How I stopped playing cricket and started liking her

D.Arun was intently staring down the road, and when the hindquarters of the cow moved out of his sight, the angry bowler came in. The ball hit a hole on the road and scuttled in and bowled him!

Tips walked in to bat, mocking at Arun, "You need good technique to survive in these conditions. I could see daylight between bat and pad!!". Arun walked past muttering to himself. But he had to acknowledge the truth. Hole or no hole, no ball could get past Tips. Well...partly because he was portly. And wholly because the bowler was 12 years old and Tips was 28!

Many such characters adorn the roads of Madras. It was by cricket that Tips precariously hung on to the last vestiges of youth, very much like the veshti on his waist. While both of them forebode an impending calamity, life and cricket moved on as usual on the improvised cricket pitch. Some might say, Sir, you are repeating yourself.

But there was life outside cricket. There was, of course, food. But for Tips, food was starting to lose its dominance on the little list of his priorities. Why? you may ask. Even if you did not, I would press on. There are priorities and then there are priorities. There comes a time in every man's life, and I daresay, every woman's too, when priorities change. Tips little list of priorities was, in no particular order: food, cricket, music, books, and women. Well, maybe the order is right...nay, was right. When bile and testosterone battle it out, there's only one winner. Adrenaline versus testosterone is a more even contest. After saying so much about this and that, sometimes its inevitable that you forget what you set out to say in the first place.

Like a fact that every self respecting carnatic musician should know, there is no Darbar without a Nayaki. The manner of Tips was undergoing a tumultuous change as the generous outline of Vanaja appeared on the horizon. It was a metaphoric sunrise for the vapid heart of Tips. Suddenly his clogged arteries were commanded to pump twice the amount of blood. It looked as if days were only a minute long in his dimension. Or shall I say the sun had set without rising to it full glory. Quite the consequence of his overworked arteries. Tips was left wondering if the daylight he saw between Arun's bat and pad was his quota for the day. Ofcourse, there wasn't any danger of a shortage of Vitamin D for Tips. How he wished for the erstwhile British empire.

But if disgrace comes, can grace be far behind? It was a touching love story, and it was ironic that there was no real touching. He felt gratified if there was a glimpse. The physical proportions of neither party was to blame.