A Rite Of Passage

In another time and another place, I adored Allan Border. Wait, make that, I loved the guy in a “heart-stopping-knees-going-weak-I-believe-only-in-you” manner. It was, for what it was worth, love in its truest form, with all eyes firmly on the present,the past discarded and the future royally disowned. Like all love stories, it must have begun with a special word or a half-etched smile or a meeting of the eyes even as time appeared to stand still. Given that I was in a tiny town in India and he was across the oceans in Australia, in all likelihood, growing up in the “cricket is our religion” family , the eyes must have met over a TV ad or a newspaper cutting or over ecstatic whoops at his batting during a cricket tournament.

Slowly and gradually over the world cup season, I graduated from a fan on the sidelines to a diehard,know-all about Australian cricket fanatic and more importantly became an authority on Border’s batting scores from the last few seasons. The final rite of passage came when I took on collective family wrath by putting up his posters in my room. With the walls bearing pockmarks of cellotape, I made the great leap into the teenage years, wearing my heart on my sleeve with his love firmly etched in my heart. I scoured for articles on him, I took any criticism to him personally ,I wrote his name in calligraphics on the back of notebooks and I played the “flames” game with his name and mine till I ran out of scraps of paper.

Young love believes in itself more than it does, in the object of its affections. And so I believed, that one day I would meet him and the sparks would fly and a fairy tale would commence. I hadn’t worked out the details, but then love has its eyes on the road and hardly ever, has any time to pack for the journey. While friends around me, flirted with the first traces of lipstick and wore their hair low to get the boy down the road look at them, I went to bed dreaming of Australia and Border, neither of which I knew much about. On the day he scored 10000 test runs, I treated a gaggle of young cousins to icecream. I stayed up later than usual staring at his photograph in the night lights and made a scrap book of his special day.

One day, some one gifted me with his autobiography which was dedicated to his wife. And like all love stories,my story met its share of tears, wasted promises and harsh awakenings. I cried myself to sleep even as I refused to give up on my dream. Yet. Over the endless summer, I gradually went back to my books and my movies and stayed away from the game. I conceded that the boy down the road was pretty good looking. I discovered lipstick and romance novels. On one such day when the earth seemed full of promises, I cleaned out my room and the posters came down. The tape marks stayed, it was just that there was nothing to define them any longer.

Cut to a decade later, in my home, in suburban Adelaide. The Aussies were reigning supreme in their quest for the Ashes, and I was solving a crossword puzzle on a lazy Sunday afternoon. And 21 across was an Australian cricket to have scored 10000 runs in test cricket. And the letters A-l-l-a-n-B-o-r-d-e-r fit perfectly. And the rest of the pieces fell into place perfectly. There it was, his name in my handwriting written on Page 35 of the The Sunday Mail in neat blue ink.

One day the best time of your life, the greatest passion you had ever felt, the sharpest pain that ever stung you, the deepest fears and the truest joys will get diluted with ounces of time. One day, the bright colours will fade and be replaced with an easier-on-the-eye sepia memory. One day, while you have been living through it all, life will come full circle. One day the loving without a thought for the outcome, the endless summer nights of promises and the possibilities of grandiose dreams coming true will make sense, even though the dreams themselves did not.

One day , a summer love story which could have been the love story of your life, will become the clue for a missing word in a crossword.  And in that instant of time, a feeling of freedom and comfort will settle around you, even as the next story begins …