---
Ramesh Dube came home at seven-fifteen every evening.
This was not an approximation. It was a law of the universe, as reliable as the tides and the 8:42 fast local from Dadar to Churchgate. Seven-fifteen. The sound of the front door latch, the thud of his office bag on the hook behind the door, the short exhale of a man setting down the weight of the day.
Shivam had grown up measuring time by that sound.
He was sitting at the dining table when his father walked in — homework open in front of him, pencil in hand, looking for all the world like a boy doing his schoolwork and not like a 30-year-old man who had been carefully rehearsing a conversation for the past six hours.
His father looked exactly as he remembered from this age. Not the older man Shivam had last seen — heavier, greyer, with reading glasses he kept losing and a cough from thirty years of Bombay air. This man was forty-one, lean and straight-backed, with a thick moustache and the unhurried, self-possessed manner of someone who had made peace with his life without surrendering to it.
"Shivam." He ruffled his son's hair as he passed. A ritual. A small, unremarkable, irreplaceable ritual.
Shivam's throat tightened.
*Later,* he told himself. *Later.*
He waited through dinner. His mother had made rice and dal and a small sabzi. They ate the way they always had — his father asking about school in the brief, genuine way of a man who was tired but paying attention. His mother providing the running commentary on the colony's daily theatre. Himself eating and listening.
Except tonight he was also thinking about every word he was about to say.
After dinner, his father settled into the single armchair in the small sitting room with the newspaper. This was the window. Shivam knew it. Twenty minutes before his father's eyes got heavy and the newspaper dropped. He pulled a chair across and sat down.
His father looked up over the top of the paper.
"Baba," Shivam said. "I want to talk to you about cricket."
Ramesh Dube folded the paper. He gave his son his full attention — because that was who he was, a man who, when he looked at you, actually looked at you.
"Talk," he said.
Shivam had decided on the way home from school that the only viable approach was honesty. Not the whole truth — *that* truth was not an option — but the honest expression of what he actually wanted, stated as clearly and directly as he could manage. No childish pleading. No tantrums or dramatics. Just: this is what I need, and this is why.
He folded his hands on his knees — a gesture that was perhaps slightly too composed for a 10-year-old, but there was nothing to be done about that.
"I want to train seriously," he said. "Not gully cricket. Real training. A proper coach, the MCA programme, nets. I want to do this properly from now."
His father studied him. "You've always liked cricket."
"I don't just like it," Shivam said. "I want to play for India."
A beat of silence.
In his previous life, he had said these words at roughly this same age and his father had smiled the gentle, indulgent smile of a parent absorbing an enormous dream with kindness. The smile that meant: *I believe you believe that, son.*
This time, Ramesh Dube did not smile indulgently. He looked at his son's face — at the stillness there, the directness — and something shifted in his expression. He was reading something he hadn't expected to read.
"Every boy in this colony wants to play for India," his father said. Not dismissively. Testing.
"I know," Shivam said. "I'm not every boy."
Another beat of silence. Longer.
"That's not a small thing to say," his father said.
"No," Shivam agreed. "I know it's not."
Ramesh Dube set the newspaper down on the side table. He leaned forward slightly in the armchair, forearms on his knees, and looked at his son with the full, unguarded attention that Shivam had not seen on his father's face in twenty years. The attention that meant: *I am taking you seriously.*
"Tell me what you mean by 'properly'," he said.
Shivam had prepared for this.
"The MCA has age-group trials in June," he said. "Under-12s. I want to go. But before that I need net sessions — real ones, with a coach, not just the compound. There's a cricket academy at Shivaji Park. Three days a week, early morning before school. It costs—" he paused, because he genuinely didn't remember the 2001 fees, "I don't know exactly what it costs. But I want to find out."
His father was quiet for a moment. Then: "How do you know about the MCA trials?"
"I asked Vijay's older brother. He plays for the school team."
This was a lie. He had known about the MCA Under-12 trial schedule from his own previous career. But it was a plausible lie, and it held.
His father nodded slowly. "And the Shivaji Park academy — who told you about that?"
"I've seen the boys there in the mornings when we go past on the bus."
Also a reconstruction. But true in the sense that he had seen it, in another life, from a bus, many times.
His father picked up the newspaper again. But he didn't open it. He sat holding it, thinking.
Shivam waited. He had learned, in thirty years of life, that the hardest part of asking for something important was the waiting. The urge to fill silence with more words. He resisted it.
Finally, his father put the newspaper aside again.
"Your mother's brother played Ranji," he said. "You know that."
