Aravind Adiga - Selection Day

•

There — shirtless, on the floor of a 320-square-foot box of brick. Home. Manjunath was back in the one-room brick shed, divided by a green curtain, where he had lived since his father brought him and his brother to Mumbai, nine years ago. Pressing his palms against his cheeks, the boy went over the newspaper once again:

One theory relies on the ‘Lake Effect’, which is seen in the cold countries of northern America …

His cricket gear lay around him, and he was stripped to his waist.

Manju saw shadows moving in the blade of light beneath the closed metal door of his home. His father was outside, answering the neighbours’ questions. When is Radha Krishna coming back? Does he think he is too big now to talk to his own neighbours?

On the table there was dinner made by his aunt (or possibly great-aunt) Sharadha. The world was in order, except for one Scientific Paradox.

A quick crust of ice forms over the lake, keeping the water underneath it liquid all through winter. Similarly, when lukewarm water freezes, a thin crust forms on top. In a glass of boiling water, in contrast, evaporating steam stops the …

A clattering noise made him look up: a vermin cavalry went galloping over the corrugated tin roof. Rats, rushing towards the flour-mill in the centre of the slum. Manju turned on the television, and increased the volume.

Reaching far behind the television set, he picked up an instant-noodle cup filled with dark mud in which two horsegram beans, planted forty-eight hours ago, had sprouted. New life, fathered by Master Manjunath. He looked at the tender shoots paternally, spilled big drops of water from a glass into the pot, and then returned the life-bearing cup to its hiding place behind the TV.

The final image of the day’s episode flashed on television: the cadaver of an American man lying naked on a green dissecting table under a cone of hard white light, before the screen went black and the credits rolled.

Manju looked down at his own body: that thing had started again — he was hard. It was happening all the time now, sometimes even when his father or brother were in the same room. He lay down and pressed himself against the floor.

He wondered what colour his cock had become under the pressure of his own body: and then he felt that it was liquefying under the weight, and spreading, an icy liquid, all around him.

Now he found himself on a frozen lake. He was not alone here. Beamed from the CSI inspection table, the foreigner’s cadaver now lay in the middle of the lake.

Promoted to the elite squad of CSI Las Vegas , Agent Manjunath Kumar-Grissom crawls, scraping the surface of the ice with his right toenail, inching nearer and nearer to the naked dead body that he must retrieve; but when he is almost there, click, crack , the surface of the lake starts to break under him.

Whistles and cheers explode all around — Ra-dha! Ra-dha! — for a Young Lion has just returned to the slum, but Manju, who must now go out and smile for the neighbours, is still on the floor, trying to crush his hard-on.

•

An egret flew in from the river and watched the boy, who lay above a well, watching a turtle.

It was an open well, the kind that still exists in a suburb like Dahisar, raised three inches from the ground and covered by a rusty iron grille: and as he lay face down on it Manju watched something beneath the water’s skin.

His legs made a ‘V’ on the chequerwork of the grid, which creaked as he shifted his weight. Through its interstices, he shone a pen-torch down on the black water.

He lanced his beam of light around the well. There! Splashing out of the black water, it came curiously to the light, a dark and domed creature, its limbs paddling fast.

Manju turned his pen-torch off, and put his face to the cold grille. His heart beat hard against his ribcage which beat in turn against the metal of the grid. In a few hours he would have his chemistry class. He knew a surprise test was coming.

Which of the following is used to make bleach?

A. Hydrogen

B. Hydrochloric Acid

C. Sodium Phosphate

D. Chlorine

Please, please, help me: O God of Cricket and also of Chemistry.

From the depths of the well, a cool draught tickled his cheek; the boy’s imagination transformed it into a breath from a range of blue mountains. He felt his hair blowing in the breeze: the mountain air of the Western Ghats.

Each summer, the family went back to their village. Taking the train from Mumbai to Mangalore, they then got on a bus that carried them over the hills and towards the shrine of the God of Cricket, their family deity, Kukke Subramanya; past trees with red leaves, and little streams that skipped a heartbeat when a schoolboy leapt into them, past waterfalls shrouded in waterfalls, until they reached a temple hidden deep inside the Western Ghats, where, leaving the bus, and standing in line for hours, moving past burning camphor and sharp temple bells, past a nine-headed painted snake, the protector Vasuki, they finally came to the silver doorframes, beyond which, lit by oil lamps, waited the thousand-year-old God of Cricket, Subramanya.

‘Remind Him, my sons. We can’t offer Him much money. So remind Him, monkeys.’

‘One of us should become the best batsman in the world, and the other the second best.’

Mohan Kumar had his own way of reminding God. As he did each year, he rolled barechested over the hard granite floor of the temple, rolled from one side of the wall to the other, and then back again, until his torso was lacerated, and the secret contract was renewed in his blood.

‘Are you licking yourself again?’

‘No,’ Manju said. ‘Just watching.’

‘Get up.’

Manju didn’t.

And now Radha lowered himself beside Manju, and there were two bodies lying on the old metal grid over the well.

‘Let’s go. He must have woken by now,’ Radha said.

Manju pointed the pen-torch to a spot below them.

‘It’s that turtle again. She’s the mother.’

‘Maybe. Let’s go home. He may hit you again if he’s in a bad mood, Manju.’

‘It is the mother. I’m not going till you agree that it is the mother.’

‘I can’t see it from here, Manju.’

‘I’m showing you, I’m showing you.’

Radha, the Young Lion, was square-jawed, tall and muscular, and was sometimes mistaken for Manju’s uncle, though there was just a year and a month between them. He strained to see through the grating to where his younger brother was directing the pen-torch beam.

‘See. The mother. Do you agree? Then we can go.’

‘Wait, Manju. Point the light over there. I think there’s one more.’

The pen-torch moved: a second turtle was discovered. It raised its head towards its two human observers. How fascinating, it seemed to be saying, to see the turtles that live in that bigger darkness up there. Done, it lost interest in the boys, and sank back into the water.

‘Do you agree? That’s the mother. Then we can go.’

Manjunath Kumar pressed against his brother’s body; the warmth sharpened his senses.

Suddenly a new turtle came into view: its body angled towards the light, jaw wide open, a rim of gold glistening around its shell.

‘Manju, you’re wrong. That’s the mother. It’s bigger.’

‘I’ve hidden it behind the TV,’ Manju whispered.

‘What?’

‘My biology experiment. I want full marks in class this time.’

Two months ago, his model fighter jet plane, a project for his physics class, left on the dining table, had mysteriously vanished after he had put four days of work into it.

‘He’s going to find it anyway, and then he’ll throw it out, Manju. Come. We have to go. He’s woken up by now.’