Chapter 49:

Reunion

64


Mumbai City

Maharashtra State

India

Karan Singh woke up in the morning to find his best friend Lokesh Kumar’s phone ringing. “Hey, Loki,” he said. “Get up, man. Someone called Danny Reynolds wants to talk to you!”

“Don’t answer the call,” said Lokesh sleepily.

“Why?”

“Just don’t.”

“I’m guessing this is your teammate, and you don’t want to talk to him.”

Lokesh didn’t answer.

Karan swiped up to answer the call. “Shut up and talk to the guy, Loki. No excuses!”

“Hello? Hello? Lokesh?” said the man, Danny Reynolds, in an American accent.

“Yes, sir,” answered Lokesh.

“How are you doing, kid? How’s the recovery coming?”

Lokesh thought for a minute. “It doesn’t hurt anymore. I’m still wearing a metal brace to support the knee. Can’t run or jump. Going through physiotherapy.”

“You’ll get better,” said Dan confidently. “We’ll make an amazing run next season!”

“Next season…” said Lokesh.

He didn’t know if he wanted to go back next season.

*

The NBA commissioner was announcing the awards for that season of the NBA. It was a long list, and quite a boring one at that. (To Lokesh, at least.)

“The 2027 NBA Most Valuable Player Award goes to,” he read a placard. “Josh Okongo! Of the Baltimore Barrage!”

Josh leapt up and hugged his teammates. “Yeah, who else?” thought Lokesh.

Josh gave a long speech about mentality and sacrifice. “Blah blah blah,” thought Lokesh. “What sacrifice?”

“The NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award goes to,” he read the placard. “Lewis Ronald! Of the Las Vegas Decks!”

A few minutes later, he read out another placard. “The NBA Most Improved Player of the Year Award goes to, Trent Clarke! Of the Los Angeles Stars!”

“Good for him,” thought Lokesh.

“The NBA Rookie of the Year Award goes to,” the NBA commissioner read the placard.

“Keon Jordan Jr, of the Houston Spacewalkers,” thought Lokesh.

Lokesh Kumar! Of the Houston Spacewalkers!” announced the NBA commissioner.

"What?" said Lokesh, as Karan hugged him. "That's the Loki I know!"

Lokesh received a call from the NBA. It was a congratulatory video call and an interview. Lokesh answered everything unenthusiastically and slowly. He didn’t seem very happy as he hung up.

“What’s the point?” he mused

*

Using some of Karan’s friends and their friends in the area of Bandra East, Mumbai, Lokesh found out some details about what Neha had been up to and what her life was like after he abruptly hung up the phone on her after their 10th grade exams.

Disturbing details, at that.

After their PUC (12th grade), Neha, with the aim of becoming a neurosurgeon, had aced her PUC exams, taken the NEET (1), MCAT (2), GRE (3), and IELTS (4) exams. Not only had she received top scores, she had gotten accepted to universities like UCLA and Yale.

But, Neha’s parents didn’t trust her. They felt that a girl like her who was always bubbly, chirpy, and perky like her would make too many “mistakes” down the line and bring shame on their family. They felt that a person like her who was so confident and cheerful would never be “submissive” later in life.

That was where Neha’s hell began.

With all these fears in their heads, Neha’s parents refused to let her study further as she would slip out of their control. They had seen her invite boys (i.e. Lokesh) to their house and watch sports with them. They’d seen the way men stared at her on the streets.

They’d seen enough.

In their paranoia, they’d forced her into getting married to a person they knew in their circles. This would, in their opinion, make her the submissive woman that she should be. The marriage was short-lived and an unhappy one. Her ex-husband had also refused to let her study neuroscience. He made her cook and clean “like a woman should do.” Even though poor Neha went through her tasks obediently, the man still wasn’t satisfied.

He had his issues with his wife from the start. It all started with her height. Neha stood at 173 centimeters (5’8). Even though that might not seem very tall, Neha towered above the average Indian man, her husband included. This made him jealous and insecure.

It then continued to her personality. Her bouncy, cheery, and upbeat nature and the way she animatedly chatted with everyone made him even more diffident and apprehensive. He began to accuse her of being promiscuous to every other man that showed up, just because she was lively. He went even further and directly accused her of infidelity towards him, despite the fact that the poor girl had done absolutely nothing of the sort. The last straw in their marriage came when he began to physically and mentally harass her. Her parents told her to stay silent and take the torture. But months of being beaten up by her inebriated husband later, he made the final decision for them.

