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.