Soliloquy

With Junaid Ali and Neel Chakravarty at the former’s walima.

I don’t exactly remember when I first met Mohammed Junaid Ali- the passage of time has played its vicious role- but it must have been somewhere during the 2012-13 cricket season. 

I was in class nine at St Andrews and he was likewise at Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Sainikpuri. We both had a good year and after having crossed paths during the season twice- home and away- we finally got together and spoke at length during the Hyderabad U-14 camp. 

I knew that he was one of the most elegant batters in our group, and he respected me equally for being amongst the most technical of wicketkeepers. Junaid was left-handed, and this added to the appeal he held to me. 

But more than the languid manner in which he went about unravelling opposition bowling attacks, it was the grit that he showcased when pulling his school out of the depths of desolation in which they found themselves quite often. 

Bhavan’s school had a skeleton cricket team back then, and he was the one who held the flag aloft for several years. It was not surprising to see his name in the papers for both batting and bowling (he rolled his arms over for some handy off-breaks) whenever Bhavan’s were playing. 

From there, we crossed paths regularly at the Under-16 and Under-19 levels before we found ourselves opening for Hyderabad ‘A’ in the Col CK Nayudu Trophy. 

Junaid made his debut in just my second game for Hyderabad ‘A’ against Maharashtra in Nagothane, and rather astonishingly went on to decimate their bowling attack with a free-flowing 150. It was one of the finest centuries on debut that I had seen, as had our coach Zakir Hussain, a Hyderabad and South Zone veteran. 

I accompanied him till my half-century and threw my wicket away in typical fashion, but Junaid carried on in a cavalier manner and won the heart of the sparse crowd that had gathered. 

It was to his utter misfortune that despite this knock, he found himself dropped from the Hyderabad side a couple of games later, which I understand to have been a blow from which he never recovered. 

On Thursday, he got married in a typical Nikah ceremony while the Walima, or the reception was held in the city on Friday. It is hard for me to fathom that Junaid, who is still thirteen years old in my mind, has grown up enough to get married, but my conscience needs no second reminder to tell me that we are both 25 now, and at a fairly marriageable age. On that regard, Junaid is not too early on the scene.

However, the mind believes in what it wants to believe in. He is the first to bite the bullet in our gang of friends, and I wish him the best for married life. I pray that the Gods shower their blessings upon him and his wife endow them with utmost happiness and good health. 

If you like my work, consider visiting my website to get in touch with more of my writing. You can follow me on Twitter as well. Also, sign up for the newsletter to get regular updates coming your way. I would love to talk to you!