Collating reports from Tommy Sir and Radha, Mohan Kumar had created a full mental picture of Javed: now, as he looked about the home he had made for his sons, his rich imagination searched for metaphor and symbol. Got it! One summer many years ago, in his village near the Ghats, standing outside the biggest bungalow for miles around, the official residence of the Criminal Court Judge, Mohan had seen the bushes by the gate shaking. Out came a brown furry thing that leapt up on the compound wall: a mongoose. With his instinctive dislike of rodents, Mohan took a step back, but could not stop watching: for this little fellow was almost human in the way he studied the judge’s compound this way and that, all the time flicking his enormous tail this way and that. Behind him, another, more timid mongoose waited, until the gangleader turned and gave him a nod; then the timid one leapt up on the gate, and the two of them raided and raped the Criminal Court Judge’s garden.
‘Yes, this Ansari boy is a mongoose – a cunning furry mongoose – and only a snake can save my family now – a snake,’ he said, as Mrs Shastri, her hands folded on the top of her son’s head, nodded.
•
After their cricket match ended, Javed took Manju in a taxi all the way to Horniman Circle in the city. He did not tell Manju where they were going, but instead kept explaining his reasons for giving up the game.
‘It’s all pro-puh-gun-duh these days.’
‘What is that?’ Manju asked.
‘Pro-puh-gun-duh,’ Javed said. ‘It’s all corporate propuhgunduh. Tatas batting, Reliance bowling. Cricket is just brain-control; and no one is going to brain-control Javed Ansari. You went to England, but I was the one who was thinking for six weeks.’
After they descended from the taxi, the little wheels on Javed’s cricket kitbag rattled along the street; Manju, his own cricket bag slung across his shoulders, followed a yard behind him. They had reached one of the crowded by-lanes of Fort. The rattling stopped: Javed had lit a cigarette.
He turned around and smiled, blowing smoke from the side of his mouth. ‘I had a brother once. A big brother.’
‘Was he a cricketer too?’
‘No! He was too smart for that. Usman was five years older than me. One day he went up to the top of our building and jumped.’
Manju cringed, and avoided the smoke.
‘Jumped?’
‘Jumped. Usman was a great guy, fun guy. He wanted to have fun but they wouldn’t let him. My father built a shrine to him in the backside of our building. Hurry up, now.’
KAJARIA CEMENTS said the sign above a dark door that led into a stairway. Manju could already hear Javed’s shoes booming up the stairs.
He followed.
Below a framed sign that said
Drugs and Alcohol have no place in society
sat a woman wearing half-moon glasses. She put her elbows down on the pages of her book and looked over her glasses at Manju. Her look said: don’t do anything silly in here.
Behind the woman, another corridor began; Manju could see the first three of a series of blue doors. One of the doors was open; and when he looked inside that door Manju had his first glimpse of the pile of human debris that was growing under Mumbai cricket.
A tall bony man with a goatee stood at a window, looking down on Horniman Circle. ‘Got anything for me, buddy?’ he asked, and at first Manju thought the question was directed at him.
In another corner of the little room, Javed shook a packet of cigarettes teasingly, and tossed it into the air. As soon as the bony man caught the packet, he slapped both hands back on the windowsill, as if he were in constant danger of falling over.
‘Manju,’ Javed said, ‘this is Shenoy.’
‘Which Shenoy?’ Manju asked, and then his mouth opened.
. . . Fastest ball . . . ?
Javed nodded.
Some Boys Rise, Some Boys Fall: Legends of Bombay Cricket and My Role in Shaping Them
Part 21
Date: 4 September 1996. Place: Bombay Gymkhana, Selection Day. A young man comes thundering down to the stumps, turns his arms over, and bowls a ball. No speedometer was possessed that day – but it is believed by every single observer that it was the fastest ball delivered in our city. Who was this boy? T.O. Shenoy. And who discovered his talent?
Ex-Speed Demon Shenoy struck a match and glanced sideways at Manju, who recognized the look: fatigue, the fatigue of meeting people all day, every day, who want more from you than you want from them.
Waaan-waan-waaan! Javed began showing off his Freddie Mercury dance-number; Shenoy walked over to a bed in the corner of the room, lay down, smoked, and spied on them through the corners of his eyes.
The blue door creaked. The woman came in, holding her glasses in one hand, and waving the cigarette smoke away from her nose with the other. ‘Who brought cigarettes? Who? This boy is a recovering alcoholic.’
