Tamanna nodded, but it felt like she had shot him at close range with a .22 calibre handgun.
‘So . . .’ He found it hard to move his jaw. ‘That’s it?’
‘Yeah . . . I guess . . .’
Rishabh remained silent. He feared that if he opened his mouth, he would let out the howl that was developing in his gut. In his stomach sat a concentrated ball of acid that churned and churned.
‘I’m sorry . . . Rishabh, I hope you understand.’
Rishabh smiled. His lips trembled.
‘I have to go now . . .’ she said.
She walked past him, moving briskly. After a distance, she dropped her head. He didn’t know why she did that—whether she was embarrassed or shocked or if she just wanted to check if her laces were tied. She turned a corner, and then he could see her no longer. He puffed his cheeks out and groaned. It was the hollow sound of three years falling apart.
‘What did she say?’
‘How’d it go?’
‘Did she slap you?’
The squawky questions flew at him from every corner of the dressing room. Rishabh stared at the concerned faces and began laughing. It started as a giggle but quickly escalated to a monstrous cackling. He pushed past them and climbed on to a desk.
‘Do you want to know what she said?’
He waved his arms about like the conductor of his own tragic opera.
‘I’ll tell you what she said.’ He leapt to a second desk. ‘She said no!’
A gasp rose from his audience. Not on hearing the news but because Rishabh had leapt to a third desk, which had wobbled perilously before settling under his weight.
‘Rishabh, come down, man . . . It’s all right . . .’ said Rahul. Puro looked away.
‘NO! I won’t. N-O. No! Do you understand what no means, Rahul?’
‘Yeah—’
‘WRONG! It means no. Not happening, negative, nah, naw, nope!’
‘Dude, seriously . . .’ said Sumit, ‘that was a terrible joke.’
‘NO!’ he screamed. ‘It’s not a joke. It’s the truth.’
‘AYE!’ came a voice from behind him. ‘WHAT ARE YOU DOING? GET DOWN FROM THERE!’
Rishabh whirled around only to lock eyes with a glaring coach. All at once he felt drained and sheepish. No one made a sound as he, slowly and noisily, lowered himself to sea level.
‘Where is your discipline?’ growled the coach.
Every shoulder in the room sagged at the mention of the D-word. The shouting sessions that followed the word ‘discipline’ were always the longest and harshest. They braced themselves as the coach ripped into Rishabh for insubordination, disorderly conduct, disrespect to public property, damaging the reputation of the football team, flaws of character, questionable upbringing and lack of remorse. In fact, he listed every reprehensible charge that could be thrown at a person this side of arson, robbery and first-degree murder. Rishabh was verbally assassinated for simply standing atop a desk and lamenting the loss of his first love. What made it worse was that every time he tried to defend himself, or even apologize, he was shut down with fiercer criticism.
When the tirade ended, the coach straightened himself, cleared his throat and said, ‘I just came to tell you that the match starts in one hour.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Okay, now half an hour. Take rest and don’t stand on tables and chairs.’ He turned on his heel and stalked out of the room. They saw that other teams had gathered outside 5 A after hearing the commotion. Rishabh shut his eyes and let out a low groan.
But his embarrassment didn’t last much longer. Soon the team was engrossed in warming up for the upcoming match. Their next opponents were called St Mary’s. They were a convent school from Mumbra and wore a green-and-gold jersey. An unspectacular outfit, they had quietly made it to the semi-finals by being stolid in their defence and clinical in their attack. They had ground out three consecutive 1–0 victories. The Sanghvi boys felt the odds were in their favour.
The birds were making their way back to their nests. As twilight wore on, the anticipation and exhilaration grew and the team jogged up the muddy patch of land between the ground and the basketball court. But Rishabh didn’t hear any of the chatter. The thought of playing a game of football—a semi-final, no less—did not enter his mind. He was focused, instead, on the match being played on the ground as they waited. Kamani Krida were deep into the second half of their tie with Bryan International. They had quickly secured a two-goal lead in the first half and had shifted to a lower gear for the rest of the game.
In the stands, Tamanna was chewing her nails. Her dark eyes followed the game with rapture. She threw her hands up whenever Kamani Krida attacked. The acidic ball wound tighter in Rishabh’s stomach. Her heart is set on someone wearing the orange jersey of Kamani fucking Krida. He was sure of it.
