Rendezvous with the street monsters....... Part-I

It was a warm June night, a bit cloudy, a little clumsy and a tad quieter than normal. I was on my way back from a late night movie show. Giving me company were my ever dependable three room mates, Ravi, Prashant and Vijay, the “Awesome Threesome”. With these guys around, you absolutely needed no trouble; they themselves were quite a handful.

Weekend late night shows were a strictly routine exercise for us those days, that had to be followed as religiously as Sage Narada chanted Lord Narayana’s name, or may be we would have backed ourselves to have given him a good run for his money, if it came down to competition.

Sitting at the window inside a town bus, I looked at my watch. Ten past two at night, rather early morning. “End of a long day!” I told myself. The consolation part though, was that it was a Saturday which meant we would get a good quarter night sleep and a full day to enjoy before we faced our usual Monday blues. Ravi and Prashant were peacefully asleep on the rear seat, somehow hanging on to the railings of their front seat by the skin of their nails, in a manner that would have forced Newton to be ashamed of his Law of Gravity. I turned towards Vijay, who managed to give me a half-nod-cum-smile acknowledging in the most unconvincing possible way that he was in control unlike the other two. I could see him fighting his desire to close his eyes though.

Everybody, including the bus conductor, was jolted back to reality by the jerk of the bus stopping at our destination. It took the poor sleepy man some time to figure out where we were, but once he realized, he tried to announce the stop name as loudly and convincingly as humanely possible at that hour of the night. As we got down, the bus was off in a jiffy.

We looked around; there was not a single soul on the road. We had to walk another mile and a half to reach our residence. Half the distance was a decently lighted main road, the other half being a scary dark narrow street alongside the bank of a canal. We were a bit concerned about the later one because of the sheer number of stray dogs that the street contained. It was a challenge to cross it even in daylight, leave alone night. But the sole reason why we had taken the risk was because of the fact that Ravi was absolutely fearless when it came to dogs and he had given us the confidence that he could effortlessly escort us through the street. This, we had reluctantly believed not only because it was hard to resist the temptation to watch the movie, but also Vijay had certified to have seen him exercising his special skill in fighting and scaring the hell out of ten street dogs single handedly on the other day.

But little did we know that his unnecessary heroics had severely challenged the self respect of the unquestionable kings of our street, and that we were about to pay the price for it in the next few minutes.

As we left the main road and started entering our street, my fearful eyes scanned every visible corner of it in a way Sherlok Holmes would have been proud of. When I was reasonably satisfied that danger is minimal, I signaled Ravi to start moving, whom I followed along with Prashant and Vijay.

I first spotted a rather thin and awfully ill fed dog on my left sleeping within the first ten yards of our starting point of the street. It appeared to be quite disinterested in us, as if it was below it’s dignity to react to half dead people in fear. It didn’t bark, which meant no message was conveyed to the dog community about our arrival in their territory. A first good sign that everything was alright. First hurdle crossed, we were more relieved than anything else. At that moment I seriously doubted the intelligence of the man who dismissed barking dogs saying that they seldom bite. Any day I would prefer this non-barking dog!

We kept moving forward, quietly and anxiously. Suddenly I felt a little nudge on my shoulder from behind. Prashant was pointing to the right towards the canal. With a little effort, I could see another dog standing, but even this one’s body language suggested no aggression. It appeared to be in quite a relaxed and cheerful mood, calmly enjoying the gentle breeze of the late hour on an empty road. This too, we felt was nothing to worry about. For the next few yards we saw or heard nothing except the sound of our footsteps. Vijay felt, it was a nice coincidence that the dogs were away on a day we went for the movie. But I never believed in coincidence. Deep down I had this feeling that something was about to happen, and I was hoping I was wrong.

My hope didn’t last too long, as we saw a group of monster dogs standing at a distance of about fifteen yards right on the middle of the street. Even though they were not barking or showing any sign of approaching towards us, the symptoms were quite ominous. The keenness in their eyes, the stiffness of their standing ears, the deep breath, were all pointing towards clear and present danger. It was now quite obvious that they were aware of our entry into the street beforehand, the only question being how, but that was no time to search for any answer.

It was time to act, and to act fast. I took a final quick look at them and regretted it immediately, as what I saw boosted my confidence by no means. There were about twenty of them standing in a phased manner, nine, eight and three. The first nine were the strongest, looked the most agile and the most muscled ones. The next eight were relatively older but more assured in their mannerism which communicated strongly that they would bite to kill. The last three were visibly the leadership group of the community, who seemed to be working with a definite plan trying to boost the morale of the rest of the group, which, in reality we needed more badly than their soldiers.

We looked around, and almost immediately started admiring the intelligence of our enemy. Moving forward was out of question. To our left was a high wall which was impossible to cross. To our right was the dirtiest canal of the city, falling into which would kill us faster than the bite of the dogs. We could now realize why we had been allowed to move that far without obstruction. The monsters had very cleverly selected their site of final assault.

The only choice we could think of was to run back and get the hell out of there, where we would have to cross only two pocket sized dogs to get back to the main road. Then we could try and fetch some help. This idea too vanished into thin air as fast as it had occurred, as we turned back to see another group of tall and strong dogs standing right behind us sealing the exit point completely.

It didn’t take us too long to figure out that we had straight walked into a trap set for us, and there was no way out.

(To be continued.....................)

No! Its not the IPL effect.......We are indeed on the right track!

