Can't promise you the world, but... (A Rohit-Shreyas Fanfiction)

Chapter 11

2022

Whatever Shreyas had ever had to deal with in his life, he'd never found himself lacking confidence.

So this feeling...feeling like a complete failure...was new to him, and he didn't have any idea how to deal with it.

He tried pretending he hadn't seen the World Cup squad, and it didn't work, he kept thinking of it. He tried sleeping, and couldn't. He tried going for another walk, and couldn't go beyond two blocks. He tried watching two dozen web series, and closed each within the first five minutes, and eventually tossed away the tab, too.

Distraction wasn't going to work, it seemed.

Then he tried thinking, and it was worse.

A failure was all he was, and that he was a failure was all he could think.

_______________

Shresta took the whole thing with great indignation. She sat in front of the TV, watching the ongoing India-Australia T20 series and leering as the middle-order failed day after day, just like in the Asia Cup.

"What criteria do they set for selecting the teams, do you think?" she fumed.

"I assume...ability...form..." mumbled Shreyas.

"Form?" shouted Shresta. "Form? Have they seen the form lately?"

"Well, ability, then."

"You are more able than most of this squad, bhaiya," said Shresta furiously. "You're a way better player than three quarters of the people who have been making debuts and playing World Cups over you since before the lockdown, and if they can't see that, maybe you should have listened to mom and never gone into a stupid profession like this."

"Don't shout," their mother called down the stairs mildly.

"DON'T SHOUT? HOW CAN YOU NOT SHOUT, MOM? HOW CAN YOU NOT SHOUT WHEN THEY'VE BEEN DOING THIS SHIT TO BHAIYA FOR YEARS AND YEARS WHEN HE'S BETTER THAN NINETY. PERCENT. OF. THE. NEW. PLAYERS. OF. THE. TEAM!"

"You just said three-quarters," said Shreyas wearily.

"YES, VERY FUNNY. SHOULD I LAUGH? SHOULD I LAUGH!"

Shresta flounced out of the room and out of the house, hopefully to work off her temper. Everyone in their family had a bit of a genetic temper, but none's was as fierce as the youngest of the household.

But Shresta's rage had got Shreyas thinking, thoughts that had plagued him often all over his career.

She's right, I'm not bad. I am good enough. I could definitely play better than the middle order did in the Asia Cup. I've played better than them whenever I got the chance.

Shreyas frowned, thinking back to the past few years.

Yes, I could definitely play better than this middle order.

Then why are they playing, and not me?

Why are they in the team, and I'm the standby?

What do the selectors see in them, and see lacking in me that I am just a standby?

Rohit bhaiya will know...Rohit bhaiya will have a solution, like he always does...

And Shreyas had actually almost reached out for his phone before the realization dropped on him like a painful shower of stones--Rohit bhaiya WAS the one selecting the team.

He froze.

At first, Shreyas' indignation born from the feeling of being wrong drained away, and he felt a worse failure than ever. If even Rohit bhaiya kept him in the standby, there had to something wrong with him, something so wrong, so wrong that...

But it could not be the assumption that he would play worse than the middle order did in the just-concluded Asia Cup!

He would not. He knew he would not. And Rohit bhaiya ought to have known that, too.

If Rohit bhaiya had meant anything at all of what he'd been telling Shreyas over the years--"you are their best bet at the job"..."do you see your shots, Yas?"..."you're going to be India's greatest number 4 by next World Cup"...

The World Cup was in less than a year.

The. World Cup. Was. In. LESS THAN A YEAR.

He hadn't meant any of it.

Rohit bhaiya hadn't meant anything he'd said for so many years. He'd just been making a fool out of Shreyas, feeding him all that nonsense. Maybe he had a script. Maybe he used those on everyone in the name of 'feedback' and 'advice' and 'motivation.'

Shreyas noted he'd been captain of MI, at least, several years before he met him.

Yes, he'd definitely have a nice script chalked out for the juniors.

He made a fool out of me.

I'm not good enough, and he made me believe I was.

And he didn't say anything before dropping me from the squad for a World Cup.

Or if I am good enough, he dropped me anyway.

Without saying anything.

Shreyas did not know which of the two to believe. And maybe it didn't matter. Once you knew a person's word counts for nothing, it didn't matter what they'd meant and how much they'd lied and what the truth was.

All that mattered to Shreyas was that the person he'd believed Rohit bhaiya to be was nothing grazing reality. Possibly, he'd only existed inside Shreyas' head. Possibly Rohit bhaiya had meant it to, by all his lies over the years.

Or possibly Rohit bhaiya didn't care.

If he'd cared, he'd have called.

That was the least...the very least he could have done.

_________________

The first time Shreyas came face to face with Rohit was during the India-South Africa T20 series, the last T20 series before the World Cup, where the standbys were miraculously in the team again, maybe to give the actual squad rest.

"Morning, Yas," Rohit bhaiya said when they met over a late breakfast, in a perfectly, perfectly normal way.

It was two weeks after the World Cup squad had been announced, two weeks of resentment and fury swirling and growing inside Shreyas till it was a balloon so big he could not see beyond it.

If he had, maybe he'd have seen the dark circles under Rohit's eyes, and wondered if something was wrong. And even if nothing was wrong, he might have realized, at least, that Rohit bhaiya was very tired, not from lack of a day's sleep, but from everything, in general.

Shreyas returned the greeting, "Morning," in the shortest possible manner and retreated from the dining hall without breakfast.

He would much rather starve than spend a single more second talking to someone whose fake-sweet facade was the only thing he'd known, and whose real self he wasn't much interested in knowing.

He'd seen a glimpse of that real self, and he hated it, and he hated himself, too, for never having seen it before.

Lies and scripts and facades.

Yes, he'd choose starving to death over that any day.