Test Match
(Had to publish this on Instagram first, because you bastards won’t share my newsletter. Please share it so that I get subscribers here so that I can leave that ugly ass anxiety-inducing shit of an app)
It’s 11 am. I have just woken up from my sleep. Today will be better, I convince myself as I check the unread messages on my phone. I can hear something playing on the TV in my living room. It’s India vs Australia, 3rd test, 2nd day. My dad must be watching. What’s the score? I get up from my bed, fold up my blanket, gather the courage to exist for yet another day, and open my bedroom door to face life again.
Suddenly, it’s January 2008. It’s the holidays before the exams. “Wake up”, my dad says. “Let me sleep”, I reply, knowing that he wouldn’t listen. “If you fail in the exams then I am not paying for another year”, he taunts back. I had never failed till then. In fact, I was always in the top 10 students. But what’s the point of taking birth in a middle-class family if you are not being forced to study at 5 am? With my eyes half open, I try to cram some inorganic chemistry, a subject which the devil himself created as a horcrux for hell. My dad, on the other hand, switches on our old CRT TV by slapping it on both its cheeks (a model which I doubt was older than the CRT technology itself) and starts watching India vs Australia, 3rd test, 2nd day.
From 5 am to 7 am, my brain would try to hear the score while both of my eyes kept themselves busy in reading why some electrons are jumping from p to d orbitals or wherever they were jumping to, those bastards. “I am making another cup of tea, do you want some?”, my dad would come in at regular intervals to ask me this. “Yes”, I’d reply every time. “Dravid is still playing”, he would say. “So who got out then? I just heard an appeal”, I’d ask innocently, not realizing that in asking this I’d be unconsciously conveying that I was more interested in the match. “Sehwag”, he would reply and give me a look which would convey exactly what it wanted to convey. I had to study. I shut my door for the next few hours. I had to study.
It’s 5 am again. “Mere liye bhi banana”, I ask my dad to make tea for me as well. The school has announced the winter holidays. 2003, India vs Australia, 3rd Test, Boxing Day. Sehwag will go on to make 195 runs. Little do I know, that the memory will be etched in my mind forever. I am sitting on one edge of the bed with my back against the wall, while my dad is lying comfortably on the bed, with his feet touching my hands. The living room didn’t have an L shaped sofa, so we made the L shape on the bed ourselves. Both of us are sipping tea. He tells me how Viv Richards used to walk like he didn’t care who is going to bowl. He was above the game, perhaps above everyone else. Sehwag reminded him of Richards. Not knowing what to say, I keep nodding. “Pagal hai kya ye”, I scream in annoyance when Sehwag gets out while trying to hit two back to back sixes. “Kam se kam maza toh aata hai dekhne mein”, he says very calmly. How is he not annoyed, I wonder.
At this point, my mom comes and says I have watched enough of the match, now it’s time to study. She would put on Kabir ke dohe on a rusty cassette player and switch off the TV. An old voice will echo in the house for the next two hours.
Chalti chakki dekh kar, diye kabeera roye;
Do paatan ke beech mein, saabut bacha na koi.
(Kabir Das sees the grinding stones as the duality of life. It pains him when he realizes that everyone will be ground between these stones. There is no escape.)
So today, when my dad spots me standing in the living room, he tells me that Shubman Gill has scored a fifty. My interest in the game has faded away. I nod and start walking to the kitchen to make my tea. I ask him if he wants some. He says no. I enter the kitchen and see 4 empty cups of tea. I realize that he woke up at 5 today as well. I don’t wanna drink tea anymore and head back to my room. He doesn’t stop me. Enough life for one day. Kabir Das was correct.