IPL- It's Pure Lure.

Long time.

I have started a new regime these days (read: the last 3 days). I do some wall practice for tennis (yes, the long lost friend, about whom I used to write so fondly). It's like playing with myself :). No no, don't get me wrong. It's like returning your own shots. But the hope of a cloudy afternoon always outSHINES the will to get up early and hit the court. However, today, as I saw the day turn silver(from clouds) from yellow, my heart leapt with joy. The line between shade and sunshine on the court blurs too subsequently. And then another leaping in joy.

When people say 'it's all in the head', it all falls in place. The trick in tennis, I've found out :d, is to slow-motion the ball when it's landing back, after the bounce, see the last of it's revolutions before you hit it with all your might, straight from the centre of the racket. Every ball, every time, with might.

Then a little run on the treadmill, some crunches and squats follow. And then some thigh pain, and fatigue follow. I vacillate between sport and fitness and fitness and sport. I have moved on from non-belief in gym. As one looks at himself slogging it out on the treadmill, the feeling of being fit is half the battle of fitness won.

Later in the day, I watch some action in IPL. The other day, I saw one of the most nail-biting, cliff-hanging match between Rajasthan Royals and Kolkata Knight Riders. These matches are bigger than loyalties. While I saw Shahrukh Khan pray and Shilpa Shetty rejoice, I felt galvanized. That's the stickiness about T-20, it's pace, it's assortment and glamour.

And today, when my favourite Chennai gets to draw with Kolkata (a fairly easy game, in favour of Chennai), I feel a little 'sinking'.

Things change all the time. In the wedding season, I no longer like to put mehendi (henna) in my hands. There was a time in my childhood when I used to crave such things. I would wear many bangles, put mum's lipstick like a shabby girl without taste, wear 'chunnis' for saris all the time (just the way I do now), make a wig and hang it around my neck and keep jerking my head in that sexy way heroines do in films. No more. I think, madnesses of childhood just peter out like this in adulthood.

But some things never change. Mums never become indifferent to us, however much they say- 'I've stopped to care about you children'. She will still come and see if we are sleeping even if we have had a battle with words just moments back. And the taste of Amul butter never changes. The assurance of the sweet voice never changes. The sting of the pernicious and scheming mosquito's bite never changes. And the promise of the eastern sun and the warmth of the western sun never change too.

So Long.