The Game They Won

As a child I was fond of reading about places that I dreamt of travelling to. 
Geography. I had this geography book, which was the only text book from my 5th grade in school that I still had. My parents could not afford to send me to school after that year.

But there was never enough space in a home as over-crowded as mine to spread out and just read. So I’d escape my daily chores and run away to the ‘maidan’ near my home and spread out there.

I was a quiet child. I liked to watch the game of cricket being played rather than play it myself. So I’d sit and watch my friends play their hearts out, run around out of happiness for the open, endless ground.

Then one day some rich looking people came and took over our ground to play a game of their own, the rules of which we didn’t understand.

They started laying restrictions on our usage of our own space. Soon, they wouldn’t let us in at all. 

I watched as a fence came up around the ground followed by a club attached to it.
And then I watched a very select number of people being allowed entry to the ground that was so very open.

I imagine what these people do inside that they can’t do in the open like my friends played cricket. They stole from me the only space in the world I had attachment to.
We were forced to move to the streets in our leisure hours. There wasn’t enough space to play and one day my brother got seriously injured in a car accident while fielding.

Now we just sit around, gambling and smoking our time away.

The game was over. They had won.