Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Lucky greens

While waiting to tee off at the 14th hole of the TNGF-Cosmopolitan Club golf course last week, I noticed that the tops of the walls had a new glint to them. Okay, I haven't been on the course for a while, but the wall-tops aren't that old, anyway. This 'architechtural' feature used to be very widespread, but seems to have dropped out of favour, at least in some of the larger residential /commercial building complexes.

As kids playing cricket, the rule around such glass-topped walls was simple: if the batsman hit the ball over it, not only would he have to run a long way around to bring the ball back, but he would also be out. Superstition was that taking a hard look at the jagged shards (and maybe some muttered incantations) before bowling would induce the batsman to hit the ball over them - and fetch a wicket for the bowler.

Some vague memory of that came back and not only did I take a long, hard look, but also pulled out my camera and took this photo. (If you know your Chennai, that's Panagal Buildings in the background, right behind the green neck). Sure enough, some luck came my way - made par (4) on the 14th and, for the first time in 9 months of playing golf, made a birdie on the par-5 16th - yay!


3 comments:

Hilda said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Hilda said...

Sorry about the deleted comment—forgot to check my grammar. Anyway here it is again, corrected. ;-)

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Not being a golfer, what you said about your score didn't make any sense to me, lol! But since you said yay I guess it was good so congratulations!

Some of the people here put glass shards on top of their house's perimeter walls to deter robbers. But none as beautifully green as these!

Shantaram said...

>> Hilda>> Thank you, thank you!