Squash

It is the crucial point. I’m going to need this. I adjust my eyewear, a furtive, fervent sweep of the wrist. Wiping off the layers of tiny beads, gems, of perspiration, I’m glancing sidelong at my opponent, who’s holding up his racquet, with rebellious confidence. I stand straight up, shoulders back. It’s as much a psychological struggle as a physical one.

He gives me a quick nod, beckoning me to get on with our duet within the four walls, an unchoreographed spontaneous ballad of lunges - forward, back, left, right. Regrets? Always, there is regret. Wrong shot? In this gladiatorial fight, right is wrong and wrong is right – lines blur, distinctions collapse. Boom, back to the T. Bam, back to the T. Straight? Cross? Side-wall?

Every muscle moves in a multitude of directions. It’s a struggle, a long, drawn-out struggle. Fear, anticipation, joy, exhaustion. With every return the court becomes larger – even in the four walls, there is unbridled liberation, there is catharsis, there is purification. Perhaps my whole world is encompassed within these four walls.

Forward and back, the ad-lib foxtrot continues. It’s as much of a performance as a match, as much of a duet as a duel. The spectators sit at the edge of their seats, my opponent’s band of brothers and next to them five boy-men clad in green, black and white bite their lips.

This is not my dance, this is not my battle, this is our battle, our sport.

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