Malcom Marshall with his side on leaned action was ready to bowl. His first shirt button was unbuttoned as usual and he ordered 3 fielders around with that sharp look.
Sreekanth, looked up at the sky and muttered something and took his crease with his drop down shoulder and unique stands ready to blast the ball out of the ground with his bat speed.
Marshall ran and bowled a perfect out-swinging delivery. Howzzzz that?, he appealed for LBW with his usual sitting pose.
The batsman responded, "Dei appave LBW kedayathu-unnu sonnana illaya?". (Didn't we agree to not have LBW for this match?)
Marshall act was forgotten, and the alter ego of 10 yr old took over angrily "Appo nee kalai stump-ikku munadi vaika kodathu" (Don't keep the legs in front of the stumps then)
This cricket ground was our terrace (40x10 ft).
The ball was plastic ball (out swingers and in-swingers are determined by the wind direction at the time of the day)
The 3 fielders don't have too many places to move around other than swapping their positions.
And last but not the least, Sreekanth was my brother and it was me who was doing the perfect(?) Malcom Marshall act.
------
Watching my 4 yr old doing a pretty neat Penguin imitation (Gloria, in the movie Happy feet) took me back in memory lane of imitations we did as kids.
------
Sreekanth, looked up at the sky and muttered something and took his crease with his drop down shoulder and unique stands ready to blast the ball out of the ground with his bat speed.
Marshall ran and bowled a perfect out-swinging delivery. Howzzzz that?, he appealed for LBW with his usual sitting pose.
The batsman responded, "Dei appave LBW kedayathu-unnu sonnana illaya?". (Didn't we agree to not have LBW for this match?)
Marshall act was forgotten, and the alter ego of 10 yr old took over angrily "Appo nee kalai stump-ikku munadi vaika kodathu" (Don't keep the legs in front of the stumps then)
This cricket ground was our terrace (40x10 ft).
The ball was plastic ball (out swingers and in-swingers are determined by the wind direction at the time of the day)
The 3 fielders don't have too many places to move around other than swapping their positions.
And last but not the least, Sreekanth was my brother and it was me who was doing the perfect(?) Malcom Marshall act.
------
Watching my 4 yr old doing a pretty neat Penguin imitation (Gloria, in the movie Happy feet) took me back in memory lane of imitations we did as kids.
------
There were unwritten rules of imitation. To start with, your social status, coolness factor, knowledge level (inversely proportional to coolness factor) are all at display by the personality you imitate.
- Geeks prefer to imitate players with good statistics & results.
Ex: Gavaskar, who other than wearing that hat does not have too much to imitate.
- Cool kids ((don't argue imitation itself is for geeks!) on the other hand prefer character
Ex: Viv Richards , chewing gum with an attitude
Ex: Viv Richards , chewing gum with an attitude
Imitation of cricket players not only served the imagination purpose. But emphasized our cricketing knowledge and elite status. And it does not stop only with cricketers.
Here are some other characters I proudly enacted during my acting days...
- There was lot of competition over who will be "The Mc Enroe" during our tennis season.
Side note: Do you know that a fully soaked badminton ball bounces knee high? And can be used as your "tennis ball". Because of its bounce, the chances of it landing in neighbors roof is less.
- Tong Fu, chinese gymnist (floor exercise specialist), was toast of the town during one of the Olympics (Los Angeles, I found out later). All available pillows were stacked in line for our dare devil floor exercise. We learnt to do somersault without using hands thanks to Tong Fu.
In the hind sight, it is a minor miracle that we all have our spine intact in spite of mis-landing on the concrete floor.
- Seeds of my marathon running were sowed back then. We use to run around the 40x20 terrace 26.2 times. (conceived by none other than the author - what can I say, as my mother would like to say, he always gets 90+ in GK (general knowledge))
[Side Note: Imagine the plight of 6 different families which lived underneath that 40x20 terrace with a group of kids running round and round above their heads.]
- To make the running experience interesting and to simulate the hurdles of some sort, we choose to jump over the chimneys which were sticking out every 8 feet.
- The same chimneys were served as hide outs for Spark & Captain from star trek. Yes! even I cannot believe it that we were avid Star trek fans for the cool gadgets and the command hierarchy. It gave an opportunity for me to boss my friends around as the captain.
- Giant Robots were controlled by our virtual/imagined watches too.
---------
What strike me as I think about it is that the lack of tools/toys never stopped us as kids from imagining anything. We circumvented the problem with what was available and there I think I/we have a lesson to learn as adults.
P.S: Don't be shy. Share your best imagination stories in the comments section. (most of us need a blog, I am sure).
Posts
12 comments:
This is simply hilarious! I couldn't stop laughing. I remember I was always the teacher when the person most influential outside of home was the teacher, the stellar story-teller reading stories aloud in the mock library, "P.T.Usha in later days" (Ha! Got to it before anyone else did!!)
