Rohan woke me up from a late-night sleep with a shake that bordered on threat. “Thatha, would you like to watch football match - semi-finals?” “If you insist,” I fumbled, still unwilling to give up my quota, and settled down in front of the TV. “It’s not a telecast Thatha, but my team, Flag, (9-12 years), is playing Steelers, and we are all set to leave.” It was an revenge match for Steelers, having taken a beating from Flag the last season.
“Oh my God, has the match already started, without Rohan? Are we late?” I asked, with a feeling of guilt as we reached the ground. “No Appa, three or four matches take place simultaneously - of different age groups,” clarified my son, his patience intact the day having just begun.
The attendance mostly was of parents and families - around 200 in number. They make a day of it with folding-chairs, picnic boxes overflowing with food stuff, cokes, Lays, nuts… For the less equipped, food stalls sprawled across the ground
Shankar briefed me at each stage the nuance of the game as it progressed. In an neck to neck match Flag had just one last chance to gain 6 points and take the cake. But that was not to be. It was Steelers’ day. Fortunately, instead of taking it to heart, Rohan looked forward to the ensuing buffet lunch at Chennai Cafe.
Ashwin is of a different genre. His visits to Library is more often to a secluded, unfrequented section: Military Strategies and Wars. His last week’s collection includes: (1) Six Months in 1945: From World War to Cold War; (2) Hitler’s First War (yes, as I learn, Hitler took part in World War 1, as a soldier); (3) An Illustrated History of the First World War; and (4) World War 1.
As part of the Scouts team he took part in a walk through to the Nuclear Power Plant, about an hour’s drive. Initially he was disenchanted: it was on day one of his spring break; also, it upset the family’s original outstation trip plan for four days. In the evening, however, a transformed Ashwin reported back home, feeling happy not having missed the session and all eager to offload the learnings of the day. Some of the things that registered in my mind notwithstanding his 160 words per minute delivery, are: there are two types of uranium - stable and unstable; that when a given quantity of uranium mined is refined, 99 percent of it would be stable (strangely it means unsuitable), and 1 percent unstable; that the major user of nuclear power is US Navy; a small pellet-sized uranium pack will service a submarine for 50 to 80 years; that following the Chernobyl accident in Russia and later elsewhere, the US government has decided not to set up any fresh nuclear plant. Then he demonstrated to the eagerly awaiting home audience the features of the memorabilia that he had brought along.
Are there chances that Ashwin will become a nuclear scientist or a military strategist when he comes of age? Not by his track record. During our earlier visits it was dinosaur, stegosaurus, brontosaurus, all the way - to the extent that he swore he would become a palaeontologist. But I can’t particularly recollect him having uttered a word of that species in my last two visits. We shall keep our fingers crossed.
And for the rest of us four - Shankar, Sunita, Aunty and I - we remained glued to a Netfilx original, “The People Versus O J Simpson”, produced in 10 episodes. We said that as we did last year with the British serial, Downton Abbey, we would watch just one episode a day. With that mindset we sat to watch the first episode on Saturday morning. When switched off the TV, we found ourselves having to watch just two more episodes. So gripping. No wonder Shah Rukh Khan remarked recently that Bollywood should be wary of Netflix and Amazon Prime.
V V Sundaram
Maple 3195
12 March 2018
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