We Have Competition

We now face competition. An army of flannelled kids today descended upon us like locusts and threatened to take over the patch in the Garden where we normally exercise. They were around 40 in all – small, big, fat, tall, short, stout, tubby, frail, sturdy, dark, not-so-dark, not-so-fair, long-haired, short-haired, under-weight, over-fed…
For a good 15 minutes they circled around us menacingly, sizing everyone, even as we pretended not to notice and continued to exercise. Then, as though to show us our place, they formed two concentric circles and right under our noses, began to perform some contortionist exercises that even our great-grandfathers could not have imagined. They twisted and bent backwards, lunged forward and froze, then bent down and swung their arms to and fro, stood motionless on one leg like statues and so on.
Khatoon Baig’s eyes simply popped out in amazement watching the boys. Bapu Rane bravely tried to mimic some of the friskier moves, but soon gave up. Prakash Motwani quietly sat on a bench with a bottle of water, studying every move of the intruders. Kishor Babani turned his back to them. Others like Yusuf Rassiwalla, Nahid Khan and Ved Prakash Grover behaved as though they did not exist.
In the end, no harm was caused. We survived to see another day. Obviously those boys were under instructions of their cricketing coach (from the adjoining track for net practice) to let us be. But they did succeed in giving us a severe complex. They were telling us that what we were doing, they could do better. And to rub it in further, Tian Serrao had to appear today with his grand mom (right pic) and take to the middle for the laughter session. This was his way to reiterate one fundamental truth of life: The old order must make way for the new. Point noted.
Renu Babani's PICSPEAK:
"One... Two... Three... and Bend, Stretch, Warm up!"
"I really enjoy coming to the Garden with grandma... Such lovely people!"