Neighbourhood Symphony – A Short Story
by dejectium
The Bigs’
attack broke down, and one of the Small’s managed to take control of the much-coveted
sphere. He looked up, and saw one of his fellow Smalls free in the centre of
the court. With a swing of his scab-clad feet, he hit the ball as hard as his
small feet allowed him to. And to his relief, it fell just nicely for its
intended target. The other Small, accepting the ball with glee, found that he
faced a huge Big right in front him, in between the posts. There was no way he
could beat the Big.
Just then, the Small
spied another team mate free to his left. He tried to draw the only remaining
Big forward, and thankfully the Big fell for his trick. Lumbering forward,
trying to intercept the ball, the Big was caught nowhere as the Small, with a
deft flick of his smattering right foot, nicked the ball out of the Big’s reach, to the gleeful accepting Small. And our last
Small simply hit the ball first-time in between the posts of the construction
barrier that doubled up as a goalpost.
The instantaneous cheer
that rang up was so heartening and uplifting. The Smalls had triumphed against
all odds. The Bigs were bigger-sized, older, more
experienced, and could rough them up easily. Furthermore they were Malays, much
better at court soccer than the Small Chinese were. Yet they could manage to
score against the much more physical Bigs.
Passing by, one could
see the Bigs’ heads hang low. They knew they were
beaten. God knows how many they had already put past the hapless Smalls, but
the fact that the little ones could sneak a goal past them showed that they had
indeed underestimated the little tykes. And that solitary goal disappointed
many of the Bigs. And heartened all
the Smalls.
A weeny voice broke out
through the still evening air, puncturing the monotonous drone of the vehicles
on the expressway behind.
“We take a break now,
can?”
And continued, albeit a
tad unsurely,
“And later we change
teams, can? Mix, can?”
That goal spoke wonders
for the confidence of the Smalls, giving them the courage to seek fair
treatment. By playing the Smalls against the Bigs,
they knew they would definitely be beaten, and just
turn out to be fodder for the stronger Bigs. Now the
Smalls have shown that they had the skills to rough it up with the Bigs, and they knew they had the right to ask to be mixed
into two equal-strength teams for the next kickabout.
All of them knew, it was the rules of the court. Rules
like “the one who kicked out picks the ball”, and “the winning team stays” when
there are more than two teams raring to play in the same court.
The stranger was too
well-decked in street clothes to get down and dirty with the boys, as much as
he would like too. Not too long ago, he was one of the Smalls too, and then one
of the Bigs. Now he led a different lifestyle, that
of the educated and refined. When he played ball, he no longer went barefooted,
no longer allowed the scab to grow on his soles, no longer allowed his toes to
be cut against the corners of the pillars. He now played in boots, on lush
turfs, with teammates who wore matching jerseys, and
not that kaleidoscope of pasar malam t-shirts
that he now witnessed in front of him.
Despite the relative
comfort of his new playing atmosphere, he realised he deeply missed those
halcyon days, when he could just trudge along downstairs with his neighbours
for a quick kickabout. With plastic
balls, and imagined goalposts. Those were days when the stranger was
young. Now no longer. He had to get on with his exams,
worry about his finances, play big brother, and take on numerous other roles
that society required him to. From a leader of the Smalls asking to challenge
other groups in a small footie match, he became a leader of people, making
decisions that had to be popular, yet efficient. The ills of
bureaucracy.
The stranger realised
he had been staring at the group of boys for far too long. He noticed the
breeze blowing gently at his face at this moment, as if it were willing him to
move on, both move on home and with his life. He took a last longing look at
the group of Bigs and Smalls, now evenly mixed,
trading blows of the ball. Just then, it rolled towards him, and he deftly sidefooted it back to the Small who kicked it out. He
gratefully picked up the ball, gave a slight unsure smile, and muttered, thanks.
The stranger noticed it
was the same weeny voice who asked for a change of teams. He returned the smile, heart warmed, and moved on, muttering under his
breath,
“Carry on playing,
young leader. You have a future ahead of you.”
The Small did not hear
it, and the group had already played on. The stranger looked back for one last
time, and then turned on his way back home.
All the time, the
monotonous drone of the expressway vehicles was slowly changing into part of
the cacophony of sounds, making up the strange, but soothing, HDB neighbourhood
concerto.
dejectium out
0155
hrs gmt +8
16
may 2003