New York, New York -Part I !

The crying need of the hour, as far as long distance travellers are concerned, should be the immediate introduction of seriously ultra-supersonic Concorde-like flights between continents.  Especially those which will cut down travel from India to USA to some 3-4 hours! The very thought is so exhilarating, even though the cost attached to that might be mind-blowingly prohibitive initially.  Like many urban Indian families, we have also despatched two young warriors to the financial minefield that is New York.  The youngsters continue to love the professional challenges there despite all the Trumped-up hurdles erected periodically in the context of visas and green cards.  This means, like many parents in the same situation, my dear wife and I are likely to make our annual pilgrimage for some more years and could gladly do with a massive reduction in the flying hours between India and USA.  The consequential damage caused by the current long flights, to the creaking bodies is two-fold.  One, the actual pain felt by the bones and muscles during the flight and in the immediate aftermath for a few days.  Two, that exotic trauma called jet-lag, which seems to impinge on existence with progressively worsening results as one ages.  Hence the fervent prayer for something akin to the Star-Trek type transporter to be made available pronto!! When someone suggests that we should take the non-stop from Bombay or Delhi, my body involuntarily shudders in response, thinking of 18 continuous hours in a plane.  More so, when it occurs to me that minimum 3 or 4 inedible meals will be served when even two are superfluous.

The immigration clearance has gotten faster and faster over the years and we now get out in thirty minutes flat.  That is providing for some chit-chat with the friendly officer who asks in his native twang, if we are carrying some `molaga podi, paruppu podi, murukku, mysurpak etc' (I swear, this is true).  These chaps have assimilated a lot of knowledge about India and Indians to the extent they can tell that anyone with the long surname is probably from the south; definitely so, if the names ends with `n'.   The prompt for that query about food items inevitably comes from the customs clearance form wherein the risk-averse part of me, especially so in a foreign land, has diligently declared `yes' for `food', valiantly overcoming hissing and nudging  protestations from the wife.  She prefers to ignore for this purpose,  routine stuff such as sambar powder, rasam powder and the rest of the start-up kit that contains tamarind, jeera, some dals etc or forgets that she has sneaked in some `real' food at the last minute, prior to locking the suitcases.  Who wants to get caught by the X-ray with some halwa or pakoda in the suitcase, to be shepherded as a criminal to a segregated area for a full search of the bags??  However nice and pleasant they try to be and are, they are still policemen, right?

Once we get through, the bags take their own sweet time arriving and if you were on an Airbus 380, you should resign to the idea of an hour or more before you retrieve your bags.  Entertainment is provided by a couple of police dogs, which sniff around, making unsuspecting people jump.  The dogs always seem to end up being disgusted with the smell of so many bodies that they seldom do anything noteworthy.  The 6 USD charge for a trolley grates more on your nerve than the machine grates on the credit card when inserted.  New York should emulate Switzerland in this respect, the latter widely advertising the availability of `free' carts (as many as you want) near the carousels. But, if visitors from Asia raise their voice against this atrocity,  Trump might hike the charge to USD100 just to ward off more Indians and partially compensate for trade deficit with China!!

The first thing that changes forthwith on landing is the mobile phone.  Out goes Airtel and in comes T-Mobile.  With that we seem to seamlessly shift to Uber from our chauffeur driven car in India.  Invariably the driver is a South Asian and this and his polite small talk tend to lull us into the false belief that we are in `home' environment,Trump or no Trump.  But then, after so many visits, the city does feel pretty much home for a few months and as we pass through one of the tunnels into the streets of Manhattan, we almost smell the place. Once we check into the by-now-familiar service apartment close to Grand Central, we are almost home.

The first week goes in fighting the acquired fatigue that is the awful by-product of jet-lag, while the pleasure of being with the sons for a few hours daily adequately dulls the pains and aches.  The primary objective during this period is to ensure one is at least half-awake during the boys' evening visits.  But strangely, this jet-lag malady seems to be terribly partial in afflicting me and has absolutely no effect of my dear wife, who behaves as if she got tele-ported in a jiffy.  It is as if God up there had assigned all such discomforts in the family to me while sparing her.  Some people are plain lucky, I say but she insists it is all karma!!

Half-awake or not, we have to accomplish some priority objectives shortly on arrival, in preparation for our two-month stay.  First is the trip to the Indian store, some 14 blocks away to fetch the basic grocery needed and this chore falls to yours truly, as the wife gets cracking on the kitchen in the apartment, asking for cooking vessels, cutlery, crockery etc that the service apartment normally sets aside for 10 apartments collectively.  By now they know her, so there is not even a whimper when the list is read out and the Housekeeping supervisor sweetly says to her that she had just put everything into a cardboard box and will haul it to the apartment.  And in her honour, they give her brand new utensils etc too.

