AN INDIAN SUMMER OF BOYS                                                                                                               Part III

A True Short Story    by Ravi Anbil

The two weeks of practice sessions went off well. We had a makeshift cricket field. To the right was Jeevan’s house and diagonally across was the Watt House. To the left some distance away was our building of flats where the ground floor was occupied by Mrs. Herbert, a very religious lady who kept a wary eye on Vaidhi whom she regarded as a menace to decent society. Despite our handwritten letters of apology to all the girls, none showed up. We were told that they had come to regard the cumulative species of boys as crude vermin.

     Three minor incidents are worth reporting. One had to do with Thamba hitting a ball way off into the Watt House. He sent his little brother, Dheenan, to squeeze through the fence and retrieve it. Mrs. Watt had been raising a ferocious goose in the backyard unbeknownst to us. When Dheenan trespassed, he got goosed repeatedly in several tender spots that caused him to be on the ‘injured reserve’ list for a week.

     Another incident involved a nest of bulbuls. When I went to look for a ball in the shrubbery, I discovered that we had accidentally knocked off a nest containing three skinny, helpless fledglings. The parent birds had deserted them. I took them home and was nursing them with boiled lentils six times a day, keeping them cuddly and cozy in a shoebox in the balcony. The entire team would visit periodically to check on the fast-growing chickadees.

     The third incident took place one early morning when J. C. was describing to us how a Pakistani cricket player, Hazeeb Hussain, slammed a sixer. He obviously did not notice that a newspaper boy was passing by. Unfortunately, the boy walked right into his field of gesticulation and got severely slapped in the face. The boy refused to deliver newspapers after that. All the mothers had to coax him with sweets to have him continue.

     These incidents were minor and did not affect our practice sessions. However, as the last few days drew close to the match, Fate would  play a mischievous trick on us.

Summer in South India is very hot. What we did not know was that dogs during summer develop something called ‘heat’. Earlier, I had mentioned Kukoosh, Gopu’s dog. He was a handsome, pudgy golden retriever who had a limited social life. Somehow our cricket field caused him to be in the proximity of Jeevan’s house that had a female Labrador by name Remy. We had no idea that we had not unwittingly opened the doors to Kukoosh's social life; nor did we know about dogs in heat. The aftermath cost the entire team many a sleepless night.

     Kukoosh and Remy started sniffing each other and soon took over our cricket field for their romantic endeavors. The only other dog was Tiger, in the servant’s quarters, behind our playing field. He was a diminutive version of a dog, referred to as dariyal, meaning ‘midget’. He was pure white and hopped all over full of energy like a rubber ball.

     If ever a gentlemanly title were granted for dogs, Kukoosh would have been knighted. He was the best-behaved dog we had ever seen. While he could have killed Tiger with just one bite, he looked upon him more as pestilence than competition. Somehow we also felt sorry for this underdog of a dog that throbbed in the perimeter with high hopes. Mrs. Herbert, who was an expert at surveillance, wasted no time in informing all the parents of this unwelcome happenstance. The upshot was that we were ordered to remain indoors while the dogs were having their private moments.

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