The entire fiasco culminated in a nasty divorce between the two of them. Neha’s parents and relatives believed the husband’s accusations of her disloyalty and started to insult, berate, and badly chastise the poor woman.

They blamed her completely for the divorce.

For absolutely nothing.

And that was the state Lokesh had seen her in.

*

He was also told that she liked teaching basketball to kids at her apartment complex. He knew how sad she probably was, and she’d have to deal with her pain.

Lokesh didn’t want her do deal with her pain alone.

So he set off to meet her.

Lokesh walked into the basketball court where Neha was teaching a bunch of kids to shoot. Looking at her face after so long, Lokesh suddenly remembered how beautiful she was, how elegant she was. He wanted to go straight in, introduce himself, and hug her. But he held himself back.

He slowly walked up to her. “Hey, miss?” he said. Neha turned to see him. She was surprised to see a tall, handsome fellow behind her. “Yes?” she said.

Lokesh was struck with Déjà vu.

This was exactly how he had first tried to speak with Neha back in high school.

“Umm…I like basketball too. Can you teach me to play?” he asked, just like old times.

“I usually teach kids, but alright, I guess,” she said. “You’re pretty tall. You have the right type of body for the game. Guess you’ll do well.”

“Thanks.”

“So only tall people can play?” asked one of the kids sadly.

“No way,” said Lokesh firmly. “There are shorter players who have dominated the game!”

In his mind, he was thinking of Kobayashi Ichikawa.

Neha taught him how to dribble and do a layup. She was kind of shocked by how slow he was. But she went through with it anyway.

After her new protégée made ten layups in a row, she was satisfied. She decided to teach him how to shoot and asked him to bring her the ball.

As he handed her the ball, she noticed his hands. They were massive. “Wow,” she said out loud. “Your hands are pretty huge. I once knew a guy like that with absolutely massive hands. He quit talking to me a long time ago. Took his academic failure way too seriously. That idiot!” she said.

She suddenly wondered what it was about this guy that made her spill her biggest secrets to him. But she couldn’t stop, and started to cry. Lokesh gently signaled the kids to leave them alone and leave Neha to him. The kids were pretty smart and they understood, quickly vacating the court.

“He left me!” she sobbed. “My husband left me! My family left me! My…”

She stopped.

And stared right into his face.

Huge hands, a comforting personality, and most importantly, the way he’d asked her to teach him reminded her of someone…

“Lokesh?” she said softly. “Is that you?”

“Took you long enough.”

Neha burst into more tears. Then, she punched him in the chest.

“Ow,” he said.

“Idiot! Where were you? What have you been up to?” she asked.

“Nothing much.”

“Finally decided to drop by from your planet and say hello, Alien?”

Lokesh grinned. “I never actually said this to you, Neha. Congratulations on topping the state in the 10th grade exams!”

Neha cried and collapsed into his arms. For the first time ever, she felt a comforting feeling that she could finally express herself in front of this man.

Unabashedly.

*

“What do you mean he’s quit, kid?” asked Danny Reynolds.

Lokesh was in the shower, and Karan had answered the call. With a heavy heart, he’d relayed Lokesh’s decision to Dan, who wasn’t happy.

“He feels he’s let you down, sir. A lot has been going on in his life. His girl left him. He gets injured in a qualifier…”

“That’s no excuse, kid. He’s the face of this team! He can’t quit! And what’s this about a girl?”

“I understand, sir.”

“Call me Dan,” said Dan. “You’re Karan, right?”

“Yeah,” said Karan. “What can we do, Dan?”

“Connect me to him on a phone call again,” said Dan determinedly. “It’s about time he knew who his teammate, Danny Reynolds, really is!”

*

Lokesh sat with Neha outside her house. She had suddenly called him to her place with a serious tone. Lokesh knew this wasn’t going to be a fun conversation.

“I was looking for you on Instagram,” she said. “And I saw your account. You had about two million followers and a verified account.”

“Oh crud,” thought Lokesh.

“I got curious and googled you,” she continued. “You’re an NBA player?”

“I was.”

You won the Rookie of the Year Award?

“Umm…yeah.”

“Alien, that’s amazing!” she exclaimed. “You’re in the NBA!”

