Aravind Adiga - Selection Day

He was aware that Manju was now talking about their father, about his health, so Radha shouted:

‘His health? I hope his balls fall off, I hope his fingers fall off, I hope he goes blind, I hope he has cancer on his tongue, I hope he is sent to some mental hospital where they beat him once a day.’

Radha was aware that on the other end of the line, his brother was asking him if he had gone mad, and so he shouted again:

‘No. No. I won’t go mad if I talk like this about that man, I will go mad if I do not talk like this about that man.’

Radha looked at his cousins, gorging themselves with the messy raagi, their lips stained, their eyes dazed by country carbohydrates, and he said:

‘Manju, Revanna Uncle here says he knows where our mother is. He says she’s alive. She’s still in Mumbai, Manju. Ten years ago she sent Revanna Uncle a letter asking how you and I were — he showed it to me. There’s an address on it in Virar. She could still be alive. Maybe I can go to her and ask her for some money? No. She never wrote after that. No? Why not? You’re right, Manju, you’re right. Either she’s dead, or if she’s alive, she doesn’t want us, and we don’t want her, either. But I do want to go back to cricket, Manju. It’s all I’m good for. Listen: I think I know what is wrong with my backlift. I’ve been practising here in the fields. We have to reimburse Anand Mehta his 75,000 rupees, and then he’ll let me play again. If you do go back, will you tell them all to give me another chance to play for Mumbai?’

•

A coconut palm grew right outside Tommy Sir’s building in Kalanagar: it was time for it to be culled of its fruit before they fell on passers-by, and the man from South India who did the work each year was at it again. Stripped to the waist, secured to the tree by a cord around his middle and another around his legs, he had climbed up with a curved knife to hack at the nuts, which rained down on the footpath like artillery. Done with his work, the man wiped his face and glistening torso with a cloth, and rewarded himself: slashing open the final coconut on the tree, he threw his head back, raised the coconut high, and drank its shining water. It was like a tableau of triumphant completion.

Tommy Sir sighed, let the curtain cover his window, and went back to his desk.

A waste-basket next to the desk was stuffed with what remained of a torn manila folder; now he continued the business of tearing up his unfinished notes on the third battle of Panipat. The geological watercolours had already been taken away by the trash collector this morning. He remembered that he had to call the Jehangir Art Gallery to cancel his show.

Manjunath Kumar was gone, and his life’s work as a cricket scout was finished. He had emailed his editors at the Mumbai Sun asking that his column be terminated. They said that ‘Some Boys Rise, Some Boys Fall’ would continue, with or without him — they owned the rights. Pramod Sawant would write it from now on.

Manjunath Kumar was gone. And he would never find another boy like that.

Six Point Two.

Tommy Sir had to go to Lilavati Hospital for another round of tests for his blood sugar, B.P. and cholesterol. He smoked a cigarette on the way.

Near the Kalanagar Signal, he stopped, and looked up at the billboard that had once said, ‘When Sachin Tendulkar dreamed of becoming the world’s best batsman, so did …’ Now it featured an advertisement for Coca-Cola. From the advertisement, his eyes moved up to the skywalk, the zig-zagging metal bridge that connected various locations in the neighbourhood to the Bandra train station. Behind the metal grid, men moved back and forth. Tommy Sir’s eyes grew tired. He felt that up there, on that seemingly never-ending bridge, shadowy figures were moving towards obscure destinations, possibly only to return to their point of origin, like in an architectural sketch of infinity by M.C. Escher. Hell is a choice, made daily and by millions, and breathing slowly and watching this aerial cage, Tommy Sir saw Mumbai, minute by minute, unbecome and become hell.

•

They were in an autorickshaw that was moving slowly through crowded streets towards the train station. Next to him Manju felt Javed’s powerful body, his thick shoulders.

‘I know you must be worried about Radha,’ Javed said, ‘but don’t do anything rash.’

Javed’s forehead had darkened, and the two veins bulged: a sight so impressively real that it drained the life from the hapless crowd around the autorickshaw. Ordinary people, bloodless people. If Manju went back to Mumbai, he would become one of them. If he stayed here, he would become whatever Javed was. These were his choices.

‘Manju, when you phoned and said you were coming to Navi Mumbai, you know how happy I was? In the station I looked into each and every train to see if you were there.’

The autorickshaw hit bumps and potholes in the road, and Javed said, ‘Fuck,’ each time.

‘What do you like about me?’ Manju asked. ‘The only thing I’m good at is cricket.’

Javed turned his face as he spoke. ‘I’m not going to sing your praises, Captain. Javed is not that kind of man. Manju, c’mon. Don’t believe all that shit your father has put in your head. Think.’ Now Javed turned to show that he was tapping his forehead. ‘What would someone like about you? Think .’

Manju tried.

•

Before a background of luminous green mountains, a succession of ponds and wet paddyfields fled past the train tracks, solitary egrets stalking in them, and the bushes sparkling with wild flowers close enough to pluck. Then came the towns, shining and white and set in geometrical grids against the green hills. For Manju’s benefit, Javed pronounced the name of each place where the train stopped.

Belapur.

Man-a-sa-saro-var.

Now and then the sun disappeared, and when it shone down on them again Manju again noticed how fast Javed’s hair was receding. Soon he would have a bald spot on his crown. Manju raised his right hand to block the sun from scorching Javed’s scalp.

‘I’m really happy your brother said you could do whatever you want,’ Javed said. ‘Now you’re free.’

They stood apart from everyone else that morning, two boys older than their years, older and wiser than anyone else on that slow-moving train.

A man in a grey bush-shirt lit a cigarette and smoked; in between puffs, when he cleared his chest, the mucus made a noise like five hundred years of human history. The light in Javed’s eyes shone playfully on Manju. Then a passenger heaved his luggage to the door and stood between them, and they had to talk around his sweating body, until the train pulled in to Panvel station.

Once there, they ran. They had been in that train so long. They ran to the end of the platform and up the stairs, and then Manju leant over a bridge to see a train down below. ‘Read what’s written on its side. Nethravati Express.’

Javed pressed against him and looked down at the train.

‘And?’

‘This is the train. This is the train we take every summer to see our village.’

Javed pinched his collar.

‘What is your shirt size? We’ll buy you a shirt.’

‘Why? I don’t want any.’

‘If you have clothes here, you won’t leave.’

Manju nodded. He moved alongside Javed among the clothes sellers, pretending to look for a shirt, till he found what he wanted: a baseball cap.

A gift for Javed. He fitted it on his friend’s head, and thought that it covered the receding hairline pretty well.

Javed slapped the cap off his head.

‘I’m not going bald. It’s just the Coca-Cola I was drinking. And even if I was going bald, Javed Ansari is not the kind of man to hide anything. Do you understand?’