The Sardarji at the Indian store does not seem to age at all -- must be the Indian spices he inhales through the day, especially turmeric.  He looks at me like a surprised frog, half under water, probably because I had gone missing for 8 months or so.  He obviously has difficulty remembering that we do not live in New York, despite that repeated explanation having been advanced every year and opens his mouth repeatedly like a fish gasping for breath while no sound emerges at all.  I presume it is a greeting only by the mustache and beard twitching simultaneously and the comforting absence of choice expletives.  He has his reasons for harbouring mixed feelings towards us; good business for two months but in the penultimate week, the wife starts returning a whole load of unopened packets bought earlier in excess, for exchange.  This causes immense agony to his soul and scalds his feelings.  He sputters even more than on the first day in anxiety and nervousness, but is yet to decline the barter; I have a foreboding that it is on the horizon somewhere. We tend to visit the store once in 2-3 days, to get fresh supplies and have not heard the stodgy Sardarji speak anything more than the total payable amount, apart from the routine `Sat Sri Akal, kya haal hai'?  A very cosy relationship!!

Our most favourite outdoor activity is to amble along the streets in different directions every day.  Normally if my wife points to Battery Park, I tend to gesture towards Central Park, and if her choice is to trundle along the East river, I prefer to go the Hudson-way. Of course, we finally reconcile amicably and democratically, without any external agent's interference and go to Battery Park or East river side, as she decides! We just flow with the crowd, but flowing is impossible if you are in the heavy duty tourist areas like Times Square, Empire State etc.  We do not really care as to where we are headed because each such trip is truly exploratory in essence.  One is just struck by the liveliness of the place, the abundant energy and diversity on display in every aspect of life.  Eminently fascinating pastime with very little effort, except the walk and we are certain to forget most other mundane things in life for the duration of the walk.  All kinds of people one cannot even guess the nationality of seem to converge and jostle along; it is a virtual tower of babel in terms of the languages spoken.  Such a melting pot that even when some immigrants speak English it takes a few iterations before you understand it is a familiar language that you should be able to comprehend!!  Invariably this sojourn ends with a visit to a supermarket, after my dear wife triumphantly sounds the bugle at some point, `Done 15000 steps for the day, enough'!

Her Fitbit must be creaking with all the walks it has monitored so far!  Even without that monitoring responsibility, I am, honestly.

(To be continued in Part II)










 

Ten Years Of Gully Cricket

About 10 years ago, my dear wife and I decided to shift to Bangalore from Bombay.  Our rationale was straightforward. Good climate during most of the year.  And equidistant from Madras (where my folks are congregated) and Mangalore (where she hails from).  But she had one distinct advantage in that many of her folks lived in Bangalore and I had none.  And between us, we had zero friends when we arrived bag and baggage.  Not one family.  All our other friends, strewn over India, tried to frighten us a bit by saying it would be so difficult to form friendships at our age, post 50! But then, we were veterans of so many moves in our lives, into various cities in different countries, where we found good friends  without fail.  So Bangalore should not pose a great problem; that was our repartee.  What made everything a breeze eventually was nothing but the game of Cricket.  Vista, the community into which we moved, had a fairly large cricket team, indulging in gully cricket every Sunday.  The moment I strolled across to the `ground', which is actually a T-junction within the community, surrounded by villas, a very warm welcome awaited me from some 15 co-residents who had assembled there. That was, until I said I wanted to play.  I would be prevaricating, if I did not mention the fact that my grey hair and build received a rather lukewarm reception and the doubts changed to outright disbelief when I mentioned that I have been a wicket-keeper all my life.  They took time to reluctantly hand over the gloves to me and many were very solicitous to ensure that I did not get hurt during my foolish escapade!  The rest, to use a cliche, is history.  My dear wife and I have some 50 families in our community, which we can call `close' and many of these relationships we owe to my initiation into gully cricket in Vista.

The name of the cricket club is Vista Breakfast and Cricket Club (VBCC) and the priority should be clear from that.  Mercifully, however, we do have a quick snack of assorted pastries, puffs and drinks AFTER the game, not before.  Having said that, we do organize a full fledged breakfast for members and their families a few times in a year and based on hard evidence, one can assert that on those breakfast days, the game gets terribly over-crowded!  The venue is a cul-de-sac with houses on all sides.  The only reason most of the residents of those houses do not complain is that they are all founders of the team and play regularly.  A couple of renters, who moved in later and resented the early morning noise and balls smashing into glass windows etc were coerced to join as players or cajoled into letting things be.  The game has never stopped!

First time one plays, one finds it tough to reconcile the physical age of the participants (the eldest being yours truly at 67 and younger ones are in thirties and forties, except for the occasional presence of some genuine youngsters) and the general behaviour on the field.  At the positive end, what contributes to this is primarily the zest, spirit, competitiveness and intensity involved in the game.  On the other side, pretty frequently people indulge in deportment that immature school children may find embarrassing.  Actually, when a couple of youngsters, about 16, stopped coming to play for a few weeks, I asked them why and the answer was very truthful and hilarious simultaneously. `Uncle, you guys sledge, talk and fight more than you play; we don't like that'.  Touche!!  Pretty much the truth, that.  But then, the players are not likely to change anything because the intended agenda includes just not cricket and breakfast, but also some serious sledging and genuine school-day fun.  If there is some meddling with the various components of the game, a lot of the lustre will be lost and things might degenerate to being mundane.

