The Titans
A long long time ago, I led a cricket team. Though we were never really more than a bunch of friends living close by who liked to play ragtag gully cricket, we thought the world of ourselves, and of our indomitable spirit, and we called ourselves ‘The Titans’. And what a team we were!
The Titans exist from May 2005 to roughly July 2009. We played with most of the teams from the suburbs , and played many a cricket match in those 4 years. We won from many impossible situations, when one would have thought no hope was possible, and threw away quite a few cakewalks as well. We fought with other teams, we fought amongst ourselves, we polished our skills, we grew up as individuals, we lay down on muddy grass and stared at the infinite evening skies after a victory, we looked at each others sweaty faces for belief during defeat, we bunked college for matches, we spent entire holidays on the ground thereby angering our familiess, and when no matches were possible, we went on dinners to stay connected and talked about everything and anything under the sun. Basically, we lived four entire years in the world we had made for ourselves, where we sought elusive glory and that feeling of being champions at our favorite sport. By the end of it all, we were no less close than brothers.
Coming to think of it, for the first two years, we were too oblivious to the thought that it might all end someday. We in our naiveté, somehow always thought we’d live on forever. We were, after all, the Titans, and who had ever heard of Titans ceasing to be? But our destinies caught up to us one day, and we finally realized that our dream team too, was like all things in the world, mortal. By then, there were only a few months left, and not as many matches as we would like to play, and not enough days left to go for dinner on. We woke up, and realized that it was ending. The season of lasts, was finally upon us.
As life would have it, we separated as a team. I miss the match day mornings, when the tense feeling in the pit of the stomach would make you feel like wanting to throw up, and run till your lungs threatened to burst, all at once. I miss the toss, and the little pre-match speeches, where I tried to motivate the guys while hoping I wasn’t sounding like Sunny Deol from Border. I miss the straight faces they tried to make during those moments. I miss the huddles and the ‘go Titans’ , the triumph of victory, and the crushing sadness of defeat as well.
Now, with half of us in the states studying, and the other half too caught up in the vicious cycles of life, we know that it is impossible for all eleven of us to meet once again on a cricket ground. The few infrequent meetings that still take place, are by the handful of remnants , who meet in the same hotels as before, sit on the same tables, which were once filled with boisterous camaraderie, and have vacuous conversations about the past, and how free we were, and how we won on a particular day. Overwhelmed with nostalgia, they too leave in a while, and get back to their lives. Nostalgia makes you uncomfortable after a while.
But I will always be a Titan, and a proud one at that, for it taught me many a thing beyond how to bat or bowl. I learnt to lead, too take tough decisions and back myself, to be part of a team, to face challenges with a smile, to feel fear and yet joke about it for fear of scaring the guys, to shake off defeat, and remain modest in victory. Probably the reader at this point might think I am making a big deal of a little thing, but I strongly believe this team has shaped my personality in a way nothing else could have. When faced with life’s hurdles, I still think of that team and how we briefly achieved the impossible, and I think to myself, well I’ve led the guys to that, how much tougher than this be? And always in that analogy, my comfort I find.
Fellow Titans, I hope you’re doing well. Forget not the Titans, and how golden we once were.
