Soldier Uncle's Badminton Hops to Shuttle Away Corona

Corona Corona everywhere! Marona Marona its echo from the opposite horizon! It’s cloudy and pretty cool for this time of late March. I am doing rounds in my courtyard. Flowers smile and plants give an assurance that not everything is lost. Getting bored has never been my cup of tea. I am confident of spending 10 years in isolation at the tiniest island in the remotest seas, provided I have at least 1000 big books and get one frugal meal a day. But then collective humongous waves of the united yawns of boredom of the humanity locked up in their houses reach me and turn me a bit restless like an old frog that moves, at long last, a bit from its hibernation and looks with suspicion and sadness around.

The neighborhood uncle shows his inquisitive eyes across the grills of the safely secured Iron Gate. I have to keep my fort well protected to keep stray humans from barging in. Even stray dogs are more welcome into the house these days. Well, he has been firmly shaped and caste into a disciplinarian mould in the army. Generally, this cast lasts well after the retirement, till the fag end of life in fact. I am forced to greet him with the minimum courtesy. I stand the risk of sounding almost rude. I have to ward him off till Corona lasts, but then I have to keep normal neighborly etiquette also for non-Corona times. Given my overblown enthusiasm for social isolation, as a mark of my contribution in the war against Corona (as inspired by our caring and hardworking PM), I come dangerously close to sound outrightly impolite. I stop myself from falling so low just to save this physical self, which in any case all of us have to shed some day or the other. It’s totally unlike me. I can see shock and surprise surfacing in his eyes. ‘What has happened to this decent guy?’ he must have thought. But the dangerous equation of social isolation seems to spoil the very definition of mankind, i.e., mankind as a social animal. This Corona will spoil all community relations, leaving us antisocial animals.

‘How are you Uncle?’ I try to pour sugar over my recently acquired bitterness, but end up asking like a robot with no warmth and affection.

All this while, I am scared that my usual smile would see my gate being crashed and the visitor barging in. I am standing at a distance from the gate, hoping that he just happens to pass along the street on his unmilitary type infringement of curfew. Well, strange are the times! Those who are instinctively prone to break law and regulation at every nook corner panic the most and behave like the most obedient kids. On the other hand, the normal time decent law-abiding guys may become adventurists and get a taste of the changed attitude. May be they are like the otherwise cornered animals who now come out to jump, hop and gallop a bit on the empty stage.

Encouraged by my remedial action, his badminton racket, raised above his head, greets me. I see it as a sword taken in an attacking stance to breach the defense system of the fort of my isolation.

‘Was getting bore son, so thought of having a bit of game,’ he says and I give the blankest of an expression in order to murder the evening badminton player in him. ‘And all these farmers, oofs the uncaring, ignorant Corona carriers give me jitters. Only you seem to give a sense of security about your following the rules,’ he tries to break the mask of my frigidity through the arrows of flattery. It appears he is really itching to play.

He is a minimalist. If he offers tea to someone at his house, he would expect half of the things that go into making tea to be carried by the visitor himself. So I am sure he will be the last person to get his second racket to be spoiled in a game, even if he is proposing the game to beat his boredom. I am sure he is carrying only one racket. About shuttles I cannot think even in wildest dreams he will ever carry.

‘Ummn, sorry uncle my rackets are broken,’ I just keep things to the bare minimum too ward off any chance of a foreign foot treading my well-protected yard.

‘But yesterday I saw you playing badminton with your niece till late in the evening,’ he seems to complete a full game with one racket and without shuttles.

I have turned very mean during Corona times, as I have already mentioned. The lie slips out like a hungry snake slithers out of its hole to chase a mouse. O God, so unlike me!

‘Yea, we had a fantastic evening full of badminton yesterday, but but…’ my usually honest tongue puts up a little coma as a mark of its protest before I splurge out the lie.

‘But, but what?’ he peers through the gate at the prisoner inside. Look at the scenario: here prisoners are fighting to keep their jails intact!

I expertly overcome the tiny coma protest and say with confidence, ‘By mistake the rackets were left in the barn store at night and at night mice had an amazing follow up games of badminton. The netting has holes where the biggest rats in the world can pass on easily.’

I am sure the mice have soiled his game also. In fact, I am relieved a bit and hold lesser grudge against the rodents now for creating a chance, through their fictitious part in the story, to ward off possible Corona carrying intruders.

‘Oh, even you are getting careless like these simpletons around,’ he swings his racket around to demarcate the circles of foolery, which in fact comes to cover the entire village. I am presented as an exception from the typical countryside lampoons. A matter of pride! But if I cherish the pride, I have pay a price also! So I quell my ego and don’t accept the flattery.  

I derive sadistic pleasure out of this helplessness in his eyes. The moment of pleasure is so short lived that I haven’t yet felt its comforting feel in the tiniest part of my brain. He has murdered my pleasure like he must have thought of murdering the enemies in the battlefield. Well, he never fired a bullet in his entire career by the way, so my father teased him as a bagpiper soldier, for which he has never forgiven my father even 10 years after my father left his body, leaving the aggrieved soldier to keep nursing the scars on his soldierly conscience.

