Aravind Adiga - Selection Day

Manju jabbed Javed in the ribs.

‘How many times have I told you? Don’t talk about my father.’

‘Who talked about your …? I asked where you have your birthday parties. Wait. He never threw one for you?’

‘I know what you’re thinking, that my father is a bad father. I don’t like that.’

‘Bullshit. You know what I’m thinking? You? ’

‘Yes. I know what everyone’s thinking,’ Manju stated, proudly.

Nostrils flaring, Javed prodded the mind-reader in the ribs.

‘Okay. Tell me what I am thinking about you right now.’

At which the back of Manju’s head tingled and his feet began to tremble, even though he couldn’t say why. He saw that Javed had gone quiet. His jaw was set, and he was holding his breath. Manju followed his eyes and spotted a man in a sailor’s white cap and uniform walking past the library. Strong, thick, hairy arms; and his bell-bottom trousers fitted him snugly around the waist. The sailor now stopped, as if he could sense something, and turned his head.

‘He saw you,’ Javed whispered. ‘Manju, he’s coming here! He’s going to beat you and rape you!’

But Manju had long ago disappeared.

•

He got back to Chheda Nagar, climbed up to the fourth floor of the Tattvamasi Building, and at once something was wrong.

Mohan Kumar turned up the volume on the TV when he saw his son. ‘You just missed the news. Sit.’

As Manju obeyed his father, the newsreader announced that two more ministers in Madhya Pradesh had stated that the increasingly fashionable practice of homosexuality, sanctioned neither by the Indian Penal Code nor by four thousand years of Hindu civilization, should be curbed at once and that nationwide ‘rehabilitation centres’ should be established, incorporating a daily regimen of cold showers and group exercises for young deviants, so they could learn the value of physical hygiene and family life.

Wiping his face with the back of his palm, Manju turned his eyes towards his father, who did not move.

Next, the newsreader announced that the record for the highest cricket score by a Mumbai schoolboy, only recently held by Radha Kumar (388 runs), and surpassed by his own brother Manjunath (497), had now been super-surpassed.

A fifteen-year-old left-hander named T.E. Sarfraz Khan, batting at number four for IES Sule Guruji, in a Harris Cup match at the Fort Vijay Cricket Club, had broken Manju’s record by scoring 603 not out. He had flicked, cut and pulled for two days; and at the end of the match, he had gone in a car to Bandra to see Shah Rukh Khan, who had called him a teenage human skyscraper.

Mohan Kumar turned to his son. So this was the news. I am not the best anymore. Manju’s heart beat with guilt. He looked at his father’s shrunken face, and he felt his own face change. This was what came of spending too much time with that makad.

He went and stood by the fridge, looking at the stack of expensive cricket bats next to it. He felt unworthy of touching any of them. Robusta!

That night, as he lay down to sleep, Manju saw the numerals ‘603’ burning in fire on the wall of his bedroom; he got out of bed and, forging a bat from the darkness, he took guard.

He lay down again, telling himself it was time to rest, so his chest could expand and his forearms strengthen, but could not sleep. Now he saw words in fire — on the inside of his eyelids.

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!

The two words (‘Tiger’ and ‘King’) drew together, tighter and tighter: until they fused and became something new, blacker than the darkness and brighter than fire.

Then it was as if a midnight sun split open his room: because Manjunath Kumar had understood the rhetoric.

In the morning he called Javed from a pay-phone, without wiping the receiver, and said he wanted to know more about the rhetoric. And about poetry.

And about everything .

•

The Gateway of India had vanished. The Taj Mahal Hotel was no more. The entire Indian Ocean? Boiled and evaporated.

‘Is that Ricky Pointing?’

And all because a middle-aged white man with greying hair, wearing a plain T-shirt and blue shorts, was standing in front of the Gateway, signing autographs. Hundreds were gathering.

‘No. Are you mad? And it’s Pon-ting anyway.’

‘I hate cricket, dude. How will I know who that is?’

‘It’s Steven Waugh.’

‘Who?’

‘Steven Waugh?’

‘I’ve never heard of him. Now go get his autograph.’

‘No way. Waugh will want my autograph next year. Just you wait.’

Sofia laughed. ‘Sure.’

Avoiding the crowds around Steve Waugh, the two went down the steps to the boat docked at Jetty Number Two. It was getting ready to leave, and Radha had to help Sofia on board just before the trembling plank was pulled away. They found her ‘crew’ waiting on the upper deck of the boat — a girl with blonde streaks in her hair, and two boys, each of whom had big curly hair and wore horn-rimmed glasses. One of them, so Sofia said, was the son of a policeman.

The water began to seethe; a milky wave slapped the stone wall that stands around the Gateway of India, returning to the tourists some of the rubbish they and their predecessors had tossed into the sea.

Burning diesel generously, the ferry was heading away from the city.

‘That’s the RC Church. In Cuffe Parade. It’s too gorgeous.’

‘She’s just learnt this word, so she’s using it everywhere. Too, too gorgeous.’

‘Fuck off.’

‘Have you noticed how girls these days use dirtier language than boys?’

‘Shut off.’

‘You said “Shut off”. Everyone, did you hear?’

Their chit-chat was interrupted by a dark, sweat-covered man, climbing onto the upper deck and asking for tickets.

‘That …?’ The conductor pointed at Radha’s bag, ‘… is goods. Means you have to pay extra.’

‘It’s not goods,’ Radha said.

He removed an object from the bag to substantiate his claim. It was a shining slice of true wood: a Sunny Tonny Genuine English Willow bat with brand-new leather handle. All the noise was knocked out of the ticket-collector: hadn’t he too once hoped to play for Mumbai? He opened his mouth and left.

Radha had grown his hair long and tied it in a ponytail; with his powerful chest and arms and the contrasting delicacy of his eyes, he had fulfilled his boyish promise of film-star looks. Sofia slid a foot from her chappals, and touched Radha’s cricket bat with her toes. Then one of his feet came to the bat’s defence.

The ferry passed near oil tankers anchored in mid-ocean; garbage and seagulls bobbed up and down on the waves.

The girl with blonde streaks in her hair had been studying Radha.

‘You were on TV, yes or no?’ she asked, when the foot wrestling had ended. ‘You scored that 300. Shah Rukh Khan met you, yes or no?’

Radha gave her his television smile. ‘I scored 388. Yes. I met Shah Rukh Khan. He called me a human skyscraper. On Selection Day I will be picked for Mumbai.’

The blonde girl looked impressed.

‘Here’s a quiz for you: What does the term KKK stand for in modern cricket?’ Radha asked her.

‘No. What does it mean?’

‘Kiss, Kock and Kuddle. KKK. Isn’t that funny?’ Radha grinned. ‘Hey, Sofia, I made that up myself.’

Perhaps he could score with Sofia and this one with the blonde streaks. Anything goes on Alibagh, right?

‘His brother scored 600 or something and broke his record,’ Sofia said. ‘Why don’t you ever bring Manju along?’