The Leap Of Faith, and the fall of pain.

Ever-since I was a kid, i was taught that i could achieve whatever i believed in. So when I was running up to the edge of the 12 feet high shed of my house when I was 10, with the intentions to jump of it, this was the thought that was circulating my mind.

Me and my cousin were playing cricket in the backyard of our house. It was usually just the two of us so we took turns batting and bowling. It was my turn of being the batsman, and i was really good at it. So when my cousin started the run up for his pacy bowling, i stiffed up my front leg and moved it a bit forward from its usual position. The ball was an obvious half volley on the off side, so i bent the knee of my back foot and got as low as possible, and i hit that ball with all my might.

The laws of physics suggested that the ball left the surface of the bat with quite an acceleration, the laws of ballistics suggested that the ball should have landed meters away, the laws of reflection showed that the ball has landed on the shed of the garage after hitting several places and the laws of backyard cricket suggested that i was the one who has to fetch it.

I climbed up the pipes onto the shed, which was some 12 feet high from solid ground. I fetched the ball and threw it to the ground. And then i looked towards the other side of shed, where the lawn was. It just looked as an inmate would define the other side of the prison fence. I had always believed that i could do it but i had never tried to, as it just felt as if there was some sort of barrier between me, standing here and jumping to the lawn of my own house. My cousin, being a very sharp and cunning person, not to mention 3 years older than me, saw the thirst of the leap in my eyes, and just said these words to help me overcome that barrier:
“Come on Manu (my nick), just come down, you cant possibly jump”

I said
“Oh Obviously I can!”

He said
“Fine, PROVE IT”

I said
“YEAH I WILL ! “

I looked at the edge of the shed, it was some 20 feet away, the only thing between the edge of the shed and the lawn was about 15 feet of air, bricks, flower pots, vertical iron rods serving the purpose of the boundary of the lawn and some extremely spiky cactus plants. I started with soft steps then gained the momentum as i reached to the end of the shed. As i took the last step which was a bit vertical as a hypotenuse  the adrenaline was pumping, the heart was pounding, the body was confused, the view was darkening, the feet were not being felt, the hands were in a position as they belonged to batman and the brain was not working for if it was i would not have done such an idiotic act or at least would have thought it through.

The leap of faith ended in the fall of pain as I injured my lower back, broke my spectacles, cut my forehead and twisted my ankle. Every thing was disguise-able except for the cut on my forehead. How was I supposed to explain it. The best my cousin and I came up with was that he bowled the ball too fast and it hit my head, next thing i know, my head is bleeding.

The end result of all this incident was that i was banned from watching all Hollywood movies alone that included Jackie Chan