"I know." His uncle Dilip — he had known him as an old man with a bad hip who told the same three cricket stories at every family function. But Dilip Karkare had played four Ranji Trophy matches for Mumbai in the early 1980s before a shoulder injury ended things. It was a family fact, carried with quiet pride.
"He has contacts at Shivaji Park," his father said. "Old ones, but contacts."
Shivam had not known this. Or if he had known it once, he had never thought to use it. In his previous life, he had been put into the system through a school coach's recommendation — a slower, less connected path.
"Can we ask him?" Shivam said.
His father looked at him. Then he did something he hadn't done yet in this conversation. He smiled. Not the gentle, indulgent smile. A different one. Quieter. More private. The smile of a man recognising something.
"I'll call him this weekend," he said.
He picked up the newspaper and opened it. Conversation over. Decision made.
Shivam sat for a moment longer, then got up to go back to his room.
"Shivam."
He turned.
His father was looking at him over the newspaper. "When you say you're not every boy — you understand what that means? What it costs?"
"Yes," Shivam said. "I understand."
His father held his gaze for one more second. Then he nodded, once, and went back to his paper.
Shivam walked back to his room and sat on his cot in the dark.
His hands were steady. His chest felt like it was full of something warm and heavy and impossible to name.
He had a plan. He had a father who was going to call his uncle. He had a perfect knee.
He had seven weeks until the MCA Under-12 trials.
He lay back. The ceiling fan turned.
*Seven weeks,* he thought. *Let's get to work.*
---
Three days later, on a Sunday morning, Ramesh Dube took his son on the bus to Shivaji Park.
Shivam sat by the window and watched Mumbai slide past. He had taken this exact bus route hundreds of times. The gulmohur trees lining the road, the old buildings with their elaborate facades, the smell of the sea getting sharper as they got closer to the park, the sound of the city doing its Sunday morning things — quieter than weekdays but never actually quiet, because Mumbai never actually went quiet.
He watched it all with the focused, slightly aching attention of someone who knows the value of ordinary things.
Shivaji Park in the morning was what it had always been: the most democratic sporting ground in the world, probably. A vast, flat green expanse ringed by the sea on one side and the city on the other, carved up into overlapping cricket matches that somehow never quite collided, a hundred games running simultaneously, the sound of leather on willow and appeals and arguments and laughter layering over each other into a continuous, gloriously chaotic hymn.
Shivam stood at the edge of it and breathed.
He had played here. In his previous life, later, older — a Kanga League match, a few net sessions. He knew this ground. But standing here at ten years old, small and light with everything still ahead of him, it felt different. Larger. More full of possibility.
His father put a hand on his shoulder briefly. They walked toward the far nets.
---
Dilip Karkare was sixty-three years old, built like a man who had once been a serious cricketer and hadn't entirely stopped believing it. He had a shaved head, a neat white beard, and the assessing, sceptical eyes of someone who had spent decades watching young boys tell him they were going to play for India.
He looked at Shivam the way a craftsman looks at raw material. Neither encouraging nor discouraging. Just: *let's see what we have.*
"Pick up the bat," he said.
They were at the far net, away from the main morning session. His uncle had arranged it through an old colleague, a coach named Suresh Kadam who ran one of the Shivaji Park academies. Kadam sir himself wasn't there this morning — it was Sunday, an informal session — but Dilip had come, and that was enough for now.
Shivam picked up the bat leaning against the net post. A proper bat, English willow, worn but well-kept. He took his stance.
His uncle walked around him slowly. Examined the grip. Examined the stance. Said nothing for almost thirty seconds.
Then: "Who taught you to stand like that?"
"Nobody," Shivam said. "I just stood how it felt right."
His uncle made a sound that was neither approval nor disapproval. He crouched and looked at Shivam's feet. He looked at the angle of the bat. He stood up and looked at the head position.
"Your weight is wrong," he said. "Too far forward. You'll be early on pace and late on spin."
In his previous life, Shivam had been told this exact thing by a coach at age fourteen. Four years wasted. He filed it away.
"Show me," he said.
His uncle blinked. Boys usually argued, or looked embarrassed, or went quiet. They didn't say *show me* with that matter-of-fact directness.
He showed him. He adjusted Shivam's back foot, moved the weight slightly onto the balls of the feet, leveled the head position.
Shivam felt the difference immediately. The 30-year-old understanding of body mechanics in him recognised the correction. *Yes. That's right. That's the base.*
"Better?" his uncle asked.
"Yes," Shivam said. "I can feel the difference."
His uncle looked at him. That assessing, sceptical look — but something in it had shifted slightly.
