The Guy & The Moron
There are times when there is little you can do about things in the past. The die would have been cast and the events would have happened as determined by what you had decided back then or based on what position you had taken earlier. Many a time we wish that we could go back in time and reset a decision or a position or an event and see if anything would have changed if you had taken an alternate path. This would be to see if the new scenarios would have benefited you more or affected you more than what had actually transpired. But unfortunately you cannot fiddle with time and what is past has to remain as the past. We all have to live in the present and make-do, as they say. But this does not mean that you cannot have any feelings or emotion about what has happened in the past. It is important to have these sensibilities since that is what we call experience. That is how we develop opinions about things living and non-living, intangible and tangible, living or dead. These are also the opinions that govern our relationships with the people around us and those with whom we have to necessarily interact with. About places and things a similar relationship exists and we deal with these in the manner that they have dealt with us in the past and create our own fads, biases, petty prejudices and what not. A large part of experience is regret. This is because man is a thinking animal. He continually obsesses with what could have been better or what could have been different. And the majority of the residue of this thought process is regret. There could be individuals who are the pessimistic sort and they happen to carry a larger load of regret. This story is of one such event which one would like to correct but sadly, that is not possible. It carries its share of regret otherwise it would not have been written here. There is little or practically no chance of apologizing to the victim since our lives driven by the deliberate winds of education, training, profession and buffeted by the gusty storms of chance and fate have probably moved us far away. Now, why should one think of this now? That is a good question. But then those matters with which you carry a larger dose of regret or which prick your conscience continuously through your lives needs to be exorcised by getting it out in some manner or other.
This is actually about cricket. Cricket played at its absolute first and primary level. It is cricket played by young children in the formative periods of their lives. It is cricket played with adaptations to place and circumstance. Apart from cricket, this is about school rivalries. Childish and petty they may seem now but back then that was the most important part of our lives. And if we did behave or react in a particular manner it was because we felt right about it then. Though with the passage of time it may seem that we did have alternate choices. It was also about getting back at each other with whatever methods that were available to us. So now let us get down to it and see whether it is at all worth talking about so late in one’s life.
Cricket back then at its primary level was played on the streets. This was circa the 1960’s in Calcutta (now Kolkata). It was played on the footpaths, pavements to some of us, which were wide then compared to what we see now. It was also played in some of the alleys that snaked away from the main street. It had an area demarcation aspect to it since the game would be played in a locality or para perspective. Though again it was not unusual to have multiple teams in each para. The segregation of these teams would be either related to age groups, seniors and juniors. And sometimes even within the same age groups divided by personal likes and dislikes which necessitated different teams. This one would believe is common enough with everyone’s childhood. This street cricket then was played with rubber or tennis balls. The latter for some reason were called ‘cambdis’ balls. All the matches would be played with ‘cambdis’ balls. The bats were the regular cricket bats but the softer variety, not oiled and cured. Bats for playing with the hard cricket balls were at that time oiled and cured which would be a typically two week regimen. Considering that street cricket would be restricted or constrained by the area in which we played the boundaries of 4’s and 6’s would be supplemented with the 2’s if the ball hit a wall without bouncing on the ground and many such made-up rules. It was all a matter of adapting the rules to suit our needs. Sometimes the players playing at a particular street would become very proficient at harvesting these special boundaries on their home matches. The opposing team from another locality or para would be at a disadvantage while playing here. But then they would wait for their match on home ground to score prolifically since they would have similar ‘special’ boundaries. Thus home and away matches became sometimes crucial and made all the difference between winning and losing. Matches had to finish in a couple of hours in the morning or the afternoon. Most matches were played on a holiday. Almost the entire para would be watching these matches from the balconies, windows, terraces and whichever place of vantage provided a view of the goings-on. Any space that was available and not defined as the playing area would be filled up by those watching the match. For such matches this was the common rule since everybody in the para was involved and interested to know the progress and the final outcome.
