Selection Day

  Anand Mehta’s mind was now like a stanza from the Bhagavad Geeta in reverse: from brooding too much on what had gone wrong in his life, he became angry; from this anger was born frustration; from this frustration was born a round glass of drink; from this one glass was born an entire bottle of 90-proof liquor.

  The day darkened; he sat with a goblet of red wine, sipped, spat, then ransacked his cupboards, searching for scotch – not single malt, not Blue Label, not Black Label. Just give me Indian scotch, honest Indian scotch.

  ‘Press conference,’ he said out loud. Press conference, at the age of fifteen. Anand Mehta felt again the thrill of having bet on that grandest of investments: a growing human being.

  Young Manjunath Kumar.

  One minute, slum; next minute, Angleterre. Mehta had a vision of a great milky waterfall, a cataract of free sex, whose sheer descent had fathered many rainbows. That slum boy must have humped like crazy in England. ‘Asha,’ he shouted, ‘let us go congratulate that boy, that English gentleman of ours.’ But then he remembered that she was away with her friends at a kitty party. He kept drinking.

  Later in the night, he dialled Tommy Sir’s number, getting it right at the second attempt.

  ‘I want to see my investment.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘My Man-cas-ter boy. Where . . . ?’

  ‘You’ve gone mad?’ Tommy Sir asked. ‘Do you know the time?’

  ‘I know they’re in Chembur. Where in Chem . . . I went there once but I forgot the way now. You shut up and don’t tell me my bloody business, mate. Where is my Mancaster?’

  ‘Go in the morning. I’ll tell you, but go in the morning – promise?’

  Minutes later, Mehta was driving towards Chembur, squinting at signs, shouting out for directions, trying to remember how he had made it there once – but that was in daylight! – while the road played games with him, becoming muddy and narrow, and then opening up into the highway, while train tracks kept appearing and disappearing by its side.

  ‘I can’t believe you’re doing this,’ he told himself, and he burst out laughing. He kept talking to himself. Look at all these buildings, stuffy with seventies concrete and nineteenth-century morality. Hollow, hollow, the concrete buildings are all hollow. The fat middle class is hollow. So let us get rid of the farce that Indians are a most moral race, that only married people should live in good buildings, girls should be virgins and homos should be in jail, let us rid ourselves of the Victorian Hindu Penal Code, declare a republic of cunt & cock and a sovereign secular socialism of cock & cunt and force everyone here to live in the twenty-first bloody American c&c century, please. God, he wished he had brought some scotch, some honest Indian scotch, for the drive.

  Slowing down, he squinted at the names of the passing buildings, until – ‘Tattvamasi. That’s it.’

  Anand Mehta got out of his car, tripped over a stone, recovered himself gleefully, and reached the entranceway of the building. He pressed the bell and went up the stairs. After a while, he became aware that he was relieving himself in a corner, as a dark face watched him from a higher floor. ‘Relaaaaaax,’ he whispered, zipped himself up, and continued up the stairs.

  ‘This way, sir, this way,’ the dark face said. It wore a banian and lungi and stood before an opened door.

  ‘It’s an honour to see you, Benefactor. I recognized your car. It is an honour to have you visit us again.’

  ‘Benefactor,’ Anand Mehta laughed. ‘You know how to speak to your benefactor, good man, good man . . . where is my Mancaster?’

  ‘Sleeping. I’ll wake him up? And his brother, Radha?’

  Mohan Kumar showed the guest into another room, where the boys were in bed. Anand Mehta stripped the bedsheets off the sleeping boys – one rubbing his eyes, the other squinting at the light – and stared at them.

  ‘Which one went to England? That one? Or this one?’

  ‘Get out of bed, Manju. Do you want to see them bat now?’

  Anand Mehta clapped at the boy who was struggling to his feet.

  ‘Say something with full fucking British accent.’

  Manju, who was wearing only a pair of shorts, covered his nakedness with his arms and blinked. When the investor shouted at him a second time he said, ‘Hello, sir,’ in a small voice.

  ‘Louder,’ the investor said, cupping an ear. ‘With the full accent. Sound like Mancaster, Mancaster! Isn’t that funny? This boy is a little superman, I tell you. Superman. Is that what you are, Mancaster?’

