Here was a Sachin. When comes such another?

"Maaaa... Sachin khel raha hai na?" I'd shout right from the staircase while coming back home from school. No, I wasn't a Sachin Tendulkar fan. But I knew that the tricoloured man waving the tiranga in the most spectacular manner - Sudhir Gautam - was his 'sponsored' devotee...and irrespective of whom we worshipped, we all wanted India to win. Even the World Cup was a collective dream. For such is the power of dreams!

Yes, a good-looking India heading for a win used to spice up our evening snacks. And an impending ton from 'Ton-dulkar' was the biggest source of joy, motivation and yes, that promise - "Match ke baad I'll study. Pukka. Please T.V. bandh mat karo na." If and if... because there's many a slip between the cup and the lip, Sachin failed to reach the mark, it used to be a day wasted. And more hours were wasted trying to eke out what went wrong. "O shit! What went wrong with that bouncer? Why did he not duck it?"... And when Sachin was in the twilight of his career,"Man! Is it tennis elbow again? " or "His shoulder! He should stop trying to dive around. He's no good anymore."

24th February 2010. The first double ton in One-Day Internationals. Sachin again let his bat do the talking and prove why he is the 'Father of Firsts'. Reminiscing the moment still gives us goosebumps because a double ton in a one day game was unthinkable at that point of time. And legends are always ahead of their time. No wonder why the clock seems to have stopped since the Master Blaster hung his boots. No wonder why it is seemingly impossible to recreate our childhood. No wonder why there's a bittersweet lump in our throats every time we revisit the era on YouTube.

A VERY HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SACHIN. We're lucky people. You've given us tons of little bedtime stories to tell our children and grandchildren. "Here was a Sachin. When comes such another?"

SUNDAY SAGA...

"Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete?
Proving nature's laws wrong,
it learned to walk without having feet.
Funny, it seems to by keeping its dreams; it learned to breathe fresh air.
Long live the rose that grew from concrete when no one else even cared."

I woke up to a very usual Sunday morning until the unusual happened. It was serendipity at its best, having actually discovered a rose peeping from behind the wall in my cousin's little garden - a place too humble for a rose to grow. A white rose, that is. And it left me searching for the apt lines from English poetry. 

There were thorns...there was sand and gravel...and that age-old wall dotted with crevices all over. And then there was that rose. Little but fresh, its petals holding themselves high - so proud of their dainty white. Happy, it must have been to have got noticed. Finally! Having been a misfit all this while, it had dared to survive where other flowers didn't. It had braved solitude...stood apart from the crowd of colours...and celebrated the hostility it had been subjected to. 

It became one beautiful memory. 

A MISSING LINK

"She hasn't got it all figured out...far from it, in fact.
But she loves God and she loves to dance... and she's her own "Better Half" .
The bravest woman I know?
She is the reason I do what I do.
She is The Single Woman.
She's me... and she's you."
                      - Mandy Hale

Having woken up in messed-up tresses, she reached for her purple comb. It was tideous, yeah - brushing away the tangled hair. Introspection sat beside her, cross-legged. Pointing out towards one of the tangles, she let out a chuckle, "My! My! My! Don't you think that resembles your state of existence?"

She rolled her eyes, ignored her and continued with her combing regime. Her thoughts wandered back to her biology class - The Neanderthal Man. And she distinctly remembered the term 'Missing link' coined by Darwin's mentor Charles Lyell. A missing link would possess the  in-between evolutionary properties of both the ancestors' original traits and the traits of the evolved descendants, hence showing a clear connection between the two. 

Right now, she believed she was that 'missing link' in her story that people may only get to hear about some day. An evolutionary work in progress. There's nothing more breathtaking than a woman who is complete in herself, for herself and by herself. And her search for that perfect 'completeness' had defied logic at times. You've got to die in order to give rise to a new. A fossil is always read backwards.  Today she was already somewhere she'd once been told not to venture into. Tomorrow she'd be somewhere else digging another fossil of hers, mentioning yet another 'missing link' they could never see in time. So what if it left her hair with a few tangles and her closet a little unkempt? There's a Nirvana in writing a legend where 'She' is the hero.

She finally rolled up her untangled tresses into a bun and thought to herself, "Mirror! Mirror! On the wall! Who's the bravest of them all?" And her day kicked off.