That vulnerable feeling

Flower beds were laid out and lush green grass came up in no time. The retired and the elderly strolled while children played around. But the peace proved short-lived.

The spacious park soon attracted the evil designs of some over-enthusiastic local youth, who spared no pains in converting it into a cricket field-cum-gambling den. The flower beds vanished and the lush lawn dried up. The elderly and the children withdrew into their homes.

The rowdy bunch of cricketers chose Sundays and other holidays for their marathon eight-hour sessions. All locals, it was convenient for them to abandon the game temporarily to visit their homes in the neighbourhood for meals and regroup again. The general consensus among the residents of the colony was that what cannot be cured must be endured. Youthful overenthusiasm would fade out soon, we hoped, and held on to our patience.

On one holiday, when the vagabonds were assembled and playing, glancing through our parkside window, I gathered that the ‘warming up’ was over, and the ‘real’ game was in progress. Just then I was alerted by a big thud. I ventured out to inspect. The game had stopped and a few of them were pointing towards our wall. I looked up and was stunned. A corner of the first-floor ‘chajjha’ (the concrete projection over the first-floor window) had been chipped off due to the impact of the ball. My protest was of no consequence. The players were more concerned with determining if the hit could be deemed a ‘boundary’!

The game followed a pattern. If the ball landed on the roof, it was said to be a sixer, if it hit the upper portion of the first-floor sky-light it was a boundary and the striker got just two runs for hitting the ground-floor wall. As the game progressed, ‘perfection’ seemed to have been arrived at. Lured by the stake money, more and more balls started landing on the roof.

Eventually, the audacity of the players crossed all limits. Once, a full-blooded shot pierced through the first-floor glass skylight. The ball landed on the bedroom floor and the smashed glass bits lay scattered on the bed. Another time, when we refused to return the ball, we were crudely challenged to step outside and meet the hooligans’ brute force.

Many years later, it seems just like yesterday. Life in our apartment block is still ‘enlivened’ by smashed window panes, Diwali crackers blast our letter box in an annual ritual, and nobody is ever held accountable for the damage. Thus spake Shakespeare: ‘‘Society is no comfort to one not sociable’’.