Manu Joseph - Serious Men

‘Tell him,’ Ayyan said to the driver, who giggled coyly.

The boy, as always, was by the left window of the back seat, his good ear facing Ayyan. Despite the freak rains, the resurgent heat of September steamed in the ancient Fiat, and their shirts were damp with sweat. But even this was marginally cooler than home. Oja had had to put a bucket of water under the fan to cool the room. Adi did not pee in it any more after being slapped for that by his mother last summer.

Adi kept removing his hearing-aid and wiping it because the streams of sweat from his oiled hair were flowing into his ears. But he did not mind the discomfort. Maybe he did not recognize it as discomfort. The torment of the weather was also a type of game for him. He was licking his sweat from the cheeks.

‘Mercedes,’ he screamed. A long silver car had eased to a halt by the side of the taxi. The dim figure of a man was visible in the back seat. He was sitting cross-legged and thoughtful, elbow on thigh, finger on the lower lip. Adi imitated him perfectly. The man in the car smiled. Adi smiled back. Then the signal turned green.

‘How much is a Mercedes?’ he asked his father.

‘What model was it?’

‘C–Class. 22 °CDI.’

‘That’s a cheap one.’

‘How much?’

‘Thirty lakhs.’

Adi howled. ‘Expensive,’ he said in English.

‘Not that much.’

‘You should save money. We should not take the taxi to school.’

‘We do this only when it rains and it is only twenty rupees.’

Adi puffed out his cheek and made a fart sound, and they both giggled.

‘Now tell me Adi, what did you do?’

The boy put his hand on his head in exasperation. ‘How many times do I have to tell you? Nothing.’

‘Then why does the Principal want to meet me?’

‘I don’t know,’ Adi said. ‘Yesterday I didn’t do anything. The day before yesterday I didn’t do anything. Day before day before yesterday, I asked the maths teacher, “Is five to the power of zero equal to one, Miss?”’

‘So why is the Principal calling me?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘She had written in your handbook, “Come with the boy to my room.” ‘

‘I don’t like her,’ Adi said.

‘We will go and find out what you’ve done.’

‘I do only what you say I should do.’

‘Good boy.’

‘What if someone finds out?’

Adi’s face turned serious as his father fondled his hair playfully. ‘So much coconut oil your mother poured on your head.’ The oil made the boy’s forehead and ears shine. He was such a beautiful, healthy boy, Ayyan thought. Then he felt the lifeless hardness of the hearing-aid in the other ear.

Sister Chastity had a scowl on her face. She was sorting out some papers on her table and getting more entangled in the muddle. Behind her, the head of Jesus Christ appeared more tilted than Ayyan remembered, as if to get a better view of her. Across her table were seated two unhappy men and a young skinny woman in a cotton sari.

‘Good morning Sister,’ Adi said, and, turning to the three other teachers, he said quickly, ‘Good morning Sir, good morning Sir, good morning Miss.’

Sister Chastity looked up with a tired face, but she brightened up a little when she saw the father and son. ‘You have come,’ she said. She asked the teachers to leave them, ‘for exactly five minutes’. The teachers carefully gathered their share of papers from the table. The way they treated the loose sheets made Ayyan curious. All he could make out before they put the papers in a file was that every sheet contained numbered questions. The teachers gave a knowing smile to the father and son, and they left the room.

Sister Chastity pointed to the chairs and rubbed her hands in anticipation. She looked at the boy and at his father and then, in a more interested way, at the boy again. She was distracted by the stacks of paper between them. She pushed them away muttering, ‘They gave me a computer saying I’d never need to file papers again. But now, all I am doing is filing print-outs. Do you have a computer at home, Mr Mani?’

‘No,’ Adi said.

‘I am talking to your father, Adi. You must know how to behave.’

‘I am sorry, Sister, I have sinned.’

‘It’s “I am sorry, Father, I have sinned”. Genius and all that, and you don’t know simple things?’

‘I am sorry, Sister.’

‘Now what was I trying to say? Yes. Mr Mani, you don’t have a computer at home?’

‘No,’ he said.

‘St Andrew’s Church is selling old computers at unbelievable prices for its less fortunate parishioners,’ she said. ‘Just one thousand rupees for a Perinium 2.’

‘Pentium,’ the boy corrected.

‘Yes, Pentium. Adi, I am talking to your father.’

‘Nice thing the Church is doing,’ Ayyan said.

‘Isn’t it nice? Do you know where St Andrew’s Church is?’

‘No.’

Sister Chastity shook her head sadly. ‘The joys of Christian life are available to all but very few open their eyes before the Lord shuts them.’ Ayyan looked at her meekly. ‘Now, Mr Mani,’ she said, ‘I will come to the point. You are aware of the interschool science quiz we are organizing?’

‘No, Sister.’

She widened her eyes. ‘You haven’t seen the posters?’

‘No.’

‘The posters have been up on the main gate notice-board for over a fortnight now. You must always read the notice-board, Mr Mani. In three days, we will be hosting the quiz finals. Grand Finale, it is being called. Five hundred tenth-standard students from fifty schools went through the written elimination rounds. Six teams have been chosen for the finals. For the Grand Finale.’ Ayyan nodded with evident interest. ‘We were, in fact, finalizing the questions when you walked in,’ she said. ‘That’s the quiz committee waiting outside.’

‘I didn’t see anyone outside,’ Ayyan said.

‘The three teachers, Mr Mani,’ Sister Chastity said, making a face of immense patience. ‘They went out right now, didn’t they? They are the quiz committee.’

‘OK,’ Ayyan said. ‘Can parents come and watch the quiz?’

‘Parents have to come. We are having the event in our main auditorium.’ (She always said ‘main auditorium’ though the school had only one. She also said ‘main gate’ though there was only one entrance.)

‘We will be there,’ Ayyan said.

‘There is a reason why I asked you to come with Adi,’ she said softly. ‘The teams from our own school couldn’t make it to the finals. They were disqualified in the preliminary rounds. You know how fair we are. We wouldn’t do anything shady to favour our teams. We are the host school and we have graciously accepted that our teams were not good enough. But it is sad, isn’t it?’

‘It is sad.’

‘It’s very sad. But I have an idea,’ she said, now beaming. ‘I can still make a place for a special participant from our school who will not compete for the prize but for the honour.’

‘And you want Adi to be that special participant?’

‘Obviously.’

Ayyan looked thoughtful.

‘What’s the problem with that?’ she asked, looking at Adi. ‘A small brilliant kid competing against the brightest seventeen-year-olds in the city. It will be a sight. How old are you now, Adi?’

‘I am eleven. Eleven is a prime number.’

Sister Chastity imitated him fondly,’”I am eleven. Eleven is a prime number.” What an odd angel this boy is.’

‘He is just a little kid who is fooling around,’ Ayyan said feebly.

‘But he is a genius.’

‘He has stage fright.’

‘Stage fright?’

‘Yes. He becomes frightened when he has to face a lot of strangers.’

‘We will all be there to make him feel comfortable,’ she said, her face now beginning to lose its pleasantness.