Aravind Adiga - Selection Day

Was she really really dead? Radha seemed to think so. Maybe someone had murdered her and hidden her body in the Dahisar river. No — she had to be alive: Manju was sure of it. Because he remembered the last evening he had ever seen her: he had come home early from cricket practice, and she had been sleeping on the bed. Manju had watched her and thought, when his father slept, his lips thickened, and his face became coarse; but how radiant his mother looked in her sleep. Her lips twitched. Her eyelids pulsed. And as Manju drew nearer to her sleeping body, her lips began moving silently, as if intoning something, some prayer, some secret Sanskrit, some message meant for her son.

‘Tommy Sir is here: stop dreaming!’

Manjunath opened his eyes. Through a colourful umbrella overhead he saw the sun; and then dark grinning faces and white shirts all around. He was sitting on a plastic chair in the Ali Weinberg tent at one end of the Oval Maidan.

As if it had fallen from a coconut tree above, he was holding a bat in his hands.

Manju looked around. Holding on to the black bars that ran around the maidan, men watched the cricket; the lucky ones, day labourers with a morning off, sat on the trunk of a palm tree, sipping tea, silenced at the moment a ball hit a bat. In the middle of the Oval, a Young Lion hunted for runs: Radha Kumar was on fire this morning.

But Tommy Sir was nowhere to be seen.

Showing his middle finger to the other cricketers — they responded with a squeal of delight — Manju closed his eyes and exercised his right to dream.

What was she trying to say, lying in bed like that with her eyes closed and her lips moving? Manju had brought his ear to her lips, and he could almost hear the words she was struggling to form: ‘Manju, let us find Radha and run away from here before it’s too late.’

‘Stop bloody dreaming, and get up from that chair, Subjunior!’

This time it was Tommy Sir, striding up to the Ali Weinberg tent, along with a middle-aged man. Manju stood to attention with the other boys.

‘Boys, this man is the most important man in Mumbai. He will determine your fates one day. Who is he?’

The middle-aged man smiled. ‘Please don’t embarrass me, Tommy Sir. I’m just a selector.’

‘That’s exactly what I said, Srinivas, and in plain English. Now, boys, this very important man will tell the story of how he knew Ravi Shastri would play for India just by looking at him. Tell them, Srinivas.’

‘That was years ago, Tommy Sir. Ten years ago, we could say, this boy, from his stance, from the way he grips the bat, will make the team. Today, it’s all different. Today, it’s all a mystery, even to the selectors, who will make it and who …’

The workers sitting on the fallen log cheered. A Young Lion had just roared: twisting his torso, Radha Kumar had pulled a long hop past the mid-wicket fielder, and through the boundary, which was marked with white flags.

•

‘Just look at him bat, Srinivas. Do you know his scores in the Pepsi tournament?’

‘How can I not know his scores, when you text them to me three times a day? It’s a rich crop, his batch. There’s Javed Ansari, Kumar, and I’m hearing a lot about T.E. Sarfraz too.’

Manju stood close to the two men to overhear.

‘Kill it like Yuvraj!’ All around their school tent, the cricketers had begun clapping in rhythm.

‘Kill it?’

Tommy Sir pointed to Rajabai Tower.

‘You heard the story? That Yuvraj Singh hit the clock tower with a six during trials?’

The selector looked at Rajabai Tower.

‘It’s seventy-five metres to the boundary wall — then thirty more over the coconut trees. Bullshit. No one’s ever hit the tower from here.’

Tommy Sir, who had written about Yuvraj’s Rajabai Tower-shaking sixer in a newspaper column two years ago (‘Some Boys Rise, Some Boys Fall: Legends of Bombay Cricket and My Role in Shaping Them Part 16 — How I Made Yuvraj a Young Prince of Cricket’), looked to his right, where he found little Manju.

‘This is the brother, Srinivas. Scientist by nature. If I ask him, he’ll recite your life story. Shall I ask him?’

But right about then Tommy Sir saw a man pushing a bicycle into the Oval Maidan.

And Manju wished he could seal his ears. It was happening once again: Tommy Sir was talking about his father as he stood in hearing range.

‘You see that creature coming in, Srinivas? Comes and watches every match his boys play. Control freak. Keeps asking me, are they talking to women, are they boozing beer, are they watching blue films? Between us …’ Tommy Sir called the selector in closer, ‘… has a police record.’

Manju gritted his teeth.

Almost at once, there was a loud crack from the pitch: Radha Kumar, as if competing with the ghost of Yuvraj Singh, had lofted the ball in the direction of the Rajabai clock tower. The sound of his bat commanded the maidan into silence. Two boys almost ran into each other: then one of them stepped back, and the other, with cupped palms, caught the ball.

‘The moment I praise him, he gets out. You’re next, Manju. Yes, I’m changing the batting order. I want the selector to see Manjunath Kumar. Quick, quick.’

•

Helmeted, padded, centre-padded, chest-padded, thigh-padded, Manjunath Kumar came out to bat; his left thumb throbbed.

All batting — all good batting — starts with superstition. Manju already had a personal treasury of superstitions associated with his game — some held in common with all other batsmen (never to wipe the red ballmarks off the face of his bat, for instance) — and some which were peculiarly his own. This one was unique: when he got to the crease, Manju first walked in a circle all around the stumps, and only then stood where he was meant to, in front of them. Next he uttered a little Kannada poem his mother had taught him in his childhood:

Obbane Obbane

Kattale Kattale

Alone, Alone

Darkness, Darkness.

Not yet ready to bat. Next, Manju scratched around the dust with his bat, as if he were searching for something, though he had found it already, in his own thumb: a spark of hurt. Next, he took a leg-stump guard, because he felt like scoring on the off-side today, and began tapping his bat.

Now .

Mynahs and sparrows flew into stacks of cut grass each time Manju tapped his bat; the umpire’s face darkened by degrees; the fielders crouched. The bowler turned into a small, stupid animal. He pursed his lips and sucked on his teeth, and emitted squirrel-like noises with which he instructed his fielders exactly where to position themselves. Pointing at Manjunath, he yelled: ‘This boy is not a cricketer. This boy is just his brother’s shadow. This boy reads books! This boy is not going to last two balls.’

Manju turned to where the sun was shining over the buildings. It was something his father had taught him to do: when there is pain or distraction, when the sun is in your eyes, lift your palm till it blocks the light. You are now in control of the most powerful force in the universe.

Now look at the bowler, the one who taunted you. And look at the three fielders on the off-side who laughed in response. You will all share in my pain.

Manju’s nostrils are dilated; forearms tense. Around him, Mohan Kumar’s second son sees the city’s landmarks — the Eros cinema, the big blue UFO in Colaba owned by the Taj Hotel, Rajabai Tower, Churchgate station — joining up into a crown whose rim can touch his head if he wants it to. If he bats well enough today.

The first ball he hits right through the covers, humiliating the pair of fielders who had laughed the loudest.

Their punishment has begun.