Aravind Adiga - Selection Day

All sixty-five members of the junior, senior and standby teams, along with Coach Sawant, marched into the auditorium to find a bald, bantamweight man waiting for them on the stage. The ceiling lights shone off his smooth skull.

‘Remember what you promised me?’ Manju whispered. Radha, his features taut and expectant, smiled sardonically. Oh, he remembered. For Radha to visit a real morgue in England and take photos of the bodies under dissection: that was the only gift Manju wanted.

‘My dear batters and bowlers,’ declaimed the Founder’s ringing voice. ‘Your attention.’

His eyebrows, thick, salt-and-pepper, rose defiantly, and though his voice was calm, he examined the boys with a hint of anger in his set jaw.

‘My dear batters and bowlers. Only two problems exist in this country.’

He made a ‘V’ with his fingers.

‘Fundamentalism, terrorism, nutritional poverty, so on and so forth are not really problems, or more precisely, stem from two underlying and rarely discussed factors. First is anti-intellectualism.’ The anger in the Founder’s face rose palpably. ‘My dear batters and bowlers: we as Indians are becoming dumber and dumber with each generation until our children are now not even half as smart as Chinese children in standardized learning tests. I tell you there are people in this country who do not know whether Delhi is north or south of the Vindhyas. I am not making this up. The pressing need to fight anti-intellectualism in India persuaded me, after many years as a champion of multipurpose construction in the city of Mumbai, to set up the Karim Ali Foundation for Academic Excellence. You are all members of this great Academy, my dear batters and bowlers. Intellectualism and a calm mind are what we teach here. How does cricket fit in? For that we must understand the second problem facing India today. Sensationalism. In other words, our Indian media, which is the joke of the world.’

The Founder looked around.

‘My dear batters and bowlers, consider the following facts. One, our country is named for a river called the Indus. Two: The river Ganga has six times the volumetric capacity of the river Indus — and three — yet it is still shallower than the Grand Amazon, which is the most powerful river in the whole world by volume of water transported from end-point to end-point. These are hard, solid facts. Why do I keep these and other such facts at my fingertips? Because facts are the only known remedy for the evil of sensation. I have created the best school in Mumbai, with the best facilities, the best faculty, the best resources. And yet the media ignore us, and choose instead to talk only about the Cathedral School. Campion School. Ambani School. The journalists of Mumbai ignore us until we feed them what they live and die for. Sensation. And the biggest sensation we have in this country is called cricket.’

The Founder closed his eyes, and opened them, and continued.

‘My dear batters and bowlers, last year we lost twice to Fatima School. We lost by fourteen runs in Giles Trophy, by eight wickets in Harris Shield. My dear batters and bowlers, you cannot lose again this year: you must win for me. When you win the wonderful Harris Shield for me, everyone in Mumbai, including press, papers, radio and TV, will applaud our new but already sensationally prestigious school.’

Founder Ali stood silent; his lips showed just the hint of a smile; he allowed anticipation to grow.

‘To bring us glory in the Harris Shield, I have decided to groom a new captain for this school’s team. Having watched all my sons at play for many months now, I decided that this future captain, who will go to England on my scholarship, is …’

The boys clapped, and started a chant: ‘Ra-dha. Ra-dha.’

Manju searched for Javed’s face in the crowd. You said Radha was not going to make the team!

‘No, not that Kumar,’ said the bald man on the stage, motioning for the boys to quieten down. ‘Not that one.’

Manju was still searching for Javed; but all at once everyone seemed to be looking at him. Why? His heart began to beat against his ribcage. His mouth open, Manju turned to the stage to see Founder Ali pointing a finger straight at him.

‘ This Kumar will go to England.’

Looking back, Manjunath could never recollect what he said to Radha at that point, or whether he did say anything: because the next thing he remembered, he was up on the stage, beside Founder Ali; and when he gazed down, he saw, in the vortex below him, Javed Ansari’s face, smiling, and his brother’s face, not smiling.

Then he heard someone say, ‘My dear humble young son,’ and felt a fatherly hand on his shoulder.

‘My dear batters and bowlers, I’ve watched this humble young son of mine bat many times before this. He didn’t see me, but I saw him at Shivaji Park when he scored a superlative 237 not out against Anjuman-i-Islam, and he didn’t see me, but I saw his magniloquent 163 in 120 balls against the Ambani School. That was a most satisfying knock. This young son of mine can bat like an angel, and he can bat like a devil. What I love most about this humble young son is his heart , which is as capacious as an African lion’s. My son is khadoos: when he’s given out leg before or caught behind, he controverts the umpire and refuses to leave the crease. That’s the spirit. That’s the rage. Now I command him, humble young son Kumar, go to England, learn on their classical green lawns the subtle secrets of cricket and come back to India a super sensation!’

And with that the Founder drew the cricketer to his bosom and held him tight, while the boys cheered and chanted the name of the correct Kumar, who continued to look thoroughly appalled.

•

The truth was, he had known that Karim Ali was watching him for weeks before the announcement of the scholarship. Other boys told him the Founder was coming to cricket matches — they had thought that he was spying on Radha Krishna. But Javed had whispered: ‘ You’re the one he’s come to watch, Manju.’ Javed wasn’t going to get the scholarship: he had written a poem about Karim Ali, pasted it on the noticeboard, and had been suspended from school for a week.

‘Bat better than your best today,’ Javed urged, during the match against Ambani when Manju scored his big century. Manju knew he was becoming good: frighteningly good. It was like running downhill — like cycling downhill — when some force much greater than you urges, “Faster, faster.” He was a Natural. High above Javed’s head, he saw the golden fruit — England — and stood on his shoulders to pluck it: Founder Ali had approved. In the Founder’s office, Manju was hugged, offered chai, and told many important details about the military, moral, and economic disposition of England — most of them dealing with the year 1066, a key date in that remarkable little island’s history — before being sent home with a wealth of hard, factual information about the United Kingdom in his head and a warm press release in his hands:

Young ‘Braggado of the Bat’ takes on Great Britain

Press Contact: J. Satish

Corporate Relations, Karim Ali Group (022) 2390-3468

•

England!

It fell on him like crimson dye on a dry leaf in Chem Lab, exposing a network of nerves and sensitive ends: a secret life.

England! Six weeks in England! Without his father!

•

‘There was a magician who came to our village with an elephant, one day, boys. An elephant in chains. You just couldn’t see the chains. We are all elephants in chains too, we three Kumars. And the magician’s name is Karim Ali. He’s playing with us. He’s setting one of us against the other.’

Mohan Kumar scratched his left ankle. As was usual in the evenings, his breath smelled of a paternal mix of Hercules rum and Limca.