The Old Bat

A young man was walking on a footpath surrounding a garden. He was returning home from what was arguably a stressful day. The cool evening and the walk in the garden had mellowed him down though. As was his habit, he was listening to soft music from his phone through the default earphones.

He looked down at the footpath tiles, pink and white, now rendered weary by time. They were like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The man was now nearing the lane where he lived.

As he passed the point where the roads bisected the garden, he saw a man. The man had a cricket bat in his hand. Strolling in the middle of the garden, on the brown-green grass blades, he was admiring the bat. He must have been around 30 years old. His clothes suggested that he was a labourer or a worker; his body chiselled, if not huge.

It was then that the young man noticed the bat. It was a rather small, aged piece of wood. The intact stickers on the frame said that it was of a good brand. Its bottom edge was well-worn and had lost its symmetry. There were marks and abrasions on its body. Furthermore, it sported printed signatures of some of the most famous cricketers of the game.

It was the same bat that he had lost around ten years ago.

However, he had to be sure. Excited, he followed the man around the garden. He passed the gigantic banyan tree and intercepted the man at the end of the footpath.

“Can I have a look?” the young man asked politely, pointing at the bat. He removed the earphones from his ears, not caring to stop the music. The worker obliged without uttering a word. He held the bat in his hands for him to examine. The young man saw that he had big, bland eyes, a moustache and stubble. The man's face remained impassive.

The bat was exactly how he had remembered it to be - the same vivid colours, the same cuts and scratches. A childhood memory, gone missing for ten years, and it was now before him. All this while, and it was still in his locality. It wasn't the dump truck which had collected the bat after all.

The young man smiled, in awe of the subtlety of the moment. He recollected how his parents had been hard on him for losing an expensive thing like this. He remembered how the loss of the bat had ended his interest in cricket as a hobby.  Yet here it was, now a relic.

He looked up to the man, and calmly asked “is this yours?” Still impassive, the man tried to utter some words in a clumsy fashion.

“Is the bat yours, sir?” shrilled someone out of the blue. “Is it yours?”

The young man turned to his right, and saw that it was a little boy who was addressing him.  He was a poor lad, ragged with a jaded frame. He looked at the boy; his eyes were unlike those of the worker. They had a twinkle in them, an honest innocence, and they sat perfectly above his brown pudgy cheeks.

“Is the bat yours?” repeated the little boy eagerly, advancing towards the young man.

The young man gave his old bat one final look, and sighed with content.

“No”, he said, looking at the boy.

He then turned away and continued to walk home with a quaint smile on his face …