  Radha, also naked to the waist, looked around for his bat.

  ‘Sir, you have honoured our home at just the right time. Radha has changed his backlift and stance. We worked on it all summer. Radha – demonstrate, demonstrate.’

  Anand Mehta wiped his lips.

  ‘No bloody cricket demonstration. I asked to hear this one talk British to me. I talk New York, and you talk British, you little fucker. Talk. Talk.’

  He sat down on the sofa and gaped at Manju, who stood with his arms making an ‘X’ across his naked chest.

  ‘Relaaaaax,’ Anand Mehta laughed. ‘At your age, you have nothing to be shy about, not a thing. After all, what is a cock, I ask you?’ He turned to the father and grinned. ‘A cock is this: when you’re a boy, it’s your manhood. When you’re a man, it’s your boyhood.’

  Both men laughed, but Mehta caught the expression on the boy’s face.

  ‘Why is Mancaster staring at me like that?’ He pointed at Manju. ‘Talk, little fuck. Don’t think you’re too good for me and my money. Talk British now.’

  •

  Even after the door was bolted, even after his father assured him that Anand Mehta would not return, Manju dreamed. He found himself in a forest: one without paths, but where everything glowed in the moonlight, and every illuminated branch guided him to the spot near a lake. This was the dream that he had had again and again in England. In the darkness, as promised, a woman’s hand reached out for him. He checked between the thumb and the index finger, and there it was: the nitric-acid scar from the goldsmith’s. And though he could not see his mother’s face, Manju was happy, for he knew she was beside him in the night. Until a bird flew overhead, silhouetting itself against the moon, and his mother withdrew her hand; his heart pounded. He could not see a single star in the sky. This was Kattale, the old darkness. It was back, and would keep coming back, now that it knew how to reach him: Stay here. You don’t have to go out and face that man, Mehta: stay here, Captain. Stay within. The cold water of the lake lapped his feet, and his ankles: and soon his lips were wet, and he was hard. Manju awoke, turned from Radha, and, licking his forearms quickly, masturbated, taking care that his come did not stain his bedsheet, which his father might notice.

  •

  After breakfast, when Manju insisted, ‘The police know we’re cricket stars. They will listen to us,’ all Radha did, once again, was to shake his head from side to side. The two brothers left home and walked to the train station, but only one of them had brought a cricket kitbag with him.

  ‘That man can’t treat us like that. He can’t wake us up in the middle of the night.’

  ‘Just because you’ve gone to England and speak with an accent, doesn’t mean you’re special, Manju. He’s paying us.’

  Manju saw that the red handle of his brother’s bat, sticking out over his shoulder, was rubbing against the back of his neck as they walked.

  ‘What do you want to do anyway, Manju?’

  ‘Go to the police. Tell them.’

  Radha had stopped.

  ‘Police? Englishman wants to go to the police. Give me your hand. Give me your foreign hand.’

  Manju held his hand out to his brother, who squeezed it in his.

  ‘Come, Manju, let’s go to the police together.’

  Hand in hand they walked like that. As they passed a streetside barber’s stall, Manju leaned back, reflexively, to check himself in the mirror in between two men being lathered for a shave. And this was too much for Radha: My
brother, he thought, is such a little bugger.

  ‘Manju,’ he said. ‘I like police stories. Do you like police stories? Good. Manju, Sofia’s friend’s father, the ACP, was telling me a story. Listen. This ACP was telling Sofia and me the Mumbai police now go on the internet, and they go onto these chat sites, right. They go on to gay chat sites, Manju. Gay chat sites.’

  Radha squeezed his younger brother’s hand.

  ‘First they make friends with the gays, Manju, and they say, you want to exchange videos? Blue videos? Let’s meet outside Dadar station. Fine, the gay brings his blue video, he comes to Dadar, he meets the ACP, who has come with another blue video, they exchange the videos, and then the gay is walking home when the ACP does this (Radha seized Manju), and says,’ (holding his brother’s shoulder, Radha curled his own tongue to touch his upper lip like a bull) ‘and says, that isn’t a blue video in your hands, is it? That isn’t a gay blue video, is it? Let’s go to the station, fag boy, let’s go. Then the ACP and his police friends take the homo to jail and say they will lock him up for ten years and tell his mummy and wife he’s not a real man, just a fag boy, till he sweats and begs and pays the policemen lots of money. Isn’t that funny, Manju? I asked, Englishman, isn’t that funny? Hey, Manju, where are you running? The police station is this way. This way.’

