Achala redux

I had dinner with mom, shut the door to my room. By the time I sat down on my bed, I had the blue pill in my hand. A groundstaff at Calcutta had passed me the pill with the whisper: ''Try this sir. Nothing to match this one in the market.'' It cost me Rs 2,000 just for one pill, but then, what is money to me? I've just signed a Rs 1 crore endorsement deal with a sports shoe company and a soft drink. I am rolling in money.

The groundstaff had warned me that I should not eat much before taking the pill, but hey life is for risks, right? After all, my mom had cooked bisibele bath for me and of course I had to eat that. I grinned foolishly at the pill, took my bottle of water and swallowed it down in one gulp. Blue, hmm, this is a new colour. Marketing, even in the shady underworld, was always the last word.

A warm tingly feeling started up from my toes as I lay down on the bed. Interesting, I thought, and shut my eyes. Whoosh, it was like going down an endless tunnel of white light at top speed. I put out my hands to the sides, trying to control the speed as my stomach turned upside down. I was nauseated, and felt all the bisibele bath coming up to my throat.  Suddenly,  white tunnel split into colours and became an eight cornered box all around me. I was suspended mid-air, slowly turning around, seeing my room, all the colours -- red-- yellow-- orange -- blue -- violet -- green -- all fluorescent, washing one into the other, the whole universe brightly lit.

And emerging from those colours was the face I always saw, the face I was always trying to forget, the face that pushed me into these drugs in the first place. Achala, Cream.. no Ratan's girlfriend.. she called him Ratan, not Cream like the rest of us. Of all the people in the world, did I have to fall in love with my best friend's girlfriend? A heartless girl, that is what she was. I had gone all the way to Malaysia just to speak to her, and she slammed the door in my face. Ratan had said it was ok if she and I got together, but did she listen? No. She threw us both out of her life. And I was left hanging, gasping for breath, with even my best friend hostile and unhappy with me..

I shook my head, feeling the air stir all around me and my hair stand on end as the bright colours continued to suck in my eyes. I was still suspended, still in a cocoon, but her face was slowing coming closer and closer. I knew what to expect.. soon her face would surround me and I would crash down, sick and desperate, with no way to get in or out of the situation..

I frowned. There was some change this time. Very strange indeed. It had started out as Achala's face, the familiar lines, the strong nose, the long hair, the fair skin. And slowly it had started to change into a darker skin share, the nose slightly different, the eyes a bit bigger, the knowledge in them a bit older, the hair short, cut just below the skin.. what was this new face? I blinked, even in the daze, as slowly an old memory began to get replaced by a much newer one. And I knew. This was the face of that media woman I invited to dinner.. and yes, she looked like Achala. Was that why I invited her?

The face loomed larger and larger as it took over my being and I floated along, aware that any time now, I would drop down to earth and struggle with cramps in my own bed. But this feeling of peace was amazing, something I could hold on to.. was this strange woman the answer to all my problems? A woman I didn't know, whose name I had no idea about.. why was she affecting me like this? Who was she?  

she speaks to me

I went into the hotel, but hung around in the lobby. My kitbag had to be unloaded from the bus, and loaded into my black Pajero, which my driver would have brought to the West End parking lot. I was going to my apartment in Kumara Park extension, where I live with my mother. I would join the team again at net practise tomorrow.

I could see through the glass panes of the lobby doors that Ganja had not managed to avoid that media woman. He mumbled something into her mike and came in, shaking his head. I waved him on and continued to lean against the reception, watching the show outside.

More TV vans landed up -- these guys were an absolute nuisance, but one had to tolerate them. After all, they popularized the game, made or broke cricketers with their comments, built up the hype. BCCI loved them and got huge revenues from TV rights. Well, in a way, they paid our remuneration and for our contracts..

Coachie and manager finished talking to the media bunch and came in, mopping their respective brows. I grinned at that and continued watching. That media woman.. I wonder why my eyes keep going to her? Something familiar about her.. she came into the lobby, straight to me. I mentally raised my brows, but kept quiet.

''Will you talk to me?,'' she said.
''Talk,'' I repeated. Hmm, interesting that this woman thought I would break my contract with the BCCI and talk to her. Did she think she was that attractive? I decided to be insulting and gave her a once over.

''Talk, you know. To my mike,'' she said, clenching her teeth.
Hmm, the woman had a temper alright. I hadn't even begun to rile her. I leaned back on the reception desk, enjoying myself now.
''Oh Mike. Ask the captain, manager or coach. No one else can talk,'' I said, simply enough.
''The captain has gone. You are the vice-captain. Please talk to me?'' she said. She was trying to smile and not get angry, which amused me further. And there was something about her...

She was looking at my feet. Oh well, everyone looks at my feet. It's a problem, when one is huge. ''Size 14,'' I told her.
 ''Huh?'' she said.
 ''My shoe size,'' I said pointedly, in an attempt to get her to see how rude it is to stare at people's feet.

She started looking harried. This woman was really interesting. I could see the start of  a blush on her face.. or was it just an angry flush?
''No to the Mike,'' I said, abruptly. ''But will you have dinner with me?''

