How the World Came to Me [4]

Beneath our feet there will be pebbles and rocks, some of them colored. Cheta’s waters were so clear that one could see the pebbles on his bed. One could see the little fish swimming amid them. There was a bamboo grove that Cheta flowed through. The bamboo twined above him and formed a canopy. It let in discrete beams of sunshine which lit up his waters with quivering patches of light.

Iphi lay farther southwards where the tribal hamlets began. His pace was languid and bed wide which he filled up during the monsoons. I still do not know whence this river came. It drained somewhere in the plains of Assam. His bed yielded strangely shaped rocks. Some looked like faces, some like people. In autumn kans grass grew on this bed. The banks of Iphi had not been bridged. One had to ford him. When you did so the ice cold water tickled and numbed your feet. Many fish swam in it. Some had an ochre back. With a little skill and patience, you could scoop one out of the water with your hand. In autumn and winter we will picnic on the banks of Iphi. I was nine when I raised a castle of sand and pebbles on his bank. I also brought back a stalk of kans grass.

Deo

To reach Sally one had to walk northwards. You crossed Deo on the way and trudged up a hill. It will be a couple of kilometers’ walk before you reached this lake. Clouds rested here sometimes when they got tired of their vagabondage. If lucky, you could find yourself in the embrace of a cloud. I cannot describe what it is like to be embraced by a cloud. You know the feeling only when you have known the embrace. Sally’s water was a blue faintly tinged with green. Sally was surrounded by a brooding, frowning forest. The canopy of the forest here was sparing in letting in even sunshine. There were trees around which bore blossoms when it was time for them to. When they did many shades of ochre and red reflected in the water. Sally was a watering hole for the animals inhabiting the forest. If you were lucky you could catch the sight of a mithun quenching its thirst. These bisons with their stockinged feet roam the forest and are prized by the tribal people for their meat and hide. One day I walked through clouds and a shower of rain to reach Sally and heard the mating call of the mithun. If you dared to stand on the edge of a precipice which was close by you could see the flat plains of Assam far away and the broad expanse of the Brahmaputra. If it were to be a rainy day you had to be careful. The trees above, the grass below, abounded in leeches. Some were thick as a human finger. It was not unlikely to have one drop inside your shirt from some branch.

Our playground too abounded in leeches and was ringed by the flames of the forest. In June and July they will be in full bloom. An especially big one stood by the fine-leg boundary. When fourteen, Shourob and I decided to raise our cricket team. I was a lanky lad, rather tall for my age. I will bowl gentle off-cutters, at least tried to. I was no tear away. But on a good day I could be rather good. On a bad day, though, the ball just won’t heed my hand. I was thirteen when I had bowled five consecutive wide balls in a game. It was drizzling that day. But it did not matter since we played with a synthetic ball. The first ball of my first over will always make me cold and nervous. Then I used to bowl what was my idea of off-spin. I will pitch the ball a little way outside the off-stump and hope that it turns in. Of course, many times it turned away instead. As I ambled in I knew that I am not gripping the ball well. When ten minutes later I walked back to where I was fielding I was struggling to hold back my tears. We saw ourselves as a brotherhood and I had let my mates down. That day a very lonely thirteen year old boy had walked back home through a drizzle.

The pitch on which I bowled five consecutive wides.

                                                   
Shourob and I did raise our cricket team. He was the captain cum the wicket keeper. He managed to get his father to buy him a pair of ‘keeper’s gloves. Shourob had a lot of enthusiasm. But he was rather roly-poly and no good at keeping wickets at all. But, then, he will say, “If Ian Healy can make it, so can I.” This Australian was rather portly too, but could be as nimble-footed as a fawn. We were fourteen young gentlemen who called ourselves the ‘Prenex Cricket Club.’ What does ‘Prenex’ mean? This is what I had asked Shourob when our team was named. The name was his choice. He was gracious enough to own that perhaps it means nothing but at least it sounds stylish. Today I know for sure that ‘Prenex’ indeed means nothing.

We had our tasks allotted. Shourob’s responsibility was to pick up fights with the boys of other schools and neighborhoods and then challenging them to a game with us. Being well endowed, he was difficult to beat up. I, as the vice-captain, was expected to practice my bowling a lot and keep in top form. Lingi was supposed to be a handy bat and bowl tight when needed. I feel that he had some genuine talent. He discharged both roles honorably. He was a buffoonish boy, even for a fourteen year old boy. He too was into making comics and hired Sanu as his illustrator. Together, they produced a strip populated by bald headed gangsters. Sanu was one of our strike bowlers. He bowled his off-breaks firmly rooted in the crease without a run up. We all were mystified by this preternatural talent of his. There was James who played no role in particular. Generally the last ‘man’ in, he will walk to the pitch dragging the bat in his wake grinning from ear to ear. Mostly, he will return a ball or two later grinning from ear to ear. And there was Langkam whose deliveries sometimes bounced twice before they reached the batsman and exhausted themselves before they reached the ‘keeper. We were a league of extraordinary gentlemen.