Struck by smash, hit and dunk

Wanting to become a sportsman, I initially chose cricket with dreams of emulating the greats of the game back in the day. I wanted to become Gary Sobers of sky-scraper sixes’ fame; play left-handed like Clive Lloyd and right-handed like Viv Richards at the same time. I wanted to keep wickets like Farooq Engineer, the octopus. In the very first minor inter-class match at school, a barbaric pace bowler hit me below the belt. The pain crushed my desire to wield a willow. 

I then turned to hockey, despite warnings from our sports master, Rathnam. He laughed and said, “Think twice, my dear monkey, before attempting to play hockey. One hit on your twig-thin shin from a hockey stick and you will be in the hospital for two months.” But I persisted until Rathnam sir gave in. On the big day of my first game of hockey, I was not allowed to get anywhere near the ball. As I simply stood, watching the players move like a tornado on the ground, my team captain yelled at me to join the fray. When I tried to enter the big swirling knot, a player of the opposite team pulled my leg with the hook (scoop) of his hockey stick, and I fell face down. I walked back, dizzy and with a bleeding nose, using my hockey stick as a walking stick.

A month after this humiliating experience, the desire to become a sportsman rose once again in my heart. This time, the game was football. “It is a game for big bullies, not for small sillies,” as usual, discouraged my drill master. But again, I was adamant, and he left me to my fate. It took me only minutes in my maiden exposure to this game of clashing titans to realise that my drill master was right. I was almost trampled into a ball of pulp and kicked out of the field.

When I wanted to call it a day, Visu, a classmate, posed, “Why don’t you try basketball?”, immediately rekindling the dwindling fire in me. But the ember was doused immediately by another of my classmates: “It is for giraffes, not for dwarfs. They will pick you up like a kitten and hurl you into the hoop.” I dropped at once the idea of becoming a basketball player.

“The only game that suits your frame is carom,” advised my brother. I listened to his sound advice and became a carom player. Neither cricket nor hockey nor football came to my rescue during the dreary days of Covid 19. It was the board of carom with its black men, white men, and red queen that kept me from drowning in bottomless boredoms during pandemic-induced lockdowns.