“India is a cricket crazy nation.” I commented as I flipped through the sports pages of the morning newspaper, sitting at the terrace of Prashant’s house.

Prashant, who stays next door, is renowned as the “Live Aaj Tak News Channel” amongst our friend circle, sans those irritating advertisements and is undoubtedly one of the front runners to be the voice of India. With him around, you absolutely need not waste any time reading newspaper or watching news channels; all you need to do is pass a super-obvious comment like the one I just did. For the rest, you could count on our man.

I grabbed my cup of tea, trying to make myself comfortable, fully aware that we were heading for a long session. I was now absolutely sure to be educated of the whole world’s opinion about India’s loss in the tri-series final against Pakistan, the day before.

“Very true man! Just take a look at these pages.” Prashant was aggressively waving a newspaper across my face. “Seriously! Tell me something, do our cricketers deserve this much adulation? These idiots again lost a final! Take away Sachin and this team is worth a shit! And yet we pay them a million bucks just to turn out for us.”

“Hey what happened to you? Are you all right?” I managed to say while taking evasive action from his now violently waving newspaper. “We have just lost a match, nobody died! And we were not outplayed; it was a fitting finale between two good teams. Why are you over-reacting?”

I quickly realized that I had grossly underestimated the extent of our nation’s cricket craziness.

“No man!” Prashant’s specialty was that every time he picks a word and over uses it till it sounds irritatingly boring. ‘Man’ was the word for the day.

“Look at them; they are not even ashamed of the loss! Man! This guy Dhoni grabs the media attention and credit for all the success when in reality it is due to somebody else. They said Dhoni won us the series with youth against Australia, tell me who did it? Was it not our ever dependable Sachin? Now what happened? No Sachin and they lost!”

Now Prashant had a serious personal grievance against Dhoni for dropping Dravid and Ganguly, and he was always wary of the fact that Sachin might face the same fate soon. So much so that I was almost thankful to God for not allowing Prashant and Dhoni to come face to face, else, our country might lose a good cricketer and a decent chartered accountant.

Prashant had not finished yet. “And our selectors are a bunch of jokers.” He repeated the famous Mahinder Amarnath statement of the eighties, which had costed him his place in the side. Our man had no such worries, so he continued, “They can’t just select an one day side based on IPL performances. Man! IPL was just for fun and it was 20-20 after all.”

These are the two opinions which Prashant had picked this up from a column by Mr. S Dinakar, the sports columnist for The Hindu. I’m sure the same sentiments would be reflected by a large section of our cricket loving public.

1) India can’t do without Sachin
2) India lost the finals because of the 20-20 effect on our shot selection

With due respect to Mr. Dinakar, I must say that both the opinions are a bit over the top, and just over reaction on the part of the media and public, whose face we just saw in our very own Prashant.

So far as the first statement goes, this is grossly due to the overwhelming fan following that Sachin has in our country and all over the world. They just forget the impact that our youth brigade had in Australia. They also forget the huge number of pathetic losses that we had been suffering till now in the hand of the Aussies, despite of the presence of the three big guns, Sachin, Dravid and Ganguly.

Sachin’s innings was no doubt important in the finals of the series, but the victory was more due to the mental dent that was carved out by the approach of our youngsters on the field, which had created unprecedented psychological pressure on the Aussies, something they were not used to. Our guys chose to fight fire with fire and the result was there for every body to see. As far as individual performances were concerned, Gambhir played exceptionally well and so did Ishant Sharma. Why single out Sachin, who had faired miserably throughout the series except the finals?

Coming back to the more recent opinion, I’ve to say that people are being over skeptical about the impact of Twenty-twenty on Test and One-day cricket. I’m sure the same must have been the case when One-day cricket was introduced. But today, both form of the game have not only co-existed, but prospered. Seldom people react positively to changes.

Agreed, the recently introduced shortest version of the game is more about attacking, but I’d defy any body who says its slam bang cricket. If it was, then Shahid Afridi would have emerged as the highest run getter. Instead, his Hyderabad team mate, Rohit Sharma, a purist’s delight, was one of the most successful batsmen of the whole tournament. People, who say that bowlers in Twenty-Twenty are paid to get hammered, must reconsider their stand, as we had a certain Shaun Pollock, a Glenn McGrath and a Mohd Asif who bowled in the right areas and still commanded respect even in the so called slam bang version.

I believe the successful players of the recently concluded IPL are a bunch of talented, thinking and intelligent cricketers. The series has added a new dimension to the mindset of all the players. They now are more aggressive, more agile and more energetic than ever. This is something which they will definitely carry to the other versions of the game making cricket more entertaining.

To be more specific, in the tri-series final against Pakistan, we did lose crucial wicket at crucial times, which is why we fell short by a few runs. This happens and will happen while chasing such a stiff target, with or without IPL. Suresh Raina’s wicket to a full toss, Yuvraj’s under-edge to a short delivery and Yusuf Pathan’s mis-time to a long hop can’t be overruled in the future even if they play hundred test matches. Such things are part and parcel of the game and will be seen as long as cricket is played on this planet, irrespective of it s format.

On another day, these very shots would have won India a thriller and we would be sitting in our drawing rooms appreciating the effort.

To me, we had seen a very good tournament in Bangladesh, where despite of the end result, clearly only one team has dominated throughout, and it was Team India. If we keep doing that, match after match, results are bound to follow sooner than later.

Till such time people like Prashant can have their say.