Monsoon Cricket

The monsoon came to Ponnanthuruthu on the evening of the twenty-ninth of May, 1983, three days early, in the middle of a meeting of the Ponnanthuruthu Recreation Club.

The meeting was being held, as all meetings of the Recreation Club had been held for nineteen years, in Kunjappan's tea shop, which stood at the end of the footbridge where the island met the main canal. It was a long, low shop with a tiled roof and a mud floor swept so often it shone, two wooden benches, three tables, a glass case of snacks fly-proofed with a sheet of newspaper, a calendar from a gold merchant in Alappuzha, a framed photograph of the Kerala team that had won the Santosh Trophy in 1973, and a big brass samovar of tea that never, in nineteen years, had been allowed to go cold. Behind the counter, Thankamma, Kunjappan's wife, was frying something in a black iron pan and pretending not to listen. Everyone knew she was listening. Thankamma heard everything that was said on the island, and most of what was thought.

The Recreation Club was a football club. It had always been a football club. It had a football, a good leather one, kept in a sack in the tea shop's back room and oiled every Sunday. It had a carrom board, a second football that was mostly patches, a noticeboard, a treasurer who had moved to Dubai in 1979 and not been replaced, and a secretary.

The secretary was Mara.

Mara was twenty-three and worked as a clerk in the island's post office, under Ammini, the postmistress, selling stamps and inland letter cards and weighing parcels for the Gulf. Two years ago, at the club's annual meeting, Mara had made the mistake of being the only person present who could type, and had been elected secretary by acclamation before Mara could object. Since then, Mara had written all the club's letters, kept its minutes, collected its subscriptions (when anybody paid them), and signed its forms. All its forms. Usually without reading them, because Kunjappan, the president, put them on the table between the tea and the pazhampori and said sign here, here and here, and it was easier.

Outside, the sky had been going a strange heavy purple since four o'clock. The air was so thick and hot and wet that the newspaper over the snack case had gone limp. The crows had stopped talking. Out on the canal, the ferryman was poling his boat back to the landing as fast as he could, and the women at the washing steps were gathering their clothes and hurrying home with their bundles on their heads. Everybody knew what was coming. It came every year. Edavappathi, the old people called it, the rains of the middle of the month of Edavam. The southwest monsoon, rolling up out of the Arabian Sea, the rain that filled the paddy fields and the wells and the rivers, and turned the canals brown, and made the whole of Kerala green again. It was the most important day of the year, and nobody ever knew exactly when it would arrive.

There were eleven members present at the meeting, which was a good turnout. Kunjappan sat at the head of the big table, as he always did, with his mundu tucked up at the knee and his glass of tea in front of him and his moustache, the most famous moustache on the island, magnificent and black and curled at the ends like the prow of a snake boat, twitching with an importance that Mara had learned to fear.

"Friends," said Kunjappan, rising to his feet. "Members. Ponnanthuruthu. I have an announcement."

The first drop of rain hit the roof tiles like a pebble.

"As you know," Kunjappan went on, "every year the District Sports Council holds a tournament in the month of June. The District Monsoon Shield. Eight clubs from across the district. Every Sunday in June, at the town ground. A beautiful silver shield, this big." He held his hands apart. "And every year, who wins it? Who has it on a shelf in their clubhouse, with a light shining on it, so that everyone who passes on the canal can see it?"

"Kizhakkemuri," said several people gloomily.

Kizhakkemuri was the village on the other side of the main canal, on the eastern bank. It had a church with two towers, a temple with a new gold flagstaff, a cooperative bank, a cinema, a bus stand, a club with real chairs, and a president named Chackochan, who owned three rubber estates and the only television set for five kilometres in any direction. Kizhakkemuri and Ponnanthuruthu had been arguing across the canal for longer than anyone could remember: about football, about boat races, about whose temple festival had the better fireworks, about whose fish was fresher and whose coconuts were bigger. Kizhakkemuri usually won. Ponnanthuruthu never forgave it.

"Kizhakkemuri," agreed Kunjappan. "Three years in a row. And last week, at the bank, Chackochan said to me, in front of witnesses, that Ponnanthuruthu would never win the Shield because Ponnanthuruthu had never had the courage even to enter." He paused magnificently. "So I have entered us."

There was a cheer. The Recreation Club had been waiting nineteen years for something to cheer about. Somebody banged the table. Somebody else shouted that Basheer would score ten goals against Kizhakkemuri by himself.

And then the rain came.

"When's the first match, Kunjappan Chettan?" Mara called over the roar of the rain.

"The twelfth of June," said Kunjappan. "A Sunday. At the town ground. We play the Town Bank Staff Eleven." He beamed. "A team of bank clerks. They will be no trouble. Clerks have soft hands."

"I'm a clerk."

"You," said Kunjappan generously, "are an exception."

Mara began, slowly, to feel uneasy. Bank clerks played football, certainly; everybody in Kerala played football. But a team called an Eleven, rather than a Club or a Sporting or a Football Club, had a faint sound about it that Mara could not quite place. A sound like the radio on a Sunday afternoon, when Unni turned it up loud at the tea shop and the commentator went on and on in English about things that happened very slowly in places very far away.

The rain came down on Ponnanthuruthu like the sky had been turned over. It drummed on the tiles so loudly that nobody could hear anything, and poured off the eaves in a solid silver curtain, and the canal outside went from green to grey to white with it. The smell came in at the door, the smell of the first monsoon rain on hot earth, that every Malayali knows and nobody can describe. Children ran out into the lane and stood with their faces turned up, shrieking. Thankamma came out from behind the counter, wiping her hands, and stood in the doorway and watched it for a long moment with a look on her face like a prayer.

And under the noise of the rain, Mara saw Kunjappan slide a printed form across the table, between the tea glasses and the plate of pazhampori, and tap it with a finger.

"The entry form," he said, close to Mara's ear, so as to be heard. "You must sign as secretary. Here. And here." He smiled. "I have filled in the rest."

Mara signed. Mara had always signed.

It was only the next morning, at the post office, while Ammini was out at the bank and the rain was still coming down outside in grey ropes, that Mara took out the carbon copy and actually read it. It was printed in English and Malayalam, on thin pink paper, with the seal of the District Sports Council at the top. Entry Form, it said. District Monsoon Shield, 1983. Club: Ponnanthuruthu Recreation Club. Secretary: Mara. Number of players: eleven, with two reserves. Overs per side: thirty.

Mara read the line about overs three times. Football did not have overs. Football had halves, and corners, and fouls, and Basheer. Overs were something else. Overs were the radio on a Sunday afternoon, and men in white standing about in a field in England for five days, and Unni at the tea shop shouting at the transistor in English.

Then Mara read the line at the very top, above the seal, in letters slightly larger than all the rest, which said, in both languages: District Monsoon Shield. Inter-Club Cricket Tournament.

Outside, the rain came down, and down, and down.