Non-Fiction
The Sky Above and the Grass Below
In the year 2003, I was invited to a dinner at Delhi's India International Centre. I came face to face with a woman my age and we began talking. We both said that we found each other very familiar and yet we couldn't recall where we had met. Were we in the same school? No, we weren't. Were we in the same college? No, we weren't. Did we meet when we were both studying abroad? Certainly not. Then where had we met? "I know for a fact, that we have met before," she said. There was something uncannily familiar about her so I said, "I know that we have spent a lot of time together." Then suddenly, it fell into place and we both asked, "Did you play cricket in Bibekananda Park? "Of course, I did" we both exclaimed. "So that's where we met!!"
In the seventies and early eighties I grew up in Hindustan Park, a neighborhood in South Calcutta. My mother had spent much of her growing-up years in Hindustan Park so my sister and I had heard of this place even before we had moved in from North Calcutta. Hindustan Park became better known when Jyoti Basu, whose house was centrally located in the area, became Chief Minister of West Bengal. As he consolidated his position in successive elections, the house became bigger and the various hangers-on around the premises increasingly acquired an air of self-importance. The rapid transformation of the house led one wit to write graffiti on the walls that read:
Opore bhara, neechey bhara
Moddhye khane shorbohaara
(A tenant upstairs, a tenant downstairs
Lives in between the proletariat.) Hindustan Park was the target of both anger and envy for the rest of Calcutta because, as a VIP neighborhood we rarely suffered power cuts. So during the city's worst experiences of `load shedding', Hindustan Park was an idyllic pool of light in a city of literal darkness. One day I came home and told my mother that one of my girl friends had said that I shouldn't be wearing boyish clothes all the time. My wardrobe was all wrong, she had said. My mother said, "They have obviously not heard of tomboys. Don't you remember George from Enid Blyton's Famous Five? Tell them you are a tomboy." Then Pratima di, our downstairs neighbor, told me, "Don't be silly and call yourself a boy. You can be a girl and still do all the things that boys do." I had never heard anything so sensible in my life. Pratima di was my mother's contemporary and I should have addressed her as mashi (aunt) but we ended up calling her "didi" (elder sister). Her son, who we called Ajit da, was our childhood hero. He was good in studies and was a badminton champion in his university. He played cricket well and seemed to excel in everything he did. It seemed to me that in our quiet and unambitious neighborhood, it was only Ajitda who seemed to have a life. My first lesson in cricket had come from Ajitda. He taught me how to grip the bat and the correct stance to take in the crease. It was nothing like what my father had taught me. My father clearly knew nothing about how to play the game. But how could anybody comfortably hit the ball holding the bat as Ajitda taught me? What was the purpose of such a contrived posture? Why couldn't you just hold it like a stick and swing it around any way you wished? This `correct grip' led to my being clean bowled several times. It was Ajitda who told us that a women's teams had been formed at Bibekananda Park and that if I was really interested in cricket, I should join the club and learn the game properly. The following Sunday, I accompanied Ajitda to Bibekananda Park in South Calcutta. I was struck by what I saw when we reached. I had never seen so many women in white flannels playing cricket. There was a batswoman at the net and other women were bowling to her. A man whose physique was scandalously un-atheletic was coaching them. He was genial and diminutive with the hugest belly ever. Everyone called him Debuda and Ajitda introduced me to him. Debuda asked me to bowl. Thankfully, if there's anything I did consistently well, it was bowling. It turned out to be one of those good days when I was able to maintain a good line and length. Debuda was thrilled and Ajitda was very proud. As we walked back home, he patted me on the back and kept saying that I had bowled very well. I felt happy and humbled. Meanwhile, the street matches continued right in front of our houses. We were so possessed by the game that it hardly mattered that the ball was regularly crashing into the neighbor's house. Then one day, my mother joined the neighbor in scolding us. The cricket ball had hit goddess Saraswati and she had taken a tumble. I may have felt bad for a few minutes, I can't remember. I was now visiting the nets regularly. One day, during a mock match, I bowled out the captain of our team who was totally taken aback. She was an excellent cricketer and couldn't believe that this slip of a girl from nowhere had uprooted her middle stump. She remained at the crease and continued to stare uncomprehendingly at the raised finger of the umpire. Then it was my turn to bat and the captain insisted she bowl to me. The balls were hurtling towards me and I felt terrified. "Keep your eyes on the ball," Debu da kept shouting, "If you keep our eyes on the ball, you'll see a football." Now, what the hell did that mean? I played too many on the back foot even when it wasn't short pitched. Then I nicked one to the wicket keeper. The captain and I became very good friends later and not only did we play together but we hung out, visited each other's homes and watched movies. The grip and stance that Ajitda taught me was fast making sense. Now I couldn't understand how people could ever hold the bat like a stick. Debuda had asked me to concentrate on forward defensive. I played backward defensive well but seemed to misjudge the length when it came to playing forward. I was deeply embarrassed one day when I was playing on