Knicq

It was a click. I am convinced of it. AP refuses to agree, but this is one debate he just cannot win. It happens to be about a sound. A sound which emanated from the general direction of my knee, when I was trying to do the agile-panthery-knicq thing, and almost succeeded in hitting the squash ball for the third time in the space of 1.59877 seconds.

Oh yes! I was a blur. Until my being, the blur that is, concentrated itself into my vision – when the world was a blur for a 0.00001 second, which hind sight has painstakingly explained to me was all an illusion – the world becoming a blur that is. On the 1.59879th second, my vision was restored, the world was not a blur, nor was I anymore, and sound had caught up with my speed, and I heard a ‘click’. It was followed by a muffled little thud, which in a squash court is often followed by either a combination of “Yes!” and “Nainyyaarr!” uttered simultaneously in two different voices, or the sound of air being punched from one side of the court while you can hear the sound of eyes rolling in another corner. The muffled little thud is the sound of  the hollow squash ball bouncing a second time before rolling away. The rolling away is often never heard in the deafening noise created by the punching of air, rolling of eyes, and uttering of war cries.

Coming back to the click though. I heard it. I commended sound on its alacrity and a job well done. Sound was panting at the time, very audibly, and it kept mumbling some gibberish about having left rain far behind. I failed to make the connection, and attributed the gibberish to a hightened state of awareness that Sound might have achieved traveling that fast – a state of awareness where memories become muddled and discerning faculties become befuddled, and a state in which Sound can be expected to confuse a click with a thunder, and then, by simple association think of rain. Out of sheer respect for an athlete, and in deference to sound’s dedication to it’s job, I decided to not knock the fellow down. Instead, I extended a helping hand, and helped it out of the court. There it stood then, leaning against the wall, waving its hands at me, and uttering rapid-fire gibberish. Sound, it is funny. It thinks just because it is sound, we must listen to everything it has to say.

All this while when this heart rendering scene was unfolding, AP had done his punching the air and uttering a gleeful ‘Yes!’. I turned my attention to the game once again. Apparently, I had lost a point and handed AP a crucial lead once again. I brought my faculties to attention, brought the requisite level of firmness to my jaw, prepared for the worst case scenario in advance with a slight stiffening of the upper lip, and braced myself to receive AP’s serve. In came AP’s trademark serve, caressing the wall all along, and making it clear that it was headed to kiss the corner – an act his serves like to do, and one I find exceedingly inappropriate, and infinitely inconvenient. Kisses and corners – so teenage, so wayward. There is, of course, the fact that retrieving a ball engaged in public displays of affection with corners requires a back-hand shot which is just not there in my repertoire of squash shots. I made an attempt though, and was about to move towards the corner when… all hell broke loose!

In an instant overflowing with comprehension, realization and understanding, Sound’s gibberish just dawned upon me – through my knee. It was not thunders Sound was talking about, nor of rain. It had been trying to warn me that on its way to my ears, when it was trying to catch up with me to bring me “Click”, it had left behind a huge mean looking guy called “Pain”. Now, because it was big and bulky, and because I was fast and furious, it had taken a long time arriving, but arrive it did, and with such aplomb so as to render me speechless, and if feelings are anything to go by knee-less for sometime. And now here it was, shooting through every tendon in my leg, and roaring and shouting and generally creating a mayhem.

Its a cocky fellow, Pain is, and even though it came in second after Sound, it refuses to budge from the knee which it thinks is the podium where the gold medal will be handed over. We have tried to ignore it and get on with other events, but it is a bit of a problem since he likes to make his presence felt, and whenever it thinks we, my sporting ambition and my limbs, are beginning to have some kind of a rythm in our day to day activities, it starts bellowing out, what it must think sweet melodies, in its hoarse and out of tune voice – and that too at the top of its huge lungs. An absolute nuisance I tell you. Not that we let it bog us down, but we will certainly be better off when this pain guy figures out how unwanted and in the way he is, and walks away.

In the meanwhile, in all this ruckus created by Pain, no-one had heard the afore mentioned thud – the one produced by a ball bouncing a second time before rolling off. Actually, I had not even heard the ‘Yes’ or the punching of the air, and I tried explaining to AP that I was distracted by the ‘Click’ and its entourage. Even Sound tried to reason with him, but AP maintains that there was no Click, and we were just paying too much attention to thuds, and calling it different names. Thuds do not originate from my knees, and this is a fact even he cannot dispute. The “Click” on the other hand came from the knee, loud and clear and even if pain took sometime catching up with click, it still means that air may rightfully have a couple of grievances about having been wrongly punched. There is no question of punching the air and claiming points, if the other player is having a conversation with clicks and pains.

Like I said, its my knee; and I know what sound it made – this is not an argument AP is winning. Nor is this a game he can claim until we have finished it; and finish it we will after we have ousted pain and stowed away the click.

Until then, he must wait.