My Bat Goes to Kerala

There were some good parts about being a Malayali boy, one was our annual trip to our ‘native’. Before every summer vacation I stood in front of Mrs. E, the Office Manager, applying for the student railway concession.  She would peer through her bifocals and say, “Yes? Entha mone, kanji kudicho?” And she would double up at her own wit. (We mallus were always ridiculed and accused of eating rice porridge). I would give her a wry smile and hope she would choke on her next ‘boti curry’ (a Tam Christian delicacy). 

Carrying on the story of my bat, I had to plead with Amachi to let me carry it to Kerala. Despite my brother saying nice things about me, I did not trust him enough to leave it with him. It was quite a crowd puller, it drew mystified looks along the way. And then I was told why; apparently there is a similar shaped wooden instrument that masons use to flatten the red clay on walls, ‘nellamthalli’ they called it. My bat looked like an imported ‘nellamthalli’.

If getting it to Kerala was a challenge, playing with it was a bigger one. There was no one willing to throw a couple of balls at me. I had to beg my sister to bowl for me, she was happier dicing raw mangoes and eating it with salt. After days of trying, I managed to rustle up five boys to play cricket. Now there is only so much one can do in terms of training them on the finer points about holding a bat and bowling. After several attempts I gave up. After I explained the basic rules of the game, one of the boys explained it succintly to the others, “Just aim and throw at the three sticks, dont let the man with the bat touch the ball”. As for batting they always got the bottom hand wrong and yet could smack the ball hard.

We started our game and I was batting. The bowler took my instructions ran up to the stumps at full tilt, I was quite impressed. And then he stopped abruptly, stretched his left hand, pointed at the stumps, closed his left eye and hurled the ball at great speed (like he was felling mangoes from a tree). The ball missed the stumps and sped like a stray missile onto the road. Georgechayan, who had this funny habit of raising his eyebrows every two seconds, was coming down the road when he saw the ball speeding towards him. His mallu spirit of adventure and sport took over and he swung his leg back and ran towards the hard cork ball and kicked at it. ”Ayyyooooo” he said involuntarily and then very quickly gathered himself and walked off with a smile, I swear I could see the tears of pain welling in his eyes. 

My story does not end there. Raju was batting next and the bowler did a repeat. Only this time he was much closer to the target and hit Raju right on his family jewels. All the male onlookers felt the collective tightening in theirs as well. It was quite a sight, Raju howled and jumped around in pain, bat in hand. That evening Raju’s mother paid my mother a visit and that signalled the untimely end of my dream of introducing cricket to Kerala. (The Brits did a better job in India). 

When I went home recently, I heard that Georgechayan had passed away several years ago, of natural causes. Raju, I hear, teaches in a parallel college and has three children. 

My conscience is clear.