The Play

‘A ball let us play. It fulfills our desire.

Our pure desire to play with it, for the play is so pleasing and there seems no other need. Nothing else to be done, nowhere else to be, while you are playing’, the old man stared at the ball in his hands, lost in his thoughts.

Jack snatched the ball from his hands and threw it in the air, ‘But Dad wants me to play Badminton. It has no ball’.

The old man’s eyes followed the ball while Jack caught it with both of his hands, ‘Yeah, but it has a shuttlecock. The shuttlecock works the same way’.

‘Grandpa, Have you played Badminton? It looks very difficult. We have to run very fast to catch the shuttlecock. I have seen my seniors play in the school’, Jack said while he sat on the bench.

The old man smiled and looked at Jack’s innocent face while he was busy rubbing his palm over the ball against the bench. He recollected again, ‘No, I haven’t played Badminton. My friends used to play it, back then while I was in my school. They used to call the shuttlecock a ‘bird’, I remember. My cup of tea was Hockey. I loved playing it and …’.

‘But it looks so difficult. Those seniors run so fast. They don’t let it fall on the ground at all’, Jack interrupted him.

‘Do you want to play like them?’, the old man sensed the dream.

‘I don’t think I can play like them! They are so big and they run so fast’, Jack replied in surprise.

‘But you want to play like them, right?’, the old man asked again.

‘Of course, I do’, Jack didn’t understand the question and looked at his face.

‘Then, it doesn’t matter how difficult it is’, the old man replied.

‘But how do you know I can play it? You don’t know how bad I am in Sports’, Jack questioned in a mix of sadness and hope.

The old man laughed and said, ‘And, you know that already how bad you are?’.

‘Yes. My friend Rob runs so fast. I have tried to run fast but my breath gives up. He always beats me in running’, Jack made his point with a pinch of sadness again.

‘You know I used to beat you in speaking, when we were both a little younger. Now you speak better than me’, the old man rubbed his hand over Jack’s head and continued, ‘Anyway, did your Dad tell you I was the fastest runner in my school! The moment the whistle blowed, I would take up a lead no one else could beat in the whole race. I could do that every single time. I could win every single race’.

‘How? How could you run so fast?’, Jack asked in excitement.

‘I knew the secret’, the old man replied with a smile.

‘You had a secret? What was your secret?’, Jack was filled with hope.

‘There is only one secret. I just became good at remembering it’.

‘What is the secret? Tell me, I will never forget it’, Jack asked again with curiosity.

‘I ran alone. I practiced running alone’, the old man told his way.

‘So, these were the only races you won?’, Jack laughed at his own joke.

The old man smiled and told the secret, ‘There is nobody else. There is just you. There is no race. There is just running. There is no ball, there is just the play’.