"Tune kise choose kiya?", asked Himanshu one of our self proclaimed best cricket captain. The other guy didn't know many of the players around so asked a guy, "Arre tu pace bowling dalta hai kya?" That guy very promptly and enthusiatically replied yeah. He picked him. The match started on a lovely summer evening and I was sitting on the sidelines with no work to do. So while picking grass and watching some girl jog by, a random thought came to my mind about all the common factors shared by we Indians as kids.
The thing that spurt up first was most of the boys since childhood love cricket and all of them to begin with are fast bowlers with no exception. Later on, when they realize that they aren't quite able to generate speed or even gain the distance of 22 yards they turn to spin. Each of them is an aggressive batsman who proclaims to play outstanding off the front foot. Again later on, when they realize that they either are no good as batsmen or not such big hitters of the ball they start to play slow or give up the batting part totally and turn to bowling. Oh, I missed one point; to start with nobody without an exception likes to bowl. Each of them just wants to bat. This remains a common fact in the whole of India from North to South and East to West. If some boy doesn't like cricket or cant perform well in any of the 3 areas of cricket then he is a "sissy"..so there is immense peer pressure upon every kid to perform good in some field of cricket played in every building or society.
With this thought still lingering, suddenly I went into academics and somehow went into the grammar area. By default when asked to write an essay about your favorite pet every kid in the class writes about a dog they may or may not have. As a matter of coincidence all the 40 kids in the class will name the dog as "Moti". I still wonder who was the first person to think of Moti as the name of a pet Dog. In reality I haven't met a single person whose pet dog was named Moti but yeah in an essay in English, Hindi or Marathi the name of the pet will be surely Moti.
Then my mind ran through more essay topics and I started to smile when I thought of a particular type of a essay i.e. Autobiography. Invariably when students start to write this type of essay the have a sad end to the story with most of them writing "and now I lie dead in a corner". The funny part is, if you are already dead then how on earth do you go on to write an autobiography.
It was quite late in the evening and I was hungry, so my mind swayed in the direction of food. Again there is amazing gift of "Vada Pav" which is loved by the richest and also by the poorest and everyone would have tasted it once in life. After a nice tiring game of cricket or soccer you would find a group of kids discussing the match they just finished with much vigor as shown by our politicians regarding reservation quota and heading towards a Vada Pav stall to grab a brunch on that hot filling Vada Pav..( I miss that a lot here).
"Abye Sushant batting ko ja.." was a statement someone shouted out and like a happy kid I jumped with joy and ran with a bat to the pitch and just lost the thought about all those common factors we always shared as kids. Though, now as mere memories each of thought without fail brings a smile on face and shows how lovely it was being a kid..