December 1, 1975
The bat arrived wrapped in yesterday's Deccan Herald.
Srinivas Reddy placed it on the floor of the hut with a reverence usually reserved for religious idols. He looked tired, his eyes were red-rimmed from three straight nights of weaving by candleligh, but his smile was triumphant.
Varun," Srinivas whispered, beckoning him from the sleeping mat.
Varun crawled over, rubbing sleep from his eyes. He was four years old, his body small and wiry, ribs showing slightly through his cotton vest. But his hands trembled with anticipation.
He tore the newspaper away.
Srinivas pulled the object out.
It was raw. It was unpolished. It smelled of sawdust and cheap rubber.
"It is not English Willow," Srinivas apologized softly, rubbing his neck. "English Willow is for the rich. This is Kashmir Willow. Seasoned. Size 2."
"I went to the sports market in Chickpet. The shopkeeper said it is a 'Second Grade', but I checked the balance. It feels good." He handed it to Varun.
Varun took it.
To a professional cricketer, it was a plank. It had a visible knot on the outer edge, a dark imperfection in the grain where the wood would be brittle. The handle was wrapped in a black rubber grip that was slightly loose at the top. The sticker on the back depicted a roaring tiger with peeling orange stripes.
But to Varun Reddy, holding it in his small hands, it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
He ran his thumb over the face of the bat. It was flat. Wide.
It was heavy. Much heavier than a baseball bat relative to its size. The weight was concentrated in the "swell", the sweet spot near the bottom, rather than distributed through a barrel.
He stood up. He gripped the handle.
It feels dead, Chuck Thomas's instincts complained. No flex. No whip.
"It's a wall, son," the dry whisper of the Don echoed in his synapse. "You don't whip a wall. You push it."
Varun took a practice swing in the cramped living room. He didn't swing straight. He swung across the line, a level, violent slash.
Whoosh.
The air hissed.
"It cost forty rupees," Lakshmi said from the shadows, her voice tight. "We will be eating rice water for a week, Srinivas."
"It is an investment, Lakshmi," Srinivas said gently, looking at his son. "Look at how he holds it. He doesn't drag it. He holds it like a soldier holds a rifle."
Varun looked up. He saw the dark circles under his father's eyes. He saw the frayed collar of his shirt.
Forty rupees. That was a mountain of money.
Varun gripped the handle. He felt the weight.
"Thank you, Appa," Varun said, his voice serious, lacking the childish lilt of a four-year-old. "I will fix the knot. I will oil it. It will last."
He slept with the bat that night. He curled around it like a teddy bear, smelling the wood, dreaming not of Seattle rain, but of the dry dust of a Bangalore maidan.
December 2, 1974
The dust lane outside was empty of cows for once. The sun was dipping, casting the alley in amber light.
Ravi and the older boys were there. They had upgraded from the cork ball to a "tennis ball"—a fuzzy green sphere that had been shaved bald on one side to make it swing in the air.
"The baby has a bat," Ravi sneered, spinning the ball. "Did Daddy buy it for you?"
"Bowl," Varun said. He didn't sound like a baby. He sounded like a man who had missed his morning coffee.
He walked to the garage door with the charcoal stumps. He tapped the bat on the ground.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
It felt... okay.
He took his stance.
Chuck Thomas warred with Don Bradman.
Baseball Stance: Feet wide. Bat held high behind the ear. Elbow up. Weight back.
Cricket Stance: Feet close. Bat on the ground. Head over the toes. Weight forward.
Varun found a compromise.
He stood with his feet shoulder-width apart (Baseball). He kept his bat high, near his shoulder (Baseball backlift). But he turned his body side-on to the bowler (Cricket).
It was an ugly, hybrid stance. It looked like a lumberjack preparing to fell a tree.
"He stands like a statue," one of the fielders giggled.
"Fast ball," Ravi announced. "I'm going to take his head off."
Ravi ran in. He was eight, and he was the terror of the colony. He threw the tennis ball with a jerky, chucking action.
The Physics of the Bounce
The ball left Ravi's hand.
Varun's eyes, enhanced by the Bradman Template, locked onto the fuzzy sphere.
Trajectory: Short.
Bounce point: Three meters in front.
Height at impact: Chest level.
In baseball, this was a high fastball. A hanging mistake.
Chuck Thomas took over.
Weight transfer.
