The Legend of Pradeep Mathew (30 page)

‘Worked at Cricket Board, pretty …’ says Ari, now pinching his lip like Poirot.

‘Or lives in Australia, plump,’ says I.

‘Remember our meetings with the SLBCC? Did you notice Danila’s face every time Mathew was mentioned? Of course not, you were looking at her boobs. But I, my dear Wije, notice everything.’

I let him ramble and wonder whether I should mention a meeting at the Cricket Café and tears shed. I decide not to, because right then, Ari unveils his hunch.

‘When we had that fight with Newton at that wedding, do you remember who Mathew was with?’

‘Mohammad Azharuddin and some girl.’

‘Do you remember what the girl looked like?’

‘No.’

‘I do. My dear Wije … Danila Guneratne … is … Shirali Fernando.’

Right then a ball is thwacked into Ari’s window leaving a spider web of cracks. Then the nurturer of grassroots street cricket runs out into the street, screaming, and confiscates the ball.

The Duckworth-Lewis method of resolving rain-affected games has divided the cricketing fraternity into those who do not understand it and those who pretend they do. Rumour has it that it involves calculus, astrology, quantum mechanics and the use of dice. Either way teams get screwed.

Ari believes:

1. That urinating on your feet can cure toe jam.
   
2. That Sri Lanka is a failed nation and will take more than three generations to heal.
   
3. That Sri Lanka’s World Cup win of 1996 was merely a run of good form that lasted a few months.
   
4. That his daughters were all virgins on their wedding nights.
   
5. That Mr OldSchoolTie of the 1980s and Ms 2ndGeneration of the 1990s were worse leaders of Sri Lanka than Mr Benevolent Dictator.
   
6. That Sri Lanka cannot be considered a great cricketing nation till we consistently win test matches abroad.
   
7. That God is great and everything happens for a reason.
   
8. That the north should be given to the Tigers. But not the east.
   
9. That the Australians play good, hard cricket and it is unfair to demonise them.
   
10. That Pradeep Mathew was the greatest cricketer to ever walk the Earth.
    

To paraphrase Meat Loaf, 1 out of 10 is not bad.

The term ‘konde bandapu cheena’ means a ‘ponytailed Chinaman’ and is a Sinhalese expression for someone gullible. ‘Go tell that to the konde bandapu cheena.’ The implication being that the said oriental will believe anything. ‘You think I’m a Chinaman with a ponytail?’

To accuse the Chinese, who invented paper and gunpowder and built great walls and forbidden palaces, of being stupid is itself an exercise in stupidity. Like our technology, our racist stereotypes are decades, sometimes centuries, out of date. In the 1950s, prosperous post-war Ceylonese would refer to slums and shanties as Koreawas. Those days when we were a paradise, we looked down upon our impoverished, war-torn neighbours. I once caught Sheila using the expression some five years after Korea staged the Olympics.

Is this a story about a pony-tailed Chinaman bowler? Or a tale to go tell a pony-tailed Chinaman? That is for you to decide.

Attidiya is beautiful at 8.30 on a Sunday morning. The sunlight is amber, the rooftops glisten and the road is not blocked by jostling metal snails. I sit in Jabir’s red trishaw watching shops and palm trees disappear into narrow lanes. We bump along at 30 kph listening to the sound of horns not blaring. It is too early for the sea breeze to be stifled by the descending heat.

I feel better than I did when I awoke. The creature is asleep in my skull, curled like a banana-drunk monkey. He refuses to leave till I slake his thirst. His presence stifles all thought, allowing only fury to enter in bursts.

The last two months have been difficult and though it is getting better, it can hardly get worse. Garfield has abandoned his wife and child and is now in London as an illegal alien. So much for the Sinhala New Year.

Jonny’s Flowery Broken Orange Pekoe is hardly a comfort. To expect it to douse my cravings is like trying to put a forest fire out by urinating on it. I’m not on my way to ask Jonny for more tea. I am going to get his permission to have just one shot. It will not be easy.

Sheila has borne the brunt of my petulance. It is she who glues together the broken pieces and feeds me on cracked plates. She tells me she has seen worse and reminds me of angrier times. Of my sacking from the
Daily News
and my falling out with my brothers. It is hard to defend yourself against crimes you cannot remember. Sadly for me, after my first bottle amnesia sets in. Sheila says I behaved like an animal; I take her word.

