Aravind Adiga - Selection Day

After they descended from the taxi, the little wheels on Javed’s cricket kitbag rattled along the street; Manju, his own cricket bag slung across his shoulders, followed a yard behind him. They had reached one of the crowded by-lanes of Fort. The rattling stopped: Javed had lit a cigarette.

He turned around and smiled, blowing smoke from the side of his mouth. ‘I had a brother once. A big brother.’

‘Was he a cricketer too?’

‘No! He was too smart for that. Usman was five years older than me. One day he went up to the top of our building and jumped.’

Manju cringed, and avoided the smoke.

‘Jumped?’

‘Jumped. Usman was a great guy, fun guy. He wanted to have fun but they wouldn’t let him. My father built a shrine to him in the backside of our building. Hurry up, now.’

KAJARIA CEMENTS said the sign above a dark door that led into a stairway. Manju could already hear Javed’s shoes booming up the stairs.

He followed.

Below a framed sign that said

Drugs and Alcohol have no place in society

sat a woman wearing half-moon glasses. She put her elbows down on the pages of her book and looked over her glasses at Manju. Her look said: don’t do anything silly in here.

Behind the woman, another corridor began; Manju could see the first three of a series of blue doors. One of the doors was open; and when he looked inside that door Manju had his first glimpse of the pile of human debris that was growing under Mumbai cricket.

A tall bony man with a goatee stood at a window, looking down on Horniman Circle. ‘Got anything for me, buddy?’ he asked, and at first Manju thought the question was directed at him.

In another corner of the little room, Javed shook a packet of cigarettes teasingly, and tossed it into the air. As soon as the bony man caught the packet, he slapped both hands back on the windowsill, as if he were in constant danger of falling over.

‘Manju,’ Javed said, ‘this is Shenoy.’

‘Which Shenoy?’ Manju asked, and then his mouth opened.

… Fastest ball …?

Javed nodded.

Some Boys Rise, Some Boys Fall: Legends of

Bombay Cricket and My Role in Shaping Them

Part 21

Date: 4 September 1996. Place: Bombay Gymkhana, Selection Day. A young man comes thundering down to the stumps, turns his arms over, and bowls a ball. No speedometer was possessed that day — but it is believed by every single observer that it was the fastest ball delivered in our city. Who was this boy? T.O. Shenoy. And who discovered his talent?

Ex-Speed Demon Shenoy struck a match and glanced sideways at Manju, who recognized the look: fatigue, the fatigue of meeting people all day, every day, who want more from you than you want from them.

Waaan-waan-waaan! Javed began showing off his Freddie Mercury dance-number; Shenoy walked over to a bed in the corner of the room, lay down, smoked, and spied on them through the corners of his eyes.

The blue door creaked. The woman came in, holding her glasses in one hand, and waving the cigarette smoke away from her nose with the other. ‘Who brought cigarettes? Who? This boy is a recovering alcoholic.’

Behind her, his back pressed to the wall, Javed, smiling a guilty little smile, put a finger to his lips. He looked as if he had suddenly shrunk in size, and turned into a small, scared rodent-like creature.

‘I brought the cigarettes,’ Manju said.

‘You should be ashamed — get out. I told you: this boy is a recovering alcoholic.’

Saying nothing till they were safe in the street, Javed laughed.

‘What a bitch. Right?’

Manju looked Javed up and down. Now he wished he hadn’t lied to protect this grinning, insufferable show-off.

They were walking through the humid garden in the centre of Horniman Circle which was full of flowers and dark leaves and crows grown as fat as eagles, while straight ahead of them, a row of classical Greek pillars glistened between thickets of bamboo: the Asiatic Society’s Public Reading Room, standing beyond the garden above a broad flight of steps.

‘How did Shenoy end up there?’ Manju asked as he followed Javed up the steps, to a black door.

‘Same way you’ll end up, unless you leave cricket. Then that fat woman will come in and shout at you every day. Get out of it now , Manju.’

At the top of the steps, one cricketer sat down, and the other remained standing.

‘ Me? ’ Manju gaped. ‘You were the one who told me to bat well and go to England.’

‘I’ve become more advanced now, Manju. You’ve fallen behind. Cricketer.’

‘Shut up,’ Manju said.

‘Tatas batting, Reliance bowling. That’s all it is,’ Javed grumbled.

And now Manju thought he could read Javed’s mind at last: where others saw a game called Test match, or one-day, or twenty-twenty, Javed saw only a circle of fat rich men, like the ring of glossy black birds that sit in the middle of the Bandra talao .

Javed yawned.

‘I come here to the library to write poems. Do you want a write a poem with me?’

Manju bit his lip. He sat down.

‘Can you make magic with a poem?’

‘I don’t write that kind of poem. I make brain-waves with poetry.’ Javed winked. ‘But first you have to be on the right wavelength. First you have to learn the rhetoric.’

‘The what?’ Manju asked.

Amidst the cricket gloves and centre pad in his kitbag, Javed had hidden a long green notebook: he took the book out of the bag, and, as Manju spied over his shoulder, flipped through the pages — sketches of their teachers and fellow students from Ali Weinberg, handwritten couplets — until he reached a particular page, which he snapped with his fingers before turning to the other boy: ‘Read.’

Leaning over, Manju did so.

My rhetoric

Javed Ansari

Analogy: As the tiger is brave in the jungle, the king was brave in battle.

Comparison: The king was as brave in battle as the tiger is brave in the jungle.

Simile: The king was like a tiger in battle.

Metaphor: The king was a tiger in battle.

Epithet: The Tiger-King.

Apostrophe: O thou Tiger-King!

‘I don’t understand,’ Manju said.

‘That’s because you have no brain-waves, man.’ Javed closed his notebook and returned it to his cricket bag.

‘Give me that book one more time,’ Manju retorted. ‘I have brain-waves.’

‘No. No. I don’t feel any brain-waves around you.’

Manju showed Javed his middle finger. ‘You’re full of shit. You talk big but you’re scared of a woman who wears half-moon glasses. Listen. Enough of this poetry of yours. I have a serious question. Do you know a cure for pimples? They became worse in Manchester. I think it was the cheese.’

‘I never had pimples. Though I get worms when I eat bhelpuri.’

They watched the garden, and the taxis going around the curved colonnade of Horniman Circle.

‘Have you been to Las Vegas?’

‘No. Have you?’

‘No. Where do you want to go?’

‘There is a lighthouse all the way at the end of Mumbai, did you know?’ Javed asked. ‘It’s true. It’s the last thing in the city. Beyond Navy Nagar. You can see it as you come in a taxi from Babulnath: there are these little dots, and then a white tower. The lighthouse. Actually, it’s white, red and black. You can walk to it over the rocks and mud at low tide. I tried it once, but the police chased me away. Fuck them. They’re always after Javed Ansari. But I will do it, I will climb to the top of the lighthouse and scream to all of Mumbai, “Here is Javed Ansari! Here is Javed Ansari!” I have my birthday parties at the Taj or near the Taj. Where do you have yours?’