Aravind Adiga - Selection Day

At the far end of the maidan stood two traffic policemen.

Manju watched them.

When at last the match was over, Radha returned with the other boys, tossing the red ball from hand to hand with a big grin. Reaching his tent, he stopped.

He dropped the ball, and looked at his younger brother.

‘Radha,’ Manju said. ‘What have you been telling people about me?’

Looking at the earth, Radha bit at his right thumbnail, tore away a part of it and let it fall.

‘Radha. What have you been telling people about me?’

He did the same thing with his right index fingernail, and then looked at the ring finger as if he were considering whether to bite it; instead, he turned and began to run. In his cricket whites Radha ran — and in T-shirt and jeans Manju ran after him — all the way down Azad Maidan and past Xavier’s College, past the soccer ground from behind whose wall and barbed-wire fence came the noise of a marching band, and then to Metro Cinema, and through Dhobi Talao, before taking a left at Alfred, the dance bar he had visited only that weekend with his friends, and further past the blue Parsi Dairy Farm, and up the bridge, past a basket of peeled pineapples carried on a coolie’s head, and down past the flyover, and out into Marine Drive and all the way to where the pigeons had huddled in the noisy kabootarkhana, the metal enclosure designed for them to gather and feed. A man in white pajamas, having just emptied a sack of grain for the birds, stood with his palms folded before their auspicious gluttony.

Radha stopped, panting: from here he could see a game of cricket being played in the Gymkhana beyond the pigeon-stand; and another game of cricket in the Gymkhana beyond that one; and another game of cricket beyond that one too. There was nowhere to escape.

He turned around to see Manju slowing down.

Sounding its long horn, a train drew into Marine Lines station.

Folding his arms across his chest, Radha braced himself for a blow, as Manju came running up to him. He kept his eyes on the feeding mass of birds, the rippling crowd of emerald necks and grey pulsing bodies, which paid attention only to their free grain, and waited.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Manju had moved a pace to his right. There was something new in his face: there was malice in his smile. As Radha watched, he climbed over into the kabootarkhana, lifted his shoe over one of the feeding pigeons, which kept clucking at the grain, oblivious to the danger over its head; he kept his shoe like this, and then, very deliberately, brought it down on the bird.

‘Manju!’

Everything else flew away at once.

The bird was still alive. Alone in the kabotaarkhana, it thrashed about the grain bed in mad, helpless circles.

Radha slapped his brother.

In the train to Chembur they stood side by side, looking at each other.

Even before the train had come to a stop, Manju leapt out and ran; Radha followed, trying to hit him from behind, all the way past the Subramanya temple, and to Tattvamasi Building, where they went to the backyard and slapped and punched each other by the brick wall, even as the neighbours watched, slapped and punched each other until they were simply too tired. They walked up the stairs to the fourth floor, drank water that their father poured into glasses for them, ate dinner, washed their faces, went to bed, and turned off the lights.

Manju opened his eyes and saw the figure standing by his bed. He averted his face and clenched his jaw.

And waited for it to start all over again.

But no blow came; and the body fell back onto Radha’s bed. Manju heard sobbing in the dark.

‘Manju, I’m sorry I said those things about you. Sofia kept asking about you and kept asking and kept asking and I got angry and … Manju, you always win, you are the golden boy, what about me? Do you want me to carry your cricket bag for you?’

The sobbing grew louder.

‘… he said I was lean, mean and … Manju …’

It comes slowly to some: they sink by degrees, over years, into paranoia — and to some the estrangement from reality occurs in a single shearing instant. For Radha it had occurred at the nets: it was the moment Tommy Sir touched his shoulder and said, ‘You are lean, mean and magnificent, son.’

Because Tommy Sir had never praised him when he was good.

‘… he said … lean, mean and …’

With a single exertion, Manju had moved his brother’s moist, pathetic body away from his bed.

‘You should have practised.’

Practised? Manju observed that the word went to Radha uninsulated. His body trembled.

My big brother must be thinking, what else have I done in my life until now other than practise cricket ?

Jumping from the bed, Radha stood over his younger brother and made a fist: Manju grinned as his brother mimed a blow right at his neck.

‘Hey. Homo. Listen. You have to throw your wicket tomorrow. Get out early. Tomorrow is my day. If you don’t get out early I’ll kill you. You hear me?’

Manju just thrashed his feet about.

Radha tightened his fist, and then let it go, and sagged, and sobbed.

‘I’m sorry, Manju. You’re not a gay.’

Manju ordered: ‘Say it once more.’

‘You’re not a gay.’

After making him say it a third time, Manju sighed: for the fighting was over.

‘Now don’t cry like a girl. Go to sleep.’

‘Yes, Manju,’ Radha said.

Though he could hear his brother, next to him, sobbing, though his own face was bruised and his neck oily with sweat, Manju was exultant: he was thinking only of the moment when he had stepped, knowingly, on the fat body of that pigeon and held it under his shoe. Something new was starting in Manjunath’s life; he had tasted power.

•

From Metro Cinema to Victoria Terminus the black avenue is deserted beneath a series of pulsing red traffic lights. The Municipal Building is lit up, but VT station is just a white circle inside a rim of gold: just a clock that says ‘5.45 a.m.’ People are sleeping, entire clans are asleep on the footpath, but in a blue stall near the station, the first cups of tea are ready, served by a young man who is so fresh from the village that he does not know what you mean when you ask him for ‘takeaway’, or ‘parcel’, or even ‘just give it to me in a plastic cup, will you?’ Now a policeman blows a whistle: the traffic moves. The sky is a faint violet, and the great mass of the Gothic train station, like a dreadnought that has lain in wait all night, emerges into view. Pigeons cluster on rooftops, landing and taking off, flying in loops and returning, as if rehearsing their movements for the whole day. Outside Azad Maidan, a boy wearing a black eyepatch sleeps on his mother’s stomach, his mouth open, as a blue-masked municipal worker advances towards them with her broom. In this chaos of rubble, raw earth and dust, an articulate sound announces that it is morning: a cricket bat is tapping the earth. Beyond the fence at Azad Maidan, a wilderness of waste paper and abandoned plastic appears to have risen up and taken human form: hundreds of young men in whites are bowling and batting, and more join them every minute.

This is, at last, Selection Day.

Mohan Kumar woke to find that Manju was missing from his bed, but he was relieved that his bat and his cricket gear were also missing. The father of champions went to the kitchen, turned on the lights, and looked about for the earthen pot filled with boiled water that the maid left by the fridge every night.

From the kitchen, he could see Radha, sleeping on his bed like a cat, all his white teeth showing.

Mohan sat down next to his older son and sipped his water.

Radha opened his eyes, but did not move.