“I was.”

“What?”

Lokesh inhaled. “I can’t do it, Neha. I’m horribly injured. My career is possibly over!”

He showed her his knee and the metal support he had on. Neha was alarmed by the injury. But she was even more shocked by Lokesh’s mellowed-out personality.

“So you got injured in a qualifier.”

“Yeah.”

“Then you bail out on your team.”

“Umm…no! But…”

“Tell me when you intend to return to the NBA, Alien,” she said angrily. “And we can be friends again!”

She got up and left.

*

Keon Jordan Jr returned home to find his mom and dad waiting for him. He suddenly felt too ashamed to face them. He just walked by them without saying a word and opened the door to his room.

“Wait,” said Keon Jordan Sr.

Keon Jr turned around.

“Come here, son.”

Keon obeyed.

“Look at your phone, son.”

Keon was now curious. He looked into his iPhone. With a feeling of pleasant surprise, he noticed that 60,000 Dollars had just been deposited in his bank account.

By his parents.

“But why?” he asked.

“For your fine, and for the medical bills of those referees, security, and others.”

“But why?”

His mom, Rochelle, smiled. “You’ve been an arrogant brat all your life. You never cared about your teammates and always played for yourself. You never even acknowledged your teammates.”

“But this time,” said Keon Sr, evidently proud of his son. “You took a stand. You stood up for your teammate. You were willing to physically fight a bigger, stronger man for his sake!”

“We don’t condone violence, son,” said Rochelle. “But we’re proud of you! Your fine, it’s on us.”

“Don’t ever fight again,” smiled Keon Sr. “All the battle must be done through basketball. And you can absolutely destroy that dirty player!”

Keon Jr started to cry. He went and hugged both his parents. They let out grunts of surprise. This was the first time he’d shown any affection towards them since he was six.

But they understood.

“Teach me, guys,” he said determinedly. “Teach me all your moves. Teach me all those moves that made you the best centers of your time!”

“I’ll make Deandre Washington pay!!”

*

Karan shoved Lokesh’s phone into his hands. “Speak,” he ordered.

“Hello?” said Lokesh. He was still sad from his conversation with Neha.

“Lokesh, it’s me,” said Danny Reynolds. “I’ll get straight to it. Will you recover?”

“Yes,” said Lokesh.

“Then why won’t you come back?”

“Umm…”

“Because you’re too ashamed to face us?” said Dan. “Because of one small injury in your first season?”

“I lost you all the game!”

“We don’t blame you,” said Dan. “Why do you blame yourself?”

“BECAUSE I FAILED!” yelled Lokesh. “I FAILED AT STUDIES! I FAILED IN LOVE! AND I FAILED AT BASKETBALL! I WAS THE LAST PICK OF THE DRAFT! AND I PERFORMED LIKE THE LAST PICK! I LOST AT EVERYTHING!”

Dan laughed.

“You think you’re the only one? A kid like you thinks he’s the only one who lost at life, and lost at love? You think you’re the only one?”

“What do you mean, Dan?”

Dan smiled. “You think you were the only failure?

“Huh?”

“You’re sad because you were the last pick? You’re sad because you lost some games?”

“What happened with you, Dan? When were you a failure?”

Dan inhaled. He had to tell him. Lokesh had to know.

That he wasn’t alone.

It all started when I went undrafted in the 2012 NBA draft, fifteen years ago!”

Endnotes

1. NEET: The National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (Undergraduate) or NEET, formerly the All India Pre-Medical Test, is an all India pre-medical entrance test for students who wish to pursue undergraduate courses in medicine.

2. MCAT: The Medical College Admission Test is a computer-based standardized examination for prospective medical students in the United States, Australia, Canada, and Caribbean Islands. It is designed to assess problem solving, critical thinking, written analysis and knowledge of scientific concepts and principles.

3. GRE: The Graduate Record Examinations is a standardized test that is an admissions requirement for many graduate schools in the United States and Canada and few in other countries.

4. IELTS: The International English Language Testing System, or IELTS, is an international standardized test of English language proficiency for non-native English language speakers.

Author’s Note

Oh my gosh, guys! 50 chapters up and counting! I’d like to thank everyone who’s stuck with the story so far! Your support is what motivates me to write!

Please continue to support and stick with the story!

It’s only gonna get better!

Cheers!

~srj5