Dreams and Birds, and Cricket at the Dentist’s

Friday night

A lone bird screeched once into the middle of the night and fell silent. All was still again, but I’d been pulled out of sleep for good, so I lay awake and tried to watch the zinging thoughts that raged in my mind. At three, a bunch of birds quarrelled and went back to sleep. I drifted into shallow sleep myself until the tweets and twitter of dawn coaxed me awake.

Saturday morning

The needle was long, and the barrel huge, so my jaw died for a while. The Dentist tore into my teeth, all the while speaking with his assistant about Kumble’s fantastic century yesterday, and of matches to come in Gwalior and in Bangalore—“Kumble is a bad fielder,” he insisted. His assistant praised Dhoni’s game: “Impatience,” the doctor said. “Strategy,” she corrected her senior softly, not wanting to win the argument. An old match played overhead on television; in the front room young women-doctors teased and sparred in sing-song.

Image: Gustavo Ardon, Unsplash