Aravind Adiga - Selection Day

Brother. Have pity on me. Think how much I have suffered in life. Please stop.

The flour-mill began its rumbling, giving off pungent fumes — it ground red chillies in the second shift, adding burning eyes to its customary noise pollution.

Mohan Kumar kept looking. The legless flautist kept playing.

Until the father put his glass down, walked over, slapped the flute out of the man’s hand, and returned to his spot to pick up his glass, only to find that his phone was ringing.

It was the boys’ cricket coach, and he said: ‘It’s payday, Mohan. Congratulations.’

•

‘But where is Coach Sawant?’

Three-quarters of an hour had passed, and Mohan Kumar, an aureole of sweat on his back, had pushed through the crowds around Bandra train station, and returned to Kalanagar, walking past Matoshree for the second time that day, to find a tall grey-haired man, whom he recognized from his one previous meeting nearly six months earlier as the man who hated all sporting fathers, Tommy Sir, waiting at the entrance of the MIG club, along with a stocky middle-aged man wearing a wonderful red T-shirt.

‘Gone with the other boys to school,’ said Tommy Sir, without smiling at Mohan Kumar.

‘I’m Anand Mehta.’ The man in the T-shirt, who smelled of cologne, stuck his hand out. ‘Just seen your boy bat. Very impressed.’

When he smelled the rich man’s hand, Mohan Kumar was overcome by shame. He almost cried.

‘Forgive me,’ he said, refusing to touch the perfumed flesh. ‘For my wet state, forgive me. For my lateness, forgive me.’

‘No problem, mate,’ the rich man said, slapping Mohan on his wet back. ‘My wife Asha says, if people sweat it means they’re honest. Can you read my T-shirt? Manchester United Gold Key Supporter. I have a cricket academy near Azad Maidan, did Tommy Sir tell you? Last year, I was happy to escort, at my own expense, seventy-six of the brightest young cricketing bodies in this country under the age of fifteen to Bowral, New South Wales, home of the one, the only, the eternal, the infinite, Sir Donald Bradman, where, in addition to a master class conducted in the Don’s own town, the boys also enjoyed a sumptuous meal of Aussie lamb wrapped in brown pitta bread. Australia is the reality principle in cricket, Tommy Sir: otherwise we Indians would think we were good at this game. Am I right, or am I right? Come in, come in, let’s eat and do business.’

They sat in the cafeteria of the MIG club, and a waiter came for their order.

‘Nothing for me,’ Tommy Sir said.

‘Order,’ Anand Mehta retaliated. ‘Order samosas.’

Like many others of his class in Mumbai, Mehta gave an impression of dogged and uncerebral strength. A small square forehead, held tight by close-cropped hair, expanded into a powerful black brush moustache over a stonecrusher jaw; a white fold of fat at the back of his skull broadened down a thick neck into a wide chest and wider paunch whose width he exaggerated by letting his shirt hang loose. His fleshy palms had clearly done no hard work, and yet seemed to sweat a lot. His English was international; he drew his phrases equally from the American, British and Indian dialects, and had acquired the democratic Australian habit of calling everyone around him ‘mate’. Halfway through each sentence came a pause in which he stared at a corner of the ceiling with an open mouth, as if just then realizing what he had begun to say; and he had the child’s habit of raising his voice when he repeated himself.

‘This man,’ Tommy Sir said, pointing a finger at the investor, ‘is a visionary. He wants to start the world’s first cricket sponsorship programme, and of all the boys in Mumbai he has picked yours as his first candidates. You are a lucky man, Mohan Kumar.’

‘No, sir,’ the chutney salesman replied. ‘ No , sir.’

‘No?’

‘ He is a lucky man.’ He took a breath, and turned to the investor: ‘Mr Anand, sir, I was not allowed to be present when my own sons were exhibited to you like goods at the market’ — an angry glance at Tommy Sir — ‘so I could not present a full picture of their talents. Let me share with you the whole A — Z of Future Champion-Making. Now, sir—’

Everyone stopped talking. Like a gangster introducing a gun into the discussions, Mohan Kumar suddenly placed a white cotton handkerchief on the table. Within the handkerchief was something black and heavy; he unwrapped the white layers to reveal a very large cell phone, which he proceeded to squint at.

‘Just checking if any customer has asked for a new batch of chutneys,’ he said, re-wrapping his phone in the handkerchief. ‘To keep germs away,’ he explained.

‘Excellent idea.’ Anand Mehta grinned. ‘Does look a bit odd — but then who cares what they think? There is a wonderful European philosopher named Mister Nietzsche who said, the man who doesn’t care about what other men think becomes a superman. I congratulate you on shedding all inhibitions. Now, relaaaaaax. Don’t bore me with details. Has Tommy Sir told you the arrangement I am proposing?’ Mohan indicated with his head that, no, the arrangement and its details were not known to him. Since he was not allowed to be present when his sons were exhibited like buffalo at a weekly fair.

‘Simple. I’ll give you a certain sum a month. You can pay all your son’s expenses using this certain sum. In return, I negotiate for him in the future with Adidas or Nike or whoever wants him when he joins the Indian Premier League. And I’ll take a certain interest, by which I mean a fair percentage, in his marketing revenues. Fair enough?’

‘No, sir,’ Mohan said, clearing his throat. ‘No. It is not fair in the least.’ He joined his thumb and index finger in the manner of a maestro. ‘My sons are not sportsmen . They will grow into the Bhimsen Joshi and Ravi Shankar of cricket. Sir—’

Tommy Sir slapped his hand on the table. ‘You know where these two boys are from, Mr Anand? Dahisar. From a slum. Hungry Lions.’

‘Sir, let me finish.’

‘Angry Lion, I think, was what the television people said,’ Anand Mehta suggested. ‘The boy Radha has these very … film-star eyes. And long hair, like Sachin’s. Pepsi, Coke will love those eyes and hair. He will act in films one day, I say.’

Mohan Kumar found himself still sweating from his bicycling, which put him at a disadvantage in the negotiations.

‘Sir, I will finish. Returning to the process by which I created two geniuses of will-power, sir, it must be noted that the first principle of my system is diet—’

Tommy Sir turned to Mohan Kumar and indicated, with ‘down, boy’ motions of his palm, that it was time for silence.

The investor proposed terms.

‘I am being asked, to invest, in a highly speculative manner, in a young person, whom we shall call Person X.’

Anand Mehta smiled at the Cricket Scout, and then drew a square with his fingers.

‘Is there a guarantee that said Person X will get into the IPL team? Can you give me this’ — he drew a smaller square inside the first — ‘guarantee?’

‘Sir, a growing body, scientifically speaking, needs three things, known as the triangle of—’

‘Shut up,’ Tommy Sir told the father, ‘right now.’ He turned to the investor. ‘Radha Kumar is the best batsman I’ve seen in ten, maybe fifteen years. And he has the right background. Because a middle-class boy can no longer make the Bombay team. You saw for yourself what that Javed Ansari did today. He has everything, money, background, pedigree, but he will never make the team. He comes to practise in an air-conditioned car, with nurse and driver. Can’t sit in the sun for five minutes. This boy, on the other hand, this Radha—’