  ‘Fuck off,’ Manju told his brother. He walked a few steps, then turned around and shouted: ‘I took it from you, Radha. Remember that every night before you go to sleep. And if there’s a new scholarship, I’ll take it from you again.’

  •

  It was virtually an instinct now, to call Javed whenever he was in trouble. After leaving his brother, Manju found a pay-phone near the Chembur train station. He told Javed everything. ‘I knew that investor was no good the first time I saw him,’ Javed replied. ‘Which man with self-respect would wear a red Manchester United T-shirt? Listen to me, little Manju. Take the train to Navi Mumbai. I’ve been waiting for you. You can tell me about England, too.’ ‘Alright,’ Manju said, and put the phone down, and paid the shop-keeper a rupee for its use.

  Then the strange thing happened. As he was crossing the road, a traffic policeman, in his white shirt and khaki trousers and topi, raised his left hand; with his right hand he pointed a wooden lathi straight at Manju. He took a step towards the boy. Manju’s throat had contracted. He stood in the middle of the road, his heart beating, until the cold glass of a passing autorickshaw’s rear-view mirror touched his back, and he started. The traffic policeman walked right past him and began talking to the rider of a motorcycle; now the rider was remonstrating and pleading with the policeman. Ah, Manju thought – the fellow has forgotten to wear his helmet. The policeman has caught him for that. Hunter and prey would now start negotiating the size of the bribe that the motorcyclist had to fork out for his offence.

  That lathi was never pointed at me, Manju understood. Yet his heart still thumped against his ribs.

  Drops of water fell on his nose. He looked up at the dark sky. Deciding not to meet Javed, he instead ran home for his cricket gear: he would go join a match in the Kanga League. He was going to be the best in Mumbai today.

  For Manju was now batting to protect himself.

  TENTH STANDARD CONTINUES: THE KANGA LEAGUE STARTS

  Even in mid-May, even in early June, they keep playing cricket: right through the heat, and through the terrible days when all-India strikes are called and buses are burned. Right through till the sixth or seventh of June, when the rains say: ‘Stop.’ Then the nets are taken away, and the stone-rollers are smothered in yellow tarpaulin. At the Oval, bare-chested workers scoop out mounds of dark earth from what used to be the cricket pitch, as if excavating a mass grave.

  It rains and it pours, and the semi-naked bodies dig deeper and deeper into Mumbai.

  But barely a month later, the cricketers have come back from the dead: the Kanga League has begun.

  Standing in a multitude of circles, they hear the same pep-talk from a multitude of coaches. Crows are rising and swooping in front of the Bombay Gymkhana. Dozens of matches are in progress on one maidan. The rain grows heavier each minute. The grass is mad and the human beings are mad. Young men are skidding, falling, and resurrecting themselves out of the mud. It is as though the life-force of Mumbai city were flowing from the street into the middle class: well-fed school kids, dressed in Victorian white, are hustling like homeless children. Strong is the thunder, and strong is the lightning-bolt: but we are stronger.

  •

  Beyond Mankhurd, the Harbour Line went past slum after slum, slums that were gloomy and hopeless in a way that Manju couldn’t remember the old place in Dahisar ever being, past the clustered buildings of a Slum Redevelopment Authority project, and into green wilderness.

  Then came a bridge, and glowing water, and in the distance, a new city: Navi Mumbai – New Mumbai.

  •

  In the men’s toilet at Vashi station, Manju looked at himself in a mirror and washed his face with soap, twice, and checked his hair.

  Right outside the station, he found a shopping mall made of glass. A foot away from the entrance, where security guards waited with metal detectors, a boy stood admiring himself in the glass wall. His powerful neck was shaved clean below the hairline, and his shoulders were exposed by his low-cut T-shirt.

  From the reflection in the glass Manju could see that the boy was wearing Aviator sunglasses, and had a gold ring in his right ear.

