1983-Facts and Fiction

Little things that change your life

"Agar ek zamane pehle ek bus miss nahi karte toh asli bus miss kar jate."

~Inderjit Amarnath

***

London, 1976

"I don't know anything here—" said Jimmy, beginning to panic as he glanced out of the transparent door of the phone booth—it was pouring with rain and what he suspected hail. The sky was a very ominous black at nine thirty in the evening.

"At least you know the language," put in Kapil from the other end of the phone, safe and warm in his room back home.

"Yeah, and how is that going to help me? It's pouring, no one's out in the streets..."

"Can't you at least find out where exactly you are?" said Kapil in a voice of logic.

"Everything around looks exactly the same!"

"All right, calm down, Jim pa," said Kapil, trying to sound soothing, which was weird because it was always the reverse.

"Calm down? I don't know where I am, I have no money with me even to make this call last much longer, it's raining and I'm thousands of miles away from our team's hotel—"

"I think it's more in the range of ten miles..." muttered Kapil. "Look, Jim pa, the worst that will happen is that you'll have to camp it out in the phone booth for the night. A cold, sleepless and hungry night, but the rain will stop eventually, and you can catch the earliest bus possible tomorrow morning. You'll be back in your hotel by breakfast time, if not lunch..."

"—and if I miss tomorrow's match—I can't miss tomorrow's match!"

"Oh, you're stranded in the middle of a hailstorm in suburban London without a penny to your name and you're worried about a county match."

"You can't just miss county matches," said Jimmy in disgust. "The opportunities are hard enough to come by."

"Not for you," said Kapil. "They aren't. You're this unbelievable run machine in the overcast conditions of England—"

"Do you really want to get into that debate now?"

Kapil had pretty much never heard him sound so cranky. He must be really cold, he reasoned. He'd heard London's summertime hailstorms were chilling.

"The best thing for you to do is use the bit of your money remaining to call Lala ji," said Kapil.

"I can't possibly," said Jimmy in horror. "I can't tell him I was out at night on the eve of a match."

"That reminds me, where were you?" asked Kapil suspiciously.

"Kaps, you do know I'm already low on balance and you're not helping—"

"Sorry, sorry. All right, think of someone you know in London. Anyone."

"I don't know anyone," said Jimmy. "I mean I don't know anyone close enough to have their numbers while travelling."

"Don't you know that girl—that sister of your friends with the rhyming names..."

"Who? Akal and Staleen's sister?"

"Akaljit and Staleenjit," said Kapil. "What was their sister's name again?"

"Inderjit," said Jimmy.

"There, I told you—they rhymed! Sounds an awful lot like Surinder, Mohinder, Rajinder..."

"Bye, Kaps."

"Joking, joking—wait!" said Kapil, realizing he was being insensitive and quite cruel considering how hungry and cold Jim pa must be. "You know this Inderjit then, don't you?"