by Vinay Jalla

Created on: November 08, 2009   Last Updated: August 16, 2010

As a young boy, I played cricket every evening with my friend in our back garden. My Grandma didn't like it at all. She would always scold, "Why don't you boys play in the park. You'll ruin my lovely plants." Though I sympathised with her,  playing in the park was simply impossible; it was always packed like a swarm of bees with boys and girls from the neighbourhood. I loved playing in our garden purely because it provided the luxury of running around on a bed of soft, green grass, moist like a damp sponge.

Grandma took great pains to keep her garden beautiful. She would renew the manure at regular intervals, water the plants religiously every morning. Even during her leisure, one could see her plucking out weeds and mischievously chucking them over our neighbour's fence. Grandma envied our neighbour's garden which had a lot more exotic flowering plants, flowering vines, a greenhouse, and better-defined hedges than ours. Grandma would even sometimes suggest to me, "Why don't you hit the ball over the fence?" I knew her evil intentions.

One day, I did hit a six, and the ball landed in our neighbour's garden, on a patch of newly-laid saplings, to be precise. Our neighbour, a bespectacled woman, came over to the fence, furious. My friend and I ran inside the house, guilty and scared of facing the consequences. Grandma, who was in the far corner of the garden, turned around and faced her opponent with the cricket bat in her hand. Our neighbour's expression changed from anger to fear. She said meekly, "I didn't even know that you played cricket..."

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