Mr Sarlo and his team

Mr. Sarlo had a team. Then he lost it.

He did not know how. But he couldn’t get used to the fact that he had no team.

People told him, it is not a great deal. It is like discovering , that you can no more give the ball the directed spin, while playing with your kids. Or finding, that the actor, who defined romance for your generation,( and whose ardent worship led you to develop a stylish stutter) is not clicking with the new girls…It happens with everyone.

Mr Sarlo is married and has a daughter aged six. He works in an insurance company.

Mr Sarlo once lived in a castle. The castle had a pond right infront, and a terrace jutting out of its first floor. When it rained, you could get a wide view of it without actually getting drenched. He and a group of other boys. That was Mr Sarlo and his team, or so he thought. Looking out from the terrace, it would seem that order prevailed. That there are no rough edges in the trees, and the sky was an unbroken surface. And the castle itself was a jigsaw puzzle that you will have to set right. The team worked on it. They worked hard.
One night Mr Sarlo went back to the castle. Stood in front of the gates and sounded the bugle , that was there ,from god knows when. The team had vanished. There were no beats in reply.

Mr Sarlo went back to his childhood. A haziness., .. his parents. Relatives. Birthday parties. Reading books , impressing elders with hard-to-pronounce Bengali words.
Cricket. Other people. Other people not relatives. Books again. History books .
War . War films. Other people’s meeting at house. Sex. Red light… Red , a huge crowd, a crowd behaving like a sea, a banner above. Mr Sarlo stopped. He focused.

A field. Mr Sarlo ,as a child sorting out a puzzle, which was a miniature version of the castle in which the spent his youth. His eyes shining, his brain on fire. He has to solve this. The boy came up and stood near him.
‘what are u doing’
No reply.
‘ want to play in our team?’
‘which team is that’?
‘oh you don’t bother about names, it s not one of your small local ones’
‘how big is it’
‘its all over the world. And we always make it on the papers’
‘do you lose or win’
‘right now we are losing, but our hopes are high’
Mr sarlo was interested. He found out that the opponent team is not a team at all. They even don’t know they are playing .
‘then why don’t we win?’ mr sarlo has changed pronouns.
‘ there’s the challenge. The referees are all against us, and they are always giving us penalties’
‘why don’t we hit them then?’
A chuckle
‘sometimes we do, sometimes we don’t . we tackle them, its hard’
‘are u in?’
Pause.
‘Listen, buddy, either you are with us, or you are with a bunch of foul players.
And people who still don’t know about the big game going on, and are busy solving jigsaws ,are idiots’
Mr Sarlow loved simplicity. He liked the clear demarcation. But he replied
‘ I would be in, if I was certain that u would be winning. I am not’
Back to the puzzle.

Nowadays , Mr Sarlo is having strange experiences. He normally reads the last page of the newspaper, first, while having breakfast. Nowadays he comes to the table and sees the third page open. He skims through it. He knows very well that he has put the vcd of ‘Roman Holiday’ in But in the morning he sees it is ‘Modern Times’ . Sometimes a news channel is on, and he knew he hated news channels. Last week, when he went to pick up his sister from school, a college student, with a poster came up ,and gave him a salute that reminded him of the boy in the field. His absent minded eye randomly caught the word ‘imperialism’ on the poster.

If you meet an unfortunate man like Mr Sarlo, remind him of his team.
Tell him that he has not lost his team, but at one point in his adolescence , the team has lost him. Tell him that

It is a war-game going on.

It will be a little stretched out.

Mr Sarlo is welcome. He can play in any position he likes.
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Thought chain: Actually I wanted it to be about my days at isi hostel. I was reminded of it when
I saw a castle like structure as a puzzle in my friend's house.
But then I drifted to the political angle. I got to know of some politically aware people recently, and i was reminded of my teenage years. I will come back to the castle
later, maybe...some may not like the drift.. however let me tell you that it is not so much in support for a definite ideology as it is in support of a political consciousness in a self-interested middle class. The class which I so proudly reperesent.