Chapter 8 - Cricket

The afternoon sun keeps people off the roads in south Mumbai. Pedestrians perpetually seek shade. They venture timorously into the sun and dive back into shade like a frog leaping from one leaf to another. Early evening sees the return of the Mumbai schoolboy – that species in the animal kingdom, which lives and breathes cricket all day everyday. The Mumbai schoolboy has a few distinguishing characteristics. The cricket bat hangs from his body like an appendage he was born with. And he instinctively hits with his bat any object remotely resembling a cricket ball.

That day from the 11th floor of Sea View Apartments, Maan watched eleven such bat bearing schoolboys coming back from school. The previous day Mr. Batliwala had sweet-talked Maan into taking a month long vacation. So most of the day had been spent strumming the old guitar and figuring out the new ‘effects’ unit. Maan had had his breakfast at lunchtime and had even spent a little while after lunch lazing in bed wondering if he could spend the rest of his life thus spread out in bed. By 3 PM he was bored out of his mind and kept looking surreptitiously at his old cricket bat in the corner of the room. When he saw the eleven schoolboys from his 11th floor window, they seemed to crawl like ants to their respective positions on the playground. He snatched at his bat and hurried downstairs.

Minutes later he walked in to the playground rotating his bat-bearing arm like a Tendulkar and squinting at the players. “Sameer, I am opening the innings.” Sameer nodded meekly, as Maan strode into the pitch and took stance. As he walked over and occupied the crease at the non-strikers end, Sameer shrugged his shoulders at his hapless teammates. On the second floor balcony, Riya appeared near the clothesline to take off some clothes that the sun had diligently dried during the day. On seeing Maan with the bat in his hand, she decided to stay on, partially hidden by a huge bedsheet still hanging from the clothesline. Zubin, the Parsi boy from 5th floor, decided to lengthen his run-up and gave the rubber ball a decent rub on his clean pants. Then he came sprinting in and delivered a decent ball that Maan expertly defended on the front foot with a straight bat. The second ball swerved past the outside edge and Zubin scratched his head and smiled a toothy smile at Maan. The third delivery resulted in a superb cover drive that beat a diving Raghu and crashed into Mr. Thakur’s car in the parking lot. Riya held on to the bedsheet but couldn’t conceal her wide grin. The security guard looked apprehensively at the stricken car, but was reassured when he saw that there was no visible damage. Then he moved his chair to a position where he could get a better view of the game.

The game lasted a couple of hours, until the sun decided to retire for the day. Maan emerged beaming with his crooked schoolboy smile. Mr. Vartak with a briefcase in his hand met him just as he was coming into the building lobby with a bat in his hand.
“Maan, is that you or did they mix something funny with my tea today? ”
“Oh Mr. Vartak, are they doing it to our tea as well! The papers only talk about the funny things they mix in the colas.”
Mr. Vartak couldn’t suppress a laugh and Maan smiled with his eyes. Mr. Vartak was a very popular figure. He was a big-sized penguin, waddling about in his own little way, in harmony with everybody around him. He could be discerned from a distance both for his large size and the genuine, goodhearted laughter that always emanated from him. A good friend of Maan’s uncle, he had known Maan for a long time.
“Lets find out if it really is the tea. Why don’t you come over and we’ll know for sure!” he said. Maan politely excused himself for he felt too sweaty and needed a shower badly.

It was the second floor and Mr. Vartak was about to get down from the elevator. Maan looked at him and saw the face of that kind gentleman who had ruffled his hair and smiled so warmly at him the day he had arrived in Mumbai as a teenager. Mr. Vartak saw in Maan that reticent teenager again and the bold eyes that had stared back at him. As Mr. Vartak got down on the second floor something caught Maan’s attention. He saw a man in a black T-shirt and as the doors of the elevator were closing this man looked back at him. He had the same glass eyes. Maan pressed the third floor button frantically and ran down the stairs. Mr. Vartak who was just about to enter his flat, stopped midway and looked quizzically at the alarm on Maan’s face.
“Maan, what is it?”
“Did you see a man, Mr. Vartak? A man in a black T shirt.”
“Yes, but he went downstairs.”
Riya, who had heard Maan’s voice, came back to the door she had just opened only to see him run downstairs.
She looked at her father’s face to see what he was thinking about all this. Mr. Vartak frowned and said, “Poor boy”, as he remembered those bold eyes that spoke of such sadness.
Maan ran out into the streets and found nothing of the man with the glass eyes.