A Whole New Ball Game

I nervously perched myself upon a cane chair, inspecting the dust that had settled on the floor. There were cobwebs lined across the sides on the chipped walls. I began to imagine how the next ten days would sail by. Living in an old house that had been locked up for months, in the tiny village of Uran, which is nestled in the rural arms of Maharashtra. More than anything; living and interacting with ten other strangers who, like me, had signed up for the rural social work camp. It seemed like a gruelling task.

“Patil kaka, will you help us clean the verandah ?”. A man standing under the gnarled banyan tree, nodded at me, smiling. An hour later, Patil kaka walked in with a barrage of brooms made of thinly spliced bamboo and colorful plastic buckets reeking of a pungent liquid. A small boy, wearing a white Chota Bheem t-shirt followed him in tow. “This is Raju, my son”. I smiled at the little boy and reached out to shake his hand. Raju looked at floor; his hands in his pockets. “He doesn’t talk much. He’s a very shy child”, Patil kaka tried to assure me. We spent the rest of the afternoon in the verandah, dusting off cobwebs from the sides of the walls, running the thin strands of our bamboo brooms into crevices, mopping the cemented floor after slathering it with a foamy liquid. I occasionally lifted my head up to look at Raju who sat on the stairs of the house, perched upon a cane mat, his face cupped in his palms, watching his father at work with ten strangers. I smiled at him again. Raju pursed his lips and looked away. I went back to cleaning.

Later that evening, I sat by Kavita kaki’s makeshift shop, that she’d set up each evening by the road, sipping ginger tea and eating crispy fritters wrapped in newspapers. At her shop, she would dole out spicy potato and onion fritters, laced with red chilly powder.Sandwiching a potato dumpling (vada) between a bun ( pao), she served me a piping vada pao with green chillies lightly lathered with salt. I saw a familiar face running around on the barren ground in front. Raju flung his pink ball into the air, and smiled every time he caught the ball. That was the first time I saw Raju smile. Leaving my half drunk cup of ginger tea, I ran to the ground. I stood at the gate and watched the little boy frolicking around like a butterfly. Raju stopped when he saw me. I smiled at him and waved at him. Raju clung onto his ball. I gestured him to pass it to me. Raju looked at the ground. Worried that I may be disturbing his playtime, I decided to go back to the fritters and tea. “Tai!”. I turned around to see Raju holding out his ball. “Ghe (take)!”, he flung the ball towards me. We spent the rest of the evening passing the ball at each other. Between my city-bred, broken Marathi and Raju’s pure dialect , we spoke the language of smiles and giggles. I pointed out to the cartoon character on his t-shirt and he flexed his arms like Chota Bheem does after gobbling a bowl of laddoos.

The following morning, I woke up to an excited voice calling out to me on the verandah. “Tai, tai!”. Raju stood outside our doorstep, waiting with his pink ball. This time, he wore a black t-shirt with a Chota Bheem motif. He pointed at the two characters printed on the t-shirt. “This is me. You are Indumati, okay?”. More than happy to have found myself a role in Raju’s world, I gladly nodded my head. Through our smiles, and constant gesturing, over the next ten days, I spent my free time enacting a scene from the cartoon show. Our stories rolled out as effortlessly as the as the laddoos that translated into magical energy, each time Bheem gobbled one on T.V. Even as we flung the pink ball, high up in the air sometimes swinging between throw-ball and foot-ball, suddenly forming new bonds did not seem like a whole new ball-game!