Nationals

Nationals. The very sound of the word sends chills down my spine. Though, all of us knew that the results of our matches were gonna be bad, and we were gonna get beaten...brutally, we had to give it our best shot, especially after one and a half hours of continuous daily practice, begging our parents to let us go and for the fact that this would be the best opportunity that would knock on our basketball career's door.

Sleepy and not even a wee-bit excited, I left my house at 6 o'clock in the morning for the airport. We met Lavi at the airport at 7.15. The weird thing is that, sparrows have disappeared from every nook and corner of Bengaluru, but there are plenty of them at the Bengaluru International Airport, one of the most developed parts of Bengaluru. We arrived at Delhi airport at 12 and stopped for lunch at a typical desi-restaurant and I enjoyed a plate of aloo-paranthas. Our train to Ludhiana was at 4.30, we had to be at the station by 4, so my dad took us site seeing. We saw Rashtrapathi Bhavan, India gate, and such and such. Man, there are a lot of pigeons in Delhi every-effing-where. We went to the railway station and met up with our teammates who had been waiting in the clock room. This made me feel kind of guilty because, while they were travelling in train for 2 straight days, Lavi and I had completed our journey in a matter of 2 hours. The train journey was pretty comfortable, although the Shathabdhi-waalas kept trying to stuff us with food. Juice, snacks, tea, dinner, one after the other, for free(!) and uncalled for! The train took us to Ludhiana by 8.30 and we had to get off of it within 2 minutes unless we wanted to travel all the way to Lahore! We reached the school at 10, and accommodation had to be arranged by us, as in- we had to carry our own mattresses, pillows, blankets and buckets to the room. A brief insight to the hostel life I'd have to face next year...Yay!

The next day, inauguration was at 10 in morning, so we were made to wake up at 8, when it was freezing cold. I was in desperate need of a ahem space-heater ahem out there. How the hell could they expect us to play in that kinda weather?! I just wanted to crawl under blanket and go back to sleep. The inaugurations involved, the teams marching around the ground, taking the pledge and a couple of performances. After a few hours, our match began. We played against Springdale, Amritsar. They were a pretty good team. They had an advantage of height. There was this one girl who kept shrieking, in the hope that she would get a foul. And most of the time, she did. That was pretty unfair because we barely even touched her. I'll bet she learned her lay-ups something like this: Right-Left-Jump-Aaargh! We lost the match 47-17. Smirk all you want, but we got thumped even harder by the Chandigarh girls. We lost against them, 57-19. In our defense, the Chandigarh team was too fast, too tall and far too experienced. There were always two girls who were on our tallest player(Mandy) and kept "hitting her head, as though it were a tabla". The only match in which we had a chance of winning was against the Daly College. They seemed to be the girly-type and they too had lost both the matches in the league. The game was ours, we were in the lead till the last 2 minutes of the fourth quarter, but just one last minute basket made all the difference. We lost, 22-23. Everyone in the team was very depressed. But thanks to the bonfire that night, we all came around. It was fun to just let go of everything, act kiddish, act drunk, and act tapori-ish! And for the very first time, with my own free will, I danced. Period. Since, the girls and boys tournaments were held at separate schools, some of the girls took to having crushes on girls who looked and played like guys!

We spent the next two days, watching the other matches(or that's what we were asked to tell people.) But what actually happened? Team secret! In the end, the final match was between, Delhi and Chennai. Delhi emerged as the winners for the freaking 4th time in row! The highlight(s) of the week was that we got to watch India's best u-19 teams in action, our rival team Chirec, actually became our friends as we supported each other during our matches, we had cartloads of fun playing pranks on people, I realised how good south-Indian food is, and permanent damage was done to my confidence and self-esteem, courtesy- all the teams that participated in the CBSE National Basketball tournament.

The Week That Wasn't

Day 1:
The day began like any other day. I went to school, bored, disoriented, not keyed up. We had all promised each other not to get excited about this little trip, until we set foot in Hydrabad. Because when you have a horse as the principal of your school, any kind of bad luck is inevitable. It almost seemed as if, preventing us from going on this trip was her ultimate goal. When Princy told us that Lavi and Rahul will not be going for the tournament, as they hadn’t got a parental consent form, we all had our hearts in our hands. We reluctantly went home, but Princy too, reluctantly let Lavi and Rahul go, as well. We had all assembled at the entrance of the railway station by 5:15 pm. From 5:30 to 6 we were all in a muddle, trying to find our seats. We were all placed in 4 different bogies. :O Compromise was the answer. All the eleven of us, somehow fit into one compartment. We all stayed up, played cards, shared dinner, and went to sleep in our respective bogies.

Day 2:
We reached the railway station at Hydrabad at 6 in the morning. A bus from PORPS had arrived to escort us to the school. The school campus was spacious and decent enough. The room was actually a third class, err…third standard class room. The benches and tables were pushed to a side to make room for us. We literally got a red carpet welcome. Well, the carpet laid on the floor meant for us to sleep on, was red, but it still counts! The room reeked so bad, that I couldn’t get a wink of sleep, during the day, and just ended up reading and music-ing. We spent the rest of the day sleeping, hogging, exploring the campus, watching the other teams practice, etc.