Ari arrives each morning with new revelations from the midget’s spools. He tells me he has a recording of the SLBCC chief instructing the umpires during the Pakistan series. He plays it to me, but all I hear are indistinct croaks.

Today he tells me he has two English bowlers chatting about sharing bathtubs with Maldivian call girls. The creature hisses in my ear as Ari prepares to play the spools. It is a slow hiss that reaches unbearability in minutes. I tell Ari I have to see Jonny and refuse to let him come with me. Ari slips Jabir some money and instructs him not to take me to the tavern.

Jabir hoiks red spit onto the pavement and moves at the speed of a tractor. He keeps chewing the betel which will keep rotting his teeth.

‘Jabba. Tell the truth. This Neiris Uncle thing is bullshit, no?’

‘Then why is Wije Sir writing about it?’

‘I’m not.’

Jabir looks at me in the mirror above his windscreen. I see his bloodshot eyes framed by a reflecting rectangle. The frame crops out his mosque cap and his betel-stained grin.

‘I have known Neiris Uncle for so many years. He’s not drunk, not mad, he just loves cricket.’

‘Most people who love Sri Lankan cricket are drunk and mad. Look at me.’ Jabir turns around and almost misses the policeman with his arm out.

‘Oi! Stop. Stop.’

A decade ago, the Jerry Lewis of the Sri Lankan stage, Nihal Silva, creator of bald, bumbling Sergeant Nallathamby, a marginally racist creation, amusing if you like watalappan-in-the-face humour, was shot by soldiers after driving through a checkpoint. Some say he was too drunk to see the checkpoint and to know what hit him.

Colombo has become a city of camouflage and guns. When exactly it went from town by the sea to city under siege is unclear. Possibly, not too long after the LTTE’s suicide attack in April 1987 that killed 113 and cut short a potentially enthralling New Zealand tour.

It crept up on all of us. Metal, sandbags and virgins with rifles took over Colombo’s junctions while LTTE bombs took out the Central Bank and an Indian prime minister. They also took out civilians by the hundreds and destroyed a whole generation of Sri Lankan leaders, which included the Minister for Cricket.

‘ID please. Can you get out of the vehicle?’

The cop’s limbs are thinner than the rifle he holds. I do not recall ever seeing a checkpoint or a cop with a rifle on Attidiya Lake before.

‘Where are y’all going?’

‘Airport Road.’

‘For what?’

‘Meeting a friend.’

The cop is assisted by two men in white shirts and black slacks next to a parked Land Rover. The henchmen search the three-wheeler and ruffle through my satchel.

‘These are CID men?’ I ask the cop.

‘What is it to you what they are?’ barks the cop.

They let us carry on.

Jabir utters a filthy phrase that contains the words sperm and dog and translates poorly. ‘Army are not rude like that. These buggers were looking for a bribe.’

We curse the government along the road to the Ratmalana Airport and Jabir tells me how Neiris Uncle’s saasthara woman concocted a charm from Slave Island, which she buried under the pitch.

‘So that’s why we never lost on that ground?’

‘Remember that record-breaking match? Neiris Uncle put charms on the bowler’s run-up.’

‘And I suppose during the last World Cup, he put them all over the pitch and scared away Australia and West Indies?’

‘Must be.’

I slap the back of Jabir’s mosque hat. ‘No use going to mosque if you’re lying like this.’

He grins, spits red, and rides off with two of my 100 rupee notes. It is only when I enter Jonny’s house that I realise my satchel is missing.

Some people read tea leaves, some palms. I can tell a lot about a person from their taste in football games.

The 1982 FIFA World Cup was the first time Jonny, Ari and I drank together. Here are our favourite games:

Jonny’s game was the biggest thrashing in the history of the sport, a goal every nine minutes. It was light-hearted and fun, like the man himself.

Ari’s game was a clash of greatness. Italy, led by Rossi, coming off a two-year match-fixing ban, knocked out Maradona’s Argentina
and
Zico’s Brazil to whack the cup. It was an intense game, savoured by purists, of which Ari is definitely one.

My game was the most disgraceful of the tournament. Group B was well poised with three teams – Algeria, Germany and Austria -tied on points. Only two could qualify and the odds favoured Algeria. A draw or an Austrian win would have sent them and Austria to the next round. A 2-goal German win would have sent them and Germany to the quarters. In the last game of the group stage, both German-speaking nations mysteriously settled for a 1–0 win, the only result that would qualify them both and exclude the more deserving Algeria.

