1972-1974. The Weaver's Colony, Bangalore.
The first three years of Varun Reddy's life were a lesson in humility.
For Chuck Thomas, a man who could bench press three hundred pounds and track a 95-mile-per-hour fastball, being trapped in a body with zero motor control was torture. He spent months staring at the corrugated tin roof, listening to geckos hunt flies, while his mind raced at a thousand miles an hour.
But while his body was useless, his ears were voracious.
The First Gift, Linguistic Osmosis, was working overtime.
It started with his mother, Lakshmi. She spoke a dialect of Telugu mixed with Kannada. Within six months, Varun didn't just understand the words; he understood the grammar, the syntax, and the subtle inflections of emotion.
Then came the radio.
Srinivas, his father, kept an ancient, battered transistor radio on a shelf near the loom. It crackled with news from All India Radio. Varun absorbed Hindi from the national broadcasts.
By the time he was two, staggering around the dirt floor on chubby legs, Varun Reddy was a linguistic prodigy. He didn't speak much, he didn't want to freak his parents out by discussing geopolitics or the Designated Hitter rule, but he understood everything.
He also understood exactly how screwed he was.
India, Varun thought, sitting in the doorway as the monsoon rains turned the lane into a river of mud. I am in India.
He remembered India from National Geographic. It was supposed to be tigers and Taj Mahals.
His reality was different. It was the smell of open drains. It was the biting sting of mosquitoes. It was the constant, rhythmic thrum-clack of his father's handloom, a machine that turned human sweat into silk from dawn until dusk.
The economics of his new life hit him harder than the truck.
Chuck Thomas had signed a contract worth three million dollars.
Srinivas Reddy made perhaps four hundred rupees a month.
There was no refrigerator. They bought vegetables fresh and ate them that day. There was no car; Srinivas rode a rusted scooter that squeaked with every revolution. There was no hot water; Lakshmi boiled a copper pot over a kerosene stove for his baths.
And yet.
Varun watched his father hunched over the loom, his back glistening with sweat, weaving a complex golden border onto a crimson sari. Srinivas would look up, catch Varun watching, and his tired face would break into a radiant smile.
"Come, kanna," Srinivas would say, lifting Varun onto his lap. "Watch the shuttle. It flies like a bird."
He watched his mother, Lakshmi, who ate only after serving her husband and son, making sure Varun got the extra spoon of ghee on his rice.
Chuck Thomas had been a foster kid. He had learned early that adults were temporary and affection was transactional.
These people... they would die for him.
I have a family, Varun realized, a lump forming in his throat that had nothing to do with his past life. I have a mom and dad.
And that love birthed a terrifying ambition. He looked at his father's calloused hands. He looked at the patch on his mother's sari.
I have to get us out of here, Varun swore to himself. I'm not staying poor. I'm going to buy them a house with a roof that doesn't leak.
At age three, mobility finally kicked in.
Varun scoured the neighborhood. It was a labyrinth of narrow alleys, stray dogs, and cows that wandered with impunity.
He was looking for a baseball diamond. He was looking for a batting cage. He was looking for anything that resembled the sport that had been his life.
He found nothing.
"Appa," Varun asked one evening, his Kannada perfect, "where do they play the game with the round bat? And the gloves?"
Srinivas looked confused. "Hockey? Like Major Dhyan Chand?"
"No," Varun sighed, making a swinging motion. "Baseball. You throw the ball, you hit it, you run."
Srinivas laughed, patting Varun's head. "Ah, you mean cricket. But the bat is flat, Varun. Not round."
"No," Varun insisted. "Baseball."
"We do not play baseball here," Srinivas said gently. "We play cricket. It is the gentleman's game."
Varun felt a pit open in his stomach. No baseball.
It was like a musician waking up in a world without pianos.
He tried to ignore it. But cricket was everywhere. It was on the radio constantly.
"Gavaskar... drives through the covers... beautiful shot... four runs!" the commentator would scream through the static.
Srinivas was obsessed. He would stop the loom when India was batting, his ear pressed to the speaker.
