pepsi

Imagine.
Not the Lennon wala imagine.
Normal, small-scale imagine.
You're back in school, and it's the summer holidays. If you are a schoolkid reading this, I and my readership hate you. So there.
Haan, so school time, summer holidays. 11 in the morning. You've just got up.
Had breakfast. Now that we're imagining anyways, I vote for sheera. With pickles by the side.
Breakfast done, and the first yell comes up from down below.
Gully cricket time.
Until everybody assembles, there are around three or four of you, who practise shots, talk of this that and the other. About how Tendulkar scored that awesome century the other day. And got out like a duffer in the next match. As an aside, do you realize that three different generations have grown up saying exactly that?
About the match that you played last week in twilight, the one that went down to the last over, last ball, with only one wicket in hand.
About your classes and tuitions. About that awesome vada-pav. About the hot girl in the next building.
About other equally crucial stuff.
Until slowly but surely, there are around ten to fifteen of you guys, all ready to play cricket. And within the confines of your locality, by the rules forced upon you by the architechture, you start to play game after game of that great Indian past-time.
And then you shall quarrel, and dispute, and fight and play, and yell and appeal, and spend the next three hours playing match after match after match, changing teams, breaking windows, losing balls and in general, having the time of your lives.
And then, when it's all over, you shell out whatever coins you have your pockets and pool in to get fifteen pepsis.
Not the bottles.
You remember those long lollies of ice, wrapped in plastic, flavoured with cola, orange, and chocolate? Priced at Rs. 0.50, Rs. 1, and Rs. 2.
Bite open at a corner at the top and suck. Sit with buddies and talk again.
Day after day of this, until school strikes again.
Nostalgic and all.
But I wouldn't mind a pepsi right now.