Varun didn't step forward to defend. He stepped back. He moved his right foot toward the stumps, creating a stable base.
The ball rose from the dust, aiming for his ribs.
Varun swiveled his hips. He brought the Kashmir Willow around in a flat, horizontal arc.
The Pull Shot.
In cricket, the pull shot is risky. You have to roll your wrists to keep the ball down.
Varun didn't roll his wrists. He wanted elevation.
CRACK.
The sound was obscene. The Kashmir willow met the tennis ball with perfect timing. The heavy blade transferred all its kinetic energy into the light projectile.
The ball didn't just fly; it vanished.
It soared over the fielder at square leg. It cleared the roof of the Reddy house. It cleared the lane entirely.
It landed in the main road, bouncing into a passing rickshaw.
Silence in the lane.
Ravi stood with his hands on his hips. "That... that's lost ball! You have to fetch it!"
"Fetch it yourself," Varun said, tapping the bat again. "You bowled it there."
The next ball was fuller. Aimed at the toes. A "Yorker."
In baseball, this is a low sinker. You dig it out.
Varun couldn't swing horizontally at this. The ground was in the way.
"Straight bat," the Whisper advised. "Present the full face."
Varun stepped forward this time. He leaned his head over the ball. He brought the bat down vertically, like a guillotine.
Thunk.
He hit the ball straight back past the bowler. It raced along the ground, kicking up dust, hitting the far wall with a satisfying slap.
"Four runs," Varun declared.
He started to understand the geometry.
Horizontal bat for bouncing balls. (The Pull, The Hook, The Cut).
Vertical bat for full balls. (The Drive).
It was simple.
If it was a high pitch, he was Chuck Thomas. He smashed it.
If it was a low pitch, he was... well, he was learning to be someone else.
For the next hour, Varun Reddy dismantled the neighborhood hierarchy.
He didn't get out.
When they bowled wide, he slashed it over the slips (The Cut Shot).
When they bowled at his legs, he whipped it backward (The Flick).
He played with a ferocity that scared the older boys. He didn't smile. He didn't celebrate. He just chewed his lip and watched the ball with terrifying intensity.
He was testing the limits of the Second Gift.
He realized the Bradman Template wasn't just hand-eye coordination. It was time.
He had more time than anyone else. He saw the ball leave the hand, and he had an eternity to decide what to do with it. It felt like playing a video game on easy mode.
"Enough!" Ravi panted, sweating. "My arm hurts. You cheat. You stand wrong."
"I stand how I want," Varun said, leaning on his bat.
He looked at the Kashmir Willow. There was a red mark in the center of the blade where the ball had hit repeatedly.
The sweet spot.
He felt the vibration in his arms, the hum of a connection made. It wasn't the crack of an ash bat in Seattle, but it was close.
It was the feeling of contact.
Varun looked up at his father, who was watching from the doorway, a look of stunned disbelief on his face.
"Appa," Varun called out in English, forgetting himself for a second. "I think I can work with this."
Srinivas didn't understand the words, but he understood the tone.
The Weaver's son was not a weaver.
He was a butcher. And he had just found his cleaver.
June 1976. St. Peter's Primary School, Bangalore.
School was a sensory assault of slate pencils, chalk dust, and the smell of damp wool.
Varun Reddy stood at the gates of St. Peter's, a government-aided school that smelled of old paper and phenol. He was five years old. He was wearing a white shirt that ballooned around his thin frame, his mother had bought it two sizes too big so it would last until he was seven, and navy blue shorts held up by a belt that had been punched with an extra hole using a hot nail.
"Be good, Varun," Lakshmi said, smoothing his oiled hair. "Listen to the teacher. Don't fight."
Varun nodded. He gripped the straps of his canvas school bag. Inside, there was a slate, a piece of chalk, and a tiffin box containing lemon rice.
"I will be good, Amma," he said.
He walked into the building.
If infancy had been a cage for his body, school was a cage for his mind.
The classroom was a sea of forty boys sitting on wooden benches.
"A for Apple," Mrs. D'Souza chanted, slapping a ruler against the blackboard.
"A for Apple!" the class roared back.
"B for Ball."
"B for Ball!"
Varun sat in the back row. Linguistic Osmosis, was agonizingly efficient. He didn't just understand the English alphabet; he was internally critiquing Mrs. D'Souza's pronunciation of the vowel sounds. He was already fluent in three languages. He could read the newspaper editorials his father left on the floor.