the streets of Hindustan Park and a man started hollering from a rickshaw. It was Debu da returning from Gariahat after buying vegetables with his wife. "Put your foot forward and keep your eyes on the ball. Understand?" he shouted as he trundled by. Everyone, including my father who was taking a walk, had stopped to watch. It became less and less embarrassing as this peculiar encounter became more and more frequent. I soon discovered that I loved net practice but hated matches. I was opening batsperson and a medium pace off-spinner in the team. Now, here's a secret I never got to share. I hated matches. It was more about winning or losing than simply enjoying the game. The pressure to score runs after every shot took away the pleasures of playing strokes. I would often forget to take runs and this was certainly inconvenient for a team that was playing to win. It was worse if we had to field in the second half. Then we were not even allowed to eat a good lunch. I much preferred net practice. It allowed me to play and correct my mistakes. Under Debu da's good-natured tutelage, I began to understand what it meant to keep your eyes on the ball. When I did manage to keep my eyes on the ball consistently -- there were many days that I didn't -- it did turn into a football. It seemed bigger, slower and much easier to hit. What an amazing thing that was! I didn't have any cricket gear of my own except an old bat that I polished with turpentine every week. But that wasn't good enough for the net. I could only shadow practice with it in front of the mirror. Debuda had asked me to practice my back lift endlessly as I had knocked down the wicket with my own bat a couple of times. The gloves and pads that made my early batting days an inconvenient nightmare were now beginning to become indispensable. Playing without method seemed madness. As a result, playing on the streets was beginning to lose its charm as it now seemed random and arbitrary. But the news that I played regularly for a club was beginning to spread through our neighborhood. One day I was buying something from Nabin's shop when an elderly lady, who was also buying provisions, exclaimed that she hadn't realized that I was a girl. "And do you know how well she plays cricket?" said Nabin proudly, "She plays at the club in Bibekananda Park." The lady patted my back. But all was certainly not well for women's cricket. The Ananda Bazaar Patrika group had launched a new sports magazine called Sportsworld. I had decided to unsubscribe Sportsweek and replace it with Sportsworld, as Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi, my favourite cricketer, was its editor. One day, a letter from Shillong appeared in the magazine saying that women shouldn't be playing cricket because the very idea was ridiculous. The letter was a description of how absurd women looked when they played cricket and then argued that such travesty should indeed be stopped. Encouraged by my mother, I wrote back a passionate defense of women's cricket adding that I suspected the hostile letter writer had never seen women play. The fellow wrote back to say that indeed he hadn't seen any woman play and nor had he any intentions because everybody knew women playing cricket was a ridiculous sight! On this rather persuasive note the editor, without a single line of refutation, decided to close the debate. How I wished Nabin from the grocery store had been the editor of Sportsworld. So Sunday mornings were reserved for cricket practice at Bibekananda Park. Both the boys and girls played in adjoining nets. There were several young men like Ajitda who took interest in women's cricket. They bowled so that we could practice batting or batted so that we could bowl. They would hit the ball hard and high so that we could take turns to catch it. For some strange reason, everybody was required to shout `Lebbit' before catching the ball. Someone later explained that it was to prevent all of us from rushing to take the same catch and knocking each other down. So whoever was best positioned to take it was supposed to tell the others to "Leave it". That made sense. But when too many coaches began teaching us, Debu da firmly put an end to it. Thank god for that as some of us were getting really confused. Then there were young men whose interests were not limited to just the game. One member of our group was a budding actress. Her lack of skill at the game was amply compensated by the aura of glamour that surrounded her. An overprotective father notwithstanding, she had managed to acquire a band of willing tutors. These incidental developments did not make Debu da very happy but he battled on with the rest of us. I loved to collapse on the grass at the end of the practice and stare up at the sky. I grew up imagining that I would always be enveloped by so much sky above and so much grass below. Very often, other team members would join me in lounging around. Sometimes we would cross the street to eat the alloo dum that the Lake area was famous for. Then we would go home to return the next weekend. The person I met many years later in Delhi was often a companion on these restful jaunts. Having finished my school, I was ready to move to Delhi for my college. I had never thought that what would be hardest to leave behind was cricket in Bibekananda Park. In fact, the separation from the game was so painful that I decided never to talk about it. Of course, I never missed the matches. But I missed everything else. With cricket I lost an entire world. Sometimes, the world comes to me as phantoms in restless dreams. Sometimes, I see the ball coming towards me and turning slowly into a giant red football. At other time, I seem to miss it. Sometimes I play a stroke perfectly and I can hear Debu da ask, "Are you feeling good about it?" I never know what I will see in my dreams. But I do know that when I wake up I will see no sky above or grass below.
