Book 2
Li’ll’y
Chapter 6
Memories on AirMail
Li had a pleasant surprise, looking at the Airmail cover she had just received. An excitement ran through her and livened up her dull week. She knew by the hand that it was from Kool; Kool! She remembered the only time she had hugged him for a selfie, though just for a short couple of minutes, while he was asleep in Joy’s apartment. She had to destroy the selfie long back, but her memories of the ‘selfie’ had been frozen in her mind. She knew from the stamp that it was sent from China, not India. That was reason for more excitement.
She did not open the Airmail immediately. She had reasons. She looked around. First she had to conceal her excitement. She did not want to give herself away to ‘watchful’ eyes. She looked around to know if she was being watched. Of course, no one need to ‘physically watch’ her all the while, with a surveillance camera focused on her all day. She considered taking the letter to the washroom, the only safe and private place in any of the buildings in China, without being watched. But if she did it in a hurry, she could give herself away. She decided to open Kool’s air mail only when she was in the privacy of her car on her way back home, later that evening. Till then she would wait. Consciously, looking uninterested, she tossed the air mail on the corner of the desk that would be glaring to the camera and pretended to work on her laptop. But her mind was elsewhere; with Kool and of course, Joy.
The string of events involving the two in the week leading to the that fateful day; her own humiliation at the hands of the ‘authorities’; her free fall from the career high she had achieved just before the bizarre events that destroyed the sporting career of not just hers, but all the three TT stars; started flooding her mind. All events were so fresh in her mind, to the extent that she knew.
She had gone through hell for nearly six month following Deng’s accusation that she betrayed the Chinese team and the Chinese Nation. Deng was a senior team mate then. Thanks to Deng’s allegations, her career was destroyed and she was almost thrown in jail for life. Though she had lost her career as a TT player, she was saved from long term imprisonment and had to just serve six months in a reformation home. Only providence had saved her from such ruin and she considered this as her second life. She dared not make any overt attempt in the last six months after release from home, to contact Kool and Joy. She also suspected that the authorities could be monitoring her every move and she didn’t want another deathly brush with the authorities.
She remembered the day clearly. Kool had decimated Deng, the then World No. 2, in the pre-Quarter Final round at the Games. There was a detailed analysis of Kool’s game by the entire Chinese team and the entire crowd drew blank on what constituted Kool’s strength and how to tackle him. Li was hauled up for a ‘discussion’ with her Coach Dan. As she walked in, she did not for a moment think that she would be incarcerated on such ridiculous charges; not even when Deng accused her of passing strategic information to Kool and Joy and helping them win against strong opponents like Deng and Meiling. As the intensity of Deng’s allegation increased, Li had fainted.
Chapter 7
Breaking the Ice
Li stepped into the practice area at the stadium, greeting her friends, who were practicing and warming up. There were more than 20 tables set up for the practice of participants. But all of them were occupied. There were all kinds of people and from all nations. It was late in the evening and almost time for dinner. She cursed herself for being late once again and was worried that she may lose some practice today. She never practiced post dinner as some of her friends did. She had to find a space for herself quickly. She spotted Su Ping, her team mate and he was practicing with a brown, almost black person. She didn’t feel like guessing which country he came from. ‘Whichever’, she thought. She wasn’t comfortable to step forward near a table occupied by strangers. But she had no options. ‘Hi Su’, she stepped forward to meet him, ‘Been playing long’? Su replied affirmatively, ‘I need to run for dinner, I am famished. I have been practicing hard for three hours now. Do you want to join me for dinner’? Li, who just found a chance to practice, wasn’t ready to lose the opportunity. ‘Dinner can wait’. She had always been friendly and she had always extended her hands in friendship first. As if reading her mind, Su bent to stare at the ID card that the stranger was wearing and said, ‘Meet Kulsgr__’, he had trouble pronouncing his name. ‘Kulsgr__ stepped forward and extended his hands shyly, ‘Kula’. Li gave her hand warmly, ‘Hi Kool, Li’. A charming female jumped up from one of the seats nearby, ‘Jay’ and stuck her hand too giggling. Li instantly liked her, ‘Joy, I am Li. Do you also play’? Joy nodded and looked at Kool. ‘I am tired, from my long flight. Kula will give you practice. I had practiced an hour with your friend and Kool; ‘Kool’, she added imitating Li and laughed. They all laughed together. They had broken the ice and were instant friends.
Li was a very friendly person and an excellent host. She went out of her way to make them feel at home, in a strange place. She herself had been in different countries with strange names and stranger people. There were times she had been intimidated by the boisterous presence of the local hosts. She wanted to do her best to let these strangers in her own country feel the hospitality she could afford. She lost nothing by being friendly, by smiling and by joking with them. In the process, she was about to discover a great friendship that she did not find in her own country, all these years. Kool and Joy reciprocated, rather shyly and they did find instant bonhomie with this stranger.
Li did not expect Kool to play much, coming from India, which was ranked low in the world TT fraternity. But she was surprised by the depth of the game that Kool produced and instantly respected and recognized his game as the same class as of her own team mates, who were in the top 10 to 20 ranking in the world. She herself was one of them. The style of game that Kool played was a mix of several styles she had come across in different continents. She thought that he did not have a regular personal coach and had been coached by several coaches with different styles. She also suspected that Kool ‘should have been self coaching observing and analyzing others games, from around the world’. ‘Videos?, You tube’? she suspected. But to have mastered the different styles that he could play and to be able to use the right style against his opponent needed tremendous skill and class. Within the first half hour, Li had sized him up well and respected him for his game. Still, she felt his game was crude and needed refinement. If and when he refined the game, he would break into the top 5 in the world and probably will reach the podium too. He had potential, she thought. Potential was one, but making it was another. Several fell by the wayside, unable to climb the steep, highly competitive, top 10 ranks. She herself was working untiringly to reach the Top 10. But it was a hell of a climb. ‘But potential is still potential’, she argued with herself. Without it, no amount of polishing would help. She should introduce Kool to her personal coach, Dan. If Dan whittled and polished him, he would break into the top 10, for sure. But Dan would never do Kool the favour. He was a strong nationalist and wouldn’t do another nation any favours. He was the type that would give his life and soul to break any talent from outside China, if he could get a chance. So that was Li; she was the most selfless, pleasant, helpful Chinese that one could bump into a highly charged and competitive environment at the Games.
