Excerpt from the chapter Dashed Dreams
Punnoose became very angry and started shouting as he recovered from his fall, pointing at Navas and running up to him, and the twins joined him as well. Punnoose’s entourage was watching the game from the sidelines, and they jumped onto the field as well to help out their master who paid for their drinks at the Alankar Bar. Surprisingly, they were carrying sticks, and it seemed they had come prepared in case a fight erupted with the host team. The tournament organizers failed to remove a threat that could have been identified easily, as there was no need for anyone to show up at the playground with sticks. Seeing Punnoose’s entourage with sticks in their hands and closing in, Navas and the rest of the club members ran away, as they knew they could not do much against them. John Mathew tried to intervene but could not stop the goons chasing the hapless host team members in their own backyard, and clearly the match got out of his control.
The Kairali team ran toward the compound wall of a house next to the school, jumped over it, and continued their run, but the nutmeg and clove trees and banana-tree clusters filling the yard and its uneven ground slowed them down. Punnoose and the twins soon caught up with Navas and started hitting him hard, first with their fists and then with palm fronds lying around and the sticks they carried. Navas tried to take it without offering any resistance, hoping that it would stop after Punnoose and his supporters were done meting out the punishment to him. But it turned out to be very violent and relentless, and he started crying loudly because he could not take the beating from many adults using their strong hands and sticks anymore. He also realized that he was being stripped naked by one of them standing around and that was too much for him to be silent.
When Abbas heard that gut-wrenching cry, he regretted that he had not looked out for his little brother, who had been left to a bunch of wild dogs chasing him like a pack. Abbas ran back and saw his brother lying naked on the ground under a short but sprawling cocoa tree, in bad shape, and Punnoose and his supporters, especially the twins, were still not done with him. He feared his brother could be sexually assaulted as well, as he noticed that some of them standing around were leering at Navas’s well-sculpted body, which showed some bruises, and he wondered why Navas had been stripped naked by them.