Now where had that come from? I frowned at myself. Why exactly was I asking a media woman to have dinner with me? What if she got some information out of me that she publicized?

But I hadn't invited the media woman, I told myself. I had invited just the woman. Oh ho. Now that was even more strange. Why had I invited her?

''No thanks,'' she said tiredly. Huh? She refused! She walked away. Wait, I didn't even know how to talk to her again.. and somehow, it seemed essential that I know.

''Hey which TV are you from?'' I called out, across the lobby. She stopped, stared at me. The whole lobby was staring at me, but I didn't really care. I was used to being stared at.

''National TV,'' she said and left. I hung around a while after that, then my car came to the lobby entrance and I left to go home to my mother, still wondering why I wanted to see that woman again.


 

at the hotel

The bus set off in the police cleared channel for us. We were a security risk, so no vehicles ahead or behind us. Or that's what we assumed, nobody ever explained anything to us. But then, we probably never asked.

I leaned back in my soft seat, stretched. I'm tall and my arms hit the luggage rack above our heads. Cream gave me an irritated look, then went back to the book he had pulled out to read. Of late, Cream doesn't talk much to me and off and on, he has not been my room mate, but everyone has a right to moods. Cream has been there whenever I needed him and has even stuck around the times I've pushed him away..

The bus screeched to a halt. What, had we already reached West End? No, we had got caught in a traffic signal. Some traffic cop was going to get a real shouting for not clearing our path. Oh well, Bangalore traffic is a part of the city's charm and all my team mates had gone through it too many times to count.

I pulled out my Walkman, plugged my ear phones in and relaxed listening to Rajkumar and PB Sreenivas's old Kannada film songs. The bus moved and stopped and moved and stopped till at last we came to West End. Cream, ever aware that the media would be following us and not wanting to say anything at all after that defeat to Sri Lanka, grabbed his small kitbag from the rack and rushed out of the bus. I got up more leisurely, stretched, looked around, took off my earphones and ambled out of the bus.

That woman was there again, the one from the airport. She had positioned herself at the entrance to the lobby and there was no way anyone could avoid her. Well, I like enterprise, and there was something about the way she looked, which I liked. Whatever. I walked up and surprise, surprise, she shoved her mike at me. A tiny thing, she had to lift her arm and elbow to get her mike in front of my face. I gave her a pained look and walked off without saying anything.

Well, we have a policy, we have no option. The BCCI has bound us left, right and centre. I didn't particularly want to talk to anyone about anything, but I didn't like the fact that BCCI had barred all of us from speaking to the media. Only Cream, coachie Rangarajan and manager Dinesh Tiwari can talk to them. It protected all of us, yes, but its the principle of the thing no? I am not a two year old to be told what to do and what not to do!

 

how it all began

It was just one more routine journey to one more city for one more match. Except that this journey was from Calcutta to my home city Bangalore and the match was against the most formidable opponent we could get, Pakistan. We had just lost a match to Sri Lanka and everyone's form and attitude was down and low. Nobody was betting on us and even the staff in the airports, usually smiling, just gave us morose looks this time.

The dressing room was as dull as it could get and not even Ganja -- Ganesh, our most prolific batsman and inhouse wit -- could get a smile out of anyone.

We arrived in Bangalore and went as usual to the VIP lounge, waiting for our luggage -- bats, pads, kits -- to follow. It was a blinding hot day and the heat was glinting off the tarmac and the glass facade  of the Bangalore airport -- the old defence airport, not the streamlined new one at Devanahalli. I blinked as we deplaned and quickly put on my fancy new Raybans, my latest indulgence. What else do I spend my money on anyway, other than fancy stuff to wear, eat and smoke?

''Media,'' Ratan -- our captain, fondly called Cream by the whole team -- muttered tome and went into the lounge. What media? I only saw harmless old Doordarshan, an old looking dark skinned cameraman with a huge toothy smile, hanging around as usual in the lounge. Then I caught sight of a woman in a salwar kameez, standing with another cameraman, loudly arguing with the airport duty officer that she and her camera should also be allowed in, if DD was allowed. I smiled to myself.. some small relief in an excruciatingly dull and boring day..

Once everyone got there and all the luggage had been loaded into the usual AC bus parked outside the lounge, all of us filed out and got into the bus. The small crowd which had gathered outside wouldn't be positive, I knew. The airline and airport employees had already given us a taste of what to expect. I steeled myself -- even after all these years of exposure to the public mood, good and bad, I was not battle hardened enough to deal with public criticism.

The crowd booed. Well, we knew that one. Some, however, said ''Welcome'' and ''Jai'' which I didn't expect. But keeping to my expected, public facade of the grim fellow who never opens his mouth -- yes I was perfectly aware of what the media and the public thought of me -- I looked neither left nor right, but plunged straight into the bus like all the others on the team.

From the corner of my eye, I caught sight of the media woman again, moving quickly towards us, but she veered away and ran to her van. Well good luck, I thought to myself and moved into the aisle of the bus and sat down by my usual window seat, third row from the back. Cream, as usual, slide in next to me and I felt the bus moving through the dust of my city's airport.