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Business News/ Leisure / Free verse | Mukul Kesavan
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Free verse | Mukul Kesavan

Free verse | Mukul Kesavan

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Intimations of Unreality from Recollections of Early Cricket

The radio’s floating needle doesn’t lock

on Test Match Special. Peace & Progress

fills the 19-metre band bar

on shortwave 3 from 12 o’clock,

so Trevor, John and Brian feel the press

of Soviet bulletins on a frozen war.

They break for lunch when Ma announces tea,

a few to win, Farokh and Vishy there,

and desis at the Oval set to riot,

while I, taught time zones by the BBC,

fill lunchtime minutes with tea time prayer:

‘Lord, let us beat the English in Vilayat.’

Vishy falls, Abid cuts for four, I win

At twilight more than half a life ago.

Ma’s dead and life has blurred but I can see

that cut I only heard, and feel the din.

How? Did I relive the match? Do I know

it’s not the match that lives through me?

Mukul Kesavan is the author of The Ugliness of the Indian Male and Other Such Propositions.

Write to lounge@livemint.com

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Published: 27 Nov 2009, 10:23 PM IST
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