Busier than a Bumblebee!!!

All my summer vacations from the age of 11 to 16 were exact clones of each other. I worked my butt off for 16 hours a day. I was madly in love with cricket those days. Probably I was very uncivilized and immature then :). Kidding.. Back then our colony had roughly around 600 homes. We had about 6 bus stops. We were the studs from the 2nd bus stop. There were a flock of kids of my age group in our dominion. Since our colony is in the suburbs, there were a hatful of open spaces which means a plenitude of playgrounds.

My mundane agenda during the vacation was something like this. It was cricket all the time !!

While(SummerVacation)

{

7.00 AM: Wake up time.

8.30 AM: Break fast time.

9.30 AM: Hit the playground.

10.00 AM: Match with Ajay-Vijay bros.

1.00 PM: Lunch @ home.

2.00 PM: Match with Ajay-Vijay bros/Mickey-Mackey bros.

4.30 PM: Tea @ home.

5.00 PM: Practice matches.

7.00 PM: Hide and seek/Lagori/Site adichufying (bird watching :)) near the temple.

8.30 PM: Dinner time.

9.00 PM: Chess/Trade/Carrom/Pallanguli (http://sports.indianetzone.com/traditional_games/1/pallanguli.htm)

11.00 PM: Sleeping time.

};

It was the time of my life. I could now understand why people say "Ignorance is bliss". Life was a free fall those days.

A note on our regular opponents:

Ajay-Vijay bros:

Ajay-Vijay bros were from the 4th bus stop. Their family were running a fancy store namely, obviously Ajay-Vijay fancy store :-).. These two guys had formed a very good team with plenty of senior fellas. They had the luxury of usurping the necessary kits from their store. Needless to say we lost most of the matches with them. Ironically, we called ourselves "War winners" :-). There was no war. They played the drumsticks and we always had our back against the wall. We got battered always. Despite of our frequent losses we were so united that sometimes we end up with buttonless shirts and torn shorts after the match.

Mickey-Mackey bros:

Mickey-Mackey were anglo indians from the 6th bus stop. They both were really intimidating. Some of the guys in our team used to piss in their pants when Mackey starts bowling. Both those guys were very fit, good looking and full of pride. I used to envy them. I would say to myself that the best way to admonish them is to play like "Afridi" against "Venkatesh Prasad". Most of the times i would get hits in various parts of my body right from the head to toe. Once I lost a finger nail when I tried to defend a ball like Rahul Dravid :(. After that incident I opted to sit out as a substitute for which there was plenty of competition, of course.

A note on our team:

As I said, we called ourselves "War Winners". The genius who came up with this befitting name was none other than myself. Our team had some interesting/weird characters. We were always in a complete mess of the exponential order. Our team was like the slums of bombay. Full of chaos which is not supposed to work but it somehow works. When I named the team I took a notebook from my home and I laboriously listed down all the players. I also named the captain and the treasurer. Guess what I was the treasurer. My father was the treasurer of the welfare association of our colony. So I tried to emulate him ;). Till date, I have not received a penny from any of them. Ghajana vangaradhuku kooda kaasu illa !! (Absolutely no money to purchase even a piggy bank). Haahrrhmm..

I think that is enough of a prelude. I would introduce and throw light on the other players as and when the story demands ;-). I intend to follow up this post with lots of childhood experiences whenever I get time. Cheers !!...