Like dark chocolate and half-hearted conquests it tasted wonderful. There was something impudent in the air, something that you might even call bad grace. Bad grace—but grace it was that darkened the purest light and cast long shadows. You knew you were in the presence of something other-wordly, something that resembles the crude elegance of the lost violent racks waning away to the contempt of the Augustan order. A faint flicker, of hope, or of its desperate memory, illuminated the shreds of survival, if only for a moment. The queue of nameless faces, sun-baked and rain-soaked, put their bets on the impossibility of a madcap moment. They believed in the unreal, and, for once in the history of make-believe, the man was the moment. Nothing can mend the broken tapestry of a collective dream. And yet, the man put his life on the line for the impossible. He made the prodigal to pine for his home by taking on the red cherry and the stubborn willow. He led the pack without looking at the existential riddles lurking around every corner, without flinching, without even a crease of thought on his forehead. Scarred, battered, and badly bruised, he held aloft the laurel of the victor. It was cruel, excruciatingly painful, and most certainly devoid of the benevolence preached in the gospels. We only cheered, and feared, and trembled at the celebration of pagan dregs within our puritanical bastions.
Gangles was fun. He was mayhem and alas!—he was merriment.
The ghost of a disconsolate fancy shall always pass our mind in long-drawn afternoons, reserved, otherwise, for serene contemplations. And the ghost will never rest in peace.
That instant of supreme awkwardness shall always be Sourav Ganguly's obelisk, standing tall, within the holy grounds of Wilfred Rhodes and Emmott Robinson.
