Green Vase

Cricket is huge in India. It’s a sport that is quite similar to baseball in that it has a bat and a ball, and you have people hitting the ball out of the park and others trying to catch it. One of the main ways it differs is that you bounce the ball to the batter instead of letting it rip at chest height. Back home, every kid dreams of growing up to be a cricket player. So did my brother and I. We were always lazy enough not to go to a professional coaching centre, but dedicated enough to carry on practicing and playing, at our own convenience, in and around the house. We played in the driveway sometimes, but it was the indoor version of the game which we always enjoyed the most.

Inside the house we had a twenty-five feet long corridor, which branched off like a ‘T’ into open spaces on either side. And that was our pitch. Runs or points would be scored by hitting the ball strategically into any of the rooms, or against any pre-designated wall.
We rarely played when dad was home; we could always convince mom into letting us play. My brother knew how badly I wanted to play, and used to bully me into letting him bat first. I always lost but I took it as a challenge to beat a guy six years older than me. Unfortunately, instead of hitting walls, my shots invariably ended up hitting furniture, tube lights, etc. Sigh.

We had a pair of beautiful green vases in the house, gifts my parents had received when they got married. We kept one of them in the drawing room. The other was kept in hallway, just off the corridor where we played. That day, my brother had finished batting first, as usual, and set me a huge target. I was struggling to keep up with the chase. I was going to lose. Again. I hated losing to him. I needed a big hit. My brother knew it and cleverly lofted a ball to me. I went for it. But alas, placement was obviously a skill I hadn’t mastered yet. The ball flew at the cabinet, where the vase stood. It hit the vase, which started wobbling. I wanted to run and grab the vase before it fell. I couldn’t. It was too far away to reach in two seconds. I watched helplessly as the vase shattered into a hundred pieces.

My mother came running from the drawing room. She said a bunch of words, but most of them were “Dad’s going to be very angry with you”. Or maybe that’s what they sounded like to me. In any case, she was quite upset too. We didn’t play indoors for quite sometime after that.

I wouldn’t let my mother throw away the broken pieces. Next day I bought adhesive and put the vase back together. My brother thought there was no point in it. We kept it back in the cabinet, but behind a few objects, to hide the ugly scars that I’d given it. Mom could’ve thrown it away then, but she didn’t. Dad came to know of it a few days later. He just shook his head, perhaps “mourning the loss”?

Back then it was a big deal for me. I made a silent promise that I would buy my parents a beautiful vase when I’d start working. A green one, preferably. I still remember that promise. Everybody forgot about the incident a few weeks after. Now, anyone hardly remembers that old vase, even my parents. Dad got posted at another city a few years later. We threw a lot of stuff away when we left Calcutta. The beautiful green vase went too.

Note: I wrote this as an assignment for my Writing Course at University for the topic "Write a short detailed account of a childhood experience". Will post other good stuff I write as part of the course too.