The process begins with a group WhatsApp message on Saturday from the ever-ebullient organizer, asking for commitment to play on Sunday.  If less than 10 commit, the game is off. Six fielders, aside from bowler and wicket keeper, are good enough because we have a plethora of trees, parked cars and frequent intruders in transit who get hit once in a while, who can all add to fielding muscle.  We need 5 per side minimum, even assuming everyone fields for both innings and the umpire is conveniently done away with, so that the room for fights and acrimony during the game increases multi-fold.    Even otherwise, the poor umpire who is from the batting side, is usually the last person to give any decision, after polling all those who have a say and generally the majority rules, seldom what is probably right.  Out of some respect for the oldest player who is keeping wickets, sometimes the decision is left to him only because no one else has seen even that little necessary to start a fracas.  And the most sensible course of action for him obviously is to say `I am not sure', so that others continue to indulge in verbal assaults after a short pause, while he gets to retain that modicum of respect that surfaces occasionally on the field.  There have been occasional successful attempts to cause grievous bodily injury to the wicket keeper, unmindful of his age. These were accomplished by batsmen over-zealously trying to cut a ball (which was too close and absolutely uncuttable), well after it had passed the wickets and then some distance, intruding into the territory usually occupied by the face of the wicket keeper. One more reason the old guy judicially maintains neutrality when a referred appeal involves some normally friendly chap who may decide suddenly to taste blood for no overtly explicable reason!

Team selection is managed mostly by one individual, well yes, ONE. One, who wants to captain at least one side, if not both, even though he pretends to be satisfied with being just a member of one team. And he selects the team in way that enhances his chances of leading both; pliable chaps are  selected as captains to ensure this happens. All done in good fun, without any ulterior motive. Then this individual manipulates the bowling changes, batting order, field placements, who umpires etc for both sides, but is careful to ask his own captain where he himself should field, or when he should bat or bowl.  Just to be seen as a good soldier.

There are a few, very passionate Commissioners involved (you see, we may be chaotic but in a very structured set-up), who drive the rules etc, if necessary, on the fly.  What they decide better be accepted even if the majority is utterly unconvinced, because otherwise you have on hand, a couple of sulking and disinterested individuals, who were excited and very involved till the rule discussion disrupted the game.  Even if  these blokes are away for a month, we text them and ask for approval to amend the rule or just do the change for the duration of their absence and noiselessly slide back to status-quo-ante when they resume.

Sniping or sledging happens all the time and same-side sledging is a defining characteristic of VBCC. Actually between two balls, the umpire and the other players wait for someone to start and finish the sledge before resuming.  As a matter of fact, the umpire starts the sledging quite often. If the game takes about 2 hours for 12 overs a side, 1.5 hours are for the actual play, the rest dedicated to traffic interruptions and sledging/fighting.  This is pretty much the standard schedule and nobody worries about time being wasted, unless he is being sledged too much or he has no repartee to spare.

Serious fights break out, all verbal, seldom physical (being an optimist, I am not saying`never') but thankfully they never leave scars on the those indulging in verbal pyrotechnics, who are all neighbours, occupying the next or opposite house inside the community. But on the field, it looks like all hell has broken out and until the intensity of the fight subsides some members who are left as dumb spectators, just loll around on the lawns, watching the unseemly skirmish unravelling fast. After the game, all is forgotten and everyone joins in the aforesaid snack and tea regimen.  All is well.  I have a feeling that our gully cricket has survived and flourished over the past decade, primarily because of the implicit understanding that after the game or at least after a few days, all should be well.

No lbw, so one can stop straight balls impudently with legs; searing words might be directed at you and even faster balls at your legs.  The physical scars heal and there is no mental trauma in the first place!  No leg umpire, so it is a free for all when it is a stumping or run out at the striker's end.  Whoever is more voluble wins and either the bunch of fielders close to the wicket or the batting team are left miffed for a few more overs.  The straight umpire, as mentioned earlier, is the last person to be involved in most dismissals, with everyone else having a firm opinion and the umpire not even allowed to get in edgeways. There are rules regarding half-out (when a shot hits a prescribed wall directly and most of the time the word `directly' creates massive confusion due to interpretation), on deflection of a shot when some tree branch or something else gets in the way (not even the Commissioners are clear about this one, we get as ad-hoc as possible in this with imaginary measurements of the angle of deflection being brought in frequently) and runs to be granted if the ball gets into a bush or under a car (bush, car and all other terms are subject to liberal and outlandish interpretations).  These are the rules which cause a lot of dissension, rampant verbal assaults, eminent heartburn, but none of us wants the rules to be taken out because the character of our Sunday cricket will be irretrievably lost with that!!

Post game chai and snacks are of utmost importance.  This is the time when wounds are licked and healed; apologies, if any, are tendered half-heartedly and accepted enthusiastically (driving home the point once more vociferously) and technicalities not accepted on the field are conceded and positions reconciled.  Hence the collective pride in the name and penchant for the breakfast part.

Disclaimer: No offence to any one, please.  But if many are offended, I might write a sequel, with detailed delineation of characters in VBCC.  And, please leave that poor, old wicket keeper alone!

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