Aravind Adiga - Selection Day

•

Sitting at a terminal in the computer lab at Ruia College, he had been googling morgues in Manchester in a bid to revive the attractions of forensic science, until the noise from outside made it impossible.

It was the day of Durga Puja: the festival of the Mother Goddess.

Carrying his three textbooks, he came out of the college, and headed towards the source of the noise — the makeshift wooden pandals, each adorned with its twelve-foot idol of Ma Durga slaying the pitch-black buffalo-demon, in front of which devotees beat drums and burnt incense.

He stopped in front of the Matunga Gymkhana to watch the girls in white playing tennis. He looked at the legs of one of the girls, pale brown, glossy, with strong diamond-shaped calf muscles, and then up at her tight T-shirt, from which a golden necklace dangled.

‘Wrong game, Tendulkar.’

A Honda City had stopped beside him, and a girl held a door open for Manju.

‘Don’t act as if you don’t know me now,’ Sofia said, as Manju looked about. ‘Get in.’

‘Is Radha here with you?’

‘Why should he be? I was just going to Ram Ashraya to meet a friend. Get in. Manju, don’t worry. Your father isn’t here. That man tried to kill me in Ballard Estate. I feel sorry for you. Get in.’

The door was still open and the car was holding up traffic; so, Manju got in, closed the door behind him with one hand, and sat with the textbooks pressed against his chest.

Sofia smiled. He tried to read her mind.

‘Tomorrow is your big Selectors’ Day, isn’t it? Everyone is so nervous right now. Are you nervous?’

As the car moved, Manju felt his stomach starting to churn.

‘Hey. I asked, are you freaked out by Selectors’ Day? I know that they asked you to come even though you’re one year younger than everyone else.’

He wanted to raise his palm and just block Sofia out.

‘No. I’m not nervous.’

‘Salim,’ the girl told her driver, ‘this boy has no blood pressure. Look how cool he is the day before Selectors’ Day.’ Leaning in to him she whispered: ‘Manju, be honest with me. I’m on your side, understand?’

‘Yes,’ Manju said.

The traffic was bad; a colossal image of Durga, seated on the back of a lorry, was approaching, surrounded by chanting and singing devotees, some of whom carried their own smaller idols of the Mother Goddess.

‘Salim.’ Sofia touched her driver’s shoulder with her BlackBerry. ‘You know who this is, Salim? He’s Radha’s brother. But he doesn’t look like Radha, does he?’

‘No, ma’am.’

An idol of Durga with a red tongue scraped past the windscreen as devotees transferred the goddess from one side of the car to the other.

‘By the way, I’m participating in a paid marketing brand survey for Amaze cars versus Polo. Which do you prefer? Sorry. You can’t drive. Your father won’t let you.’

Manju concentrated on the image of the Goddess Durga, still in the distance, to calm himself.

‘Radha has taught himself to drive. He’ll teach me one day.’

Sofia clicked her tongue: sure, sure.

‘You know Radha and I broke up, right? One day he hit me, and I said, Don’t dare do that again. It’s abuse. Get out of my life. But we’re still friends. Do you approve of friendship after a relationship?’

‘Yes,’ Manju said.

Her magenta T-shirt had a gold-rimmed hole around her navel, and big letters above it said: POW. How silly he would look, Manju thought, wearing something like this; how silly anyone would look in it. Not Sofia, though. She pulled it off, she could pull anything off: she knew her prerogative as a rich girl in Mumbai, which was to be one step ahead of the city she lived in.

Sofia helped him understand Javed. The same note of irritation sounded in her voice even the first time she asked for something; and the same carelessness when probing the personal life of one not of her class.

‘Salim,’ Sofia said suddenly to her driver, ‘Salim, be careful, we’re going to hit and kill someone. Look at all these mad people doing this puja. All these Hindus ! Did they walk out of a film set? Now, Manju, I’m on your side. We’re all on your side. No one likes what your brother is saying about you, okay?’

Manju felt that churning in his stomach grow stronger and stronger. Ask her what your brother says about you, he told himself. Ask her.?She knew this; Sofia, like his mother, like most women, could read minds.

‘Are you scared of me, Manju? Don’t be.’

She had rehearsed for this encounter: it was not by chance she had driven up just as he had stepped out of the college.

‘People discuss you a lot, do you know this, Manju?’ Sofia said at last. ‘But we’re all on your side. I told Radha, stop talking of your brother like this. I mean, it’s Manju’s choice, Manju’s lifestyle, let him be whatever he wants. I defended you.’

That he was being talked about, analysed, and gossiped about, came as a shock; and as Manju sat with Sofia, he felt a net falling over him. Frenzied devotees of Goddess Durga pressed against the windows of the car.

‘What does my brother say about me?’

‘I just want to be your friend, Manju,’ Sofia said, and bit her lip, and told herself she sounded exactly like one of the men who creep closer and closer but claim they are only looking for ‘friendship’. But talking to Manju was so much harder than talking to his brother, who was a simple soul, after all.

Enough. She leaned forward and yelled at the driver’s shoulder:

‘Salim, stop the car at Ram Ashraya. Tendulkar,’ she touched his shoulder, ‘relax, okay? This is the twenty-first century and you are in junior college. Be who you are. Look at me, dude. The other day I told my father, I’ve grown up. I told him, Dad, I’m on the college committee to protect turtles and birds. We go to Crawford Market every Sunday to free them from cages. I’ll protect you too, Manju.’

‘Protect me?’

Fine. To make it clear to one and all that she was not behaving with Manju the way boys sometimes behaved with her, but out of a genuine and sincere interest to protect him, Sofia just cut through the bullshit and told Manju it was normal, perfectly normal, 100 per cent normal, lots of people these days were homosexuals, it was no big deal anymore, there was even a gay and lesbian club in Xavier’s for chrissakes, so why make a fuss over the fact that his brother was going around telling everyone he was a—

The next thing Sofia knew, cymbals and drum-beats were deafening her and her driver had had to brake hard; because a door had opened in the moving car and a body had leapt out and run. Sofia reached over and shut the door at once.

•

Off stump line pakado, bhai. Kaise bowling kar rahe ho? New ball hain, waste mat karo!

Waiting, waiting. Now bowling.

Lavkar daud — Ramesh!

From the Fort Vijay Club, Manju had gone counter-clockwise around Azad Maidan, past the Lord Northbrook Cricket Club, the Times of India Sports Club, and the Bohra Cricketers Club until he was just outside the Young Hindu Cricket Club. Cloud and wind and unbearable sun; the smell of woodsmoke in the breeze; spike-marks in red mud; the sounds of balls being struck and bodies colliding from one match and another.

And at last he found what he had been searching for.

Radha Kumar, his brother, fielding in the covers, fingers spread out, eyes on the wicket.

There was a loud cry: a fielder, running after a ball from his own match, had been hit in the shin by a ball flying from another match, and had fallen with a cry. Now there were spots of blood on the mud. As he stood up, with torn trouser and bloody knee, the fielder grimaced at Manjunath.