COMEBACK

In almost all fields, comeback has been a very frequent phenomenon.

A prime minister’s party loses the elections in one year and another prime minister with his (the second prime minister’s, not the first) party takes over. Then after 5 years or sometimes in less than 5 years there is an election and the first prime minister and his party wins again and effectively stages a comeback.

Among cricketers, ‘comeback’ is very frequent. A certain batsman is forgotten for a couple of years and then he makes a couple of centuries (sometimes it doesn’t matter against which team or in which tournament) and he would come back to the team. Similarly a certain bowler who was not chosen for the team stages a comeback after a few years when he takes a few wickets in some tournaments.

There are many film stars who had retired from movies (especially female stars after marriage) and then after a few years make a comeback.

We, many times pray for someone’s comeback eagerly.

When we were school children, we had to walk almost about 5 to 6 kilometers from our house to school. Out of this, about 1 km you can go by bus if you want to reduce your walking (as per rule, if you shell out 1 anna – about 6 paise of today). We were four students together and walking used to be fun. But there was a particular driver who took pity on us and took us in the bus for that kilometer free of cost, if the bus had empty seats. And one day the driver disappeared and another man took his place. He (the new driver) did not show any kindness towards us. We came to know that he had some accident and had fractured his right leg. What we heard was a car hit him when he was walking back from his shopping trip and it would be practically impossible for him to drive a bus again.

We prayed for his fracture to be healed soon. Not really because we wanted free trips but genuinely he was such a good soul and doesn’t deserve to be handicapped for life.

And probably someone heard our prayers and he was at the steering wheel again and had made a successful comeback.

I talked about comebacks mainly to announce that Naradaa decided to stage a comeback to his lazy chair. This time Naradaa also got a shishya with him. As shortening of names is the in thing for these days, Naradaa calls him ‘Shish’. He sometimes becomes a nuisance because he insists on reading what I write before I publish it and he is quite open in his criticisms.

Here is a sample.

Shish: what are you blogging like this? I can see so many brackets. Is it some formula in algebra? And then, what does that expression ‘almost about 5 to 6 km’ mean?

Naradaa: Oh, that? That is to assert that I am not sure of the distance. My father used to say that it is only 4 km. But when I asked my grandma to come for the annual day function, she would say, ‘I am not coming. I can’t walk all those 10 - 12 kilometers.’

Shish: I will criticize wherever I find something wrong. Even if you remove me, I will make a comeback….