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Boys of summer (Fiction)


The carrom board was set up. Tipu discovered that the carrom board needed powder to make it playable. He was promptly dispatched to find the box of carrom powder. You had to spread the powder uniformly over the whole surface of the board. And the guy who can spread his palm over all the gotis and then use them to spread the powder showed irrefutable signs of being a master of the game.

Rupya paise where each white goti counted for 20 and each black one counted for 10, was for kids (and maybe a little bit racist). The preferred game was the 'game'.

I was sweating like a pig and the sweat was stinging my eyes. It was my turn to start the game. I wiped my hands on my shirt to dry them. And hit the set of gotis with all my strength.

Tipu and Romi sniggered when it was discovered that none of the white gotis went into the holes.

Romi tried to use his thumb to put a black one in. Suddenly Hemu started shouting 'cheater, cheater' at Romi. 'He used his big finger to push the other black goti to block my white goti'.

Shut up, I shouted lazily. I was sleepy, sitting directly on the path of the wet cool air coming out of the cooler, faintly smelling of the khus essence.

Everybody was sleepy....and needed a reason to lie down. The alleged underhand trickery of Romi supplied the necessary reason.

Ma shouted, when I had just drowsed off, 'run and get some chana from the agarwal shop'. It was the last thing I wanted to do...

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