It was an hour before midnight, and it is strange how this night often comes back to me. The faces are always a little different, and I change them in and out at will, but the principal characters remain the same. The coach, sitting across me, and my closest friends in tennis class. And over plates of nasi lemak, we start to talk.
And conversation begins haltingly, as sentences are offered, with a little hesitation, hoping to find affirmation in what must have seemed like a rashly assembled gathering of strangers. While we were all classmates, most of us seldom talked to each other. If we did, it was a call across the net, for points, or a query to ask who was serving out the game.
And as it often does between mere acquaintances, conversation meanders. I steal a few looks at the girl sitting to the left of the coach. Her boredom is unmistakable, as she glances away every once in awhile, smiling at the dialogue taking place but not really partaking in any of it. I notice her hair, how it is still straight and perfectly in place after a long day, and two hours at the tennis courts.
In all classes, there's always one girl who's the looker, the one who gets all the guys interested. If there wasn't one, you were in the wrong class. And I remember the chats the guys used to have about her, about who would be the first one to ask her for her number, or ask her out. And like in most classes, no one does. Not during class anyway.
It was just the flavour of the day, a common topic between classmates searching for something everyone else might be interested in, and amongst guys, talking about girls always ensures a steady audience. It is not as though everyone isn't already checking out the way they run when they make their returns anyway.
Or how the guys are always only too happy to pair up with them, all in the spirit of fair play. Or maybe its because its awesome to check out their behinds as they wait at the service line, while you're standing at the baseline, always anything but ready. What's a few points for a view.
And suddenly, almost on cue, the coach starts talking about his life, dispelling the langruous cloud that had seemingly descended upon us all, a post-meal malady sometimes jokingly called "food coma". It is almost as though he has realised that our time is soon to pass, and in passing, he offers the best he has to give, so that if anything, that is what we may remember him by.
Perhaps, he understands that his duty as a coach is done, and now, he has become a friend, albeit one whom we are about to part ways with soon in the sea we call life.
And soon he has us listening raptly to his every word, in the palm of his hand. He talks about his younger days as a tennis player, as a junior champion, and as a guitarist in his own band. He was quite a charmer in his time. And he talks about how he met his wife, a story that never fails to capture the imagination. Perhaps because much of it is often embellished in one's memory, and more so over time, but such stories never fail to make one marvel at the happenstance.
And he talks about getting older. About being a teacher at a school where he wasn't appreciated, about how he toughed it out till one day, he could take it no more, and left. And then he made his way to NIE, where now he currently teaches students like us tennis, fit and spry for a man of his age, because it is the one thing that still gets him going.
At this point, I notice that it is getting late. It is close to midnight, but none of us show any sign of needing to be anywhere else, despite the fact that maybe, we are stuck in a corner of Boon Lay, and some of us live really far away. It is almost as though this has become a moment where time has stopped, one of those places you come back to in dreams, where everything is strangely fixed in place, where people live out the same stories, again and again.
And the coach notices it too. He begins gathering his things. And knowing that most of us are final year students, he wishes us the best in our endeavours. I take down his contact details, and as all of us start to make our move, I ask him one question. And strangely enough, no matter how many times I relive this dream, this moment, it never changes.
"Coach, after having lived for so long, what do you have to say about life?"
"Well? I'm just passing through."