Balls of Steel.

BALLS OF STEEL

“I am quitting from today onwards”, mumbled Mahendra. It had been sometime since he had mumbled out words instead of bellowing them out.

“Sissy’s like you don’t deserve to be in the team anyways” the coached leaned back and passed the snide remark without as much as blinking. He had been subdued by his star player’s overbearing persona for far too long. Nothing less than rubbing salt into Mahendra’s deep wound and even stomping on the bruise with spiked shoes would suffice.

For the first time, the bellicose side of Mahendra did not erupt in such a situation. He meekly took the abuse on his chin and let it fall flat on his chest. He got up gingerly and inconspicuously slid away from the locker room and out through the back door. Once out, he slipped away into a reverie of his former dominant days he had enjoyed within that very cloistered locker room. The menagerie of photographers and reporters scuttled towards him expecting a sound byte of some sort. They were expecting their hero to hurl his persona into their face and give them that consolation that the entire country was expecting from him. He did nothing of that sort. He ran. He lunged hard for his Jaguar and screeched away from the parking lot.

Mahendra closed his eyes hard and shuddered.
“What was this behaviour?”
“He of all people. This way”

He wanted to hate himself so bad. More than hatred what he felt was regret for using this illusion for as long as he did. His façade had visible cracks and he was falling hard into them.

The team he was formerly a part of comprised not of teammates but more of followers, idolisers and even aria-singers of his praise. All of whom had seen him come apart.

He could not possibly imagine going back and “high-fiving” his adoring teammates who had seen him naked and bleeding. How could he call them “losers meant for fucking only cheap whores” anymore when his male-dominance was under serious question and doubt?

It was so very different before. He had gained quite a larger than life prominence in the team, which was no more egalitarian in its make. Every play flowed through or was left to be initiated by him alone. Mahendra’s talk, Mahendra’s wham-bham attitude, Mahendra’s intimidating style of play, Mahendra’s swagger on the field.
His effrontery in every matter was never a matter of discomfort. None had the audacity to point any part of the finger at him.

Mahendra was a stud. That was that. Felt by all and believed by all, to be questioned by none. It was a religious obligation to one and all to abide by and hold onto this opinion. Possession of anything apart or resembling in any manner a divergent opinion was considered to be blasphemous.

His prominence was, however, not a simple matter of acceptance by 15 or so cricketers. This foible of his transcended the locker room and landed it self in every possible media outlet. It put star-strung celebrities to the back pages of disinterest. Front pages carried bold interviews and photographs of his ever-present stubble and commodious chest-hair. The press happily lapped him up and gave him all the space to comfortably lie with his arms and legs spread out on newspapers and TV time. He was their macho-man personified. For a country apparently devoid of true masculinity he came as a whiff of virile and masculine air. The country had been skilfully induced into a blissful comatose state where only Mahendra existed and mattered. There was no cessation in sight to this frenzy. It was getting harder to look away from him.

A vital component of this peculiar congeries of everything that ill-defined and misunderstood masculinity stood for was in full show in his bedroom. This man that he was, actually took birth in his bedroom with a sizeable contribution to the gasps that his coital partners gave out. The baby steps of ego, self-worth and self-respect in a man are usually taken when he looks down up himself, when aroused or looking for arousal. Mahendra’s pride too stemmed from the pleasurable discomfort that his girls took to take in a piece of his appendage or member. The awes that his 10-incher gained were in no way limited only to the females but also to the guys. His bulging lovestick had the perfect exhibitionist streak in him and found a perfect accomplice in an ever-ready-to-peel-off towel. Mahendra’s imperiousness had spurted out quite literally, out of his unending pubic protrusion.


All this had become all too common now, and in a normal due course came a day which had nothing normal to offer. He had once sauntered onto the pitch with his sinewy brawniness cascading recklessly out of his folded sleeves. He had let everyone know in the locker room of his disdain to the suggestion of a protective gear in the groin area. “Balls of Steel” is what he proclaimed to have possessed and any sort of protection was tantamount to personal abuse. Within five minutes of being out there he had hurled a racial abuse at the bowler, slung a meaty boundary, and cut his career curtly short. He brashly hit out at a furiously fast paced delivery, which sneaked in beneath his bat and carefully chose to miss his “balls of steel”. What it did hit was however, wasn’t even close to made of steel and was quite meaty tender. He crouched up hard and fell with a thud dismissing a cloud of dust from the ground. Well the expectant reaction was that he would any second belligerently lash out at the accurate bowler with his bat and completely play to the gallery. He didn’t get up. He just lay there. Crying. In the scorching glare of his faithful audience he was clutching hard at his groin. There was a red blotch in the portion possibly because of how hard he was clutching at it. The medicos moved onto the field surprised at his outburst of an emotion they knew not existed within him. Mahendra’s wail rose above the stunned silence of the crowd who with their disbelieving eyes were watching their “man” flap, cry and writhe away in pain. He deteriorated further once he was brought back into the locker room. In a state of delirious frenzy he stripped off his clothes, while continually gripping hard at his injured companion, very reminiscent of his usual antics of stripping off his towel to earn some applause from his team-mates. He wasn’t worth a single applause now. Behaving like a moronic whimper crying his eyes out for help was something Mahendra would have had nightmares about. Vanity and blood bled out from him in spite of his firm hold. His medicos and his mates simply looked on Mahendra lying naked now on the massage table, bleeding and crying. A lost endomorph, contorted in an aberration of his self. The coach rushed in from behind and broke away the inactiveness of the circle. He smirked at Mahendra and looked dead in his eye and said, “Losers like you are meant for fucking cheap whores only”.
Mahendra stopped crying, got dressed and passed away to oblivion forever.

