Aravind Adiga - Selection Day

For a soothing half an hour he read online about the twists and turns of the Battle of the Bulge, 1944, and then emailed an old girlfriend in New York, and then browsed on Twitter for Nietzsche quotations. He closed the laptop and returned it to his desk, next to the bottles of liquor, and then went and stood by the window.

The ocean, rolling in towards Nariman Point, struck a shore of black rocks in front of the National Centre for the Performing Arts — and then, moving again, the foaming water rolled past the low white Mediterranean wall of the NCPA, past the blue-glass building of the Indian Overseas Bank, past the Arcadia building (the very ugly Corporation Bank building behind it) and past Dalamal Chambers. And this, Anand Mehta thought — this citadel of brain-dead wealth, fortress of the world’s least educated elite, a place with ten thousand ways to mispronounce ‘swanky’ and ‘entrepreneur’ — this is what won’t let me in. Moving past Nariman Point, the surf subsided near the blue-tarpaulin-covered shanties. The exact spot where Ajmal Kasab came with the jihadis to kill us on 26/11. If only he’d done a better job.

I gave up Central Park for you , he yelled down at the city, you piece of shit!

Anand Mehta’s mind was now like a stanza from the Bhagavad Geeta in reverse: from brooding too much on what had gone wrong in his life, he became angry; from this anger was born frustration; from this frustration was born a round glass of drink; from this one glass was born an entire bottle of 90-proof liquor.

The day darkened; he sat with a goblet of red wine, sipped, spat, then ransacked his cupboards, searching for scotch — not single malt, not Blue Label, not Black Label. Just give me Indian scotch, honest Indian scotch.

‘Press conference,’ he said out loud. Press conference, at the age of fifteen. Anand Mehta felt again the thrill of having bet on that grandest of investments: a growing human being.

Young Manjunath Kumar.

One minute, slum; next minute, Angleterre. Mehta had a vision of a great milky waterfall, a cataract of free sex, whose sheer descent had fathered many rainbows. That slum boy must have humped like crazy in England. ‘Asha,’ he shouted, ‘let us go congratulate that boy, that English gentleman of ours.’ But then he remembered that she was away with her friends at a kitty party. He kept drinking.

Later in the night, he dialled Tommy Sir’s number, getting it right at the second attempt.

‘I want to see my investment.’

‘What?’

‘My Man-cas-ter boy. Where …?’

‘You’ve gone mad?’ Tommy Sir asked. ‘Do you know the time?’

‘I know they’re in Chembur. Where in Chem … I went there once but I forgot the way now. You shut up and don’t tell me my bloody business, mate. Where is my Man-caster?’

‘Go in the morning. I’ll tell you, but go in the morning — promise?’

Minutes later, Mehta was driving towards Chembur, squinting at signs, shouting out for directions, trying to remember how he had made it there once — but that was in daylight! — while the road played games with him, becoming muddy and narrow, and then opening up into the highway, while train tracks kept appearing and disappearing by its side.

‘I can’t believe you’re doing this,’ he told himself, and he burst out laughing. He kept talking to himself. Look at all these buildings, stuffy with seventies’ concrete and nineteenth-century morality. Hollow, hollow, the concrete buildings are all hollow. The fat middle class is hollow. So let us get rid of the farce that Indians are a most moral race, that only married people should live in good buildings, girls should be virgins and homos should be in jail, let us rid ourselves of the Victorian Hindu Penal Code, declare a republic of cunt & cock and a sovereign secular socialism of cock & cunt and force everyone here to live in the twenty-first bloody American c&c century, please. God, he wished he had brought some scotch, some honest Indian scotch, for the drive.

Slowing down, he squinted at the names of the passing buildings, until — ‘Tattvamasi. That’s it.’

Anand Mehta got out of his car, tripped over a stone, recovered himself gleefully, and reached the entranceway of the building. He pressed the bell and went up the stairs. After a while, he became aware that he was relieving himself in a corner, as a dark face watched him from a higher floor. ‘Relaaaaaax,’ he whispered, zipped himself up, and continued up the stairs.

‘This way, sir, this way,’ the dark face said. It wore a banian and lungi and stood before an opened door.

‘It’s an honour to see you, Benefactor. I recognized your car. It is an honour to have you visit us again.’

‘Benefactor.’ Anand Mehta laughed. ‘You know how to speak to your benefactor, good man, good man … where is my Mancaster?’

‘Sleeping. I’ll wake him up? And his brother, Radha?’

Mohan Kumar showed the guest into another room, where the boys were in bed. Anand Mehta stripped the bedsheets off the sleeping boys — one rubbing his eyes, the other squinting at the light — and stared at them.

‘Which one went to England? That one? Or this one?’

‘Get out of bed, Manju. Do you want to see them bat now?’

Anand Mehta clapped at the boy who was struggling to his feet.

‘Say something with full fucking British accent.’

Manju, who was wearing only a pair of shorts, covered his nakedness with his arms and blinked. When the investor shouted at him a second time he said, ‘Hello, sir,’ in a small voice.

‘Louder,’ the investor said, cupping an ear. ‘With the full accent. Sound like Mancaster, Mancaster! Isn’t that funny? This boy is a little superman, I tell you. Superman. Is that what you are, Mancaster?’

Radha, also naked to the waist, looked around for his bat.

‘Sir, you have honoured our home at just the right time. Radha has changed his backlift and stance. We worked on it all summer. Radha — demonstrate, demonstrate.’

Anand Mehta wiped his lips.

‘No bloody cricket demonstration. I asked to hear this one talk British to me. I talk New York, and you talk British, you little fucker. Talk. Talk.’

He sat down on the sofa and gaped at Manju, who stood with his arms making an ‘X’ across his naked chest.

‘Relaaaaax.’ Anand Mehta laughed. ‘At your age, you have nothing to be shy about, not a thing. After all, what is a cock, I ask you?’ He turned to the father and grinned. ‘A cock is this: when you’re a boy, it’s your manhood. When you’re a man, it’s your boyhood.’

Both men laughed, but Mehta caught the expression on the boy’s face.

‘Why is Mancaster staring at me like that?’ He pointed at Manju. ‘Talk, little fuck. Don’t think you’re too good for me and my money. Talk British now .’

•

Even after the door was bolted, even after his father assured him that Anand Mehta would not return, Manju dreamed. He found himself in a forest: one without paths, but where everything glowed in the moonlight, and every illuminated branch guided him to the spot near a lake. This was the dream that he had had again and again in England. In the darkness, as promised, a woman’s hand reached out for him. He checked between the thumb and the index finger, and there it was: the nitric-acid scar from the goldsmith’s. And though he could not see his mother’s face, Manju was happy, for he knew she was beside him in the night. Until a bird flew overhead, silhouetting itself against the moon, and his mother withdrew her hand; his heart pounded. He could not see a single star in the sky. This was Kattale , the old darkness. It was back, and would keep coming back, now that it knew how to reach him: Stay here. You don’t have to go out and face that man, Mehta: stay here, Captain. Stay within . The cold water of the lake lapped his feet, and his ankles: and soon his lips were wet, and he was hard. Manju awoke, turned from Radha, and, licking his forearms quickly, masturbated, taking care that his come did not stain his bedsheet, which his father might notice.