Aravind Adiga: Selection Day

‘I want to watch the turtle.’

‘Manju, it’s not that morning.’

‘I want to watch the turtle.’

‘Manju, it’s not a check-up morning,’ his brother said. ‘Don’t be afraid.’ Radha poked his brother in the ribs. ‘And if you don’t come now, I’ll show him where you’ve hidden your science experiment.’

The brothers looked at each other for a moment: then both bodies sprang from the well and ran.

Their father had already folded up their cots and propped them against the wall, forming two isosceles triangles; his own cot was on the other side of the green curtain. Next to the dining table stood a metal almirah, which complained of its years of ill treatment in a rash of rusty patches and livid scars; leaning on three of its sides were seven cricket bats.

Old Sharadha, relative of some kind, aunt or great-aunt, polyglot remonstrator in Kannada, Hindi and English, the only woman to have entered their home for a decade, perhaps longer (neither boy can remember exactly when She left), was cleaning the stove and last night’s dishes.

Standing before the mirror on his side of the green curtain, Mohan Kumar was painting his moustache, a grooming procedure that could take a quarter of an hour. He turned around with his dye-brush and looked at his sons.

‘Were you looking at girls again? Naked girls bathing in the morning?’

‘No, Appa. We were looking at turtles.’

‘Boys,’ Mohan Kumar said, closing his eyes and restraining his anger. ‘If you are looking at naked girls, half-naked bathing girls, tell me. I will not punish. But don’t lie. What were you two looking at?’

Emerging with a pitch-black moustache, Mohan called his second son to him, held his chin, and turned his face from side to side.

‘There’s blood in your cheeks, Manju. That comes from hormones. You were looking at girls, weren’t you?’

‘No, Appa.’

When Mohan Kumar raised his hand, his palm rotated ninety degrees to the left and vibrated, like a man having a fit just as he was saluting; Manju cringed and readied himself; the blow fell on the right side of his face.

In ten minutes, the boys were in school uniform and had packed their cricket bags: they stood at attention while Mohan slid his fingers into the bags to check their contents.

And then, closing the door of their home behind them, the family Kumar left for cricket practice.

When they passed the tyre-repair place with the sign saying PUNCHER SHOP, Manju stopped, and shouted, ‘Wrong, that’s wrong!’

‘Quiet,’ Radha said.

But when he looked at his father, Manju knew that he wanted him to continue: he was proud of his son, smarter than everyone else his age in the slum.

‘Do You Want Pan Card!’ Manju raised his voice. ‘Pumpkin Carrot Banana Shapes Fruit and Vegetable Salad Decorators! Pandal, Marriage, Birthday Experts! Everything in English is written the wrong way and I alone know!’

But Manjunath Kumar, world’s second-best batsman, knew something much more important than how to spell English correctly: Manju knew how to read other people’s minds. It had come to him like one of those special things that some children can do; like being able to move your ears without touching them or curling your tongue up as if it were a dried leaf or flexing your thumb all the way back. If he let himself be still, Manju could tell what other people wanted from him. And he could complete their sentences for them.

He knew that this secret gift, this mind-reading power, had come to him from his mother. Her long, elegant nose; her ravishing smile; her way of looking at him sideways — he remembered all this about his mother. This, too: her sitting on a sofa, fixing her beautiful smile on her visitors, all the time rubbing the silver coin embossed with the image of Lord Subramanya that hung from her marriage-necklace as if it were an amulet that read minds for her. She could always say what her guests wanted to hear, and she pampered them with flattery after flattery, till they left her with their egos refreshed and glowing, as if they had just stepped out of a hammam ; and then one day, she read his father’s mind and vanished. That is what saved her from being killed by Mohan Kumar. Manju was sure of it. That is why their mother had never come back to see Radha or him, even though she must have heard they were famous. She was so scared of her husband she had forgotten her sons.

Right now, reading his father’s mind, knowing what he had to do to give him satisfaction and pleasure, Manjunath kept shouting in English, while Radha (who did not have his brother’s secret gift) protested:

‘Didn’t you hear him? Shut up, Manju.’

Manju did shut up: but only because of the grinding noise and a cloud of particulated flour produced by the wheat-mill. It was a tyrant of blue pipes and funnels, the most famous object in the slum, which brought even people from good buildings to Shastrinagar every morning. The noise and choking white dust temporarily pacified the youngest Kumar, but then he began again:

‘Internet Gaming Cyber Mahesh Cafe!’

‘Manju, shut up, I told you. I know English too, but I’m not showing off.’

Following their father, the boys had passed the shuttered shops of their slum, and through a cardboard WELCOME TO OUR HOME arch. The gift of a political party, it was painted blue, and covered by the beaming, disembodied faces of city, statewide and national leaders, at least two of whom were serving jail sentences, a fact which only heightened the impression that they were so many medieval criminals whose grinning heads had been hoisted up above a city gate. An observer from a distance, however, might well judge that the faces on the blue arch were so many genies gathered there to perform friendly magic: for family Kumar now appeared to be walking on water.

The slum had grown at the very edge of Mumbai’s municipal limits. For most of the year, the Dahisar river was a rock-filled sewer, lit up by egrets and the flutter of a paddy-bird returning to its nest of twigs. A series of bricks, spaced two feet apart in the water, formed a makeshift bridge: their father had hoisted his cycle over his head, and the boys followed him step by step, as they crossed over the river and into the rest of Mumbai.

At the station — get in, get in — Mohan pushed the slow cricketers and their bags into the fast train. Hurry, hurry. Miss this train and there won’t be space on the next one. It’ll be rush hour. Yes, I know there’s an empty seat, but you can’t sit down, Manju. All three of us will stand. I don’t want anyone sleeping in the train and yawning during practice.

A thin, tall gap-toothed child went about the first-class carriage, offering or threatening to polish shoes for five rupees each. Mohan Kumar’s shoes were polished for free. As he worked, the gap-toothed child looked up at the father of cricketers.

‘Young Lions? Young Lions. Young Lions? Young Lions. Young Lions?’

‘I sell unique chutneys,’ Mohan told one passenger after the other. ‘Twenty-four chutneys for each hour of the day. You like Mint? We have Mint. Garlic? We have Extra Garlic. Chilli, Hot Chilli, Green Chilli, Sweet Chilli, Mango, Rainbow, 100 per cent vegetarian.’

Manju leaned his face to his brother’s shirt and dozed against his body.

At Bandra, the family Kumar got off and walked along the pedestrian bridge, a grid of inverted ‘V’s, that zigged and zagged, yellow and metallic, over the swamps and green vacant fields of east Bandra. The sun burned, the wet earth reflected, and the two brothers knew they had to run. Down the yellow bridge, in the direction of the Kalanagar Traffic Signal. Radha surged. Yee-haah. Manju wanted to touch his brother — I’ve caught you, I’ve … But to his right (he surrendered a yard to his brother) he saw fields of water lilies, and right beside them newly rutted mud roads on which men fought to move their motorbikes. He caught up with Radha and they ran past security guards playing with their lathis, and a cluster of Muslim youth with their feet dangling down the bridge. Because their father was now invisible behind them, Radha turned to his brother and—