Aravind Adiga - Selection Day

The wrong young Kumar, bent over at the sink, was splashing water on his cheeks.

‘You should have spat in the face of Karim Ali and given the scholarship back right away!’ Mohan shouted at Manju. ‘You should not have taken what is rightfully your elder brother’s!’

Radha, who had been sitting at the dinner table without a word, picked up his bat and left for the door.

‘Radha,’ his father pleaded. ‘Radha, come back, we’ll work out a plan together. We’ll make Manju return what he stole—’

At this Radha stopped, and kicked over a little table.

When his father whimpered, ‘The landlord will keep our deposit if you do things like this. He expects us to keep the flat clean,’ Radha came back from the hallway, bent, picked up the table, and flung it at the wall of the living room.

That was what he thought of the landlord’s deposit.

•

From the window came the noise of a rubber ball hitting a brick wall. But Mohan Kumar was locked in the toilet.

‘Javed,’ Manju whispered into the landline phone in the living room, twirling the black wire around his fingers, and looking at the toilet door, ‘they are making me give the England scholarship back.’

‘You idiot,’ Javed said, ‘if I am not going to England, fine, but you should go. You’re the only one on my wavelength. Don’t let your father fuck with you. Do you want me to come over and bash him up?’

Manju laughed, but his laughter died away.

‘Javed, but the scholarship is my brother’s. I stole it.’

‘Bullshit,’ Javed said. ‘You are much better than your brother.’

‘What should I do, Javed?’

‘Do? Do? You’ve already done it. You’ve got your scholarship. I’m going to send you a letter when you are in England, and it will say: “Manju, my little one, are you actually having fun?” Because you need to relax, man.’

Javed laughed, and Manju already felt himself relax.

‘Just tell your father, if you give back the scholarship, Founder Ali will award it to Javed Ansari. Because they’re both Muslims. He’ll believe that. You’re not alone, Manju: remember that. You’re never going to be alone ever again.’

•

England! A drop of my semen is going to England for six weeks! Mohan Kumar closed his eyes. He dreamed of the laterite arch built by the unknown king, the starry skies above, and the croaking bullfrogs on the forest floor. Tears of vindication entered his eyes — England, on a fully paid scholarship, my little drop, my baby boy! — and he wanted to hug his little Manju.

But from the backyard he heard the sound of a rubber ball on a brick wall, and he had to open his eyes.

Towards the end of the previous year, Mohan Kumar had decided to slap Radha a few times, after his batting average fell below 40, but Tommy Sir had intervened, explaining that it was not Radha’s fault. The elder Kumar had developed a ‘weight-transfer problem’. Tommy Sir had seen it before. The body grows so suddenly that it is no longer used to its own new momentum. Radha had shot up; he was becoming a handsome young man, and this was ruining him as a cricketer. Because his body now made him hop when he went on the back foot, the same bowlers whom until recently he had been thrashing around the park were now getting him out clean bowled.

But Manju: now he had stayed compact. The voice was breaking but the body was not growing. The centre of gravity stayed low. Think of Lara. Gavaskar. Tendulkar.

But a father has a plan, and a contract with God, and the offspring had to follow this plan and this contract, and it was not Manjunath who was meant to go to England this year. Down his right arm Mohan Kumar felt a nerve twitch. Let me fix it, Mohan, it said: let me hammer the scholarship out of the wrong son and into the right one.

•

A brick wall stands in Bowral, New South Wales. Once upon a time, a boy appeared before the wall and threw a tennis ball at it. It bounced back; so he hit it with his wooden bat. He kept on doing this and kept on doing this until he became Sir Donald Bradman, the world’s greatest batsman.

A brick wall stands behind the Tattvamasi Building in Chembur, Mumbai. A boy has thrown a tennis ball at the wall, but he has no wooden bat in his hands. It bounces, and hits him on the side of his neck. He tosses it back at the wall. This time, he wants it to hit him on the face.

‘Radha,’ said his younger brother. ‘Radha.’

Radha threw the ball at the brick wall again, but this time Manju extended his foot like a football defender and kicked it out of their compound.

Raising his bat, Radha looked at his brother.

And Manju knew he should not have stopped his brother from hurting himself: for now he would hurt others.

‘When we played Fatima in Ghatkopar,’ Radha said, ‘you were out. LBW. Plumb. That umpire let you go on batting.’

With a hunch and a goblin face, Radha showed his younger brother how he had looked as he stood at the crease.

A window opened above them. From the fourth floor, a moustached man with a raised eyebrow looked to his left and looked to his right, and hissed:

‘They’re all listening to you, boys. The neighbours have a high opinion of me.’

At the window, Mohan Kumar reached inside his banian and scratched at his chest hair.

‘No, they don’t!’ Radha shouted at his father. ‘You know what they call you around here? Mad antibiotic uncle. Go inside and drink some more Hercules rum.’

Mohan Kumar stared at one son, and then at the other, nodded, and shut the window.

An hour later, Manjunath stood shirtless in front of the mirror in his bedroom, which was lit by the tube-light in the living room; from down below, he could hear the ball hitting the brick wall. He turned from side to side, looking at his naked torso in the mirror, and made his muscles bigger.

Maybe the veins would emerge in England.

As he stood half-naked before the mirror, a creature three parts Hercules rum and one part his father sat on his bed.

‘It’s all because Radha kicked me that day in Ballard Estate. Because he tried to murder me. God has punished him. I think he has started shaving, don’t you? But a contract is a contract, and Radha was the chosen one. Manju, if you love your father, you must tell Principal Patricia that it is all a mistake and she must phone Founder Ali. First thing in the morning.’

Manju thought ‘England’: in his mind’s eye, he saw a plane flying over the silver ocean, flying direct to a British dissecting table where Grissom and Nick were waiting for Agent Manjunath to join them in their next autopsy.

Sitting upright on the bed in one motion without using his hands, Manju shouted at his father: ‘I am not alone!’ He turned his face to the ceiling and shouted: ‘I am never again going to be alone!’

‘Manju …’ his father whimpered. ‘Is that a no?’

•

In the morning, Manjunath woke to the sound of the tennis ball bouncing off the brick wall in the backyard.

As he brushed his teeth, he smelled sweat. Radha, wet from practice, came to the door of the bathroom and stood watching him brush.

Suddenly, Manju felt someone pinching his left arm tight: and holding on to it.

‘Maybe if I keep pinching you like this, I will destroy your batting arm, Manju.’

Manju did not move his left arm; toothpaste oozed from his mouth as he stared at the flowing water.

‘Did you call Javed last night? Did he tell you not to return the scholarship to me?’

Through the corners of his eyes, he could see his elder brother scraping his fingernail against a canine tooth.

Radha pinched even harder: the pain in Manju’s left arm became maddening. Still offering no resistance, Manju leaned forward, and splashed himself with his right hand: he felt faint, he felt he could fly. If Radha pinched his nerve until his arm was damaged, he could tell them in England, I can’t play cricket anymore, but I can study forensic science and I want to join your London CSI team, please, and suddenly Manju laughed, and, as the cold water struck his face, he laughed again.