We had traditional rivalries in cricket with the adjoining locality or para which was for some reason called ‘Lal para’ or Red locality. There was no particular reason to call it thus. But then the accepted logic was that since most of the houses in that para were painted red, the naming was apt. They had a good team and most of the time we would lose. Their key to winning was Amal. He was their star batsman. He represented their school, St. Xavier’s and it was rumoured that he was tipped to be the captain of the school team. Whenever we played it was difficult to get him out. Most of our bowlers would be slammed for boundary after boundary, special or otherwise. He had never got a century and that was not for any fault of his but that our playing times were short. If you had to win then the batting team had to declare their innings and put the other team in to bat. This left Amal many a time not out but tantalizingly close to a fifty or a hundred. I happened to be the opening bowler of our team and would have to take the brunt of Amal’s bat. Watching ball after ball of your bowling dispatched to the boundary sometimes for a 4, sometimes for a 6 was disappointing to say the least. On top of it I was captain of our team which carried the added stigma of losing the match under my watch. The matches would also not be devoid of the customary fights mostly for ‘lbw’ and ‘run-out’ decisions by the umpires. Actually the umpires would be someone from the opposing team when we would bat while we would have our men when they batted. This mechanism though intended to ensure neutrality ended up sometimes with rank bad decisions which were the reason for many a fight.
It was one such day when Amal was batting. He was in tremendous form on that day. He had cruised past 50 and had had his share of contested decisions by the umpires. All of them had gone in his favour and though we had been desperately looking at ‘our’ umpires, we were met with stony silence and angry stares. When tempers flared we had also reminded the umpires that they were from our side which though unfair, was fact. However, the umpire’s heart did not melt and they continued to be ‘fair’. I suspected, particularly for one of them, that since being umpire he could not play, which was the reason why he was possibly angry with us for not making him part of our playing team. Nothing could be done about it now. Amal also had joined in sometimes in the angry exchange of words that would follow a contested umpiring decision. The language of play in those days happened to be Bengali. Amol had been heard lapsing into English sometimes and saying, ‘What is it with you guys? Can’t you see that the ball missed my bat by a mile?’ This English was not understood by the majority of the players. More often than not they had a lesser exposure to English particularly the spoken version. They had let such comments pass in the past ignoring them just as much as they would let abuses hurled in the heat of the moment slide off their prickly personalities. But they would remember all this the next time a fracas occurred and then take it out as another insult to neutralize, combat and demolish.
The other thing that happened on that day was that Amal was close to reaching a coveted century. One of our faster bowlers was in action. And the ‘cambdis’ ball thudded into Amal’s legs while he was aiming to lift the ball over where mid-on might have been. The bowler went up in appeal and with him the wicket-keeper and the rest of the fielders. In fact all those watching the match from the sidelines let out a collective howl. All eyes particularly of those of our players turned towards the umpire. The collective thinking was after all the umpire was from our side and he should favour us, at least now. What with having given almost all the decisions against us during this entire match. But it was not to be. We all saw the umpire negative the appeal. The players from our side were immediately in uproar. A sigh had gone around all through those who were watching. The decision seemed to be close. But I had personally felt that it was missing the stumps. But what happened after that could never be really put down as to who was responsible for the fight that started.