Towards the end of the game, Eklavya clipped the ball over to the fossilized Nagesh, who promptly walloped it into the net. The boys and the two men of KKPS erupted in jubilation. Then, as he watched, Eklavya turned to the stands with a cheeky grin and saluted. Tamanna turned red and buried her face in her hands. The ball in Rishabh’s stomach spewed out its bile. He froze.
Eklavya! She loved that pumpkin-headed idiot, who was still a student despite being old enough to be a teacher! What terrible taste she had. That too from Kamani Krida, of all places. His interior monologue threw up a little. What a traitor she had turned out to be.
If there is any mercy in the world, Rishabh doesn’t find evidence of it that day.
He doesn’t hear the whistle blow. He starts moving as a mechanical obligation when he sees everyone around him running. He has a glazed look on his face that makes his teammates reluctant to pass to him. Rahul takes a shot at a goal that is firmly grasped by the keeper. Rishabh continues staring at the keeper with a thousand-yard stare long after he has kicked the ball afield. He stares till the keeper begs a defender to stand between him and the ghostly gaze.
They get a corner. Rishabh listlessly jogs over to take it. He submits a ball that drags itself along the ground and comes to a pathetic stop acres from where his players are poised. Puro grabs him by the collar of his shirt and shakes him. ‘You’ve gone mad or what? Don’t fuck up this match over some stupid girl!’
It enrages Rishabh. How does Puro not understand him? Why is he so selfish? It’s just a game. A stupid game, that’s all it is. How is he overlooking the well-being of his best friend over a goddamn match? Rishabh spits on the ground. From the touchline he can see the coach gesturing violently at him. He can make out the expletives framed by his lips. His eyes are popping so far out of his head that someone on the pitch could have tripped over them. St Mary’s are attacking, and the coach is frantically trying to get Rishabh to track back.
‘Fuck you!’ he yells but jogs to pitch in. Luckily, between Dave and Dutta, they put out the attack. A few more strained minutes pass before the half comes to a close.
‘Rishabh, what has happened to you? Bastard, look at me!’ spat the coach the minute Rishabh was within earshot.
Rishabh turned a glum face towards him.
‘Standing on tables, playing like a bloody fool. My six-year-old daughter could have taken a better corner. You don’t want to play, you tell me. I’ll take you off right now,’ said the coach. He was screaming so loudly that a murder of crows flew out of a nearby tree.
Rishabh mumbled an apology. He darted his eyes upward, to the stands. Blood rushed to his ears. Reclining on the steps was a laughing Eklavya. Tamanna sat beside him. Rishabh was certain they had heard the coach. They were laughing at him. At his ineptitude. He felt embarrassed and angry.
If Rishabh is lackadaisical in the first half, he’s positively catatonic in the second. If the statistics of the match are recorded accurately, then they will show that the goalposts are covering more distance than Rishabh. He ambles around aimlessly and ends up being more a spectator than a participant.
The coach goes blue in the face just yelling at him. Rishabh’s
behaviour is baffling and blasphemous. The Mongoose doesn’t understand why he’s shirking responsibility so openly. Eventually he’s left with no choice. He tells Pinal Oza to get ready, and the next time the ball rolls out for a throw, he signals the referee for a substitution.
Rishabh is awoken by three sharp blasts of the whistle. He’s surprised when he sees Oza bouncing on his toes by the touchline. Who’s being subbed? wonders Rishabh.
‘Get off the pitch, fast,’ says the referee.
‘Who?’
‘You!’
It takes a moment for his protests to begin. He raises his hand, telling the coach he’s fine where he is. The coach has an apoplectic fit. He goggles his eyes, and a stream of invective flows out of his mouth. The outburst is so venomous that it makes the referee blush.
‘Just go,’ says Puro quietly.
‘But I don’t need to be subbed,’ whines Rishabh.
‘It doesn’t matter. Just go,’ says Puro. The steeliness in his voice cuts through Rishabh.
He bows his head and trots to the touchline. Oza has a hand up for a high five, but Rishabh jogs right past him. Oza shrugs and runs in the opposite direction.
Rishabh glances up at the stands. The good news is that Tamanna isn’t present to see his disgraceful exit. The bad news is that she is probably off canoodling with that filthy Eklavya. Rishabh drops down on a step, defeated.
