Aravind Adiga - Selection Day

A Paradoxography is a book illuminated by monks in the Middle Ages, and in his New York years, Anand Mehta had once seen a whole bunch of Paradoxographies lying under a panel of glass at the Morgan Library: each page glistening with impossible creatures, centaurs, unicorns, half-man half-fish, fanged things tamed by the touch of a saint, that sort of thing. Right now, standing in this glittering hall of the Grand Hyatt Hotel, Mehta felt he was living inside a Paradoxography, surrounded by a bestiary of financial analysts, brokers and bankers who had been transformed, from the waist down, into Mother Teresa. Officially, it was a gathering of social entrepreneurs from around the world, looking for business in India. One man, a former Lehman banker, was now running a corporate social responsibility consultancy, and this chap, who had worked with Bill Miller at Legg Mason, had developed software that increased corporate donations to primary education by 25 per cent, and that white guy, once in junk bonds, was now in windmills. Mehta discovered from him that the big game in Indian bio-renewables was no longer Rice Husks. ‘It’s all about Elephant Grass these days. We have three fields in Assam already. What’s your big idea?’

And young Ms Rupinder here, to whom he had just explained all about hipsters — authentic stockbroking Gujarati hipsters — represented a venture fund in Iowa City that apparently wanted to ‘both do well and do good in India’. Right up my alley, dear lady: Anand Mehta sipped more Diet Coke, as the young Punjabi — American woman, who reminded him in some ways of his own wife Asha, before she put on weight, examined the brochures in his folder.

‘This doesn’t interest me much,’ the American snapped her fingers at one brochure, ‘the old power plants. But this ,’ she snapped at another, ‘tell me more about this .’

‘Modelled closely on the US college athletic scholarship programmes,’ Mehta added, as he told her all about young Manjunath Kumar, his fully sponsored little superman.

‘Except,’ Ms Rupinder said, as she returned the folder, ‘isn’t it illegal, what you’re doing? I mean, it would be in America: you can’t bribe boys to play football or basketball until they’re eighteen. Very strictly enforced. They send college coaches to prison all the time over this.’

‘ Nothing’s illegal in India,’ Anand Mehta replied with a smile. ‘Because, technically, everything’s illegal in India. You see how it works, Ms Rupinder?’ He had not been wrong: this woman really did remind him of Asha.

He gave her his card anyway.

An hour later, done with the paradox-people and their bullshit, a little bit tipsy from all that free Indian champagne (he had promised Asha, who worried he was turning ‘psychotic’, that he wouldn’t drink for a month — but not that he wouldn’t reject free drinks), Mehta walked out of the hotel, and into an autorickshaw, and said, ‘Bandra Kurla Complex.’ Well before they came to the financial centre, he told the auto to stop at a bridge with a view of the Mithi river, and got down. Some shade of colour between grey and black, tinged with the dark green of the brave trees growing on its banks, the ravaged Mithi river, into which all the city’s effluent and shit flowed untreated, moved towards the ocean slowly, sluggishly, and indecisively — so human-like in its movement, Anand thought. In the middle of the river, an old man, shirtless above his blue lungi, rowed a boat with a single oar, as he searched for something in the murky water. What the fuck are you fishing for? Nothing lives in this toxic river of Mumbai. As if agreeing with Mehta’s assessment, the old man turned his boat around, and began moving back to shore. Now Anand Mehta’s sense of scale changed. He watched the old man struggle, with his thin tough arms, to take his little boat against the current. Pitted against a human’s strength, the dying river had become a powerful thing. ‘Do well and do good,’ Mehta said aloud and smiled. A decade ago, when he returned to India, Anand had imagined that matters would be as simple as floating along a river. Yes, he would lead the good life — servants, a big flat, a wife, home-cooked food, weekend fucks in air-conditioned hotels near technical colleges — but he would also do good things for his motherland. It would be simple enough, he had imagined. There would be Rotary Clubs and Blood Banks on every street — a man would just have to sign up and show his face on Sunday mornings; moral glow would be one of the ancillary benefits of living in India. Now, watching that old man strain his muscles to row his boat, Anand Mehta wondered: what if doing good in India was like going against the current? You can barely make a buck here, and in earning it, what if you end up screwing the poor, the people you imagined you would help a bit in your spare time? The boat struggled to reach dry land; Anand Mehta dreamed of New York.

When the smell from the river became overpowering, he took an autorickshaw to Bandra, and from there a taxi over the Sea Link bridge and all the way to the Cricket Club, where he settled down into his favourite veranda table for tea and toast — which was precisely when the bombshell landed.

Tommy Sir called and told.

Manju was gone. After three years and two months, the cricket sponsorship programme was over. A table shook; breadcrumbs scattered and tea spilled on the tablecloth.

‘Gone?’ Mehta asked Tommy Sir. ‘Gone where? Gone why? What the fuck are you talking about? I could be on the verge of getting some woman from a venture fund in Iowa City to take this boy from me, how can he be gone now?’

‘Goldenboy is gone,’ Tommy Sir said quietly. ‘He ran away. He didn’t come to the selection match in Shivaji Park. His career is over.’

‘Where is he now? With his brother? That other criminal?’

‘No. He’s in Navi Mumbai.’

‘Why has he gone to Navi Mumbai?’

But Tommy Sir hung up.

In the next few minutes, Anand Mehta came up with the following observations about cricket: that it was a fraud, and at the most fundamental level. Only ten countries play this game, and only five of them play it well. If we had any self-respect, we’d finally grow up as a people and play football. No: let’s not expose ourselves to real competition, much safer to be in a ‘world cup’ against St Kitts and Bangladesh. Self-obsession without self-belief: the very definition of the Indian middle class, which is why it loves this fraud sport.

Poised to offer the world more deep thoughts about the gentleman’s game, Mehta heard:

Shot! Bloody Good Shot!

A blue screen on the veranda of the Cricket Club protected club members from the matches played in the Brabourne stadium; it rippled, and two boys in white rushed towards the dark red ball rolling about the base of the screen.

Confronted by the sound and smell of an instant of real cricket, Mehta felt all his mighty observations turn to ashes.

In the evening, after a tele-con with Rakesh, the IAS officer’s son, (whose cough, thank God, had improved), Mehta booked another flight to Delhi, to meet a political connection before taking the train to Dhanbad to work on his distressed power plant. He seemed to be in high spirits.

‘We’ll have to do battle out there for our power plant, Rakesh,’ he declared, ‘so let’s do battle.’

But in truth, the end of his cricket sponsorship programme had shaken Anand Mehta more than he admitted even to himself, and he was going to need a long holiday when he returned to Mumbai.

For this too is hell: knowing you are not — and can never be — as good as you want to be.

•

Across a shining creek, in Navi Mumbai, Manjunath was waking up. Yawning and slapping his cheeks, he got out of bed and saw that familiar sparrow sitting on the fan. Can this really be my new home, he wondered. Can this really be my new bed?