Moddhye khane shorbohaara
(A tenant upstairs, a tenant downstairs
Lives in between the proletariat.) Hindustan Park was the target of both anger and envy for the rest of Calcutta because, as a VIP neighborhood we rarely suffered power cuts. So during the city's worst experiences of `load shedding', Hindustan Park was an idyllic pool of light in a city of literal darkness. One day I came home and told my mother that one of my girl friends had said that I shouldn't be wearing boyish clothes all the time. My wardrobe was all wrong, she had said. My mother said, "They have obviously not heard of tomboys. Don't you remember George from Enid Blyton's Famous Five? Tell them you are a tomboy." Then Pratima di, our downstairs neighbor, told me, "Don't be silly and call yourself a boy. You can be a girl and still do all the things that boys do." I had never heard anything so sensible in my life. Pratima di was my mother's contemporary and I should have addressed her as mashi (aunt) but we ended up calling her "didi" (elder sister). Her son, who we called Ajit da, was our childhood hero. He was good in studies and was a badminton champion in his university. He played cricket well and seemed to excel in everything he did. It seemed to me that in our quiet and unambitious neighborhood, it was only Ajitda who seemed to have a life. My first lesson in cricket had come from Ajitda. He taught me how to grip the bat and the correct stance to take in the crease. It was nothing like what my father had taught me. My father clearly knew nothing about how to play the game. But how could anybody comfortably hit the ball holding the bat as Ajitda taught me? What was the purpose of such a contrived posture? Why couldn't you just hold it like a stick and swing it around any way you wished? This `correct grip' led to my being clean bowled several times. It was Ajitda who told us that a women's teams had been formed at Bibekananda Park and that if I was really interested in cricket, I should join the club and learn the game properly. The following Sunday, I accompanied Ajitda to Bibekananda Park in South Calcutta. I was struck by what I saw when we reached. I had never seen so many women in white flannels playing cricket. There was a batswoman at the net and other women were bowling to her. A man whose physique was scandalously un-atheletic was coaching them. He was genial and diminutive with the hugest belly ever. Everyone called him Debuda and Ajitda introduced me to him. Debuda asked me to bowl. Thankfully, if there's anything I did consistently well, it was bowling. It turned out to be one of those good days when I was able to maintain a good line and length. Debuda was thrilled and Ajitda was very proud. As we walked back home, he patted me on the back and kept saying that I had bowled very well. I felt happy and humbled. Meanwhile, the street matches continued right in front of our houses. We were so possessed by the game that it hardly mattered that the ball was regularly crashing into the neighbor's house. Then one day, my mother joined the neighbor in scolding us. The cricket ball had hit goddess Saraswati and she had taken a tumble. I may have felt bad for a few minutes, I can't remember. I was now visiting the nets regularly. One day, during a mock match, I bowled out the captain of our team who was totally taken aback. She was an excellent cricketer and couldn't believe that this slip of a girl from nowhere had uprooted her middle stump. She remained at the crease and continued to stare uncomprehendingly at the raised finger of the umpire. Then it was my turn to bat and the captain insisted she bowl to me. The balls were hurtling towards me and I felt terrified. "Keep your eyes on the ball," Debu da kept shouting, "If you keep our eyes on the ball, you'll see a football." Now, what the hell did that mean? I played too many on the back foot even when it wasn't short pitched. Then I nicked one to the wicket keeper. The captain and I became very good friends later and not only did we play together but we hung out, visited each other's homes and watched movies. The grip and stance that Ajitda taught me was fast making sense. Now I couldn't understand how people could ever hold the bat like a stick. Debuda had asked me to concentrate on forward defensive. I played backward defensive well but seemed to misjudge the length when it came to playing forward. I was deeply embarrassed one day when I was playing on the streets of Hindustan Park and a man started hollering from a rickshaw. It was Debu da returning from Gariahat after buying vegetables with his wife. "Put your foot forward and keep your eyes on the ball. Understand?" he shouted as he trundled by. Everyone, including my father who was taking a walk, had stopped to watch. It became less and less embarrassing as this peculiar encounter became more and more frequent. I soon discovered that I loved net practice but hated matches. I was opening batsperson and a medium pace off-spinner in the team. Now, here's a secret I never got to share. I hated matches. It was more about winning or losing than simply enjoying the game. The pressure to score runs after every shot took away the pleasures of playing strokes. I