The seasoned journeyman

It was the summer of 2007 and I was twenty four. It was my first year as a working, responsible adult and yet looking back, I now have reason to believe that I had the mind of a toddler.

It had been a year since I had met my Dad and cousin sister who were back in Kerala and while the north simmers with rising temperatures in June, the southern state cools down with the onset of the south-west monsoon. Since my Dad and sister stayed in different districts of Kollam and Thrissur respectively, and I had only a few days leave in hand, I decided to head to my sister’s lovely home that had a large front yard in Puthenchira, in the Thrissur countryside.

Dad wasn’t fussed about it because coming to Thrissur also meant that he would get to meet my cousin, her husband and their two-year-old daughter. Since I had began working the previous year in Delhi, opportunities to meet Dad were dwindling and we both were looking forward to this.

Those days like most of the years Dad and I lived together, Dad didn’t have a car. That meant that Dad would travel in a state transport bus (KSRTC for those familiar) for over six hours. The other alternative was for Dad to book a cab but he was never going to spend the money to travel comfortably in a car.

I did, however, have an odd request for him while telling him about my travel plans.

‘Papa, can you also bring my SS bat?’

‘You mean that old Ghaziabad cricket bat?’

‘Yes,’ I affirmed and we both went silent.

He referred to that bat as the ‘Ghaziabad cricket bat’ because that’s where we had bought it from. I was fifteen and in the tenth grade. By then working with our cricket coach at school, I had displayed some signs of being able to compete in cricket at a state level. I say some signs because these signs were not clear enough for me to give up on my studies to focus on cricket and yet they were enough to convince my father that I needed a top-grade cricket bat to move to the next level.

We’d bought the bat in 1998. I changed schools, cities, graduated from college, earned myself a full-time job and all this while, the bat travelled with us. Most of the time it was just Dad and I traversing these cities and among our modest belongings that moved across state borders, belonged this fraying, but precious SS bat.

I hadn’t planned to ask him to carry the bat but as I thought of how I was going to spend these few days in small-town Kerala, it raced to the top of my mind. I thought I could play against the wall, like the way I would spend all my summer vacations. When you have a childhood without a mother or a sibling, the trifecta of a bat, a wall and a ball becomes an irresistible companion.

I let our conversation hang in the air for a few seconds.

‘I mean, if you can, it’d be great Papa. I haven’t played with it in a while.’

‘Who will you play with?’

‘We can play. Or I can play like I used to, just against the wall.’

Somewhere at the back of my mind, a sixty-year-old man carrying an old worn bat with only weathered threads to show for a grip, conjured an image of a needless exercise, but like I said, looking back I now know I was a selfish toddler to even place this request.

‘Please, Papa. Bring it na. I don’t know when I’ll see that bat again and you know I loved playing with it.’

I think his silence dragged him in the same visual imagery that I had, a few moments ago — that of a comical, embarrassing tableau of an old man with an even older bat (in bat years) struggling to first find a seat in a State Transport bus, then climbing down, then waiting at the station to board another bus, jostling in a queue to find a seat again and then alighting at the final bus stop of Puthenchira.

He would then need to walk another ten minutes with the bat in hand in broad daylight to reach my sister’s home. Along this journey, he would be gawked at, and most likely even laughed at by those jobless men who hung around the toddy shops and tea stalls. When he’d be inside the bus, people would gape at him and the bat he’d be carrying and when he’d be out of the bus, those stares would follow him.

‘Let me see what I can do,’ he said.

That evening my older cousin brother, who lived in Kollam in an adjoining house, called me.

‘You expect your father to carry a bat making a fool of himself on a six-hour bus ride? Do you know it’s not even one direct bus? He will need to change buses, maybe even take three buses and then your sister’s house is at least a ten minutes walk from the bus stop. A man at his age, you want him to do all of this for what joy?’

My cousin was right. I didn’t have an answer. I left that conversation with a feeble, ‘I didn’t insist. I just asked him.’

The next day I boarded an early morning flight to Cochin, called myself a cab at the airport and snuggled myself to sleep during the two-hour cab ride from the airport to arrive at my sister’s doorstep at around noon. We were all expecting Dad to be there by around four o clock. My sister didn’t lose a chance to remind me of my petulant request. ‘Why did you have to ask him to carry your bat, baba?’

I once again went with, ‘I didn’t insist. Really.’

By now I was wondering if I should’ve called Dad and asked him to not carry the bat in the morning. He’d have begun from Punalur after I had boarded the aircraft. I had a chance to tell him to leave the bat at home and I didn’t take it.

Meanwhile, the monsoon had started her dance. While Dad was not a big fan of carrying an umbrella, to get out of home in Kerala in June without an umbrella was nothing short of unwanted daredevilry, so he would have to be carrying an umbrella and my bat.

I could’ve also bought a bat from a sports store in Thrissur but it would then become a discussion in the Mathew household that evening about why should one buy a bat when you only needed it for a few days to knock some balls around.

I loved my sister’s house. My brother-in-law is a priest and there was a church in the same compound as the house. Between the church and their home, lay a sizeable open area of concrete. This area would double up as a parking zone for cars and bikes on the day of the Sunday mass but other than that it was an open area for every other day of the week. It was this area that I had my eyes on.

I could position myself anywhere in this open area and use one of the many walls of Didi’s house to serve as a bouncing board for the ball. I loved this so much in my childhood that I could spend hours just hitting the ball back at the wall with a bat in hand.

Dad and I didn’t talk after our conversation from a few days ago. While it was pouring heavily outside, I finished my lunch and caught a nap. Around three o’ clock, since one couldn’t expect much out of a Vodafone network phone even in those days, Didi and I perched ourselves in the verandah waiting for Dad.

I had travelled in those KSRTC buses during the rains in my college days. With all the windows down, these buses would transform themselves into musty dungeons of socks, stink and sweat. By now I was really wishing that Dad had made a tradeoff for the umbrella over the bat.

At dot four in the evening we saw a lonely figure in a striped shirt and grey trousers approaching the gate. He held up an umbrella that swayed more than it served. The bottom of his trousers had gotten wet up until his calves. I wouldn’t have liked to be in his shoes that day. But he looked like a seasoned journeyman comfortable in his skin.

I was glad that he carried an umbrella and then my eye went to his left elbow, where I also spotted the shape of a bat tightly tucked in to his side.

We were not much for hugging well until his later years, so we just exchanged smiles as he reached the verandah. The only difference was that my smile was laced with guilt.

My sister handed him a towel. When he settled in the cane chair my sister had kept for him, I could see that the bat was neatly wrapped in a transparent polythene cover. Through that cover, one could see multiple newspapers that covered the length of the bat inside to provide enough cushion. Finally, on top of the polythene cover, three strong rubber bands evenly spaced out held it all in place.

‘I didn’t want the bat to get wet. It would’ve lost its stroke and you wouldn’t have enjoyed it as much,’ he said as he dried his hair up.

P.S.: A year ago I lost my Dad. On 18th June, every year I’ll write a piece about him. This is the first of that series.