Day 3:

We all woke up at 5 am, and were at the court by 5:30. The team from Vidya Mandir was practicing. We were speechless after watching them play. They were all practicing in their jammies(!) and one of them was in salwaar kameez. For future reference let’s call them salwaar kameez (SK) team. In a few minutes we had half the court to ourselves. During practice, the girls from the SK team asked Gita, “Who kepten?” Poor Gita didn’t know what the question was, let alone the answer. Gita just walked off resisting the urge to display the colorfulness of her vocabulary. After practicing, we headed for breakfast. As I was new to the concept of breakfast, it was overwhelming at first to eat at 7 am. The inaugural function was at 10. All the teams were supposed to march, headed by the flag bearer a.k.a. the captain. We all had to say the pledge, and this was followed by the releasing of the pigeons by the chief guest (not metaphorically.) I have nothing but one word to describe the weather at Hydrabad- Dhoooop! After the oh-so-tiring inauguration, we all rested for sometime in our room, until it was time for our match. At the tournament we witnessed few of the most phenomenal as well as moronic matches in the history of Clusters. We watched the SK girls playing and I laughed my lungs out. Sometimes I wonder whether the world is actually filled with weirdos or they follow me around everywhere I go. Some of the teams that came to participate were walking fashion catastrophes. Their uniforms were weirdly designed and ridiculously carried off. One of the girls’ school uniform was salwaar kameez…WITH A BELT! Why wear a belt over salwaar kameez? To hold the dupatta in place, of course. :/ :D
The SK team felt that their shorts were way too short, so they were wearing leggings. Ummm…or they were supposed to look like leggings but they actually were their pyjamas. One girl showed up in Patiala pants, and was trying hard to ignore the guys cat-calling her “Alaudin!” :D
Our match began at 4, we entered the court, as nervous as a goat on Bakrid. The BSRKV team looked damn tough. Most of them were tall, they looked well-experienced, and the look of their jerseys itself was highly intimidating. As the cliché goes, looks can be deceiving. We beat them, 18-9. This came as a shock to all of us. We owe special thanks to the juniors who literally had their fingers crossed throughout the match and keeping a mown wrath especially for the team. That night our “chaperon” took our nazar out. What can I say? Certain experiences in life make you superstitious. As I said before looks can be deceiving. The SK team came up to our room to congratulate us and wish us luck for the next day’s match. They were really warm and sweet. In their defense they explained that they were actually handball players and had no clue about basket ball until the week before the tournament, and that they came only with the spirit of participation. Well, that explains their suckishness.

Day 4:
We had to wake up at 4 in the morning for practice. We just took a few shots, practiced a few strategies and went back to bed. We woke up in time for breakfast, and tried to kill 10 hours of time, because our match was only at 7 pm. We found out that we were playing against team Gitanjali. We followed the same procedure of mown wrath and finger-crossing, in keeping with our latest superstitions. We had watched team Gitanjali play before and concluded that even blind-folded babies could win against them. What more could we expect from a team which has its chest numbers handwritten on a piece of paper and taped to their jerseys! But we were taken by surprise when we found that at the end of the 2nd quarter we were 10-all. But in the next two quarters, we bucked up and beat them 28-12. It was an amazing feeling, playing in the floodlights during sunset. We were into the semi-finals, but unfortunately most of our team members were injured, exhausted and the like.

Day 5:
We did make many new friends, supporting and cheering each other during matches. The Navy Children’s School girls were very friendly and we got along really well. Little did we think that sooner or later, we might have to compete with them. In this case, it was sooner than we thought. We were up against NCS in the semi-finals. We put up a good fight against our friends, in spite of the unnecessarily harsh fouls, and made them earn all their baskets. The competition was neck-to-neck. But in the end we emerged victorious. The score was 13-12 and we had made it to the finals of CBSE Cluster vii Basketball Tournament. We were all a nervous wreck, before the final match, though we had loads of support from SKs(Gita’s fans wouldn’t want to disappoint her by not doing so!) and NCS(we were up against Chirec, NCS’s rivals since they got beaten by Chirec at the finals the previous year.) Lavi’s ankle was sprained, Priyanka had an injured arm, Richa was feverish, and Mandy and Gita had many butterflies to deal with. Though each and every one of us knew what the outcome of the match would be, we kept trying, we kept fighting, and we kept cheering. Perseverance, thy name is NHVPS GIRLS’ BASKET BALL TEAM.

Clusters vii was one of the best experiences of my life. I got to know my teammates better, we all made new friends, we made it to the nationals, I personally learnt a valuable lesson about the evilness of pockets, and it brought about the much needed increase in my appetite. In a nutshell, I had the time of my life.