Aravind Adiga - Selection Day

‘You’re now batting like a girl. Congratulations.’

Radha removed his helmet; he wiped his face with his shoulder; he tried to deny the charge.

Tommy Sir’s voice softened when he saw the boy’s face inside the helmet.

‘You should ask me about these things, son. But don’t worry: you are lean, mean and magnificent. He reached over and patted Radha’s shoulder. We’ll fix your problems, don’t worry. Now it’s time for your brother to bat. Manju, pad up.’

When she heard this, Sofia turned with a smile towards the younger Kumar, letting him see all the dark spots on her neck. At once Manju glowed with pleasure: for he knew that he was the only boy in all of Mumbai who was truly lean, mean and magnificent with a cricket bat.

•

After sixteen days apart, the two friends were meeting again, at a table in the Golden Punjab Hotel, not far from the Vashi train station.

Javed was still grinning and wobbling his head like Harsha Bhogle. He had gone with his father to Aligarh, and from there they had taken a taxi around Uttar Pradesh. It was the first time he was seeing his home state. From the Taj in Agra, they went to Benaras, and then to Kanpur. UP was one big fucking brain-wave, man. Amazing . Near Agra, Javed and his father went to this dargah — ‘You know what that means, Manju? — and there was this marble slab inside, and there was this long groove in the marble, and you know what my father told me, Manju? That in the old days a Persian poet used to sit on that marble slab and write with a peacock feather, and that when he grew tired, the poet would set his peacock feather down in that groove in the stone. I touched that groove, Manju: look!’

Javed showed his fingertip, brought it nearer, and touched it to Manju’s forehead: Manju smiled, as if thrilled, but then began to cry.

As he sat curling a lock of hair over and over again around a finger, he could see, through his wet eyes, grey tubes of chicken seekh kebab in a rich red sauce lying on a plate in front of him. Using three fingers, Javed picked one up, squeezed the kebab in two with his thumb, and rolled the longer half towards his friend. Manju shook his head; he kept working at the lock of hair on his forehead.

‘And what are you crying over this time, my little Sachin?’

‘You don’t know what happened to me. You were gone for so long and you don’t know what happened. You didn’t even call me from Aligarh,’ Manju said, and the tears came out freely.

‘Sorry. Tell me what happened.’ Javed left his food. He came and sat by his friend and listened.

Chemistry Practicals Lab made him nervous, Manju confessed, so he had misread the level of the hydrochloric acid in the long test tube during titration. He kept taking the upper meniscus reading — he showed Javed how the liquid sticks to glass and gives you a false reading. After that even his litmus tests were screwed. Screwed. He was going to fail and they were all going to mock him, and then throw him out of college, and he would never become a scientist in America.

‘ That’s all? No one’s going to throw you out of college. Before the year end you will be the best student in chemistry. I promise you. Does Javed ever lie?’

‘No,’ Manju said, still curling the lock of hair on his forehead. ‘Have you made new friends in college, Javed? Even before you went to Aligarh I didn’t hear from you for two days.’

For once Javed spoke slowly and clearly. ‘I’m here, you’re there, how can we meet every day?’

It made sense to Manju, and yet it was unfair. He thought it had been a deal; he would study hard and get into science at college and in return he would see Javed every day.

‘What about you , Sir Manju?’ Javed asked. ‘Other day I called, and you didn’t pick up the phone.’

‘The pictures.’

‘You saw a picture? With who?’

‘Alone.’

‘Only mental patients go to the movies … alone ,’ Javed said. ‘Come to Navi Mumbai and watch movies with me.’

Manju felt a sense of elation. ‘Really?’ he asked, hoping that Javed would say more good things about him. He moved closer.

Only the sound of the laughing warned Manju that Javed’s mood had changed, and that he had turned into the other ‘J.A.’ — the nasty one.

‘U-ha, U-ha. Hey, Tendulkar. Find a new mirror.’

