Manu Joseph - Serious Men

‘What is it?’ she asked in a whisper.

‘I’ve got something for you,’ he said. He opened the packet and took out a bra.

‘This? It looks so fancy. How much is this?’

‘Look, how stiff it is,’ he said, pointing to the hardwire frame of the cups. She giggled.

‘It’s metal. What if lightning strikes?’

‘It’s plastic.’

‘It’s metal.’

‘To be on the safe side, don’t wear it in the rains.’

‘It’s so funny. Where do you find these things?’

‘It’s not funny, you idiot. This is what girls are wearing these days.’

‘How do you know so much about girls?’ she asked, toying with the bra. ‘It’s so funny. I can’t wear it. What will people say?’

‘I hope people won’t know what you are wearing underneath.’

She slapped his thigh. The sight of the fancy skin-colour bra made her giggle again. Ayyan told her, in a professorial way, ‘This will keep your breasts firm. Or they will begin to sag like your mother’s.’

‘Don’t talk like that about my mother.’

Ayyan poked her breasts. ‘Breasts have eyes, Oja. They look at me now. I don’t ever want them to look down at the floor, like your mother’s.’

He remembered a curious fact, one of the many he collected almost every day for her. ‘You know, Oja,’ he said, as he always started these things, ‘an average woman’s breasts weigh eight kilos.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s very heavy,’ she said. Then her eyes fell on a smaller parcel. ‘What’s that?’

‘That’s for Adi.’

Ayyan went down the ladder with the packet. Oja followed.

‘I’ve got something for you,’ he told his son. Adi jumped. He tore open the packet and a toilet roll fell out. The sight of the roll made Adi almost breathless with laughter. He always found it funny. So, occasionally, Ayyan stole toilet rolls from the Institute. There was something else in the packet. It was a Rubik’s cube.

‘You keep turning till every face of the cube has the same colour,’ Ayyan said, ‘Not many people in the world can do it. But you are a genius.’

‘Some boys in the school have it,’ Adi said.

‘Don’t give him such things,’ Oja said, snatching the cube from Adi’s hand. The boy tried to take it back from his mother, but he was not tall enough. ‘Do your imposigen,’ she said. ‘You keep giving him such things,’ she told her husband, ‘Don’t play with his mind.’

‘But he is a genius.’

‘I want him to be normal. We have to make him do normal things.’

‘What can we do if he is not?’

‘That scares me,’ she said.

Adi snatched the cube back from his mother.

Oja looked angrily at her husband. ‘Don’t do these things,’ she said.

‘These are the toys he needs. He is just too intelligent. You will not believe it in the morning.’

‘Tell me, what has he done?’

‘You will know in the morning.’

‘Tell me, she said.’

‘Wait till morning.’

Oja was so angry that night that she punished Ayyan with silences and refused to sleep in the attic. She slept with her son on the floor. From the wooden loft, Ayyan saw his wife through a dim streetlight that was coming through the kitchen window. She looked weak and sad when her big eyes were shut. He wanted to pinch her till she yelped and tell her that he did not like it when she was sad. He wanted to tell her that she should never be sad because to be sad was to be afraid. And to be afraid was to respect the world too much. The world was not a scary place, he always told her. It was full of ordinary people who did ordinary things, even though some of them went in cars and lived in very big homes and spoke in English. He wanted her to know that he was smart enough for this world and that he knew how to take care of her. He whispered from the loft, ‘You know, Oja.’ She did not respond. ‘Oja … Oja,’ he said.

‘What do you want?’

‘A shark can sense a drop of blood miles away.’

‘Let me sleep,’ she said.

‘Isn’t it amazing?’

Ayyan lay awake the whole night. When morning came, he heard the no-talent pigeons first and then the crows whom he liked because they were clever and mean. He heard the rustle of Oja’s silver anklets going to the kitchen. Steel vessels moved. He heard the hush of The Times of India slipping under the door. He went down the narrow folding ladder and put on a shirt.

Oja was by the stove, yawning. ‘It’s morning,’ she said, still angry. ‘Now tell me.’

Ayyan left without a word.

At the end of a lane outside the fringes of BDD was a newspaper-seller whose transient plywood stand that vanished at noon was now neatly packed with papers and magazines. Ayyan felt his tongue go cold as he approached the vendor. He ran his eyes over the stand but could not find it. Then he saw it in a corner. It was called Yug, a Marathi daily. He turned the pages impatiently and stopped when Adi’s face beamed from a snippet. ‘A Special Boy,’ the headline said.

It’s unbelievable but true. Ten-year-old Aditya Mani has been selected by the Department for Scientific Education and Excellence of Switzerland to go to Geneva later this year on a one-month scholarship. Aditya took part in a written test which was meant for all students under the age of 16. Over five hundred 12th standard students sat for the screening test. Only one was selected and it turned out to be the ten-year-old genius who is in the sixth standard of St Andrew’s School. ‘I want to understand the universe better,’ the shy boy said, when asked what he wanted to do in the future. He will spend one month with top scientists in Geneva…

Ayyan bought all the ten copies of the paper.

Oja heard him enter but she was engrossed in the milk. It was always the milk. Adi was still sleeping, hands and legs now spread all over the floor. Ayyan shoved the paper into his wife’s face.

‘What’s this?’ she said, and then she saw Adi’s picture. She switched off the stove. That annoyed her husband who did not expect her to remember to switch off the stove at this moment.

Oja sank to the floor with the paper. Her knees gave way smoothly and she sat in a crouch. She looked frightened as she read. Then a smile appeared on her face. She put her slender fingers on her mouth and looked at her sleeping son. ‘When did he write the test?’

‘Two months ago,’ Ayyan told her. ‘The test was on a Sunday. I didn’t want to tell you. You would have fussed.’

Oja began to cry. ‘My son is famous? They should have carried his full picture. This photo is so bad. He is much more beautiful than this.’ She rubbed Adi’s feet and began to pull his toes. ‘Wake up, Adi,’ she told him. She shook the boy and showed him the paper. Adi stared at his picture and fell back on the pillow.

‘Why didn’t you tell me, Adi?’ his mother asked softly. ‘You should tell your mother everything. Your father never tells me anything. Adi, you should tell your mother everything that you do.’

Ayyan stepped out into the corridor and stood in a line flanked by the jaundice-yellow walls, holding a copy of Yug in one hand and a small blue bucket in the other. The two lines outside the four toilets were long. As always, the women’s queue was longer. That was not only because it moved more slowly but also because fewer men used the toilets here. Several working men of BDD had taught their bodies how to wait till they got to the office. They squatted on the glimmering western commodes of their offices, and on some days even bathed there under luxurious showers. Ayyan too, usually, waited until he reached the Institute. But this morning he chose to stand in the queue with the blue bucket.