MHOW, 1986: I was 5 years old. You haven’t seen my photograph (good thing) but I can tell you that I had a physic resembling a 4′5″ burned out wooden plank. The term short dark and planksome could have been applied to me perfectly. I was a kid who had this immense capability of generating ideas that definitely  didnot help society. There was a talk on whether I should be allowed in this civilized world. Anyways, enough praise about myself, to get on with the story…

Our national sport , no! it’s not cricket!, its hockey. This game has given legends to Indian sports. It has also given us frustration, disappointments and other warm feelings. We were once the world champions in Hockey. No I am not joking, and no we were not the only country playing hockey at that time! Being the sport of legends, it was a sport of choice in army cantonments. Hockey is a simple game with simple requirements. All you need is a patch of land, some sticks with a little nook at one end, a ball and some happy stick swinging people. The rules are easy, you have to score goals, preferably for your own team. You have to hit the ball with the sticks, again preferably. If you end up hitting your opponents, well what the heck! the ball is very small anyways.

As you might have guessed it by now, I like to play hockey. There was just one simple problem, I didn’t have a hockey stick. At that age, all kids are possessive about their stuff. So the option of getting a hockey stick from someone else was also not there. Hence it was pretty much up to me to find a hockey stick.

I am a sort of person who likes to improvise. So I started looking out for sticks that can be approximated as a hockey stick. It was then that I saw my father’s walking stick! My father had this dress code for going on walks. Kurta-pajamas and a walking stick. The walking stick was his prized possession. He use to tender it with groundnut oil. He use to polish it at regular intervals. It had a beautiful hooked shape handle and the handle had embroideries on it. All-in-all a posh walking stick. Now if you see it through my eyes, its not a walking stick, its just an inverted hockey stick.

Army offices have half day on Wednesdays and Saturdays. My father use to come home at 3:00 PM on half days, and at 6:00 PM on normal days. My playing time were from 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM, daily. Now you can understand my brilliant scheme. The plan was simple and effective; I will take the walking stick, sorry, the inverted hockey stick (hence called IHS) to play at 4:00 PM and return it back at 5:30 PM. Will clean it before putting it back. On my dad’s halfdays, I will play football. Perfect isnt it? Yes! it was for 3 weeks but then tragedy stroke.

It so happened that my father came back home early on a normal day. Exceptional situation, something I didn’t plan for. He must have been proud to see his charcoal plankdribbling past opponents, proud till he saw his walking stick being an IHS in the hands of Dhyanchand. People told me later that he parked his scooter and started running towards me. I saw him a bit late. I saw him and my IHS transformed into a red hot iron rod. Dad was almost at an arms length when I saw him. I did the only thing I could do, threw his walking stick towards him. I have no idea why I did that, maybe to live a few more milliseconds. My bad luck was in full force. The walking stick hit him on his right shoulder. At that point I started running like crazy. I can bet that I would have broken the 100 mts world record. I turned around and saw my father rubbing his right shoulder. He had is walking stick in one hand.

I was in hiding for rest of the day. My mother took me back home after giving me assurances that the sliced Bipul (Bipul – yours truly) was not on the dinner menu. It was next morning when I came face to face with my Dad. He just said ‘If you touch that stick again, the stick will touch your back’.

Now my father is 67 years old. God has made him so strong that he doesn’t require a walking stick. Maybe I did take my father’s walking stick, forever.