Aravind Adiga - Selection Day

‘Yes.’

Javed grinned again. ‘You’re a cricket terrorist, boy. I like it.’

‘No,’ Manju said.

‘What does your father do?’ Javed asked, as he strapped on his pads.

Manju, apparently doing a bit of pre-game stretching himself, turned his neck to one side.

‘Business,’ he said, as he turned his neck to the other side. ‘What does your father do?’

‘Textbooks, scientific textbooks. He imports them from Canada and sells them here. But the truth is,’ Javed said, ‘ I’m his business. He wants to make me captain of India. Another question for you. Can you swim?’

Manju looked at Javed.

‘No.’

‘Drive?’

‘No.’

‘Hm.’

Javed smiled. He turned the rubber handle of his bat round and round to tighten it.

Manju looked down at Javed’s huge white shoes; in his mind they disappeared, revealing a giant’s pair of naked feet.

‘Stop looking at my shoes. Stop looking at me. Go away. You want to know why Javed Ansari got out on purpose to that boy you called “Loser”? You won’t. Because I don’t like you. I never liked you. You stare at me too much.’

Manju stared. Javed resumed his warm-up exercises with his bat.

‘Where is your mother?’ Javed asked, freezing his bat in mid-air. ‘I see only your father. Mine’s living in Bangalore. She gave my father divorce. Same story with yours?’

Slap! Slap! Javed struck the bat against the sides of his shoes.

‘You know you have the world’s biggest eyes? Seriously.’ Manju moved his head. Javed continued, ‘Do you drive? I’ve got my car here. I can teach you to drive. Right now if you want.’

‘My father will teach me.’

U-ha, U-ha, U-ha. Again. Manju begged his shoes to take him away.

A small man in a startlingly white uniform approached them, holding up a red BlackBerry for his master. Javed looked at it, frowned, and gave it back to the man in uniform, who wiped it clean with a corner of his shirt, and said something in a low voice.

‘My driver says something funny is going on over there.’

Manju followed Javed to the barbed-wire fence that separated them from the next compound. A gang of street boys were playing something. One of them wore a very large and strange brown glove; another was throwing a white ball at the glove.

‘This is what they play in America?’ Manju asked.

Javed nodded. He too had forgotten what it was called. In a state of wonder, the two boys watched the throwing and catching on the other side of the fence. How silken the movements of that oversized brown glove, how prehensile the catcher’s forearm, rotating to the left to intercept the hard white ball.

Javed broke the spell.

‘Softball, this is?’ he shouted at the boys.

‘Base-o-ball, uncle! Base-o-ball!’

The two cricketers put their hands on the fence and leaned forward.

‘Who teaches you this game?’

‘We have a coach, uncle. He’s from the YMCA, he’ll be here soon. Now watch me, uncle. Can you cricketers do this?’

The boy now threw the white ball with a brute force they had never seen in cricket. The pitcher turned to the two boys in white and showed his teeth.

‘Better than cricket, no? Come over, uncle, we’ll convert both of you to base-o-ball.’

Javed climbed over the fence. Manju placed a hand on his shoulder.

‘Shouldn’t we go back?’

‘No.’ Javed called to him from the other side of the fence. He winked.

‘Come over this side, play baseball — since you’re so bad at cricket.’

Manju climbed over too.

The cricketers stepped through wild grass; dragonflies flew around them. Soon Manju and Javed were running circles around the baseball players, throwing gloves and stones and handfuls of grass at each other: ‘Kambli! You’re Kambliiiii!’ Behind them, as they chased each other, they heard the hard white baseball smacking into the glove.

Laughing wildly, they fell down into the grass.

‘What is the story with your father, man? Does he …?’ Javed pantomimed a man having a drink.

‘Shut up. What is the story with your father?’ Manju asked. ‘He wants you to leave cricket. In every interview he says this.’

‘He just wants to look good on TV. Don’t you know fathers by now?’

Manju was still thinking this over when he felt someone take hold of him by the chin; trained by his father’s touch, Manju froze, and let the alien hand turn his face from side to side.

‘U-ha. Someone needs to shave. U-ha.’

Still offering no resistance, Manju said: ‘My father won’t let us.’

Javed let him go.

‘So? Do it anyway.’

Manju shook his head.

‘Not brave enough?’ Hands rubbed through Manju’s spiky hair. ‘Not brave-rave-shave enough? See, I made another poem about you.’

Waiting for Javed to remove his fingers from his hair, Manju — horrified beyond words, Manju — thrilled beyond words — demanded:

‘Yours never hit you? Never? ’

‘No one hits their sons in the city, Captain. Only a chutney salesman from the village does that.’

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

Javed shrugged.

‘What do you want to study in junior college?’

‘I don’t know,’ Manju said, and added at once, ‘I want to do science.’

‘Too much work. Go for commerce.’

‘I want to be a forensic scientist.’

Javed’s lips parted.

‘ CSI ?’

Manju nodded.

‘You want to cut open dead bodies? I think you have a problem. Mental problem.’

Happy for no good reason he could tell, Manju bent and drummed his hands on his knees. I have a mental problem, he thought, and, sucking in his lower lip, gave a final flourish to his drum roll.

‘Your mother’s what, divorced or dead?’

Manju lay still and let Javed’s shadow cover a part of his face; he did nothing as Javed took his arm, and rolled up the short sleeve, exposing his arm all the way to the top of the bicep.

‘As I thought,’ Javed said. ‘You’re not really dark.’ Biting his lip, Javed forced the shirt all the way back to the top of Manju’s shoulder, where the skin had the pallor of something rarely exposed to the sun.

‘See?’

Manju saw his naked arm, smiled, and said: ‘My brother is better than you at cricket.’

It worked: Javed let his arm go. The shirt again covered the pale flesh.

‘Your brother won’t make the team, Manju. He’s got a weight-transfer problem.’

Manju tried to pull his short sleeve further down his arm.

‘Fuck off. My brother has what ?’

‘Sorry, Manju. Sorry.’ Javed shrugged. ‘Your brother is the best cricketer in the whole world, and he will make it onto the team. Happy? Which college will you go to?’

Manju closed his eyes and frowned: he could still sense that Javed was watching him, watching the left-slanting, rather stylish, furrow in between his eyes. He smiled.

‘I’ll never get into science.’

‘Who told you that?’ Javed sat down beside him. ‘Your father?’

Manju swallowed. His heart beat hard against his ribs. ‘You need 80 per cent for science admissions.’

‘Wake up!’ Javed clapped right before his eyes. ‘Wake up! You never heard of the sports quota in admission?’ Javed was almost shouting now. ‘You don’t even need that. I see you answering all of Tommy Sir’s questions. What was Sobers’s batting average against left-arm orthodox spin, all that Wisden bumshit. You know what I read? Have you heard of George Orwell?’

‘Which college should I go for?’

‘Go to Ruia. Best for science. Do you know of The Animal Farm ? And by the way, what happened to your mother? I’m asking you a second time.’