Aravind Adiga - Selection Day

Manju shook his head. The sparrow was still up there on the ceiling fan.

‘Sure?’

‘Yes,’ Manju said. He let Javed keep his cell phone, and said, ‘I finished Fantastic Four. You have X-Men?’

•

The next day was Friday. While he was brushing his teeth, Javed said, sure, it was okay for him to go to Mumbai: no danger from cricket now.

He took the train to Matunga station. At Ruia, he was called to the principal’s office; Tommy Sir had informed them that he had run away.

‘I am not living with my father, sir. I am sixteen and a half years old.’

The principal pinched together the wings of his nose and shook his head.

‘My father is a violent man, who has beaten me in the past,’ Manju told him. ‘He may try to do so again. Being also an unintelligent man, he is unaware that I am now stronger than he is, and I might accidentally hurt him, or even kill him. In which case my only regret would be wasting the rest of my life in jail over a man like my father.’

His fingers still pinching his nostrils, the principal’s mouth opened.

Manju took the train back to Vashi, and walked down the road, past the Golden Punjab Hotel, to Javed’s flat, to give him the good news: the college had agreed he need not live with his father.

But when he returned to Javed’s flat there was another teenager sitting on the bed with the golden bedsheet, and sharing a cigarette with Javed.

‘Manju, this is my friend Ranjith,’ Javed said, putting a hand on the newcomer. ‘My dear Big Boss, that is Manju.’

‘Look at this chap,’ Ranjith said. ‘Where did you find this fellow, Javed?’

‘Cricket,’ Javed said.

Manju and the boy on the bed examined each other. A tuft of blonde hair grew under Ranjith’s lower lip. He wore braces on his teeth, but had blue tattoos on each of his smooth arms, and smelled one part tobacco or pot, other part superior cologne.

Manju’s nostrils suddenly longed for home. He waved away the cigarette smoke.

Ranjith took a final drag at the cigarette, and then flicked it out of the window.

‘That must be the best place to find them, no? All that dressing up in white, so romantic.’

Manju had never seen Javed like this before: he nodded demurely at everything Ranjith said, and hunched forward, arms folded across his chest, lips pursed tight, looking almost scared of the boy with the blond tuft.

Ranjith slapped him on the back: Javed shook.

‘Buddy,’ Ranjith said, ‘we must all go to Mad Max racing in Powai. Have you told the little cricketer about the bike racing? Dude, Cricketer, you know that each of us takes his bike — you do have a bike, right? — and goes from Powai all the way to Bandra without stopping. Let the police shout, let them chase, we keep going. Because we aren’t frightened of the police, or anyone else, are we, Javed?’

‘No, we’re not frightened,’ Javed said, and laughed, almost painfully.

Manju got it now: his own lies were deflating Javed. He was scared of the police. He was also scared of this boy, Ranjith.

So when Ranjith asked, ‘Javed, are you ready for the challenge on Tuesday?’, Manju sat on the bed between the two.

‘Javed is not coming for Mad Max anymore,’ Manju declared. ‘ You get caught by the police this time. Don’t get us into trouble.’

Ranjith gaped. Manju heard Javed’s voice behind him.

‘Don’t talk to him like that. He’s my friend.’

Ranjith smiled over Manju’s head. ‘Mad Max on Tuesday, Javed?’ He stood up.

‘Yes.’

‘Don’t bring any inexperienced types along with you.’

‘I won’t.’

The door slammed shut.

Manju’s face had gone numb, like it did after his father slapped him: tears filled the corners of his eyes as he looked at the golden bedsheet, where Ranjith’s arse had left an impression. Maybe Javed had brought him to Navi Mumbai only to show him off to Ranjith and the rest of the Mad Max gang. Here is the boy who I took away from cricket. Here is my catch. And in a day or two, his cricket career finished, the maidservant would open the door, and say, ‘Get out.’

Manju could feel Javed sitting right by him on the bed.

Was he going to gloat now? Was he going to tease Manju for being a virgin? He looked at Javed: but he could not see into him. The only mind in the whole world he could not read was Javed’s: for what we discover, when we think we are discovering someone else’s thoughts, is our own diminished expectations of them. And the one person Manju could not create a diminished version of was this beak-nosed boy.

‘What? What are you angry about this time?’

Each second that Ranjith was gone, Javed visibly reverted, sat more upright, and seemed more like himself.

‘I’m not going to Mad Max. Are you happy, Sir Manju? I just said I was going, to keep Ranjith quiet. Who wants to go to Powai anyway? This is where I want to go. Look up.’

Javed sketched a ‘V’ in the air.

He had it all planned out. As soon as the holidays came, Manju and he were going to rent a motorbike, and drive from Bangalore to Alur to see Radha, and from there to Mangalore, and then — Javed sketched that magic ‘V’ a third time, signifying the entire coast of India — drive top -speed all the way down to Kanyakumari, tip of the subcontinent, and there they were going to find that black rock that Swami Vivekananda had stood on with folded arms and they were going to adopt the same macho posture and take selfies of each other and become very enlightened, and smoke a shit load of ganja. Manju had done ganja, right?

‘What motorbike are we going on?’ Manju had to ask.

So Javed showed him, parked against the compound wall of his housing society: a black Royal Enfield bike, formerly his father’s.

‘Can I sit on it, Javed?’

‘Yes! Of course! Captain — don’t be such an ass!’

So Manju got to sit on a motorbike for the first time, touched its metal surface, gripped its handles, and smiled. When he got down, uncertain how to use the foot-stand, he leaned the bike against the compound wall; and then, with an elbow, he rammed into Javed, driving the taller boy back.

‘Don’t call me Captain. Don’t ever call me Captain again.’

Javed chuckled.

They played with the bike for three hours, and Javed showed Manju how to take it for a ride around the compound. Tomorrow they could start driving on the road.

•

‘O, I do read Indian novels sometimes. But you know, Ms Rupinder, what we Indians want in literature, at least the kind written in English, is not literature at all, but flattery. We want to see ourselves depicted as soulful, sensitive, profound, valorous, wounded, tolerant and funny beings. All that Jhumpa Lahiri stuff. But the truth is, we are absolutely nothing of that kind. What are we, then, Ms Rupinder? We are animals of the jungle, who will eat our neighbour’s children in five minutes, and our own in ten. Keep this in mind before you do any business in this country.’

And Anand Mehta sipped some more Diet Coke.

Dressed in a grey business suit, holding a glass of sparkling water in her hand, young Ms Rupinder controlled her smile, and asked: ‘Has it been a bad day for you, then?’

‘You could say that.’ Anand Mehta smiled at his interlocutor. ‘I’ve been meeting hipsters all day. The sons of my classmates. All of them are stockbrokers like Daddy, but they’ve also become hipsters.’

The young Punjabi — American businesswoman struggled again with laughter. ‘Hipsters? Here in India?’

‘O, yes, Ms Rupinder. Our trains aren’t running, our roads are full of potholes, but our cities are bounteous with hipsters. Without understanding what capitalism means, we’ve vaulted’ — Mehta made an aeroplane with his palm — ‘straight to post-capitalist decadence. What is an Indian, after all? Picture today’s young man from Mumbai or Delhi as a vulture above the nations, scavenging for his identity. He sees a pretty thing in Dubai, and he brings it home; he sees a pretty thing in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and he brings it home. One day he looks at his life, finds that it makes no sense at all, and then he turns to religion. Now, Ms Rupinder, I would like to give my portfolio folder, which has information about my two visionary ventures …’