When Rohan and I were on our second helpings of everything and Ankit was on his fourth, Sameer finally showed up. He had changed from his sherwani into a kurta-pajama. We greeted him and wished him many happy returns of the day. Then we gave him the thailis of loose change that we had brought along. I’d brought about two hundred rupees in one and two-rupee coins. The thaili was really heavy and I was rather glad to be rid of it. I had no idea what Sameer was going to do with it, but it was about what I would have spent on his present anyway, so it was cool. Sameer excused himself and we hit the food again.
Fifteen minutes later, Sameer reappeared carrying a huge bora filled with all the change he had received from his guests. We dumped our kulfi and rushed forward to help him.
‘God, this weighs a ton!’ exclaimed Ankit. ‘Dude, you’re rich now!’
Sameer just laughed. He led us out of the haveli and stopped beside the darwaan.
‘Bhaiyya,’ he said. ‘Put your hand in and take out as many coins as you can.’
The watchman complied and dug up a handful of coins.
‘Keep them,’ Sameer said and walked off.
The watchman smiled. ‘Thank you, baba,’ he said. ‘Thank you, thank you!’ Then, giggling like a child, he stowed the coins away.
We repeated the process with all the staff members who were helping the maharaj. The joy on their faces was a sight to see—they just sat there, laughing with delight.
We went out to the streets and offered the bora to the beggars. We went to the poor shopkeepers lining the streets.
Every single person thanked Sameer.
‘Now,’ Sameer said, smiling, ‘now, I’m rich.’ Watching Sameer grow rich with the blessings of all those less privileged than him got me thinking about Shubho. I had not visited the club since the pujas and had not seen him for ages.
The next morning, my father and I went to the club. It was six-thirty, but it looked more like seven in the evening. A thick cloud layer hid the sun and a chilly wind was picking up momentum. The conditions indicated that it would be next to impossible to play. Nonetheless, we took the court and made a few dismal attempts. At first, we knocked the ball over the half court. When we tried a full-court rally, however, we lost the ball. It took three ball boys fifteen minutes to locate it. It was pathetic—six-thirty in the morning on a beautiful November day, and the sun had decided to hit ‘snooze’ on its alarm!
Shortly after that, my father retired to the shamiana to exchange gossip with the golfers gathered there, providing me with the opportunity to carry out what I had in mind. Once he was out of sight, I asked the ball boys about Shubho. The news was worse than I had expected—Shubho had not shown up with his father for the past month. And who could blame him? It would hurt his dignity to be just a ball boy and he did not have the means to play the game he loved.
It looked like Dad was going to be busy for a while since he was happily chatting away with his golfer friends. So I informed him that I would be back in half an hour and engaged a ball boy to guide me to Shubho’s house.
We walked out of the club gates, leaving the darwaan staring at us. The question in his eyes was as clear as if it had been written across his forehead with a black marker—a ball boy and a chhota sahib were going somewhere together?
A little way outside the club, the boy took a sharp left turn. The change in surroundings was immediate and dramatic. The roads vanished, replaced by a narrow mud path beaten down by hundreds of bare feet. Huts appeared, made out of mud and plastered with cow-dung cakes, with sheets of corrugated iron acting as roofs. One of them had no windows and a rectangular gap in the front wall acted as the door. A thin, sickly cow was tethered to a pole beside the entrance. Inside the hut, an old man was lying on a khatiya. The ball boy greeted him with a salaam. The man moaned in reply.
We moved on, my heart chilling with every step that we took. It was obvious that none of the ‘houses’ lining the narrow path had running water or electricity. Slowly, very slowly, the slums melted away to reveal a huge pond surrounded by more huts, a tiny island at its centre. On one bank, twenty-odd women were scrubbing and beating the life out of some clothes. Close to another bank, a few straw-and-clay idols drifted in the water. The poor man’s Ma Durga was stuck in the pond, unable to flow away anywhere.
I was shocked. I visited the club at least thrice a week and hadn’t had a clue about this slum-village a few hundred metres from it!