"Who is Gavaskar?" Varun asked grumpily, sitting on a mat eating a mango.
"The Little Master!" Srinivas beamed. "He stands against the giants, Varun. The West Indies have bowlers seven feet tall, but Sunil... he stands tall."
Varun watched the blurry black-and-white images on the neighbors' TV through an open window.
It looked... pathetic.
They bounced the ball. Why bounce it? Just throw it.
They hit it along the ground. Why? Hit it over the fence.
They stopped for tea. Tea? In the middle of a game?
"It's a picnic," Varun muttered in English, a habit he kept for his private thoughts. "It's a game for old men in sweaters."
November 1974.
Varun was almost four.
The heat in Bangalore was dry and dusty. In the lane outside their house, the older boys, seven and eight years old, were setting up.
They didn't have stumps. They used three lines drawn in charcoal on a garage door. They didn't have a leather ball. They had a cork ball wrapped in tape. They didn't have bats. They used planks of wood.
Varun sat on the stoop, watching them. His body was small, skinny, fueled by rice and lentils. But his eyes... his eyes were predatory.
"Bowl fast, Ravi! Break his toes!"
But it was the Second Gift that was waking up.
As the bowler ran in, the world slowed down for Varun. He didn't just see a ball. He saw the rotation. He calculated the arc.
He's releasing too early, Varun analyzed. It's going to be short.
The ball bounced. The batsman swung and missed.
"Out! Caught behind!" they screamed.
The bat, a heavy, flat piece of wood used for beating wet clothes against stone, fell to the dirt.
Varun stood up.
He walked into the lane. He was half the size of the other boys.
"I want to bat," Varun said.
The older boys laughed. "Go home, baby. Go drink milk."
"One ball," Varun said. His voice had an authority that a four-year-old shouldn't possess. It was the voice of a shortstop calling off a fly ball.
Ravi, the bowler, grinned. "Fine. One ball. Don't cry if it hits you."
Varun picked up the washing bat.
It was heavy. The handle was thick and square. It felt wrong. It wasn't the sleek ash of a Louisville Slugger.
But it was wood. And that was enough.
Varun took his stance.
He didn't stand like a cricketer, bat tapping the ground between his feet. He stood like a baseball player. Feet shoulder-width apart. Knees bent. Bat held high over his back shoulder, the washing bat pointed at the sky.
"What is he doing?" Ravi laughed. "He holds it like an axe!"
"Bowl," Varun said.
Ravi ran in. He didn't hold back. He threw the cork ball as hard as his eight-year-old arm could manage.
It was a full toss. No bounce. Aimed right at Varun's chest.
A whisper brushed against Varun's mind. A dry, rasping voice with an accent that wasn't American or Indian.
"Watch the ball, son. Don't lift your head."
The Bradman Template flickered.
Varun's vision sharpened into high definition. He saw the seams on the taped ball. It looked like a beach ball floating in slow motion.
Chuck Thomas took over.
He didn't play a defensive shot. He didn't block.
He stepped forward, planting his left leg. He dropped his back shoulder. He unleashed a violent, horizontal, cross-bat baseball swing.
CRACK.
The sound was thunderous in the narrow alley.
The washing bat connected with the cork ball in the sweet spot.
The ball didn't roll along the ground. It vanished. It rocketed upward at a forty-five-degree angle, soaring over Ravi's head, over the garage, over the rooftop of the neighbor's two-story house.
Crash.
The sound of a clay water pot shattering three streets away echoed in the silence.
Ravi stood with his mouth open. The other boys dropped their makeshift bats.
Varun felt the vibration in his hands. It wasn't the perfect ping of a baseball bat, but the kinetic feedback was familiar. It was the feeling of power.
He looked at the empty sky where the ball had gone.
"Home run," Varun whispered.
He dropped the washing bat in the dust.
"Too slow," Varun said to the stunned boys. "Throw faster next time."
He turned and walked back to his house.
He still hated the bouncing. He still hated the flat bat. But as he walked into the dim light of the weaver's hut, a thought crystallized in his mind.
If this is the only game they play... then I'm going to be the king of it.