‘Find a new mirror?’ Manju asked. ‘What does that mean?’

‘It means you’re not that good-looking. And you’re always looking at yourself in the mirror. Even in the cinema hall I bet you were looking at yourself in any glass surface. Right? U-ha, U-ha.’

Manju had to contract the muscles in his throat to avoid replying to that. He felt the same numbness in his face and neck that he did when his father slapped him.

They walked, at first in silence, towards the train station. But suddenly Javed’s face and mood changed, and he became playful again.

‘Are you going to practise , Captain? Are you?’

Manju said nothing.

‘Are you?’

‘Yes.’

‘No. You’re not, Captain.’

‘I’ll find a way to study chemistry and practise cricket.’

‘No. There is another reason, Captain,’ Javed said, ‘that I had to leave cricket, and it’s the same reason you too will have to leave, sooner or later.’

Javed tickled him in the ribs.

‘When we were in Uttar Pradesh, my father asked me if I wasn’t interested in girls.’

As they crossed the road, an autorickshaw came between them; Manju hurried to catch up with Javed.

‘And you said?’

‘And I said, if I’m not, what is your problem, Daddy?’

‘And he said?’

‘Do whatever you want, as long as it doesn’t cost me any money. Man, I love my father sometimes.’

Javed laughed: Manju could smell fat and meat and freedom.

‘One time the wicket-keeper from that Dadar school asked me, you’re a gay or what? Manju, has no one yet asked you ?’

The question burned away the sun and the day; now Manju felt small and dark and as though a litre of pink disinfectant had invaded his stomach.

‘Why … they would … me?’

He wished he had said it louder. He wished that Radha were here, by his side. But the only one here was Javed, grinning.

‘Manju, stop being a slave. What’s your problem if someone calls you a gay?’

Manju felt the sweat on his forehead.

‘I know you’re scared of everything, so I don’t even talk about anything to do with sex when you’re near me. But why just look at everything? It’s not normal. Do something.’

‘Fuck you.’

Now run.

‘I’m asking you, what are you scared of? It’s all normal, man. Don’t let them brain-control you.’

But Manju stood frozen: Javed, as if he had read his mind, was laughing at him. U-ha. U-ha. In the coarseness of Javed’s croak, in the length of pink gum that showed above his canines, Manju saw nothing but the contempt of one who knew more about the animal truths of sex and life.

‘Fuck you.’

Without looking back, Manju ran to Vashi station, boarded a train and sat still all the way to Chembur. At dinner he looked at his father, and said, ‘I’m going to cricket practice every evening from now till Selection Day.’

Mohan Kumar sighed.

‘And will you un-shave? But I forgive you, Manju. Just promise me one thing, son. Promise me and Lord Subramanya you won’t learn to drive a car, but from now on will stay pure and think only of cricket.’

Manju promised everything.

•

He loved playing tricks on her, her father. One morning every April he filled the house with green mangoes and then led her in, blindfolded, while the scent of raw fruit drove her mad. As his hand moved down his stomach, on which he could feel the downy hair that was growing up from his groin, Manju thought again of her childhood. Not his — hers . His mother’s. Lying in bed with his eyes closed, he thought of the stories his mother had told her sons about her life in her father’s home, and through which Manju understood what a childhood must be like for everyone else. His mother had loved her father more than anyone else on earth. He was tall, fair, handsome — people in the village used to call him their ‘European uncle’, because he was so light-skinned — and he loved her back. Each time he went to the market he returned with toys for her, but would say nothing to her, just leave them, as if by accident, on the dining table, or lying on the floor: and how she screamed with joy when she discovered them. One day, her father and she — just the two of them, no sisters or mother with them — took a bus and went up a mountain and all the way to the great temple of Tirupati. Yes! Just the two of them. Still rubbing his stomach hair, Manju nuzzled against his cotton pillow. This was the only place he had ever felt entirely safe: his mother’s childhood.