‘She should be of the same age as Jay’, Kula thought. That would make her two years younger than him. He knew it was not good manners to ask a girl’s age. Does this also hold true about trying to guess a girl’s age? He wasn’t sure. In any case, he wasn’t good at guessing age of girls, definitely not that of a Chinese girl.
Chapter 8
The Fragrance called Li Ling
The next day, was not their lucky day. They bumped into a selfish crowd of players from other nations, who took over the entire practice tables at the Stadium. Kula and Jay were completely spaced out and had nowhere to practice. A few hours of practice for the competitors is like an Oasis for a desert traveler. But what Kula and Jay got on that day, was just got to see a mirage of tables, they couldn’t play on and they had to move from table to table watching others possess and practice on. Kula and Jay wanted practice badly and they hunted for a practice table across the the stadium and moved to a less crowded part of the stadium, where the local host team practiced.
They approached a group of a particularly merry crowd of Chinese players, mostly boys and a few girls, who were poking fun at each other, playing and practicing. Encouraged by the friendly reception they got from Li the previous day, Kula, expected similar warmth and showed his teeth, beaming as he held out his hand to introduce himself, ‘Kula’, he said to the nearest player. The Chinese player responded with an ugly frown and stuck his middle finger towards Kula and shook his hips in a vulgar gesture. Kula was shocked and stepped back, instinctively, to shield Jay from the view. Thankfully, Jay was too innocent to understand the gesture, though she knew it to be a rude one and was offended nevertheless. As Kula tugged Jay by her arm and tried to walk away from the table, seething in anger and from humiliation, Jay obediently trotted behind him, unable to comprehend, if Kula made any mistake of etiquette, trying to introduce himself. The whole company jeered at them in a very disgusting manner.
One of them, menacingly stepped in her way, stretching his palms towards her and folding his fingers, with his thumb struck up as though it was a gun. He coolly placed his ‘gun’ point blank on Jay’s ‘bindi’ decorated forehead as if her ‘bindi’, the dot, was the target, and crackled a thunderous blast, from the depth of his gut, louder and sharper than a gunshot. Then there was absolute silence… tilll the entire crowd exploded in laughter with him. Jay believed for a moment that she had been shot, felt stoned unable to move her leaden feet, was grateful that Kula was dragging her away by her arm, while she was still trembling. This was the most terrible laughter Jay had ever heard. The Chinese pulled his fingers from her forehead and blew the imaginary smoke from his pointed fingers; cowboy style and shouted obscenities along with a warning, ‘No more dots on your forehead, lady. My gun is itching to find its target. Next time it wouldn’t be bare fingers’.
They rushed back to Kula’s assigned apartment in the Games Village and settled down slowly, with Jay still trembling. Along the way Kula was trying to pacify a terrified Jay, saying they are sledging us just to break our will, before the games. Jay was still in a state of shock and his words didn’t mean much.
Then Kula placed two chairs, each against the centre of a long side of the dining table in the apartment, asked for Jay’s ‘Duppatta’, which she handed over to him absent mindedly. He folded it into the size of a standard TT net and tied them to the chairs. He did it with quite a flair and deftness and said, ‘the TT table is ready’, in just a matter of minutes. Jay smiled for the first time, since the scary experience of the morning and was ready for the practice. They played in their familiar setting for practice. Kula and Jay enjoyed their game they grew up with, without a concern for tomorrow.
Li stepped in without ringing the doorbell or knocking or any announcement whatsoever. ‘What’s knocking, between friends’? she seemed to believe. They had got that close. She winced at the apparatus they used to play on. She reprimanded them both as her right, ‘You will spoil your game before tomorrow’s friendly’, she commanded. The next day, some unofficial friendly matches were planned to give the players some practice, before the Games. Jay spoke first almost in tears, ‘What are our options’? She narrated the horror at the stadium in the morning. Li apologized profusely on behalf of her fellow Chinese countrymen. She asked Kula and Jay, ‘Would you be able to recognize some of the hostile persons or the group’? as she opened her smartphone.
Li showed them some pictures and found quickly that the perpetrators of the scare were members of the official Chinese team of probables, from among whom the official team was to be announced before the start of the Games. Deng’s gang, as she called them, for want of a better translation in English. How could they behave so badly? Did they have official sanction? It didn’t look to be a chance incident to her and they had definitely appeared motivated. Had she inadvertently triggered a hostile reaction from the Chinese management and team, against her simple Indian friends? She was not too sure. She will have to confront Dan about this, later today.
Li put up a straight face and parried Kula’s questions on who these were, and diverted the attention from the pictures, praised about their ingenuity and quickly creating a practice TT table. She also cautioned them, ‘This practice in less than standard equipment would spoil your game. Improvisation is good for entertaining yourself, but can’t help you in competitive sport’.
Jay explained Li, ‘This is how we learnt our first TT lessons’. As Jay narrated Kula’s and her own initiation to the game of TT and how they progressed to where they did...
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