I tried. I tried to stay on my office chair from 10 to 10. My eyes strained, watered and I stood up. The introvert within wept, but my Covid-19 brain was gasping for some fresh air, drowned by the second wave. I caught up with old friends. Fortunately they were staying nearby and were playing football regularly. I hauled my heavy eight-year-old Hercules Blazer IC out of my home and my heavier nervous self on it – making my way to the field nearby.

I spent the next half hour masking my nervousness behind warm up drills and handshakes with old pals. Returning to my left wing back position after so long felt burdensome on my rusty post-Covid lungs but the mid-June drizzle helped cool things down. With a pinch of beginner’s luck I managed to score a goal from a corner kick (What!?) Honestly, I had surprised myself on that one. The match however, ended in a stalemate, serving justice to the casual friendly format.

I rode this confidence to the ground for the rest of the stay-at-home season. Shortly after, hauling the old Blazer IC started feeling like more-than-warmup itself and I would tag along on Kaushik’s Honda at a mandatory excessive 90 odd kilometers per hour serving validation to the 220 cc engine. Stamina ++

The running and joy always mattered more than the goals or wins.

A few weeks ago on a chilly Sunday afternoon, I needed to catch some sun. The chilly air in the capital was getting to my bones and yours truly is more suited to tropical weather. So I walk to the nearby park and walked to a shady spot and start staring at the kids who are playing. Ah yes, textbook predatory behavior. In my defense, the group of old uncles playing cards and the couples munching on peanuts were rather boring. The kids on the other hand, reminded me of looney tunes, same reason you’ll see them here.

This guy had football studs on while his friends were running around in sandals and slippers. Needless to say, he dribbled a lot, passed less and kept yelling at his team mates.

This guy is an amalgamation of three brothers (probably) who looked fresh in their shiny shaadi sherwanis and glistening oily hair. Kind of unexpected that they decided to play some football, swinging on monkey-bars in that attire, while spinning their fancy fidget spinners.

Amidst the chaos there was this little girl who was playing by herself. She derived much delight from kicking the ball, and fetching it then giving it a hug-bite-sniff and setting it down and kicking it again. She’ll probably will grow up to have one hell of an immune system.

Out of all the kids, this guy seemed the most delightful. He had come dressed like accidental Santa, laughed and played with the other kids and kicked up a lot of dust as he walked. Such joy!

At the end of September the capital was still warm, a few spells of untimely showers brought down temperatures and brought up mosquito numbers. I didn’t mind much. The clear skies meant that I could watch godly winged whales descend from the heavens every morning one after the other, growing in scale before disappearing into the tree-line. I could, until it all got obscured by the mustard mist. My eyes watered but this usual missing of the whales was interrupted. I found myself in the belly of the pink boa, among the rest of the fodder, undergoing the process of slow yet sure digestion. Making sure to put up a fight, I read and made sufficient marks on my books. To camouflage in here one needs checked formals ironed crisp, backpack on the shoulder, a pair of earbuds— whispering/ screaming/ vomiting news/ episodes/ music, a neck affixed at an angle fixated on the old loyal thumb not weary yet, having swiped away kilometers already.

The city breathes, it gasps, it bends under the constant stress and the strain; the more it gets stretched thin, the more it makes people claw and bite at the rim. The march goes on, with a skip on Saturdays and a drag on Mondays— the boots resonate over chatter.

Fewer times have I ever before noticed emotions change as fast as the graph of a crypto token. The other day, I was at the saloon ( what a barbershop is called in India). As I waited for my turn for a haircut, I couldn’t help but notice the customer beside me — a middle-aged guy getting the full service package on offer. The barber was done with the shave and had now taken up the role of a masseuse with a massager clamped to the back of his hand. It vivaciously vibrated like a purring cat. As the vibrating fingers walked against the customer’s head and body, his resulting orgasmic expressions kept nudging me towards absurd but funny assumptions.

It seemed like this was the first-time-in-a-long-time someone was touching him this way. His eyes almost shut in a dizzying trance when the barber put his vibrating finger inside the guy’s aural orifice. The poor barber was probably used to these reactions off the many such middle-aged men he has had to serve, but he had a neat trick up his sleeve. The massage session drew to a close and in the ultimate act, the barber took off the whirring massager, rubbed his palms, cracked his knuckles, and smacked the dozing post orgasmic customer hard on his back. In less than a second, the guy was getting smacked, shaken and shuffled around in the seat and it was pretty apparent why the barber was suddenly loving every second of his job. Ultimately, it’s safe to say the guy got the complete awakening experience. It’s safer to say, when it comes to me, I could pass on that experience for a few more years, or decades.