The sequence of events was that the bowler in disgust had thrown the ball at the stumps and threw them down. Our wicket-keeper took of his cap and hurled it at Amal, spinning it out as you would a frisbee. The cap hit Amal on the lip and hurt him. He went after the wicket-keeper with his bat raised and at that moment all hell broke loose. Our players ganged up and took on Amal. Their players who were until now sitting on the sidelines, joined in to defend Amal. A regular melee was on. Amal was in the thick of it surrounded by some ten guys. He was fending off those hitting him with his bat. Fists were flying; kicks were being exchanged in the middle of the throng. I could not keep away any longer and waded into the centre of the action. In the process I caught some of the blows and the kicks. I really did not want a fight. Confronting Amal I saw that his lip and been cut and he had some welts across his cheek. Someone had snatched the bat away from his hand. Seeing me Amal seemed to be a little relieved. He angrily exclaimed in English, ‘What are these morons up to?’ This comment was heard by our players who were in the thick of the throng. Something in that comment sent them aflame. Comments started flying around that – ‘This fellow is again showing off in English!’ ‘He is again cursing us!’ ‘He is wishing that we were dead!’ The last comment was because of a misunderstanding. In the Bengali the similar sounding word to ‘moron’ meant death. And the common exclamation in Bengali families when referring negatively about someone was ‘Moron Aamar!’ meaning ‘He or she will be the death of me!’ I tried to pacify them but it was difficult. Things had gone too far. On top of it the players from Amal’s team were jeering at us that we did not know English! This was natural since most of the Bengali children at that time would go to the Bengali-medium schools. Though English was one of the languages that they had to study, speaking English or understanding it when spoken was something that was not yet their forte. One of our players turned around to me saying, ‘You go to a convent school. Tell us what this fellow means when he calls us guys and morons! Are these not abuses! We will not let him go from here without breaking his arms and legs!’ He was shouting all this while brandishing one of the stumps in his hand. It was also true that this fellow was a hot-head and difficult to control once he took off.
I sized up the situation quickly. True I went to St. Lawrence, a convent school. But for the life of me I then did not know the meaning of the two words - guy and moron. Call it my ignorance or whatever. Given the situation I could not back out by saying that I did not know the meaning. It would be a loss of face for our team. Because it would mean that apart from cricket they were also better at English than us. This was all child psychology mixed up with mob behavior at that time and in that context. A lot of things were going around in my mind. St. Lawrence and St. Xaviers though schools from the same fraternity had a tradition of competition which was bordering on animosity. This enmity would peak in the Bishop’s Cup football tournament played among the Christian schools where the match between St. Lawrence and St. Xaviers was considered to be better than even the final of the tournament. This was an opportunity to get back at St. Xaviers. Moreover this fellow, Amal had been hitting me all over the park as they would say and plundering huge runs off my bowling. It was not only my bowling career but my captaincy of our team that was at stake, thanks to Amal. And then there was the other thing that if I defended Amal at this point of time, it was also possible that my team would consider me a traitor and thrash me along with Amal. After weighing all these options, in that instant of time, which I felt had expanded to eternity, I looked at Amal and said in English, ‘This time I will not be able to save you.’ Turning around to my team I said, ‘Yes! This fellow has been abusing us allalong. The words - guy and moron, in English are abuses. Come on, let us give it to him and his team!’ With that I raised my fist and punched Amal squarely on the lips. Seeing blood spurt out was a satisfaction that released me from the ghosts of my bowling which Amal had smashed all over the ground whenever we had played.
Thereafter Amal was beaten up so badly along with some of the other members of his team. Amal spent the next ten days in the nursing home recovering from a broken head, badly bruised arms and legs. His lips required eight stitches. Our team members were also injured but none so badly as Amal. I got off lightly with a bruised right hand and some cuts and scratches on my legs. With that incident we had solved the problem of losing cricket matches to Lal para. This was not because we had become better at the game or that Amal was not playing for them anymore but because after that there were no more matches between our paras. As for me, I kept on bowling after that and also retained the captaincy of my para team. I also had through this incident cast a blow for our school against our traditional rivals. Amal became better and we passed on the streets sometimes but we never spoke after that.
Looking back one feels sorry for Amal. But one fact remains and that I was then all of twelve years and I really did not know the meaning of the words - guy and moron. But what hurts is that I should have admitted my ignorance and not let that incident precipitate into a full blown fight. Childhood is something that carries with it memories, some good and some bad. This remains a bad memory. In later life as I went through college the word guy apart from its regular meaning was used to signify someone who was smart and worldly in his ways. The opposite of guy was in slang - ‘pap’, which meant what we call today ‘dehati’ or a ‘rustic simpleton’ who is yet to learn the ways of the world. But recollecting the Amal incident, one wonders who was the ‘guy’ and who was the ‘moron’ there!
THE END
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