My wife has a Slovenian friend K who shares a flat with a man named S. S is coloured brown, and learnt his thickly accented English at St. Michael's but/and he assures all and sundry that he is British.
Till recently, S had the habit of hosting raucous parties which would end late, with S rendered comatose amidst an inglorious mess of pasta-encrusted dishes, half-empty beer bottles and bass-blasting stereos. However, after a three day New Year's blinder, S vowed to give up drinking and clean up his ways. As K awaited with bated breath, it appeared that S had changed his life around.
One Friday night, K arrived at home to find another party, with the alcohol replaced by a bubbling shisha. Without bothering to investigate the legality of the ingredients burning within, she went to bed. Saturday saw both flat-mates out of the house, and so came Sunday.
K was having breakfast that morning, when she noticed a black burn mark on the expensive carpet they had paid a 200 pound deposit for. Intrigued and incensed, she investigated further. The linoleum kitchen floor had a similar black burn mark, and the bin liner in the dustbin had a perforated hole the same size as the burn marks, while one of her kitchen towelettes was burnt as well. K would later discover that the size and shape of the burn marks in question closely resembled the circular shape of the specialized coals used for shishas.
"That wasn't me, I wasn't home last night. Maybe you did it?"
"If you think that a kiss is all in the lips
C'mon, you got it all wrong, man
And if you think that a dance is all in the hips
Oh well, then do the twist
If you think holding hands is all in the fingers
Grab hold of the soul where the memory lingers and
Make sure to never do it with a singer
Cause he'll tell everyone in the world
What he was thinking about the girl
Yeah, what he's thinking about the girl, oh
A lot of people get confused and they bruise
Real easy when it comes to love
They start putting on their shoes and walking out
And singing "boy, I think I had enough"
Just because she makes a big rumpus
She don't mean to be mean or hurt you on purpose, boy
Take a tip and do yourself a little service
Take a mountain turn it into a mole
Just by playing a different role
Yeah, by playing a different role, oh"
II
O wondered, much like the Simpsons for episode 138 "...so, it has come to this."
In a strange little island adrift of a continent, he sat on a perch within a rustic colosseum, wondering how exactly he had ended up with all this toxicity overcoming him.
Hadn't he been the one constantly reminded of how lucky he was? Didn't they all rub him for not doing real work, and yet be green with envy that he was living the dream? Hadn't this been what he wanted to do, to be here, in this stadium, doing what he loved? That boy who would be out playing in the cruel relentlessness of the Jeddah afternoon would have killed to be where he stood today, so why did he feel so pissed? Precisely because he had never seen it purely as work, but as a way of keeping that boy alive.
Well fuck that boy, because all that was left inside O at the moment was pure bile.
Oh how he had hated the cynics! Those vultures who gobbled up the free travel, and the countless passes, and the cheap tickets to seedy venues. Those vinegary idiots who stewed all day in their vile conspiracies, unable and unwilling to experience joy for even a minute, because they were too caught up in their unending quest to spark a fuse, light a fire, twist a knife. He had vowed he would never be like them, never let his passions cloud his rationality, never become overcome with the sheer desire to be a fucking bitch like them.
Well fuck that now.
He couldn't take it anymore. It was one thing being infuriated, frustrated, dejected, resigned, crushed, defeated. He had blitzed through hope and trudged through hopelessness, he had been stoic and he done the 'hiding his pain behind bitter humor' thing. But this was a new low. This was...
30 catches in six Tests.
Fuck. That.
His laptop stared blankly back at him so he decided to stumble for a bit. Had he bothered, he might have gone to his home page, and read the feature by the senior statesman of gung-ho Ozzie-ism, who summed it up quite nicely for him.
Pakistan have long been the least willing of all the Test-playing nations to own up to their failings.
But he didn't check the home page. Instead, he thought maybe he'd try Smiling Buddha one last time. He had last spoken to him a week ago, right after the end, right when his stomach had felt like ripped up ribbons of meat in rancid acid - to put it mildly.
He hadn't the heart to rip into him then, so he had merely asked, why? Smiling Buddha had smiled sadly, and said
"What will a specialist fielding coach do? The same thing we are doing. This is a grassroots problem."
Smiling Buddha better have something different this time, thought O as he walked down the stairs to the field. Out by the boundary, crouched low, was the painfully slow Buddha in front of the Boy Blunder. Someone was tossing lollypops for SB to edge to BB. O stood there for 15 minutes, not saying a word.
When he had counted 50 throws, he turned back. The Buddha had managed to edge five.
O sat in front of his monitor, his by-line already formulated.
There is not a cricket-playing country in the world as backward and as resistant to not just modernity but simple, natural progression as Pakistan.
"The boat yeah you know she's rockin' it
And the truth well you know there's no stoppin' it
The boat yeah you know she's still rockin' it
The truth well you know there's no stoppin' it
So what, somebody left you in a rut
And wants to be the one who's in control
But the feeling that you're under can really make you wonder
How the hell she could be so cold
So now you're left, denying the truth
And it's hidden in the wisdom in the back of your tooth
You need to spit it out, in a telephone booth
While you call everyone that you know, and ask 'em
Where do you think she goes
Oh yeah, where d'ya suppose she goes, oh
The truth well you know there's no stoppin' it
And the boat well you know she's still rockin' it
The boat well you know she's still rockin' it
And the truth yeah you know there's no stoppin' it
You recognize the effect and the wreck
That it's causin' when she rocks the boat
But it's the cause hittin on the Cardinal Laws
'bout the proper place to hang her coat
So to you, the truth is still hidden
And the soul plays the role of a lost little kitten but
You should know that the doctors weren't kidding
She's been singing it all along
But you were hearin' a different song"
III
M stared at his tumbler. It contents were Amaretto, cream and scotch. They'd named a goddam cocktail after him.
His tumbler caught the sun's dying rays. That fiery bastard was going down amidst the hills on an island he owned, himself. His own goddam island.
There was a whole world out there that still, to this day, worshipped him. They swore by him in acting schools. They memorized his lines, sold his face on t-shirts, parodied and pastiched him, revered him. They goddam loved him.
So why did he still care?
He should do what Maria kept telling him to do - give up hope that they'll ever find her, get the scientists to make another one, another dozen ones if he goddam wanted, and live his life.
Why should he keep moping and hoping?
Because, M realised, there was nothing else he could do. Nothing could make him accept she was gone. Nothing left but to keep hoping.
Maybe they thought he was a fool, but what did he care? They'd been saying that about him for over thirty years now. So what that the Americans couldn't find her, the Europeans and the Japanese and the Chinese were all clueless, that even those Afrikaans mercenaries had given up hope of finding her in the thicket of the forest? He still believed, and that was why he had paid every last contender who promised to find his liger Tarita - his half lion, half tiger beauty that was perhaps every bit as monstrous and wonderful as him.
Maria knew that, and she looked out in to the jungle with a tear in her eye. She'd been through the good, the bad and the worse with M, and the worse was pretty hairy. But to see him, so desperate, so broken, so goddam sad - that was...
Suddenly, there was a rustle and a bustle, a bungle in the jungle...
M jolted up, and Maria looked with trepidation as figures began to emerge out of the bushes amidst a fearful commotion. Time froze as they waited, and watched.
And then...
A mighty elephant came roaring out, being beaten senseless by members of the Pakistani police, screaming "Haan main Liger hoon, main Liger hoon, Kassam Khuda ki main Liger hoon!"
Lyrics in italics for "The Denial Twist" by the White Stripes
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