Читать книгу A bird, half-eaten: A Story from the collection, I Am Heathcliff - Nikesh Shukla, Nikesh Shukla - Страница 7

I LOOP THE WRAP over my thumb and across the back of my hand. It goes over my hand three times, tight, and then around my wrist, three times, tight. There’s a ritual to this. I bring the wrap up from my wrist in between my little and ring finger and then back down to my wrist. Up again, between ring and middle, and back down. Up again, between middle and index, and then back down. Each time, the wrap forms an X across the back of my hand. I loop it between thumb and index and then across the palm of my hand, to lock it in. I wrap the remainder of the cloth around my wrist and then Velcro it closed. I flex my hand, open and closed. It feels tight, taut, tethered.

I repeat the ritual with my weaker hand. This one always feels looser. I love watching people perform this ritual quietly, meditatively, with ease, in changing rooms and on YouTube videos. I look at my own fingers, shuddering slightly under the wrap, and clench my fist.

When I have wrapped both my hands, I pick up my gloves and take three shallow sips of water, heading to the thin sweaty alcove of heavy bags. I’m the only one in here. I come when it’s quiet so I can concentrate.

When the bell rings, I hold my fists up over my face and I drop my chin. I am hunched, and standing with my feet a shoulder apart.

The bell ring is a short sharp electronic burst, like when you’re called forward at the bank. I always choose the bag in the middle. It’s milk-chocolate brown with a silver strip of gaffer tape that acts as a waistband around its middle. It’s the heaviest bag here.

For the first three minutes, I punch quickly and lightly, jab-cross, repeatedly. First at your nose. Then at your stomach. Jab-cross nose, jab-cross stomach, jab-cross nose, jab-cross stomach. I try to maintain a consistent speed so that I’m working my arms, ensuring that the muscle memory is kicking in. I don’t want to fling my arms out at you uncontrolled. I want my body to be seasoned to swivel from the hips, the turn of the foot, so that the power is coming from my entire body, and my arms are giving me the necessary distance from you, and my fists can carry the full force of my core.

The first time I got punched, I was intervening in a theft. Some guy was pulling on my friend Rachna’s bag, which she had slung over her shoulder, while I was oblivious, trying to hail a cab. I heard her shouting, ‘You can’t do that, you can’t do that,’ and turned around. The guy was pulling the bag so forcefully that their heads were nearly colliding. It was over her shoulder, securely, so she’d need to take it off for him. He wrenched her so close as she was shouting, I saw her accidentally bite his nose. I ran towards her and pulled on the bag myself. The bag-snatcher let go, and for a pregnant second, I saw something in his eyes that wasn’t aggression or frustration or anything – it was powerlessness.