The club was like a life-source for the entire settlement, the ball boy told me. Everyone who lived here was either a caddy or a bearer or worked in some capacity at the club. Seeing the ever-polite, ever-helpful faces of the people who served us at the club, I would never have guessed that they lived in such abject poverty. The disparity in their lifestyle and that of the folks they served horrified me. People who had no clothes to wear at home obeyed people who were dressed in the height of fashion, people who had no food at home saw sumptuous spreads and wastage of food all around.
We finally reached Shubho’s house. I don’t know how the ball boy knew which one was his since all the houses looked identical to me, but he was confident. I stood outside, tapping the mud wall with my fingers. I heard some shuffling inside and then the sari which acted as the door-cum-curtain was pulled aside. A short, dark lady appeared from behind it.
‘Yes?’ she asked, looking me up and down.
‘Is Shubho here?’
‘No.’
I learnt from the lady that Shubho had taken up a job as a newspaper delivery boy. My stomach felt hollow as I thought about the irony of the situation—the boy who should have been flinging bright yellow balls using his racquet was now reduced to flinging rolled-up newspapers into the verandas of houses.
The lady, Shubho’s mother, ushered me inside and offered me water in a battered aluminium cup. The hut contained only the bare necessities. There were three mattresses on the floor and a coal oven in one corner. Next to it sat a basket with a few scraggly vegetables. An open crate in another corner housed an assortment of frayed and faded clothes. Shubho’s tennis sneakers were arranged neatly next to it, a clear inch of dust on them. The most distressing of all were the posters. There were two of them on one wall. One was a collage of tennis greats—Agassi, Sampras, Laver, Federer, Bjorg. The other was a picture of Rafael Nadal, his muscles bunching as he played a powerful shot. Both posters were spoilt now—somebody had taken a black marker and scribbled across the players’ faces in a fit of fury.
I turned away and walked out of the hut.
At home, I was very stressed. Talent was being wasted and no one was doing anything about it. My mother was more sympathetic than my father and suggested contacting the club authorities. I wrote a few letters to the club’s manager, but didn’t receive any replies. Meanwhile, Mum called up some ‘influential’ members of the club. They all said ‘Yes… we’ll try’ or ‘I see… I see… I see….’, but no one gave us a concrete ‘yes’ or a ‘no’. One aunty even said that Shubho should leave all this ‘running behind balls’ and start studying. How could I explain to her that for Shubho tennis was more important than going to school? Besides, given their financial situation, how on earth could Shubho get admitted to a school that would give him a worthwhile education?
I felt a rush of raw anger. I felt like knocking Mr Gupta on the head with the same racquet that Shubho had once played with. I felt like pelting him with Shubho’s tennis balls. But was Mr Gupta really at fault? Was only Mr Gupta at fault? I searched my mind for an answer and discovered that he was not. No, the entire system was at fault. If not Gupta, some other narrow-minded rich guy would have chucked Shubho out.
Society was playing a kind of twisted tennis match with Shubho. The match started when society served poverty to Shubho. Shubho hit back with a powerful forehand—hope and talent. Society countered with a cruel, concealed drop-shot—it allowed him to nurture his dreams for a while and then chucked him out of the courts.
To express my anger and frustration with the whole
situation, I wrote a poem dedicated to Shubho. Then I looked at the piece of paper with the words on it, crumpled it and threw it into the bin. A poem wouldn’t solve Shubho’s problems. Regardless of what people said about the pen being mightier than the sword, it just wasn’t powerful enough. Even if my poem were printed in the most prestigious of newspapers, with a huge write-up on Shubho, it would serve no purpose other than to highlight his poverty. No, something meaningful, something concrete had to be done.
I tried to think up ways to help my friend. I thought of people who could help him. Organizations that could finance him. I searched the net, looked through the Yellow Pages. Nothing. The few prospects I came up with were ones which would paint Shubho as a charity case and insist on ‘educating’ him rather than recognizing his talent and letting him play. It was this bechara image that I wanted him to be able to get away from—he didn’t deserve to be branded as a poor boy who was being given a ‘chance’ in life and the condescension that such branding automatically invoked. He deserved to be recognized and respected as a human being with an extraordinary talent.
