His hands enveloped the marble which he always carried around… it was special… it was a gift from Harry. That one time, when he had beaten Harry, the master of ‘kanchas’, Harry had let him keep the marble cue. He remembered the game with a smile; he had felt on top of the world. He had celebrated his win by having ice candies with Ginny at the park. How happy Ginny was for him. But then Harry and gang had turned up and started teasing Ginny. How he had watched helplessly when all that he wanted was to enjoy the moment of victory with Ginny and his ice candy. But then, he had been floating in seventh heaven, and had been a mute spectator not lifting a finger to help Ginny.
Then it was all routine, he playing the mute spectator in Ginny’s humiliation. The recollection of those days flashed across his mind like a fast moving western, in Technicolor. There was Ginny being ridiculed over her baggy trousers two sizes big while there was him with a half smile. Next was Ginny being ridiculed for not being able to catch the ball during a cricket match, Ginny being poked in the ribs for laughing at Harry when he ‘accidentally’ slipped down in the mud. And there was he, standing in the corner, with a half smile, not knowing whethser to join in the vicious laughter or telling Harry to leave the poor girl alone. The vivid image made him tighten his grip on the marble. He felt miserable. He was so distraught that he almost flung the marble away into the sea.
But wait a sec, what was he doing, hadn’t he felt like a king when he had won that kancha match, didn’t he feel good when he was with Harry and the gang. He felt as if he belonged somewhere. Hadn’t Magesh his cousin who was in senior school and in the basketball team told him that you had to be a team player and tough to survive in this mean, bad world. And if Ginny was not able to take Harry’s teasing in the right spirit, then tough luck. How would she manage when she grew up? And besides, he was not going to hang with her, a girl, all the time. It was not cool. Maggi (everybody called him Maggi, short for Magesh) never hung out the girls. He went to school, practiced in the evenings, hung around with his team and then came home. Just because, Ginny was his childhood friend didn’t mean anything; He hadn’t chose Ginny as his friend. They had been forced to be friends as their mom’s were friends.
He straightened up resolutely; he was going to get back to Harry and gang, the one place where he was accepted. They were his friends; he was not going to give them up so easily, not without a fight. But how was he going to do the impossible, Harry was never going to forgive him for defying him. Forget forgiving, he was not even talking to him. His shoulders slumped again. His whole world was crumbling around him.
He was jerked from his thoughts by a weird shuffling sound coming from behind the rocks. He was irritated, that his thoughts were being disturbed so. He shook his head and continued being miserable, when the shuffling turned into whispers. He couldn’t concentrate in wallowing in self pity any more. He decided to go and tell the lovers to keep it down. They had to be lover, only couples came to the beach to make out behind the rocks, it was a common sight in the busy metropolis.
However, what he saw wiped all thoughts of Ginny, Harry and the gang from his mind. He saw a scruffy looking fat man bending over a gunny bag while another man slightly older than fatso was sitting on a rock and looking extremely bored. He passed his time by arranging and re-arranging his numerous gold chains which could have amounted to the entire gold reserve of Uganda.
As the thoughts passed his mind in a rapid fire round, Gold-pot looked up and saw him. Gunny froze on the spot seeing the steely eyes of gold-pot. He found his legs as heavy as a steel almirah the kinds that Madhu aunty had in her house… the fraction of the second that it took him to realize that he has to run and the actual act of urging his legs to listen to him seemed like an eternity.
He ran like mad from that place, all thoughts of Harry and Ginny abandoned, all misery wiped out from his life… survival was the only thought.
Once he reached home, he went to his room without a glance at his sobbing mom or his dad who was watching TV as if that’s the most important thing in this world (sic).
He took a breath only after he reached his room and had locked the door and latched the window, checked under the bed incase gold-pot was hiding there. He was scared, but he didn’t want to admit it to himself even if he was alone. He fell asleep dreaming about the gunny bag and the two scary men and Ginny and mom and Harry and his marble...
1 comment:
okkkkk...then..?
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