Gentleman's game ladies please excuse !

Saturday morning and I am greeted with the sight that most women in India dread! That of the menfolk sitting glued to the TV watching cricket! I can see the usual Saturday family card session vanishing into thin air. Getting my Dad and brothers to abandon the TV is as impossible as Cauvery water sharing, which brings me to the topic of this post "CRICKET".

No,no...this is no girly rant against Cricket. I love Cricket...but only when India wins against Pakistan. Other times I hate the game that makes millions of wives into temporary widows, children into temporary orphans and sisters into ballboys er...ball girls or whatever it is that younger sisters are called when they have to go fetch the cricket balls that brother and friends hit wildly into neighboring Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and the Indian Ocean.

I was introduced to cricket at a very young age. My elder brother and friends used to play cricket at the paddy field near my house. And I was the official ballgirl (if there is such a term). And for all my troubles I was rewarded with ice cream at the end of the game. I quite liked skipping after the ball, picking it up and then skipping back to the field after I had chased a butterfly and the batsmen had made their 18th run and were looking desperately to see if I would get back and give them a break.

One day after the opposite team had made about 765 runs, both teams met for a pow wow and it was decided by mutual consensus that when I ran after the ball, it would be counted as a Four and no more. This put paid to runs being accumulated like Sachins injuries.

Now you might wonder why the guys put up with me at all. On weekends my Mom would take off for her weekly shopping trip and my eldest brother had to baby sit. He did baby sit, but as he always says it does not matter how you do the job as long as it gets done. So I was taken to the cricket field along with the other equipment and made to run after the ball if the ball went outside the boundary line. Of course Mom was none the wiser and I kept my mouth shut partly because of a very numb tongue after my 6th ice cream.

Second brother soon got into playing cricket and realized that additional human resources in the form of younger sister was a good idea than running around looking for the ball and getting all hot under the collar. He was however unsuccessful in garnering the available human resource because the human resource had to be fed and would keep wandering off with the ball. This made him mad and he withheld the promised Ice Cream after one match. Human Resource went and squealed to Dad and that was the end of further fielding resources for second brother.

During the course of my glorious innings as ball collector I learnt quite a few cricketing terms.

F**k!!!! means "if I wasn’t watching that gal I would seen that the ball was headed towards my middle stump!"
A** h**e means,"how can you hit me for a six you a** h**e?!?!"

Such colorful terms were very educative for an 8 year old and soon Dad and Mom were called for an emergency PTA meeting. Dad was relieved that it was nothing serious when he heard the Teacher say with a pained expression "You daughter said F**k when the Crayon fell down and broke."

Mom was however horrified and soon the three of us went through a refresher course in English language.

Mom: What is the exclamation you would use when you are angry?
Elder Brother: Damn?
Mom: hmm ok, but I would prefer if you said, “This is so inconvenient”
Elder Brother: Sure

Mom: Ok what would you say when someone swears at you?
Second brother (smirking): What do you mean by 'swear'?
Mom: er...I mean like the language you use in the cricket field!
SB: Ok, I will say, “This is so inconvenient?!”
Mom: Good!

(Muffled and uncontrollable giggling from the students.)

Mom: And what will you say when your crayon falls down the desk?
Me (on the defensive): I dunno.
Mom: You mustn’t use bad words ok?
Me: Ok. But dad says it’s ok if I don’t say it too loud!
Mom: #*@&*%$&+%$$# (choicest Malayalam epithets)

This brings me to another incident involving Dad:

Ms Michelle: Your daughter pinched Chithra yesterday.
Dad: Why did you pinch Chithra?
Me: But dad, she pinched me first!
Dad: (shocked) I hope you pinched her back real hard !!

Dad was declared persona non grata in school after that.

To come back to our narrative, it is Saturday morning and after a long time, the gender balance in my house is at a level. With my brand new sis-in-law we are now three females vs three males. My mom calls herself a Golf widow and me a Golf orphan, and today my brand new sis-in-law got a new name ‘Cricket widow’. After watching the guys in disgust for half an hour, I did the kindest thing I could do to my new sis-in-law. I took her to Forum for an expensive shopping spree. It will be nice to see my brother’s expression when the Bills come home to roost.

Frailty.er...revenge thy name is woman!