Those were d Days!!

Imagine a cricket match going on in a gali (street), and all kind of players are making their statements either by displaying their cricketing talents or just by the verbal shots. If you ever played cricket in gali you would be having a very familiar picture in your mind by now. Remember what used to the ambience there, everyone shouting at each and every decision of umpire, who most of the times used to be biased this way or the other. I was a regular in these sessions of gali cricket and was considered to a good sincere player. I still feel that I was good in sports and there used to be just one guy in our group who had this hobby of getting better of me in each and every sport. I don’t know how this tag of ‘sincere’ caught with me and who actually committed that sin.

Anyway, so this was one of those sessions of gali cricket and as I remember the match turned took an important stride with both the teams trying every trick to win the match. And there came the moment when everyone was as vocal as never before, an appeal for run out. Can you imagine what would have been the scene, everyone shouting at each other as if they outshout the opponent they would win the match, forget about the mere run out. It was not like there was no elder person involved, we used to have at least two of our so called uncles. They really had a big role in these games simply because we all used to listen to them and obey them, and the reason for obeying them was more of an acknowledgement of the fact that they used to allow us play even though our parents did not feel very happy about this gali cricket.

Ok so back to that moment of appeal for run out. No one was ready to listen to the umpire as he belonged to the batting side. Finally one of the uncles made a proposal that let an unbiased person judge this run out. And to everybody’s surprise he pointed at me to do the tough job. I did not have the hawk eyes but I judged that run out in the favor of the opponent team. Ohh boy, you would not believe it but I got the all evil glances of my team mates for that not so noble deed of mine. And from that day onwards I used to perform this additional task of unbiased umpiring apart from playing the game. I used to enjoy this additional role and feel that being unbiased and true in sports came very naturally to me. And as you can expect, being unbiased spread to different aspects of my life. People including my classmates started considering me as a very sincere and no nonsense guy, a guy who had this very formidable and predictable pattern of behavior, who seldom deviated from the well defined path.

Even today I feel amazed by the fact that all my teachers used to look at me with some kind of respect for what I was. And it was not an imposed impression, rather each and every person had either interacted with me or had watched me go places from nowhere. Definitely golden days of my life which happen only once, and the rest of life goes trying to recreate the same.