room. ‘Don’t touch anything,’ she instructed.
Rishabh stripped off his wet, dirty kit and washed it. He hosed the muck off, scrubbed the jersey—careful not to scrub out the school logo—and then rinsed it. Then he took a long, luxurious hot-water bath. Under the shower, he noticed a purple mark below his ribcage, to the left; a spot which the number 17 of AVH must have mistaken for an armrest because he’d kept nestling his elbow into it. The bath had made him drowsy. He just about managed to spread his wet kit under a fan before collapsing in a heap on the bed.
The pain began the moment he opened his eyes. He felt like someone had moved him from his bed while he’d been asleep and placed him in a car accident. Every inch of his body screamed in agony. He felt wincing pain in places he didn’t even recollect getting hurt—like his eyeballs. When he stood up, his calves felt so stiff that he wondered if he had bathed in starch the night before. It took him half an hour of slowly shuffling around to retrieve some of his motor skills. Thank God I don’t have a football tournament to play in today, he thought bitterly.
He stopped by Puro’s house and waited patiently as the latter hobbled to the rickshaw and gingerly hopped in.
‘Aches like hell, doesn’t it?’
‘Not really. I’m feeling fit and fresh,’ said Puro. His dogged denial was amusing to Rishabh.
‘Great! You mind holding on to this for a second?’ asked Rishabh, dropping his kitbag on Puro’s thigh.
‘FUCK!’ yelled Puro, making the auto-wallah swerve in fright.
‘Sorry, man, I thought you were fully fit and all,’ said Rishabh, laughing.
‘Fuck you.’
The school was shrouded in Sunday silence. Their footsteps echoed down the long, empty corridors. In the distance, they could make out the forms of two–three contingents along the ground. Dattatreya was, as usual, in the middle of the pitch, having waited till the last possible minute to redraw the lines. Rishabh was talking to Puro about how benched substitutes always seemed to enjoy more victories than the key players, when he caught sight of an apparition that made him freeze. Puro noticed his stricken face.
‘Your eyeballs hurting again?’
‘I think . . . I saw Tamanna . . .’ whispered Rishabh in a tizzy.
‘Where? Where?’ asked Puro, spinning in all directions.
‘I think she was in the corridor next to the ground. Uff, there’s a pillar coming in the way now,’ said Rishabh. ‘NO! There she is!’
Puro looked towards the passage Rishabh was pointing at and saw Tamanna and Preetha walking down it. Puro was relieved. He had been worried about Rishabh’s form in the last game and didn’t want hallucinations to compound his friend’s issues.
‘So today you’ll be in full form,’ teased Puro, winking at Rishabh, who said nothing and ducked with surprising speed into the corridor that led to the dressing room.
When Rishabh opened the door to 5 A, he was almost thrown out by the sonic force of twelve voices simultaneously telling him, ‘Tamanna is here!’ He quickly shut the door behind him but was confident the announcement had reached her already. They were loud enough to be heard in Burundi.
‘I know!’ he hissed.
‘You called her or what?’ asked Tejas.
‘No.’
‘Then why is she here?’ wondered Tejas, genuinely puzzled.
‘Because she’s in love with our champ. Personally, I think it’s time . . .’ began Rahul.
‘Time for?’ prompted Rishabh.
‘Time to tell her, dumb-ass,’ said Dave.
Rishabh blushed. He knew they were ragging him, but a part of him wanted to believe they were right: that she had come to see him, that she wanted to support him—and see him win—that the time had come for him to man up and come clean. In his head, he quietly mulled over the idea of asking her out. The team, quite done with his indecision by now, resolved to egg him on.
‘Tell her! Tell her! Tell her!’ they chanted in unison.
‘Guys . . . I can’t,’ muttered Rishabh. He had lived with himself long enough to know that his cowardly soul couldn’t go through with the task. He was feeling parched just thinking of it.
‘You have to tell her sometime,’ urged Sumit.
‘Dude, I’m telling you—you aren’t going to get a better chance than this. There’s hardly anyone in school today. No one will know. It’s a three-second job—“I love you.” See how easy it is?’ reasoned Rahul.
Rishabh looked at Puro, who hadn’t weighed in yet. Rishabh hoped he would side with him and against the rabid bunch of Romeos. But to his horror, a sly grin crept across Puro’s lips.
‘Tell you what, let’s leave it to destiny. You don’t want to tell her now, that’s fine.
But . . .’ trailed off Puro, holding off for the flourish, ‘if you score in the next match, you will tell her. Deal?’
‘Arre, if you don’t want him to tell her, then say that, no,’ yelled Dave.
‘Now he’ll purposely not score. Well done, Puro,’ groaned Floyd.
‘Deal,’ said Rishabh.
He’d said it too softly; the bickering continued unabated. So he said it again, considerably louder.
‘I SAID I’LL DO IT!’
Now he had the attention of the room.
‘If I score in the next match, I will ask Tamanna out,’ stated Rishabh Bala with a coolness and calmness that surprised even himself. His heart was battering against his chest. He felt it was beating hard enough for the others to see its imprint on his T-shirt. He didn’t know what had prompted him to blurt the words out, but he felt relieved at having voiced a thought that had grown stale in his mind. Suddenly it was fresh again. Yet there was a reptilian part of him that stuck out its forked tongue and hissed, ‘You’ve made a big mistake.’
Rishabh has never played under so much pressure before. They’re playing Kala Mahavidyalaya. KM aren’t that great a side, having won their last two matches on penalties. Only the Mongoose is taking them seriously. ‘Remember, there are no bad teams in the good rounds,’ he says. KM doesn’t bother Rishabh in the least. What worries him is seeing Tamanna and Preetha sitting in the stands overlooking the ground.
‘Play a good game, my boy,’ Puro says with a wink.
Rishabh gives him a nervous thumbs up. He has no other option. It’s the first time she’s seeing him play. He’s determined to impress her, to show her what he’s capable of, to display his skill, talent and passion for the game, to put the last match behind him and move Sanghvi ahead in the tournament.
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