Several weeks had passed and my attempts to get in touch with Zara were as unsuccessful as an alchemist’s attempt to turn things to gold. Pelting her window with pebbles, standing out in the monsoon showers at night, staring up at her window, lingering around the market to catch a glimpse of her, none of these gave me a chance to talk to her and find out what was wrong.
While we had been seeing each other my cricket had suffered a blow. Some days I would skip playing, and the days when I did my performance would be subpar, getting bowled rather easily, or misfielding or dropping catches. My attention was elsewhere, at the second story window facing the street where she would sit at times reading.
But now her silence and aloofness was definitely driving me insane, and the boys noticed it. They figured by this point that I had been smitten by a ‘bachi’ and ridiculed me for being so easily strung up by one. I dreaded the whole ordeal and continuously denied any such involvement. Not that it was convincing. But over time they stopped teasing me and instead helped me get over her by directing my hurt into anger at her family, for allowing such moral depravity to flourish under their household, and at her for ignoring my sincere concern for her wellbeing.
I began to indulge myself in playing cricket more salaciously, even during the monsoon rains. Those times were better since the traffic through the streets would reduce significantly, the searing heat of the day considerably reduced by the downpour. We would play on for as long as we could, hampered only when the water would begin collecting in puddles.
The neighborhood, however, was still not keen on us playing and being loud and rowdy, and for “disturbing the peace”. We would be scolded quite often for our brazen behavior and glared at until we went back into our homes. That did not daunt us however. We would sneak out to play for a short while but our match would almost always get interrupted by someone who would yell out at us to beat it. Eventually we realized we needed to make peace with the neighborhood, and so we went around door to door, convincing other families that we would be more responsible, and with some of our fathers in tow, reassured the elders that we would behave ourselves.
We were able to hash out a truce that gave us permission to play in the late afternoon – past siesta and Asr prayers – but made us responsible for any damage and harm we might cause. The compromise might have reduced our ability to wildly, and for that matter blindly swing our bats, and although we complained and grumbled about it every so often, I am sure all of us will admit it actually made us better batsmen, and in some cases at least, also helped with growing out our patience. Needless to say, there were still moments when we would break someone’s window or dent a parked car, in which instance we had to pool our pocket money to pay for the repairs.
It was a good incentive though since none of us were happy to dish out our money for repairs and lose out on the chance to buy ourselves ice cream, spicy sand-baked corn, or tickets to go see the latest Javed Choudhry film in the theaters. I recall him being quite a prolific director since after every 2 months a new film of his was being screened at the local cinema. This being apparent as, on our way back home from our evening loitering in the markets, we would notice billboard painters off on the side of the theater hunched over a long banner, painstakingly coloring in the eyes, lips and tight clothing that revealed the voluptuous breasts of the heroine. And on the rare occasion an American film would miraculously be having a screening, we would be extra careful with playing cricket, and skim on other luxuries so as to watch the glamorous and beautiful white actors perform, in a language that we still did not fully comprehend, and secretly relish the kissing scene, or for that matter the few seconds leading up to the scene since it would be censored; an abrupt cut that would jump a few minutes ahead into the movie, with no regard to whether any crucial aspect of the story was being missed and would cut into the action that was already midway.
All of this helped me mend my broken heart, and although there were times I caught a glimpse of Zara sitting at the window while we would be getting drenched in the downpour, I learned to take no heed of her.
We had been playing cricket, one hot, humid summer day. It had rained the night before, and although the night had been cooler, the heat came back the following day with a vengeance.