A Breed of Counterfeits

Chapter 3: Salma

"Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise."

- Sigmund Freud

The cafe's door opened, and a gush of cold air-conditioned air splashed on Vishnu's face. It came as a welcome relief for his sweaty brow. He finally found the Cafe where Salma had called him, and from the looks, it was expensive. Vishnu would never visit such a cafe, but Salma had told him to come here. The October heat of Mumbai never bothered him earlier because he was born and brought up here, but age was catching up with him, and now, in his 40s, the same October heat was tiring him out. He had played cricket in the summer of May - probably a harsher one and was a well-known spinner in his locality in Dharavi slum. He was popularly known as spinner Vishnu. The Hindu deity upon which his name was based, had a similar rotating disc on his finger. He threw a small but sharp disc at evil forces to destroy them, and Vishnu Patil, the human namesake of the lord, had his leather ball in his hand, which he threw to destroy his opponent team. He was an exceptional spinner, which gathered him fame in his locality. He was told to try out for district-level matches, and he did attempt. He had been selected for a match and won it. He had even gotten Man of the Match award, and after two more matches, he would've been selected for Ranji Trophy. But destiny was a better spinner than Vishnu.

He entered the cafe looking everywhere, like he entered the stadium when he played cricket, looking if the fielders were placed correctly. Here, attendants and people were working in cafes standing in the far end. He looked for Salma but couldn't find her.

'Had she really come?' He thought, looking anxiously for her.

Vishnu and Salma had loved each other back then when Saurav Ganguly was the captain of the Indian Cricket team and when Indian politics had good people like Atal Bihari Vajpayee. But Salma had gotten married to someone else, and Vishnu was left alone like the Indian Cricket team after Sachin Tendulkar.

The incident took place long back when Salma was going to come to her parents' home, the first time after her marriage. Today, even after 20 years, Vishnu remembered that tortuous week after Salma's wedding. They had loved each other and wanted to marry. But apart from the fact they had different religions which were one of most rivaled religions in their society, Salma's father had promised her hand to someone else long back, or so he said. All he wanted was for his daughter to stay within the community, even if the person marrying his daughter was unknown.

Vishnu never understood these communal disputes. Fights for something unknown and incomprehensible. He wasn't atheist, rather a God-fearing man, but he surely would never fight to defend his God. There are no insults if He is not real, and neither would He need protection from mortals, if He is real. Being a science student and having a religious family, Vishnu was a convergence of both. He considered God to be an entity, call it the Almighty Brahma or Abraham, Allah, or the great father. It's like 9 and 6, the same number viewed from different sides mean different things, but it's all the same. That was Vishnu's philosophy, and he neither forced anyone to believe it nor convinced them the truth, but it did bother him when Salma's father was not ready to listen to him.

It was the fame of Spinner Vishnu that had brought Salma to him. She was never as attracted to sports as Vishnu was, and it annoyed her when she saw people playing cricket. What's the point of playing cricket, she thought. It's a useless sport. It wasn't like the Olympics, which was world-famous, and every country participated in the Olympics, especially the one that did not have a cricket team - the Chinese, German, American, and all the biggies.

Whenever there was a cricket match, people living across an entire lane of Salma's home gathered because they had large-screen television that her uncle had bought from Chor Bazaar (literal translation: Thieves Market honest to its name) in Kurla. Men, it seemed, needed a reason to sit in a group and yell and shout, and it annoyed her all the more when it happened in her home.