O’ my secret diary, how much I love and need you. How could I ever manage without you?
Once I got labelled, it was difficult to change even after retirement. Wife tells me to buy vegetables and come home quickly because they were needed for lunch, not dinner. Don’t dawdle, you are not batting, she warns. Leave the boys to school was the next command and be quick because if you moved at your batting rate, they would be late and get punished! See, once a slow coach, always a slow coach.
A number of ad guys came home after retirement. They want me to do commercials to sell ‘Tortoise’ brand mosquito coils. Amar Chitra Katha people want me to read the part of a tortoise in a radio version of The Hare and the Tortoise. Bengaluru Municipal Corporation asked me to pose for a statue to be installed at their office. What pose? No hooking, pulling or square-cutting but the forward defensive push! When will I be allowed to let myself go? Srini suggested I do an ‘India Cement’ ad plying a wall built by the cement which no one could break.
Will I miss cricket? No, sir. In Australia, I could not see the ball, only heard the sound of rattled stumps. Fielding at slip, the edges slipped out even though I avoided butter at lunch and at tea breaks. O, how I practised. Throughout the day, I batted at the nets and quit only when the ground staff would not set up lights at the nets. And to see Sachin glaring at me from wherever he was fielding. This was after I declared the innings closed when he was on 194 in a Test against Pakistan. That guy has a long memory! Wow, time to leave the kids at school, still four hours to go, but I need time to get ready. Here I go, left leg thrust forward.... The kids complain that my movements put them to sleep. That is today’s kids for you. They want Usain Bolt as their father.
The Mumbai-based satirist is the creator of ‘Trishanku’
Email your secret diarist: vgangadhar70 AT gmail.com