The boys who entered the Britannia Amritraj Tennis Scheme (BAT) were sometimes quite young. They all came from good homes and as such were often a little naïve. This was the case in most things but particularly when it came to girls. When it came to girls our team of ferocious competitors were painfully shy. One story helps to illustrate this.
It was quite late at night, I was getting ready for bed when a call came to our apartment. It was one of the boys, breathless and obviously very excited. “Sir, you must come, something terrible has happened”. I asked what it was but kept getting “Sir, just come, just come”. Robert Smith, my fellow coach at the program, and I couldn’t work out what could have caused such a reaction. The boys were not allowed to use the phone without permission, and certainly not at this time of night. Was it related to a boy’s health? But if that was the case why couldn’t they explain that over the phone? What could have happened to create such a reaction?
Rob and I walked the 10 minute walk to the BAT House where the boys lived. We were trying to imagine during the walk what all this could be about and thinking that perhaps a flying saucer had landed on the BAT House roof!
When we rounded the corner on their street, two of the boys starting running towards us. Faces white from shock and still unable to answer the question we asked “What was going on”? Again the reply, “Just come Sir, just come”. We entered the house. The younger boys stood off from us, mouths open, eyes staring, breaths panting, we had never seen them like this. One of the older boys said to us “You will never believe this Sir, you will never believe this” and led us to the back of the house to a locked room used by the house maids. They had a table wedged against the door which they were also using to look through a small glass window high above the door. “There Sir, look”! Again, the whole thing was becoming a bigger mystery by the minute but we were getting closer to finding out what had disturbed the boys so much. I got up onto the table top to peer in. The boys had locked the door to the room so this was the only way to discover the mystery inside. There inside the room, sitting on the bed was the BAT driver and a maid, looking thoroughly bored having been locked inside for what must have been the past 1 hour. I was confused, “so what’s the problem”? I asked. “See Sir, see, we caught them inside together”!
It was starting to become clearer. Perhaps there was a romance going on between the Driver and the Maid. They had been together in the room and one of the boys had discovered this. To young Indian boys from a sheltered up-bringing this was tantamount to a wild orgy; this was a male in a room with a female, alone!
We assembled the boys upstairs for a talk. It was difficult to decide whether the talk was to be a “Birds & Bees” talk or a “well done, you’ve caught the rascals” type of talk. I think Rob and I decided on telling them that these sorts of things happen sometimes, we would handle it in the morning.
The mystery had been solved and it was time for bed. Another day in the BAT program was coming to a close!
No comments:
Post a Comment