  He began to run towards him.

  But Javed had seen his reflection in the glass: waiting till Manju was almost upon his back, he turned around and caught him and for a long moment they held on to each other.

  •

  Knowing that Javed’s first question would be: What is England like? Manju thought, I will tell him about the forest bird. There was a garden behind the school, and there were deer in the garden. Deer? Yes. In England you have deer everywhere. On the way to cricket, Manju would stop to watch the deer in the garden, and one day, he heard a sound from the bushes. Parting open the leaves of a big dark bush, he found a forest bird, motionless and curled-up in a wet nest, like an ebony foetus. Indian boy and British bird stared at each other, for a full minute, each asking the other, What are you doing here? Then, with a beating of wings, the bird made Manju’s heart stop as it rose right over his head, as if it meant to seize him, like the roc that lifted Sindbad over the seven seas.

  But Javed had seen a roc of his own: and he had caught his. Because while Manju was away on his grand Manchester scholarship, Javed Ansari, without leaving India, had also visited a foreign country. He had celebrated his sixteenth birthday a fortnight ago. Around midnight, in Colaba, alone, walking past the open-air mutton and chicken kebab grill of Bademiya’s, seeing a young man smile in a certain way, a young man with blond streaks in his hair, Javed had smiled back at that young man, to feel a finger scrape diagonally down the back of his jeans, and turned around in surprise to see the young man now standing behind him, no longer smiling, but with his nostrils tense, his eyes candid, and realized that all of these formed a closed door: and that the door could be opened, and would reveal something – something as big as an ocean, and as turbulent – behind it. And Javed, right there, went up to the blond man, negotiated a deal without saying a word, and with a beating heart followed him up wooden stairs to a room on the third floor of a private hotel behind the Taj, where the blond man inserted a key into a door, and said, ‘Go in,’ and when Javed entered the room, trembling, he smelled the ocean for the first time in his life, early in the morning after his sixteenth birthday.

  •

  And now Javed walked alongside Manju, hand on his shoulder. He smiled condescendingly, and asked: ‘So what was England like, Superstar? What is England’s food like?’

  The two of them rode the escalator up into the mall.

  Manju said: ‘The Britishers eat cheese all the time.’

  Javed removed his Aviator glasses and put them in his pocket to get a bett
er look at the superstar.

  ‘Manju. Please.’

  ‘I’m telling you, the white people eat cheese for breakfast and smell of it all day.’

  Javed laughed, just once, but so hard the Aviator glasses fell and he had to grab them with both hands.

  ‘Manju. Did you really go to England?’

  The boy looked the same as he had before leaving for England, just a bit fairer, a bit broader. He was also definitely wearing some sort of deodorant.

  ‘Pass me the hammer, Miss Moneypenny –’ Manju spread his arms wide, and lowered his voice an octave – ‘I’m a young Sean Connery!’

  Javed stared.

  ‘There were workers on the roof of the school, and they would bang their hammers and sing that all day.’

  Javed tried it out himself. Pass me the hammer, Ms Money . . .

  ‘Who is Sean Connery?’

  A whistle blew. Short women in blue uniforms stood by the sides of the escalators, making sure no young ruffian ran up or down the metal steps or did anything else to set off a panic among the crowd, many of whom were using an escalator for the first time in their lives.

  Keeping his eye on the blue-uniformed guards, Manju said: ‘You didn’t come to Kanga League the other day.’

  ‘Fuck cricket. Why didn’t you come to see me till now?’

  ‘At the press conference they complimented my accent.’ Manju beamed. ‘It’s called a Mancunian. It’s got glottalstop. Do you know what glottalstop is?’

  ‘It’s sexy,’ Javed said.

  He said the word as casually as he could, but he saw it wiping the grin off Manju’s face, and stopping his breath: It’s sexy.

  Javed tapped on his gold earring and looked at Manju. ‘Did you go to the police yet? And tell them about the investor, how he invaded your home? That’s what they call what he did. Home invasion. Did you tell—’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  Javed felt his ears move on their own, as they always did when he gritted his teeth. Look at Manju go to England, spend six weeks there, eat the cheese, breathe the scented air, and come back and still behave like a slave!