Spectator Sport

I could not really sleep till 2am last night. Tons were going through my mind without a single theme, it was a simple collage, a series of random association.

Images of the earlier basketball game came to mind. Almost ten years back, someone remarked that I was pretty expressionless during basketball games, revealing neither excitement nor joy when I make my shots.

The shots, I forget; the passes, the steals and the blocks stay.

So, what really excites me about basketball?

I guess I like watching the game.

It is about watching and reading the slightest movements, the subtle signals, the strategies and the body language. Be it a block or steal, it is about thinking on and off your feet. And having your body keeping up with the brains.

And there are the memorable passes; the ones which were so very delicate and exquisite; the very ones which your heart stopped for. It is sheer precision, in step with your every breath, keeping in pace with the recipient's trajectory, getting the ball to be a hair's breath away from grasping fingers and into the hands of the one.

It is watching reality unfolding as you willed it to, in a moment so fragile that a single breath will shatter it. It is all about getting the ball to be slightly beyond everybody else's reach but one.

And there is that pair of eyes.

It is those eyes that tells you that there is a connection, an unspoken understanding that will start it all.

It is that look.

It is that glint which shines so brightly that the rest of the world becomes a mere shadow.

It is that silence.

An understanding in a complete vacuum; a connection made in a split second and two bodies dance to a tune which no one else can hear, complementing each other perfectly, one picking up where the other left off, to complete the final stanza to the poem, all of which started with a look.

It is not about whether points were scored, but about the split second when two minds were transparent, communicating at a level transcending thought.

Maybe all these sound incredulous and I sound mad, but do not take my word for it.

Try it.

I am a guy who sport myopia of at least four hundred degrees in each eye, compounded with astigmatism of over a hundred degrees in one... and I play without my glasses. I can hardly distinguish the facial features of my team mates standing within two feet, what can I possibly know about the look?

Play with me and find out then.