Read And Then One Day: A Memoir for Free Online Page A

didn’t consider me inferior; both unselfish, undemanding friends who liked me for what I was and wanted to share their affection. I have had only fleeting contact with both over the succeeding years but can never forget how they made me feel.
    Going home for the vacations was now drudgery worse than school. Most maternal uncles and aunts were long married, and the assemblages at Sardhana were for funerals rather than festivities. Habib Manzil was losing its grandeur, it looked kind of washed-up now. The old walls were starting to crumble and new walls were coming up with succeeding generations laying claim to their share of the houses and the lands. The divisions had begun. The antique Model-T Ford was sold and replaced by a tonga, which didn’t last long, a horse being more trouble to maintain than a car. Ammunition had become prohibitively expensive, and blackbucks were disappearing from the face of the earth, so that was more or less the end of shikar as well. Expensive luxuries were now being done without. The gramophone was catching rust with neither the stock of records nor the stock of needles being replenished. The cousins were all growing up and getting on with their lives. Sardhana was becoming a bore. No one even saw ghosts there any more.
    And Ajmer and vacations only meant Baba’s gimlet eyes boring through me from over his reading glasses, questions on whether or not I’d given any thought to the future, me weakly justifying an even shabbier academic performance this year, and having to endure unending tuition classes, which he decided I needed. So apart from the Maulvi saheb who tried to teach us Arabic and Urdu, there was a procession of tutors on whom my poor misguided father spent another good portion of his salary, and who I hoped would be devoured by Zulu, our crossbred German shepherd, on their way in. (One almost was, but got away with ripped trousers and a sprained wrist, but no blood. ) Holidays, in fact life, had become a monumental drag. The cricket field, the scene of so much gloriously sweaty laughter, lay abandoned. Now there was only the occasional tonga ride, the cricket commentary on the radio, and Zulu to play with and, of course, the Sunday morning English movie at Prabhat Talkies.
    Back at Sem, Miss Perry was succeeded as class teacher by John Lefevre, a dapper, affable bachelor who had a rumbling baritone, rolled his cigarettes and always smelt of tobacco. Certainly not intending to stay celibate like the Brothers, he’d often have lengthy consultations with various lady teachers who’d go giggling by while he was in our class. He’d also often, during class hours, put his head on his desk after admonishing us to ‘do anything, but don’t make a noise’ and stay oblivious to us through the hour. He was kind and much loved. But though my association with him did not help me learn any more than Miss Perry’s cruelty had, it did help my collection of cricket pictures.
    Cricket was trying to force itself to the forefront of my awareness, and was grappling with movies for the honour. Apart from the literature stories and the odd poem worth memorizing, I found nothing of the slightest interest in any of the books I was made to read in class. Cricket was interesting. I was up on the details of every score of every Test match being played; there weren’t one-hundredth the number of matches being played then as there are now. I played too and briefly dreamt of a career in cricket, but gave it up as no one ever told me whether or not I was any good, and I couldn’t figure it out on my own. The last-straw thing happened when I was the third victim bowled round my legs in a hat-trick pulled by one Prabhat Kapil. I continue however to sustain a passion for the game, which at that time was aflame. I had a vast collection of pictures of cricketers past and present which, when I left school, I just left behind. Those pictures would be priceless today. Half my weekly pocket money of one rupee