well stocked. My liver is well worn. I skim through my cricket collection and delve into my favourite wastes of time. Byron, F. Scott and the Bible.
To me, the Bible is perhaps the greatest book ever written. Not as a step-by-step guide to life or as a travel brochure for the afterlife. In that respect, it is positively dangerous. But as a tightly written work of fiction, it is magnificent.
There is a knock on my door and then a turning of the handle. I see the unruly hair before I see the ungrateful lad.
‘Thaathi. Busy?’
‘A bit. Why?’
My office is strewn with paper cuttings and books. Garfield looks about and nods. ‘Ammi says you and Ari Uncle are doing a TV show?’
‘With Graham Snow and Brian Gomez,’ I say nonchalantly. ‘When are your results coming?’
‘Next month.’
‘What do you want?’
‘Need to discuss… things.’
‘Bit busy. After lunch?’ I say, knowing that I take my lunch when others take their tea.
He is gone.
That was our first conversation in three weeks. He had caught me off guard. I usually prepare for my meetings with Garfield by making my heart into a fist.
Our fights began shortly after his fifteenth birthday. First he joined a rocker band. Then he was suspended for smoking. Then he was dropped from the Wesley College 2nd XI cricket team. Sheila broke the news and I accidentally broke one of her vases. That conversation ended badly.
‘He is playing in a band, smoking, running with girls, of course he will be dropped. What do you expect?’
Sheila spoke quietly. ‘Gamini. This is good in a way. Now he can concentrate on studies.’
‘This fool? Concentrate on anything?’
The boy never talks back to me. At least I have taught him something.
Our last argument had been over his choice of A-level subjects. I recommended he study commerce or science and he went behind my back and enrolled in history, Japanese and logic.
The reason he was now breaking the silence was obvious. Money. But what for? To travel to Japan and study Confucius? To marry some girl he’d impregnated? To buy guitar strings for his rocker band?
I turn to Ari’s notebooks. I have borrowed his collection of 1985–95. The blue ones include scorecards and written summaries for each match he has seen. And Ari claims to have seen them all. The yellow ones are the fattest. Scrapbooks of paper cuttings. The pink ones contain undecipherable diagrams and formulae.
With our combined libraries, I have enough data to hammer short films on each cricketer. Except for one. I appear to be the only person to have written about Pradeep Sivanathan Mathew in the last ten years. By the time I am ready to meet Garfield, it is five in the evening and he has left for tuition class.
I spend weeks scribbling and pasting notes on walls. For inspiration I have a mess of books, a window overlooking flowerpots and a wall that I stare at. The wall gazes down on my flimsy table and my flimsier typewriter. It is a 1971 Jinadasa, gifted to me by my sister, the only relative not to file me under lost causes. The keys are as brittle as my bones, but the ribbon is fresh and the ink is wet.
I type career summaries for my top ten and paste them on the wall. I draw up a list of potential interviewees and a list of potential questions. I compile a list of memorable footage to be sourced. Mendis’s twin centuries vs India in ’82, Ratnayake’s catch in our first test win in ’85, Aravinda’s 267 vs the Aussies in ’88 and Mathew’s ’94 Zimbabwe tour. I then type random sentences and paste them on the wall. Pretentious stuff that I may never use.
‘Goonesena, a gentleman to his fingertips, placed etiquette above aggression.’
‘Ranatunga was a fox in a grizzly bear’s clothing.’
And then, with three days to deadline, with the wall I stare at full of scribblings, I sit in my banian and sarong before my 1971 Jinadasa and daydream as hard as I can. It is the compulsory procrastination before each assignment. I think
To me, the Bible is perhaps the greatest book ever written. Not as a step-by-step guide to life or as a travel brochure for the afterlife. In that respect, it is positively dangerous. But as a tightly written work of fiction, it is magnificent.
There is a knock on my door and then a turning of the handle. I see the unruly hair before I see the ungrateful lad.
‘Thaathi. Busy?’
‘A bit. Why?’
My office is strewn with paper cuttings and books. Garfield looks about and nods. ‘Ammi says you and Ari Uncle are doing a TV show?’
‘With Graham Snow and Brian Gomez,’ I say nonchalantly. ‘When are your results coming?’
‘Next month.’
‘What do you want?’
‘Need to discuss… things.’
‘Bit busy. After lunch?’ I say, knowing that I take my lunch when others take their tea.
He is gone.
That was our first conversation in three weeks. He had caught me off guard. I usually prepare for my meetings with Garfield by making my heart into a fist.
Our fights began shortly after his fifteenth birthday. First he joined a rocker band. Then he was suspended for smoking. Then he was dropped from the Wesley College 2nd XI cricket team. Sheila broke the news and I accidentally broke one of her vases. That conversation ended badly.
‘He is playing in a band, smoking, running with girls, of course he will be dropped. What do you expect?’
Sheila spoke quietly. ‘Gamini. This is good in a way. Now he can concentrate on studies.’
‘This fool? Concentrate on anything?’
The boy never talks back to me. At least I have taught him something.
Our last argument had been over his choice of A-level subjects. I recommended he study commerce or science and he went behind my back and enrolled in history, Japanese and logic.
The reason he was now breaking the silence was obvious. Money. But what for? To travel to Japan and study Confucius? To marry some girl he’d impregnated? To buy guitar strings for his rocker band?
I turn to Ari’s notebooks. I have borrowed his collection of 1985–95. The blue ones include scorecards and written summaries for each match he has seen. And Ari claims to have seen them all. The yellow ones are the fattest. Scrapbooks of paper cuttings. The pink ones contain undecipherable diagrams and formulae.
With our combined libraries, I have enough data to hammer short films on each cricketer. Except for one. I appear to be the only person to have written about Pradeep Sivanathan Mathew in the last ten years. By the time I am ready to meet Garfield, it is five in the evening and he has left for tuition class.
I spend weeks scribbling and pasting notes on walls. For inspiration I have a mess of books, a window overlooking flowerpots and a wall that I stare at. The wall gazes down on my flimsy table and my flimsier typewriter. It is a 1971 Jinadasa, gifted to me by my sister, the only relative not to file me under lost causes. The keys are as brittle as my bones, but the ribbon is fresh and the ink is wet.
I type career summaries for my top ten and paste them on the wall. I draw up a list of potential interviewees and a list of potential questions. I compile a list of memorable footage to be sourced. Mendis’s twin centuries vs India in ’82, Ratnayake’s catch in our first test win in ’85, Aravinda’s 267 vs the Aussies in ’88 and Mathew’s ’94 Zimbabwe tour. I then type random sentences and paste them on the wall. Pretentious stuff that I may never use.
‘Goonesena, a gentleman to his fingertips, placed etiquette above aggression.’
‘Ranatunga was a fox in a grizzly bear’s clothing.’
And then, with three days to deadline, with the wall I stare at full of scribblings, I sit in my banian and sarong before my 1971 Jinadasa and daydream as hard as I can. It is the compulsory procrastination before each assignment. I think
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