The man with the red file, the pregnant lady, the old lady and me

This will appear a bit vague on first reading. I would prompt you to go through the thing twice and then try to make sense or no-sense out of it. I have a lingering feeling that it could do with something "more". Not sure what, but would help if you could suggest something. So do hit the comments link after the reading and leave some thoughts or suggestions or vulgur abuses that you think could prove useful.

The man with the red file, the pregnant lady, the old lady and me


“Dream of Californication,
Dream of Californicaton”

“Saaale woh khud aurat ban ke chupa hua, toh hum kar bhi kya sakte hain”

“The girl was hot dude, you wont believe the fucking cleavage she was showing me”

“Lucky Assol”

Too many voices were being heard that day. More than what was usual.
I couldn’t help myself from overhearing whatever was audible in the din of the excited but nonsensical chatter pervading throughout the bogey.

A man sitting opposite to me, carrying a red plastic file, was in the middle of this telephonic conversation:

“Sir, I have the report in my hand.

Yes, sir I know. But I want you to read it again.

There must be something to help.

I know the medicines are there but I cant be like that sir.

Sir, you are the doctor, you must……….

Yes sir, yes.”

The man pushed hard onto a button on his cell. Disgruntled. Disappointed.

He closed the red coloured plastic file that was laid open on his lap.

The file had on its cover inscribed the address of some sex clinic.

I flinched and smiled. The assol in me concluded the guy was some looser who could not get his dick up. The man next to him shuffled in his seat. I guess he too had read what was written on the file. Assols are there in all of us. Such priapic thoughts can originate, quite obviously, in a man.

The man wiped the sweat of his brow with quick and hurried dabs at his hairy eyebrow. In his clumsiness he poked his smutty handkerchief into his tired eyes. It evoked another sardonic smile from me.

Here I was, the perfect embodiment of all things that are truly masculine and virile and exactly opposite to me was sitting a small, timid and malfunctioning example of man. Man or should I say the all-exalted man is so self-conceited that he will reason himself out to believe the most ill-conceived idea to be true to him.

A Pride so artificial, it beats the man in his Pride.

The train chugged along slothfully and languorously. I still hadn’t stop smiling.

The train braked and landed itself at the next station. I had tuned out all the other conversations that we taking place inside the train at that moment. Now my sole object of ridicule was the unnamed man with the red file. In between he gave me looks of complete desperation, almost begging me not to be judgemental about his condition. Such moments where my upper hand was obvious didn’t present themselves frequently enough for me to give away this opportunity. I could look down, mock, ridicule the man for the entire span of the journey, without him raising an eyebrow. He knew where he stood. He knew, I knew where he stood.

In boarded a lady at the station with a large bulge in her abdomen. She looked pretty flushed, probably out of the strain she had put in to get on to the train.

The lady entered and waddled through the crowd and seated herself in the seat that had been now vacated by the person sitting next to me.

As soon as she seated herself in the she gave a broad grin to all those in the train who out of boredom had nothing to do but stare at the lady. The lady tried hard to shimmy and wobble and get herself to fit into the seat, all of which gathered more unobtrusive stares at her.

An elderly lady approached her who I presumed knew the lady from before and was assigned to meet her in that bogey itself. I came to this presumption because as soon as she approached her she started mouthing her the amount of pain she had taken to climb on to the train with her bad knee and how no one here bothers enough to get up and help her.

Definitely mother-in-law material I presumed.

By know she had successfully grabbed the attention of the bored ears away from the other lady. Those who earlier were involved in some sort of conversations, I felt, had the urge to break their conversation and overhear what the old lady had to say.

“I have told you don’t travel by trains it will harm you. You are in your 5th month”

“I can’t see why Ramesh can’t get the government car to ferry you to the doctor. Others use it quite freely when ever they have somewhere or anywhere to go to. The party, the gym, the dentist. If they can why can’t us. Useless.”

“Have you been taking your pills? Don’t take too many though. These doctors you can never quite trust them”

I wondered why the old lady felt the need to talk to the pregnant lady (revealed to all by the old lady earlier) as if she was deaf or she was on the other side of a long distance STD call.

All this while the man with the red file listened on with rapt attention. I too had forgotten my self-assigned task to look down on him.

The man with the red file however did not waver his glance for a moment.

My glance and his were, however, made to waver by another stop and another attention grabbing entry.

“Baba aur Baby ke liye khilone lelo”
“baba aur baby ke liye khilone lelo”

“aap bhel-come hain khelonon ko haath main lekar dekhneko. Kharidne ki zaroorat nahin par dekh toh lijiye ye kitne acche hain”, he appealed to all the passengers.

The pregnant lady lifted her burgeoning rear only partially to view the man offering the gifts.

She called out,
“oye, zara idhar aana”

The hawker rushed over and handed her a girl toy whose pantie, I observed, was coloured red (it is through the possession of years of experienced, forever roving and wholly pervert eyes that I could manage to steal this detail)

“kitne ko doge”
“10 rupay ek ka madam”
“huh, nahin nahin bahut zyaade bol rahe ho…”

The pregnant lady had hardly completed her sentence when the man with the red file flung out a 100-rupee note and belligerently lashed out at the dolls and took all of them away from the hawker.

“mujhe sab ke sab chahiye”

He was sweating quite profusely and his lips quivering. He pressed all the dolls hard against his chest and his blood-shot eyes gave me and the pregnant lady the coldest stare.