‘What’s wrong with you, man?’ inquires Sumit.
‘SHUT UP!’ screams Rishabh.
He startles the entire bench. Sumit tells him where he can shove his anger, and the coach gives him a cold look. It’s meant to intimidate him, but Rishabh holds his dead gaze till commotion on the pitch makes the coach turn away.
Rahul eventually broke the deadlock with a clean header from Purohit’s corner kick. Even the substitutes jumped up in jubilation. Rishabh, however, reacted as if he were watching a particularly tedious poetry recital. He blinked in rapid succession to show he had comprehended the situation but was unwilling to display any more emotion.
When they won the match and everyone charged the field to celebrate their first qualification for a football final, Rishabh hung back. He kicked about on the fringes, unable to generate the pride or happiness that the occasion demanded. He felt a lump in his throat as he realized that he was completely forgotten by all his mates. Nobody cared for the grumpy boy who refused to join the scrum. No one stopped to wonder, Hey, where’s Rishabh? They were content and self-sufficient.
They don’t need me around, thought Rishabh.
The coach congratulated the team privately after their vocal cords had been sapped from screaming and sloganeering. Chillingly, he didn’t even look at Rishabh or acknowledge his behaviour. The ghostly insignificance of his presence wounded Rishabh more than a thousand words ever could.
‘You have lots of time before your final match this evening,’ said the coach. ‘I will call you. Till then, save energy, have food, have water. Be mentally relaxed. It’s one more game, men, just one more.’
In 5 A, Rishabh took off his studs, wrenched off his soggy jersey, slipped into a cool, dry pair of clothes, put his head down on a desk and slept. He felt like his teammates had abandoned him. He didn’t want the coach glowering at him. Most of all, he didn’t want to see Tamanna and her slimy old boyfriend. He was very much done with reality and so decided to slip into a self-induced coma for a couple of hours.
It was a dreamless slumber. When he awoke, he realized he had dribbled all over the bench. The dim classroom was empty. He didn’t know how long he had been knocked out for, but he knew the day had progressed because the light outside had gone from dull grey to charcoal grey. The sleep had thankfully erased the sourness of the last match.
But bad luck wasn’t done with Rishabh Bala just yet. It hung around the fifth standard corridor and took the form of the lumbering Dutta. Rishabh saw him immediately as he exited 5 A. One look at Dutta’s mournful face made his peace ebb away.
‘KKPS are in the final,’ said Dutta. The words floated on a heavy sigh. ‘They crushed DES in the semis. 5–0.’ Dejected exclamations rose from Dave, Rahul, Floyd and Lokhande, who hung about the corridor too.
Rishabh balked. Dancing before his eyes was a vision of Tamanna clapping her hands in glee.
Dutta inhaled deeply and then delivered the sucker punch on a breathy, defeated sigh that was deeper than the first one: ‘And I think Puro’s dying.’
‘What do you mean?’ Rishabh was alarmed.
‘He’s in the infirmary,’ explained Dutta.
Rishabh didn’t hear the rest of what Dutta had to say because he’d shot off towards the infirmary, which was at the end of the fifth standard corridor. Rishabh raced down the passage, came to a skidding stop at the infirmary and entered it, panting.
He met the nurse in the examination room. She shrieked on seeing him. ‘Get all that mud out of my room!’ She shooed him away by violently fluttering her wrists.
‘Ma’am, is Puro here?’
‘Who is this Puro? Look how dirty you are, completely dripping with mud and dirt. Chee! I just get the room clean and you arrive with all this dirtiness. So filthy, so filthy!’
Just then, Dave, Floyd, Rahul and Lokhande burst on to the scene. The sight of one muddy footballer had been enough to cause the nurse’s sensitive blood pressure to spike. The appearance of an entire gang of them was giving her heart palpitations. Again she shrieked in horror and this time retreated into her cabin, invoking the holy spirit of the Lord.
The boys marched to the sickbeds. The infirmary only had three, in one of which lay Puro wrapped up like a newborn baby. At the far end of the bed, like a tense father, sat Ghadge Sir. His hands were under the blanket, and were moving vigorously. At another moment, Rishabh would have burst out laughing at the suggestiveness of the spectacle, but then he grew grave.
