Aravind Adiga - Selection Day

But Javed had seen a roc of his own: and he had caught his. Because while Manju was away on his grand Manchester scholarship, Javed Ansari, without leaving India, had also visited a foreign country. He had celebrated his sixteenth birthday a fortnight ago. Around midnight, in Colaba, alone, walking past the open-air mutton and chicken kebab grill of Bademiya’s, seeing a young man smile in a certain way, a young man with blond streaks in his hair, Javed had smiled back at that young man, to feel a finger scrape diagonally down the back of his jeans, and turned around in surprise to see the young man now standing behind him, no longer smiling, but with his nostrils tense, his eyes candid, and realized that all of these formed a closed door: and that the door could be opened, and would reveal something — something as big as an ocean, and as turbulent — behind it. And Javed, right there, went up to the blond man, negotiated a deal without saying a word, and with a beating heart followed him up wooden stairs to a room on the third floor of a private hotel behind the Taj, where the blond man inserted a key into a door, and said, ‘Go in,’ and when Javed entered the room, trembling, he smelled the ocean for the first time in his life, early in the morning after his sixteenth birthday.

•

And now Javed walked alongside Manju, hand on his shoulder. He smiled condescendingly, and asked: ‘So what was England like, Superstar? What is England’s food like?’ The two of them rode the escalator up into the mall. Manju said: ‘The Britishers eat cheese all the time.’

Javed removed his Aviator glasses and put them in his pocket to get a better look at the superstar.

‘Manju. Please.’

‘I’m telling you, the white people eat cheese for breakfast and smell of it all day.’

Javed laughed, just once, but so hard the Aviator glasses fell and he had to grab them with both hands.

‘Manju. Did you really go to England?’

The boy looked the same as he had before leaving for England, just a bit fairer, a bit broader. He was also definitely wearing some sort of deodorant.

‘Pass me the hammer, Miss Moneypenny’ — Manju spread his arms wide, and lowered his voice an octave — ‘I’m a young Sean Connery!’

Javed stared.

‘There were workers on the roof of the school, and they would bang their hammers and sing that all day.’

Javed tried it out himself. Pass me the hammer, Ms Money …

‘Who is Sean Connery?’

A whistle blew. Short women in blue uniforms stood by the sides of the escalators, making sure no young ruffian ran up or down the metal steps or did anything else to set off a panic among the crowd, many of whom were using an escalator for the first time in their lives.

Keeping his eye on the blue-uniformed guards, Manju said: ‘You didn’t come to Kanga League the other day.’

‘Fuck cricket. Why didn’t you come to see me till now?’

‘At the press conference they complimented my accent.’ Manju beamed. ‘It’s called a Mancunian. It’s got glottalstop . Do you know what glottalstop is?’

‘It’s sexy,’ Javed said.

He said the word as casually as he could, but he saw it wiping the grin off Manju’s face, and stopping his breath: It’s sexy .

Javed tapped on his gold earring and looked at Manju.

‘Did you go to the police yet? And tell them about the investor, how he invaded your home? That’s what they call what he did. Home invasion. Did you tell—’

‘No.’

‘No?’

Javed felt his ears move on their own, as they always did when he gritted his teeth. Look at Manju go to England, spend six weeks there, eat the cheese, breathe the scented air, and come back and still behave like a slave !

The escalator had now reached the highest level of the mall. There was a bowling alley up there, in what was called the Play Park, where they could talk.

‘What was the point of going to England, Manju?’

‘I went to the Science Museum and read the Daily Telegraph newspaper.’

‘Bullshit.’ Javed touched Manju’s left cheek with the back of his palm. ‘You went to a CSI morgue. To see dead bodies.’

The whites of Manju’s eyes expanded, and he looked to this side and that, and then grinned. Wanted to, sure, but he had been too shy to ask the white people for directions to the morgue in Manchester.

‘Thank God. Otherwise they would think all Indians are mad like you.’

At the entrance to the Play Park they found a machine with illuminated numbers on it; a boy swung a mallet — thud! — and the numbers began to light up, one by one.

‘To see how strong you are,’ Javed said. ‘Want to try, Captain?’

‘No.’

Javed took him on a tour of the video games. Ghost Squad (‘No’), Police Squad 3 (‘No’) and Formula One (‘No’) until Javed said, ‘ Relax , Captain. I’m paying. Is that what you’re worried about?’

Air hockey: a group of boys standing on either side of a table were smashing away at something small. Saying ‘Yes,’ Manju went closer, inspected the boys at the table, and then said, ‘No.’

‘Man. You keep changing your mind. They sent you to England and you became an English lady.’

They stood by the side of the Play Park, watching others try their luck or skill at the machines.

‘Did you think of your family when you were over in England?’

Looking Javed in the eye, Manju said: ‘Not once.’

‘And did you really play cricket?’

Manjunath Kumar betrayed the slightest of smiles.

‘Only when they were watching.’

Javed grinned. ‘Maybe you are on my wavelength at last. By the way,’ he asked, ‘how is Radha? And which junior college is he going to?’

‘He’s not going to any.’ Manju turned to Javed, and, to pre-empt any criticism of his father, added: ‘He can’t be running after girls in college. He has to practise every day.’

‘And if your brother doesn’t make it in cricket?’

Manju looked up at the glass ceiling of the mall, which was in the shape of a lozenge, with a metal grid supporting it.

‘My father knows what he is doing.’

‘Manju, Manju, Manju …’ Javed shook his head. ‘Seriously. Stop acting like a villager. It was my birthday the other day. I’m sixteen. Do you know what I did on my birthday?’

A vein bulged in Javed’s forehead; he decided to tell Manju everything. But wait. Since he had no idea how Manju would respond — whether he would just run back home, shouting, Daddy, Daddy, that fellow is a homo — Javed said, instead:

‘Close your eyes.’

Manju, unable to disobey, did so.

Javed touched him. Manju, blind, held his breath, as a fingernail scraped against the beard on his cheek.

‘You need to shave.’

Manju shook his head.

‘Your father? Still?’

Manju said nothing, but Javed heard the answer anyway. So when Manju, predictably, tried to run away, Javed, in a fury of compassion for this poor, exploited boy, who had gone to England, but was still too scared to shave by himself, caught him by the wrist, and said:

‘Let’s shave you now.’

He took Manju to the supermarket below the Food Court, bought a disposable Gillette razor, and an eighteen-rupee tube of shaving cream. Then they went to the men’s room on the first floor. The attendant from the Dosa-and-Idli stall at the Food Court was washing his hands. He stared at the boys.

Standing before the mirror, safety razor in hand, Javed demonstrated. Down up, down up. Downward stroke first, see? Javed took the safety razor out of its plastic cover.

Leaning against the door of a toilet stall, the Dosa-and-Idli attendant began offering the first-timer additional tips.