Finally, after days and days of contemplation, I had a brainwave. A name popped into my head—Pradyuman Krishnaswami. Yes, the same Pradyuman from my old school. The one who had filed a case against me. He was the person who held the key to Shubho’s success. Unfortunately, he also hated my guts.
I remembered that before our falling out, when we had still been friends, he had told me that his father was on the committee of the All India Tennis Association, or AITA. I hadn’t paid much attention then because it had had nothing to do with me. But now it meant that his dad could really help Shubho out if he wanted to.
Okay. So that was an idea. But how on earth would I implement it?
Even if I was allowed back inside my old school without anyone branding me a traitor because of the abrupt and hush-hush way in which I had left, it would still be damn awkward to ignore all my purana real-buddies and walk straight up to my friend-turned-enemy after so long and ask him for a favour. That too, not a favour from him but his dad. What would I say? ‘Listen, I forgive you for the stupid fuss you made out of everything a year back. And I need a favour. My tennis marker’s son is a great player, but he doesn’t have the means to play. So can your dad give him a scholarship to play somewhere?’ How weird would that sound?
It wasn’t a bad idea—it just wasn’t an idea at all.
However, I swallowed my ego and nervousness, put aside all resentments and decided to finally do what I had always thought would be impossible—visit my old school.
I reached the school gate, hand-painted by the students themselves, and opened it hesitantly. The darwaan smiled at me. I passed the playground and reached the front door of the school building. Akash, Vishesh, Karthik—their faces suddenly swam before my eyes and I lost my nerve. Would they accept me? What would they say? Would they…
Quickly, I spun around. I couldn’t do this. The playground was deserted. If I left now, only the darwaan would know that I had been here. But as fate would have it, just as I started walking back, I heard my name being called out.
‘Hi!’ said Praveen. He had grown taller. After a year, he looked familiar yet alien.
‘Hi! How are you?’ I said, lamely.
‘Fine.’
‘I just came to say hi to you guys…’
Before I could say ‘scram’, I was pulled into the building. It turned out that my old class was having a karate session just inside. All the guys abandoned the teacher and mobbed me. ‘Hi, dude!’ people yelled, creating quite a hullabaloo. They quizzed me about my new school, grilling me with question after inquisitive question. ‘Are the teachers strict?’ ‘Are you blending well?’ ‘Did you find new friends?’ ‘Don’t you miss this school?’
I answered them all in monosyllables, more interested in my old school’s progress. I was astonished at the warm welcome they were giving me—I had left in a hurry and hadn’t really kept in touch with anyone.
I was worried that the neighbouring classes would complain because of the noise that we were making and, sure enough, the teachers started coming out of the classrooms to investigate. But much to my surprise, they too struck up conversations with me instead of scolding anyone. They asked me about my studies, my health, my school, as warm and concerned about my welfare as they had been before I left. I wondered if I would be welcomed like this at Xavier’s if I were to leave—I had a feeling that it would not happen.
Soon, the bell rang, signalling the lunch break and the class dispersed.
‘C’mon. Let’s go inside and chat. You hungry?’ said Akash, who had been one of my closest friends, dragging me into the classroom.
Part of the ordeal was over. Now I had only the main event to deal with—Pradyuman the Great. He wasn’t in class. Trying to sound real casual, I cleared my throat—a little too loudly, I immediately realized—and said, ‘Where’s Pradyuman?’
‘God knows. Must be around somewhere. Why do you wanna meet him?’
The guys had reason to be curious. My feud with Pradyuman had made headlines in school.
‘Uhh, just like that…’ I said rather awkwardly.
This was definitely going to be difficult. But regardless of how tough or embarrassing it got, I could not just leave without meeting Prads. I had come here with a purpose, and I would not let Shubho down.
