Aravind Adiga - Selection Day

Manju turned around to have a word, but Javed guided his face back to the mirror. Let’s get this thing done. Squeezing Manju’s cheek with his left hand, he moved the razor over the beard. Downward stroke first, then up, then down. Stroke by stroke, Javed removed Manju’s fuzzy mask to reveal a shining new face.

Then, fogging the glass with his breath, and wetting his finger, Javed wrote on it:

Roses r red

violets r blu

u r a giant

or u r a tool

‘You know what this poem means, or shall I explain?’ he asked.

Javed saw Mr Glottalstop gaping at the mirror and moving a finger toward his reflection.

‘What are you doing? Don’t touch the glass. You’ll make a mess of my poem.’

But Manju touched Javed’s reflection, and drew a line on its forehead.

‘Javed.’

‘What?’

‘You’re losing your hair.’

•

On the way back to Mumbai, Manju leaned out of the open door, his left hand touching his smooth right cheek. Another train was passing by. In the women’s compartment, the passengers squatted on the floor; one of the women had her back turned to Manju, and he could see the nuggets of her spine, each demarcated and bulging like a taunt, and he wanted to reach out and touch. Down her back, one bone after the other, reach and touch. In the next compartment, two schoolboys stood in their all-white uniforms, looking back at him; their shirts dazzled as the train gathered speed. Cut for the first time, Manju’s face stung when the wind hit it. Stepping back from the open door, he endured it for as long as he could, and slapped his raw cheeks again and again. Suddenly he found himself hard, and pressed his cock against the steel wall of the train and screamed at the schoolboys and the fat bones in the woman’s back as he exploded into a million little ribbons of hormone.

•

‘When you got home, what happened? I told you, Javed Ansari expects a full situation report.’

‘I got home, and went up the stairs, and the door was open. I went in, and he was sitting on the sofa and reading the newspaper.’

‘What did he say? Details.’

‘Nothing. He just looked at me.’

‘When you go to war, first you must have a map. How many chairs did you see around the flat?’

‘There are three chairs at the dining table. I got ready to do like you said, I was ready to lift one of them high high up, and say, Don’t you dare touch me . But guess what, Javed? He looked at me and saw I had shaved, but he didn’t say a word.’

‘And then?’

‘Then Radha came in with his cricket bag and we sat together and ate.’

‘And no one said a thing?’

‘Javed, this morning I shaved again, and I can’t believe it, the way my father looks at me now. He’s scared .’

There was a pause and then Javed announced, quietly, ‘Mine is scared of me too. All of them are. I told you, read The Animal Farm , Manju. This is just the start of my plan. Next thing is you come to Navi Mumbai to see my career counsellor. Agreed?’

‘Agreed. And one more thing. I went to the bathroom and I wrote a poem. You want to hear it?’

•

The square root of 181, multiplied by 11.1?

Present capital of France?

Draw an accurate isosceles triangle, please?

On the wall behind the plump-faced man with the weak chin, a framed photograph showed two white mice peeping out of their wicker basket to examine the caption: My life is not limited by your imagination. A cold glass slab covered the table between them. Manju slid the piece of paper across it. The plump man nodded as he read Manju’s answers.

‘And what do you want to do with your life?’

In his fingers Manju held a business card, the first he had ever been given —‘Jignesh Seth, Guidance Chief, Best Choice Educators’ — while across the glass-faced table Mr Seth adjusted his glasses with an index finger and waited for the boy’s answer.

‘Be a cricketer. And represent my country in the World Cup of cricket.’

‘You said that very fast.’

Manju, in response, began twirling a lock of hair with his index finger.

The counsellor asked: ‘Are you ambitious?’ Manju shook his head.

‘Do you want to be famous? Is that why you go for cricket?’

‘No.’ Manju thought about it, and said: ‘I want to be the fellow at the back.’

‘Have you ever been the fellow at the back?’

‘My father never let me be. But I like it when I’m there.’

The counsellor nodded. ‘You don’t know what you do want. Fifty per cent of this country, that is half a billion people, are under the age of twenty-five, and we older Indians have no idea how to listen to them. Javed told me about your case, and I said at once, bring the boy here. I’ll listen. I want to be the Mother Teresa of listening to your generation.’

Silence.

‘Do you know who Mother Teresa is?’

Manju looked at the white mice in the photo.

‘Let me try this, Mr Manjunath, as a way around your inhibition. Let me talk about myself.’

The counsellor smiled.

‘This office, this job, is not what my father did. We’re Gujaratis. You know what we do? We cut diamonds for a living. That’s what I should be doing right now, in a shop in Opera House: but one day I heard a voice inside my head saying, Jignesh Seth, you’re cutting the wrong diamonds. Your vocation in life is to guide young people — like Mother Teresa. I listened to this voice. This job doesn’t pay, but I’m happy and I don’t drink anymore. Now, let me help you find your inner voice. Follow me?’

Manju nodded.

‘For now, I want you to repeat something aloud. When anyone says, you must do this, you must make money, must play cricket, just say in response: “My life is not limited by your imagination.” It is our motto here. Repeat it, please. Excellent. Now the second thing I want you to do is a mental exercise. Please close your eyes, and imagine a future in which you play cricket for the next twenty or thirty years. Tell me if you like what you see.’

The moment he closed his eyes, for some reason Manju thought of something he had seen on India’s Got Talent the previous evening, a slim young woman with a ponytail and layers upon layers of abdominal muscles — and a silver ring piercing her belly-button.

The boy started: across the table, the career counsellor was striking his knuckles on the glass, and Manjunath Kumar had been returned from the distant planet where he suffered his erections, to this one, our earth.

‘Did you like what you saw, Manju? A life as a cricketer?’

Keeping his eyes on his shoe, Manju said, ‘Yes, yes.’

But then he gazed over Mr Seth’s head at the photograph of the white mice, and read the slogan again, and this time he felt the same strange exhilaration as he had when he’d seen Javed nearly naked in the dark tent, and so raised a finger to catch the counsellor’s attention and asked if he could please change his answer.

•

An hour later, Javed and Manju were back at the big mall in Vashi, playing air hockey on the top floor, until Manju asked:

‘Are you in a gang ?’

‘How do you know?’

‘Your counsellor told me. He said it’s called Mad Max Gang. He told me not to join it.’

‘I knew he was a spy for my father,’ Javed said, concentrating on the game. ‘That son of a bitch.’

‘ Can I join it?’

‘No. Mad Max Gang is for experienced boys only. Not for you.’

‘I am shaving every day now. I am experienced.’

U-ha, U-ha. Running across the table, Javed caught Manju by the forearm, but he freed himself, and kicked back.

The two raced from the mall to Vashi station, and when he realized he was going to lose, Javed stopped running, and began playing air-guitar, forcing Manju to turn around and come back — and beg to be allowed to join in the guitar concert.