"Okay," he said. "Let me throw a few."
He threw underarm from ten feet — not trying to beat him, just giving him something to play. Shivam played each ball as correctly as his small body would allow. Straight bat. Head still. Weight transferring properly, or close to properly, on each shot.
After twelve balls, his uncle stopped.
He stood with the remaining balls in his hand and looked at his great-nephew with an expression that was difficult to read.
"How long have you been playing?" he said.
"Since I could hold a bat," Shivam said.
"Who have you been watching?"
"Sachin. Dravid. Everyone."
His uncle nodded slowly. "You watch and you think about what you're watching."
"Yes."
"Most boys watch and just feel excited. They don't think."
"I think," Shivam said simply.
His uncle was quiet for a moment. Then he turned to Ramesh, who had been standing a few feet back, watching with his hands in his pockets.
"He needs Kadam," Dilip said. "Properly. Three mornings a week, minimum. And tell Kadam I sent him — not as a favour, as a recommendation. There's a difference."
Ramesh Dube nodded once.
Dilip turned back to Shivam. "You'll bowl for me now."
Shivam picked up a ball and walked back to his mark.
---
He bowled eight deliveries.
His pace, predictably, was nothing — a 10-year-old's medium pace, barely 50 km/h if that. But three of the eight hit the line and length his uncle had indicated before he started. And his uncle watched the action very carefully, not the pace.
"Front arm," he said after the third ball. "Keep it high. You're letting it collapse."
Shivam nodded. He adjusted. The next ball — higher front arm, better hip rotation — skidded through lower off the surface.
His uncle said nothing. But he made a small mark in the dirt with his foot, as if noting a coordinate.
After the eighth ball he walked over and stood beside Shivam, looking down at him.
"You know what your problem is going to be?" he said.
"What?"
"You already think you know things." He paused. "But you're actually right about most of them. That's going to make it hard for coaches to teach you, because half the time you'll be correct and they'll be wrong, and you'll know it, and you'll have to decide what to do with that."
Shivam looked up at him. "What should I do with that?"
His uncle almost smiled. "Listen anyway. Take what's useful. Learn to tell the difference." He handed the remaining balls to Shivam. "That'll take time. And it'll require you to be humble even when you're right. Can you do that?"
Shivam thought about his previous life. About the coaches who had helped him and the ones who had held him back, and how he had never quite worked out in time which was which.
"I can try," he said.
"Good enough," said Dilip Karkare.
---
On the bus home, his father sat beside him and looked out the window at the city going past.
After a while, he said: "Your uncle doesn't give recommendations lightly."
"I know," Shivam said.
"He said the last boy he recommended to Kadam played for Mumbai Under-19."
Shivam nodded.
His father looked at him. "First session with Kadam is Tuesday morning. Five-thirty. I'll take you."
"You don't have to—"
"I'll take you," his father said. Final. Simple.
Shivam looked out the window.
The gulmohur trees went past. The old buildings. The sea smell fading as they moved inland.
He had a coach. He had his father. He had six weeks and four days until the MCA Under-12 trials.
The system panel appeared softly in the corner of his vision — not intruding, just noting.
```
════════════════════════════════════
MILESTONE UNLOCKED
════════════════════════════════════
First Coach Contact ✓
Shivaji Park Access ✓
Family Support Secured ✓
NEXT MILESTONE:
Complete first formal
net session with coach.
POWER HITTING skill
remains locked until
Batting attribute
reaches [D] level.
Current: [F] Foundational.
Keep working.
════════════════════════════════════
```
The city moved past the bus window.
Shivam Dube, 10 years old, watched it go by and thought about Tuesday morning.
*Five-thirty,* he thought. *Fine. I've been waking up at four for nets since I was nineteen. Five-thirty is a holiday.*
For the first time in either life, he was looking forward to a morning.
---
**— End of Chapter 3 —**
---
```
★ CAREER STATS — END OF CHAPTER 3 ★
OFFICIAL (Competitive matches only)
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Format Mat Inns Runs HS Avg SR 100s 50s Wkts
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────
First Class 0 0 0 — — — 0 0 0
List A 0 0 0 — — — 0 0 0
T20 0 0 0 — — — 0 0 0
INFORMAL LOG (Gully/Colony — tracked separately)
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Games : 1 | Runs : 14 | Dismissals : 0 | Wkts : 0
TRAINING LOG
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Net sessions (formal) : 0
Shivaji Park sessions : 1 (informal, with uncle)
Coach assigned : Suresh Kadam (pending start)
First session : Tuesday, March 20, 2001
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────
```