I wandered around the school, checking every classroom. Here and there, I met a friend or a teacher, but I kept these meetings brief. Library, deserted. Games room, packed, but no Pradyuman. Canteen, nope. There was no hope of finding him in the field—the chap I was looking for was a nerd, not one for running around a field. Struck by this thought, I headed straight for the Chemistry lab. As a future scientist, Pradyuman Padma-Shri-Swami possibly enjoyed missing lunch in order to assist the Chemistry teachers.
Put on your cinematographer glasses and visualize two bichhrey huey enemies, looking at each other through SO2 and NO2 fumes. Pradyuman had been holding up a conical flask, checking to see if the limewater was milky yet. Upon seeing me, he froze. I must have looked like a ghostly apparition, I realized, materializing like that in the middle of the fumes. Pradyuman was still holding the flask in front of his eyes and continued to stare at me through the turbid liquid. It was rather funny.
Then Pradyuman nodded at me, gangster style, a brief jerk of his head.
‘Wassup, scientist?’ I said, gesturing at all the test tubes, Bunsen burners, and other Chem lab paraphernalia. ‘Remember our test on Heat-slash-Light?’ I joked. ‘I’m still confused—which one was it?’
Pradyuman smiled. ‘How silly I was…’ he said.
With those words, the ice was broken. And before I knew it, we were having a conversation. After chatting about this and that for a while, I told him that I needed a favour.
I told him Shubho’s story. It must sound pretty odd to someone who had never seen the kid play, I realized. Pradyuman didn’t react at all. He didn’t say a word, either positive or negative. I went on and on, trying my best to convince him, until the bell rang.
‘Gotta go!’ Pradyuman suddenly said. Then, collecting his books and bag, he rushed off for his next class.
I stood there all alone. Why, I wondered. Why had I even bothered to try? Why was I tormenting myself like this for the sake of someone who didn’t even know what I was trying to do for him? For all I knew, Shubho hated me, thinking of me as an enemy who could well afford to pursue as a hobby the sport that was his passion.
Feeling absolutely ridiculous, I exited the lab. The corridors were deserted. It was odd walking past the classrooms, knowing that there were so many students inside, yet not hearing a single sound from them. Defeated by Pradyuman’s response, I trudged silently towards the exit.
When I reached the playground, I was surprised to see that some kids were still playing. They were assembled around the single basketball hoop, taking turns to shoot as a teacher coached them. Getting closer, I recognized them as the ‘s
pecial needs’ students. I stopped for a minute to watch. It was fascinating, watching them dribble, run and pass. Their walk was clumsy, their shots off the mark, but they all looked happy and keen on trying their best.
For six years, I had seen them doing this, but the wonder of it had never struck me like it did now. It was fantastic, the way that students with special needs were integrated with regular kids, leading to overall symbiotic development for both. While I had studied at Akshar, I had taken these things for granted, but it was only today that I realized how lucky I had been to be associated with this school.
Someone shot at the hoop and missed. The ball rebounded off the wall, coming straight at me. I grabbed it, dribbled and did a lay-up. The ball soared through the air, hit the backboard and landed right in the hoop. Scattered applause greeted me. I stood there proudly and even took a bow. Suddenly, one of my ex-classmates, Jatin, came speeding past me in his wheelchair. He picked up the ball by leaning over the hand-rest of the chair and, using a strange manoeuvre I had never seen before, launched the ball into the air, far higher than one would have expected from a wheelchair-bound person. It landed in the hoop and he started applauding himself loudly. We all joined in. ‘Yes, very good!’ said the excited teacher. ‘Even you must try,’ she said to the others, using Jatin as an example. ‘You can all do it!’ The kids started playing again with renewed enthusiasm. It was absolutely magical.
I made a decision then. No matter how negative anyone was and whether Shubho ever appreciated my efforts or not, I would not abandon his cause. I would not do it. For Shubho’s sake, for the sake of my friendship with him and that of the values that this school had taught me, I would keep trying.
I rushed home from Akshar and grabbed the phone. I had a very important call to make.
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