‘What the hell is going on?’ demanded Rishabh.
‘AIDS?’ said Dave.
Ghadge Sir glowered at them. ‘He’s pheeling weak.’
‘In only two games his stamina is over?’ said Floyd.
‘Fuck off!’ growled Puro. Ghadge Sir’s glower transferred to him. He must have done something unpleasant beneath the blanket too because Puro winced. ‘Sorry, sir. I meant to say, “Get lost!” I’m just feeling really cold.’ He shut his eyes and shook like a leaf.
In a long, rambling retelling, Ghadge Sir explained the situation. Purohit was suffering from hypothermia. Being drenched in sweat and a steady drizzle for the last five hours and playing two intense matches had left Puro a shivering wreck. That’s when they noticed that Puro’s skin had turned the colour of a cow’s tongue. Rishabh asked the dreaded question.
‘Will he be able to play?’
‘What s-s-sort of q-q-question is that, b-b-bey?’ said Puro between shivers.
Rishabh ignored his machismo and looked, instead, at Ghadge Sir.
‘What you think I’m sitting here, rabbing his legs phor? I want him to but—’
‘But can he?’
‘I wheel not rishk this boy’s health,’ declared Ghadge Sir. ‘He wheel play iph he gets better. That’s all.’
Ghadge Sir rarely showed such firmness. Yet, when the moment demanded action, he transformed from a floundering dancing bear to a growling grizzly. His word, they realized, was final.
Rishabh could only wonder how cut up Puro was feeling. For him to succumb to illness before a final was perhaps the cruellest twist that fate could rustle up. He deserved to play in the final more than any of the others. Since the moment his father had first rolled a football towards him and he had bumped it across the room, Puro had developed a devotion to the game that the others couldn’t even come close to. For most of the boys, the sport was a hobby. It was something they enjoyed doing even as they saw themselves eventually picking a branch of study, settling into a job and containing their love for football to weekend games on the television. Meanwhile, all Puro wanted to do was to keep himself on a pitch for as l
ong as luck, livelihood and longevity would allow. When he closed his eyes and dreamed dreams of the future, he saw a vision of himself wearing a blue jersey, an armband encircling his bicep, and singing the national anthem in a full voice, joined by a stadium packed with passionate people. The thought drove him to wake up early, train with ferocity and cast aside any doubts about his talent or destiny. He had worked so hard to be a champion, it hurt Rishabh to think that he wasn’t playing for the championship.
There was nothing they could do except stand around and dirty the nurse’s infirmary even further. As they were leaving, Puro called out to Rishabh.
‘Get my bag and kit, no,’ he said. ‘If I get better, I don’t want to waste any time.’
Rishabh looked at Ghadge Sir, who mulled over it plaintively and then finally nodded his head.
‘Getting it right away.’
By the time he dropped off Puro’s belongings, news had spread about his hypothermia. Fearful conversations erupted in every corner of the dressing room.
‘I knew it in the last match only,’ said Vade. ‘I played him a ball and he couldn’t run to get it.’
‘That pass was fuck all,’ groaned Rana.
‘No, no. He was struggling. I could see it on his face,’ insisted Vade.
‘Wish he was playing,’ mumbled Bhupi.
‘Arre, we’ll be fine,’ reassured Rahul.
‘I know,’ said Bhupi, but his face suggested he didn’t.
An hour remained till kick-off—time enough for Puro to make a miraculous recovery, the team hoped. The minutes ticked by painfully slowly. Their bodies began recognizing the beating they had taken over the last two days. There was a dull ache in Rishabh’s shins and a sharp one near his knee. They had burned through their energy and couldn’t move without wincing and whining.
Then came the nervousness, which began permeating the room as the countdown came to a close. The boys started kitting up. The sense of occasion mounted as they slipped into their muddy jerseys. Tejas wiped the school emblem clean. Studs clattered against the marble floor. The smiles were replaced by pursed lips. Brows came together. Bhupi let out a series of quick breaths in an effort to calm down. But he continued to buzz like a wind-up toy entangled in a rug. Sumit sat upright in his seat. His eyes were shut, his fingers were entwined, his lips moved rapidly. The final had put the fear of God in Sumit, and he wasn’t even going to play.
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