There is one thing though - our imagination isn't as wild when we grow older, but we still do have it. Remember Phoebe in that Friends episode, acting like she is being presented with the Nobel Prize!
Imagination is an important part of life, and I find those who pay scant regard to its importance become dull over a period of time!
A good speech on the importance of Imagination from my favourite author, J.K.Rowling:
http://harvardmagazine.com/commencement/the-fringe-benefits-failure-the-importance-imagination
I was more of a dreamer. I always dreamt of winning awards, of being the class topper, of meeting my prince charming..(which I did:-)
But, I used to imitate my sister a lot and was a perfect copy cat. She was my role model at that time and I used to shamelessly copy all that she did.:-)
Your blog reminds of the time when I took some cloth and was enacting in my own one-man's play when some guests came in and mistook me for the maid servant as I was dressed up in rags..;-).Me being the only family member with a dark complexion just affirmed their suspicion..:-)LOL
I think it was the lack of toys that helped us with our imaginations .I still love reading books as it helps me to imagine things than watching it as a movie.
Btw, a nice blog Brainwaves.
i will have to think of what i enacted.But I have to point out that its not 'Spark', its Spock :)
excuse me now.
some of the stuff that fascinated me enough for me to imitate:
- with a bath towel (the thin kind) tied around my neck as a cape. I suddenly became superman. After a while (yes, it took me a while) I realised I can't fly, so I changed myself to spiderman (but still retained the cape, have no idea why) and climbed to our terrace by scaling the external wall of our house.
- Gymnasts fasicnated me, but tight rope walkers fascinated me more. After reading about the guys who tight rope walk across sky scrapers. I decided to walk the thin ledge of our terrace (3rd floor). After that proved to be less challenging, the next thing was to jump and turn around 180 degrees on the ledge. I think my dad lost his cool for the first time when i demo-ed it to him.
- using logs as ramps, we would try to leap into the air with our cycles. oh i have hit myself on the nuts so many times... ouch.
If someone else wrote about that jumping on the 3rd floor thing and hitting on the nuts thing, I would have treated it as exaggeration.
You're completely capable of doing it and more :)
How DUMB!
Spock - huh?? I should have just said - person with wierd ears.
As far as my childhood goes, my imagination was very restricted, or atleast wasn't expressive...:)...
I was never a copy-cat, for whatever reason... Whenever I was greatly impressed by someone, I just wanted to be better than them...
@mindframes:
(Although its true) CP vudriye mammu!
Good blog brainwaves. For a second I thought you are describing some India match you watched live.
For me when boredom hits me, I tend to do some drawing/coloring/comics/reading. I vividly remember during my very early school days (when I was 11 or12) and got smacked for reading kumudam and vikatan.
Copy-cat ? I imitated everybody and everything when I can. Even movie dialogues at home. I remember the movie "Uyirullavarai Usha", where the heroine trashes the hero's attempt to woo her. She would say "Sila jenmangalukku sonnalum puriyaadhu" with an attitude, which I really liked. (Meaning: Useless fellow will never understand)
It was so catchy, I used it towards my sister and my sister was so shocked, me delivering this line for nothing (She is 10 years older than me). I had to immediately explain the whole thing, which she didnt beleive I guess, gave a smack still. I was happy she didnt tell others about this then.
BTW- Happy Pongal Everybody
Sdpal@
Sila jenmangalukku adichalum puthi varathu :)
HAPPY BIRTHDAY to you!
came across this in a mail-footer. Thought it was quite relevant to this blog...
"Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not;
a sense of humor to console him for what he is. "
--- Francis Bacon
May be this is more relavant :)
Albert Einstein:
Imagination is more important than knowledge. For while knowledge defines all we currently know and understand, imagination points to all we might yet discover and create.
(I am taking this comments count to 20+ :))
okay, I will try my best to push the comment count...
When Albert Einstein talks about imagination, I think he meant it more from a "knowledge" perspective... I think there is a careful borderline between imagining and day-dreaming...
Here we go.. the response stored for more than 10 days now..
Gloria Steinem: (I don't know who this is)
Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.
George Bernard Shaw:
You see things; and you say, "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say, "Why not?"
(Google-searched-imagination-quotes are just for response)
IMO, people's quotes are over rated. It can be used as motivational thing (if it motivates). And there is always a context in which it is said we can easily use it different context.
I agree Einstein meant imagining possiblities even when knowledge points out that it is improbable/impossible. But same can be said about a kid who is imagining that he/she is winning Nobel prize or acting out a sporting star when they have very little chance in reality of making it.
What I was pondering was.. are we as adults shutting out possibilities because we "know" that the probability of winning is low.
Post a Comment