I focus my eyes to conform what they see might be wrong. Uncle soldier has done a coup. I see two rackets in his hands held tightly in his fist like he is holding the triumphant flag of mother India proclaiming victory after a bloodied battle. In the other hand, he holds the shuttle proudly by the tip. He holds it like he has won an Olympics gold medal. The most exuberant soldier! I don’t think I can bear up with the assault for too long now. I stand in utter helplessness.

‘We will have a game,’ the intruder beams with sadistic pleasure.

‘Uncle you are so well informed I know. This Corona…’ I use my last bullet against the enemy.

‘This Corona can’t kill our spirits!’ he cuts my bullet right in the middle of its path by the thundering cannon shot of his war cry.

‘Here is the sanitizer!’ he shows off another item from his armory. ‘The rackets and the shuttle are well rubbed with the sanitizer. In fact you need to be cleaned up to be entitled to touch them!’

My fort lies broken and vandalized. The enemy is in. As the victorious King, he decides the terms of negotiation. I am the defeated King and have to listen and follow up his instructions. I find myself obediently rubbing sanitizer on my hand to change my status of an untouchable.

As I rub, he is peering into the pores of my soft poetic hands. ‘Rub with force man! You are still young. Destroy each and every Corona from your hands. It’s a war!’ he is no longer a miser with the sanitizer bottle and pours a big splurge, as if I am a confirmed Corona case. Looking at the way he is using it so copiously, I am sure he has moved out the entire sanitization stock from the army canteen, where they get it at terribly subsidized rates.

So I am sufficiently quarantined. ‘I have to keep in check any involuntary coughing during the play, otherwise he will immediately call police and doctors to get me isolated at the stinking civil hospital in the city nearby!’ in my sullen silence I take stock of the situation.

‘After every set, we will sanitize our hands as well as the shuttle and the rackets!’ I hear him setting up his kingdom after conquering the enemy territory. My spirit is already defeated. So I start with unwilling movements. All I hear is his warlike guffaws and instructions. ‘He never fired a bullet while in the army,’ I hear my father’s sagely baritone voice. ‘So the old soldier is trying to win wars here after retirement,’ I am having my revenge intangibly. I move sluggishly to beat down his enthusiasm for a competitive game and get him bored to hell. Even by losing you can defeat many people!

‘Aren’t you feeling well? Um, not feeling ok! Some problem…Corona!’ Before he gives the final confirmation of one more Corona case, I am forced to cut him short with a hard smash which nearly missed his nose.

With my hard hit, I give a proof that I am feeling OK and there is no Corona scare in the yard. But a defeated soldier bears all ignominy. The victor thinks he is all sense and the fallen one is all nonsense. Having sanitized me, thus availing the advantage of incalculable value, he is finding faults with my ways of covering the court, my movements, my way of holding the racket, in fact everything. Oofs! I know I am not even the village champion. But, am I that horrible at badminton?! I am trying my level best to keep my temper in stock instead of losing it.

But the heights of insanity now! ‘You have to dive while you try to reach for a shot from a distance. Don’t run unnecessarily like this and tire yourself out!’ his latest instruction lands like molten lead in my ears.

Well, guys this is intolerable. When and where did you see a player diving to reaching the shuttle in a game of badminton? You dive in the air to take a catch in cricket. You do it because after that you roll on to the ground and you don’t have to immediately get back to your feet to hit the shuttle back. I cannot make the head and tale of it.

With my hands on my hips in a confrontationist stance, I ask him like an Indian General will ask his Pakistani counterpart, ‘Well uncle, what do you mean by diving to hit the shuttle. Am I a cat, so that I will jump up again within a fraction of a second to return the shot? Do you expect me to stop the dive midair and get back into the normal stance? One takes long strides and lunges forward to hit the shuttle. When did any player on earth dived to hit the shuttle, Uncle?’ I am irritated to the hell.

Soldier uncle still has his confidence in the face of my unsporty fusillade. ‘Yes, you have to dive!’ he says with steely determination. ‘Like this!’

He moves sideways to demonstrate like an old, old leopard cat. With his racket aloft he hops like an old toad sideways to jump like you do in sacked foot race. This jump of a couple of feet sideways turned out to be his dive. Why would you put up so much of effort to walk like a Penguin, if without effort you can run like a rabbit, a bit old though?

‘But why would one jump like a frog in a hot pan, if one can take one’s foot in a lunge forward or just parting the legs a bit more than the normal?’ I am clueless about this latest Bermuda Triangle tragedy.

He is doing it like he is the coach of the Indian badminton team. Hops to this way, then that way. These are the dives to beat the world champion. I am stunned by an assault of sudden laughter. I bend down with laughter. I hold my guts to save them from the ravages of laughter. He is confused about what is so funny about it. That’s how it is done, he is sure. With laughter-assaulted waters in my eyes, I go to his part of the court and hug him for his cutest old toad hops, the so called dives, which he believes can beat the best in the world.

As I hug him, I hear him muttering with suspicion, ‘Hope you have been washing clothes daily, that too in Dettol’