A few years ago get togethers in Bombay would mean coming together at a friend’s place mostly Sudheeendran’s. Kerala Parotta, beef, alcohol and Kerala chips would be our companions for the evening.The day will start off with mostly catching up since always there will be a couple of blokes meeting for the first time after school. After the first drink conversation would veer to what is happening back home. What is happening in our school etc. After the second drink conversation will veer towards the guys who we have not met in so many years. This is also when the MBA folks would throw in their Excel bullshit or something from their office powerpoints much to the chagrin of guys like me and the lawyer in the room. After the third drink is when it gets interesting because that is when the G-topic will rear its ugly head. There will be one guy pulling the other by asking him what his ex-flame from the popular girls school is doing right now. Another over enthusiastic guy would quickly run a search in facebook and confirm that she is now fat and ugly. One by one every guy in the room will be throwing in one name after the other to follow the same exercise until we are tired of it. After the fourth drink you lose track of the number of drinks. By this time the monsoons would be in full fury and 1 bloke would start crying for Clara the protagonist of the evergreen Malayalam movie “Thoovanathumbikal”. The next 1 hour we would be furiously discussing as to why Mohanlal should have married her rather than the seedhi saadhi ladki.
Fast forward 2021 we are in the midst of a pandemic. Most of us are in TVM we meet at badminton courts on a daily basis in the mornings. Understandably I am too lazy to go play my excuse being I would much rather go cycling for my cardio rather than making a fool of myself because let us face it I suck in the game. For the record I don’t cycle from a fitness perspective but to satiate my need of going back in time and being the boy of 13 whose most prized possession was this very cycle*(another post). Fitness is for the heartless freaks ,romantics like me would choose nostalgia any day over sweating it out in the gym.
All said and done but last week I managed to get myself cajoled for a game of cricket. I was naturally thrilled to be playing the game after quite some time. As a kid I always wanted to ball fast because that was glamorous. But being a scrawny kid right through school and college forget bowling fast I couldn’t even get the ball to travel from one end of the pitch to another. Nowadays, thanks to putting on a great deal of weight compared to my growing up years I have a strong upper body and expected to bowl a bit.
True with every such meetup there were at least a couple of guys who I met for the first time after school. Even before the ice breaking session we started a game of cricket. We had an assortment of players, a few from Trivandrum, another few from other cities of the country and even an overseas player all the way from the US of A. The two games went in a jiffy at the end of which all of us were panting for breath. Yeah, I got to bowl a bit still not fast though. The last over of the 2nd match the opposition team needed a good 20 odd runs to win I was called to bowl because there was no other option. I managed to make the game exciting with the game going down to the wire with me ending up in the winning cause by a whisker. But nonetheless we enjoyed to the core for that 2 hours we were transformed to a bunch of old boys playing against each other just like in our school days. I am surprised that the bowling action of a few of them still is the same as in school. And yeah, we no more talk about random chicks anymore but we only talk about our wives and kids back home.
Author's note: It is the same guy in the centre for both the pics.
Let me sign off by trying to contrast the aftermath of both the above mentioned meetups. In the former one you only wake up with a headache the next day but in the latter you end up with your entire body paining for the next few days. I am still happy that we have transitioned seamlessly from one to another.
P.S: I am still pissed with the guys because they only got a picture of me getting bowled. who cares, I am only the chronicler here.
* Check out my blog post on The cycle