Both teams spent the second half kicking the ball around and refusing to attack. Flabbergasted, the crowd jeered, Algerians in the stadium began burning German flags and waving money at the players. It was a farce of a match, but it was also perversely compelling. The same fascination that makes me stare at road accidents and peek at my hanky after blowing my nose.

The other two think I am slightly mad for picking this game. They may be right.

I am smoking a cigarette. It is the compromise. I can smoke a cigarette if I keep drinking the tea. Jonny doesn’t argue or lecture or smile, he just gives it to me straight.

‘You drink, you die. You don’t drink, you feel like shit. The trick is to not drink and not feel like shit. This you do by keeping busy. Do your book, seduce your wife, go for walks, watch cricket.’

‘It doesn’t work.’ I have tears in my eyes. Tears that neither my wife, nor my son, nor my best friend, nor Jesus Almighty has been able to extract from me. Before this giant homosexual in a Newcastle jersey I feel neither shame nor fear.

Jonny watches me powder his varnished carrom board. ‘You need to change addictions.’

‘I preferred your old place. This house is stuffy.’

‘You must find another pleasure that helps you transcend. Meditation. Swimming. Marijuana.’

‘Did you have to sell Bolgoda?’

‘They put dead rats in my letter box. Threw rocks at my windows. How long before a drunk with a cup of acid broke in?’

At least you’ve still got your TV.’

‘Acid is the weapon of choice of jilted men in this part of the world. It requires a cold-blooded sadism that is as horrific as the disfigurement it causes. I liked it better when we were discussing kakka gangsters.

‘How about just one drink?’

‘It’s never just one drink.’

I wipe my eyes and miss an easy shot. ‘I can control it this time. I don’t want to exercise or smoke ganja.’

‘How about cigarettes?’

After the fifth game and third cigarette, the compromise seems bearable. We discuss Sri Lanka’s tour to England, my worthless son and Jonny’s month in a Bangkok prison, though he does not tell me for what. It’s not quite Bolgoda, but it’s all right.

Who would you rather be? Muhammad Ali or George Foreman?

In 1974, after the Rumble in the Jungle in Zaire, there was only one answer to that. Ali, back from wrongful suspension, dismissed as a spent force, destroyed Foreman, the malfunctioning cyborg, in a battle mythologised beyond redemption. ‘It’s a divine fight,’ said Ali at the time. ‘This Foreman represents Christianity, America, the Flag. I can’t let him win. He represents Pork Chops.’ There is prophecy in that last sentence.

Fast forward two decades to ‘94. Foreman regains the World Heavyweight title at forty-five, while Ali, crippled by Parkinson’s, can barely give an interview, let alone step in a ring.

Foreman, made wise by his youth, hangs up his boxing gloves and picks up his oven mitts and markets the George Foreman Grill™, a phenomenon for the fat-free infomercial generation that bought its eponymous owner more wealth and fame than 76 wins and 68 knockouts.

Who would you rather be? The man who suffers first and laughs last? Or the man who suffers now, but will forever be known as The Greatest?

Jonny was right. It was the keeping busy that silenced the creature. I had replaced the classified ad in the
Sunday Observer.
I had classified all Mathew’s balls from Ari’s notebooks. I had written about Neiris, Shirali and the show that no one saw. The monkey on my back stayed quiet, the chip on my shoulder felt less heavy.

I notice a man standing outside Jonny’s, smoking a cigarette. At first I think he is a spy for Jonny’s prosecutors. I make up my mind to warn Jonny and ask him exactly how much trouble he is in. But I forget. Then I see the man again on the bus, reading a copy of the
Sunday Observer.
I realise that (a) the man is familiar, and (b) it is Friday.

I return home ready to build a cathedral with words. Unafraid of the gargoyles that tell me it won’t play, disobedient to the creature that haunts my thirst, drowning in tea, steaming in cigarette smoke. Sheila brings in a letter and sniffs at the air.

‘I didn’t drink. I’m not going to drink. So let me smoke.’

‘I didn’t say anything.’ I hear her voice break and I want to hug her and say I’m sorry and that I’ll try and be better, but of course I don’t. I tear the envelope and recognise the computer font.