would often forget to take runs and this was certainly inconvenient for a team that was playing to win. It was worse if we had to field in the second half. Then we were not even allowed to eat a good lunch. I much preferred net practice. It allowed me to play and correct my mistakes. Under Debu da's good-natured tutelage, I began to understand what it meant to keep your eyes on the ball. When I did manage to keep my eyes on the ball consistently -- there were many days that I didn't -- it did turn into a football. It seemed bigger, slower and much easier to hit. What an amazing thing that was! I didn't have any cricket gear of my own except an old bat that I polished with turpentine every week. But that wasn't good enough for the net. I could only shadow practice with it in front of the mirror. Debuda had asked me to practice my back lift endlessly as I had knocked down the wicket with my own bat a couple of times. The gloves and pads that made my early batting days an inconvenient nightmare were now beginning to become indispensable. Playing without method seemed madness. As a result, playing on the streets was beginning to lose its charm as it now seemed random and arbitrary. But the news that I played regularly for a club was beginning to spread through our neighborhood. One day I was buying something from Nabin's shop when an elderly lady, who was also buying provisions, exclaimed that she hadn't realized that I was a girl. "And do you know how well she plays cricket?" said Nabin proudly, "She plays at the club in Bibekananda Park." The lady patted my back. But all was certainly not well for women's cricket. The Ananda Bazaar Patrika group had launched a new sports magazine called Sportsworld. I had decided to unsubscribe Sportsweek and replace it with Sportsworld, as Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi, my favourite cricketer, was its editor. One day, a letter from Shillong appeared in the magazine saying that women shouldn't be playing cricket because the very idea was ridiculous. The letter was a description of how absurd women looked when they played cricket and then argued that such travesty should indeed be stopped. Encouraged by my mother, I wrote back a passionate defense of women's cricket adding that I suspected the hostile letter writer had never seen women play. The fellow wrote back to say that indeed he hadn't seen any woman play and nor had he any intentions because everybody knew women playing cricket was a ridiculous sight! On this rather persuasive note the editor, without a single line of refutation, decided to close the debate. How I wished Nabin from the grocery store had been the editor of Sportsworld. So Sunday mornings were reserved for cricket practice at Bibekananda Park. Both the boys and girls played in adjoining nets. There were several young men like Ajitda who took interest in women's cricket. They bowled so that we could practice batting or batted so that we could bowl. They would hit the ball hard and high so that we could take turns to catch it. For some strange reason, everybody was required to shout `Lebbit' before catching the ball. Someone later explained that it was to prevent all of us from rushing to take the same catch and knocking each other down. So whoever was best positioned to take it was supposed to tell the others to "Leave it". That made sense. But when too many coaches began teaching us, Debu da firmly put an end to it. Thank god for that as some of us were getting really confused. Then there were young men whose interests were not limited to just the game. One member of our group was a budding actress. Her lack of skill at the game was amply compensated by the aura of glamour that surrounded her. An overprotective father notwithstanding, she had managed to acquire a band of willing tutors. These incidental developments did not make Debu da very happy but he battled on with the rest of us. I loved to collapse on the grass at the end of the practice and stare up at the sky. I grew up imagining that I would always be enveloped by so much sky above and so much grass below. Very often, other team members would join me in lounging around. Sometimes we would cross the street to eat the alloo dum that the Lake area was famous for. Then we would go home to return the next weekend. The person I met many years later in Delhi was often a companion on these restful jaunts. Having finished my school, I was ready to move to Delhi for my college. I had never thought that what would be hardest to leave behind was cricket in Bibekananda Park. In fact, the separation from the game was so painful that I decided never to talk about it. Of course, I never missed the matches. But I missed everything else. With cricket I lost an entire world. Sometimes, the world comes to me as phantoms in restless dreams. Sometimes, I see the ball coming towards me and turning slowly into a giant red football. At other time, I seem to miss it. Sometimes I play a stroke perfectly and I can hear Debu da ask, "Are you feeling good about it?" I never know what I will see in my dreams. But I do know that when I wake up I will see no sky above or grass below.
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