But he had to sit there and chant.
I was a grown man, Varun thought, staring at a gecko hunting a moth near the ceiling fan. I had a checking account. I drove a Harley. Now I'm shouting 'C for Cat'.
He wanted to scream. He wanted to stand up and explain the infield fly rule just to feel like an adult.
But he knew better. In the weaver's colony, standing out was dangerous. Being a "smart aleck" got you beaten. So he slumped in his oversized shirt, mouthed the words, and waited for the bell.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
Lunch.
The playground of St. Peter's was a slab of uneven concrete surrounded by a high compound wall.
It was a war zone.
Hundreds of boys spilled out, screaming. Within seconds, the space was colonized. The rich kids with leather shoes took the center. The poor kids with rubber slippers took the edges.
Varun sat on a perimeter wall, opening his tiffin box. He ate quickly, his eyes scanning the chaos.
In the center of the concrete, a game was starting.
It was the "Big Boys", the fourth graders. They had a tennis ball. They had a set of stumps drawn in chalk on the wall of the urinal block.
And they had a bat.
Not a plank. A real cricket bat.
Varun shoved the last of the lemon rice into his mouth and closed the box. He hopped off the wall.
He walked toward the game.
He was small. He was a first-grader. He was wearing a shirt that looked like a tent. But he walked with the swagger of a shortstop taking the field in the bottom of the ninth.
"Move, pipsqueak," a boy shouted. It was Vikram, a fourth-grader with a digital watch and shoes that actually fit. He was holding the bat.
"I want to play," Varun said. He spoke in English, crisp, clean, without the heavy accent the other boys had.
Vikram laughed. "Go play marbles, First Standard. This is hard ball."
"I can hit it," Varun said.
"Oh?" Vikram sneered. He looked at Varun's oversized clothes. "Weaver's son, right? Go weave us a net."
The other boys laughed. It was a sharp, stinging sound.
Varun felt the heat rise in his neck. Not shame. Anger. The cold, focused anger of a competitor who has just been insulted.
He looked at the bowler, a lanky boy named Deepu.
"One ball," Varun challenged. "If I miss, I'll give you my lunch tomorrow. If I hit it... I bat."
Vikram looked at the tiffin box. He looked at Deepu.
"Fine," Vikram said, handing Varun the bat. "Deepu, take his head off. Fast ball."
The Concrete Pitch
Varun took the bat. It was too big for him, a Size 4 meant for a ten-year-old. It dragged on the concrete.
He gripped it.
Heavy, he thought. Good.
He took his stance at the chalk stumps.
The surface was concrete.
"Watch the bounce," the Whisper warned. "Concrete is fast. It skids."
Deepu ran in. He didn't hold back. He hurled the tennis ball.
It hit a crack in the concrete and rocketed up. A bouncer.
On a dirt pitch, it would have been waist height. On concrete, it was heading for Varun's nose.
Chuck Thomas reacted.
Panic? No. Adaptation.
Varun didn't back away. He didn't duck.
He rose up on his toes. He swiveled his hips.
He didn't try to keep it down.
He unleashed the Hook Shot.
He rolled his wrists over the handle, catching the ball at the apex of its bounce.
THWACK.
The sound echoed off the school walls.
The tennis ball flew. It sailed over the heads of the slip cordon. It soared over the wall of the school compound.
It landed in the busy street outside. Honk! Screech! A lorry swerved.
Silence on the playground.
"You lost the ball," Vikram whispered, his eyes wide.
"Six runs," Varun said calmly. He handed the bat back to Vikram. "And that was a tennis ball. Imagine if it was leather."
Varun turned and walked back to his class as the bell rang.
He didn't look back. He didn't need to. He could feel their eyes on him.
He sat back down at his desk.
"D for Dog," Mrs. D'Souza chanted.
"D for Dog," Varun mumbled.
But under the desk, his hands were trembling slightly. Not from fear. From the vibration of the impact.
He had felt it. The connection.
The "Tiger" bat his father had bought him was at home, oiled and waiting. But now he knew something important.
He could dominate here.
In America, he had been a small fish in a big pond. Here, amongst these boys who played with fear and hesitation... he was a shark.
He looked at the blackboard.
A, B, C...
He smiled.
D is for Drive.
P is for Pull.
S is for Six.
School was going to be bearable after all. As long as there was a lunch break.