Behind her, his back pressed to the wall, Javed, smiling a guilty little smile, put a finger to his lips. He looked as if he had suddenly shrunk in size, and turned into a small, scared rodent-like creature.
‘I brought the cigarettes,’ Manju said.
‘You should be ashamed – get out. I told you: this boy is a recovering alcoholic.’
Saying nothing till they were safe in the street, Javed laughed.
‘What a bitch. Right?’
Manju looked Javed up and down. Now he wished he hadn’t lied to protect this grinning, insufferable show-off.
They were walking through the humid garden in the centre of Horniman Circle which was full of flowers and dark leaves and crows grown as fat as eagles, while straight ahead of them, a row of classical Greek pillars glistened between thickets of bamboo: the Asiatic Society’s Public Reading Room, standing beyond the garden above a broad flight of steps.
‘How did Shenoy end up there?’ Manju asked as he followed Javed up the steps, to a black door.
‘Same way you’ll end up, unless you leave cricket. Then that fat woman will come in and shout at you every day. Get out of it now, Manju.’
At the top of the steps, one cricketer sat down, and the other remained standing.
‘Me?’ Manju gaped. ‘You were the one who told me to bat well and go to England.’
‘I’ve become more advanced now, Manju. You’ve fallen behind. Cricketer.’
‘Shut up,’ Manju said.
‘Tatas batting, Reliance bowling. That’s all it is,’ Javed grumbled.
And now Manju thought he could read Javed’s mind at last: where others saw a game called test match, or one-day, or twenty-twenty, Javed saw only a circle of fat rich men, like the ring of glossy black birds that sit in the middle of the Bandra talao.
Javed yawned.
‘I come here to the library to write poems. Do you want a write a poem with me?’
Manju bit his lip. He sat down.
‘Can you make magic with a poem?’
‘I don’t write that kind of poem. I make brain-waves with poetry.’ Javed winked. ‘But first you have to be on the right wavelength. First you have to learn the rhetoric.’
‘The what?’ Manju asked.
Amidst the cricket gloves and centre pad in his kitbag, Javed had hidden a long green notebook: he took the book out of the bag, and, as Manju spied over his shoulder, flipped through the pages – sketches of their teachers and fellow students from Ali Weinberg, handwritten couplets – until he reached a particular page, which he snapped with his fingers before turning to the other boy: ‘Read.’
Leaning over, Manju did so.
My rhetoric
Javed Ansari
Analogy: As the tiger is brave in the jungle, the king was brave in battle.
Comparison: The king was as brave in battle as the tiger is brave in the jungle.
Simile: The king was like a tiger in battle.
Metaphor: The king was a tiger in battle.
Epithet: The Tiger-King.
Apostrophe: O thou Tiger-King!
‘I don’t understand,’ Manju said.
r /> ‘That’s because you have no brain-waves, man.’ Javed closed his notebook and returned it to his cricket bag.
‘Give me that book one more time,’ Manju retorted. ‘I have brain-waves.’
‘No. No. I don’t feel any brain-waves around you.’
Manju showed Javed his middle finger.
‘You’re full of shit. You talk big but you’re scared of a woman who wears half-moon glasses. Listen. Enough of this poetry of yours. I have a serious question. Do you know a cure for pimples? They became worse in Manchester. I think it was the cheese.’
‘I never had pimples. Though I get worms when I eat bhelpuri.’
They watched the garden, and the taxis going around the curved colonnade of Horniman Circle.
‘Have you been to Las Vegas?’
‘No. Have you?’
‘No. Where do you want to go?’
‘There is a lighthouse all the way at the end of Mumbai, did you know?’ Javed asked. ‘It’s true. It’s the last thing in the city. Beyond Navy Nagar. You can see it as you come in a taxi from Babulnath: there are these little dots, and then a white tower. The lighthouse. Actually, it’s white, red and black. You can walk to it over the rocks and mud at low tide. I tried it once, but the police chased me away. Fuck them. They’re always after Javed Ansari. But I will do it, I will climb to the top of the lighthouse and scream to all of Mumbai, “Here is Javed Ansari! Here is Javed Ansari!” I have my birthday parties at the Taj or near the Taj. Where do you have yours?’
Manju jabbed Javed in the ribs.
‘How many times have I told you? Don’t talk about my father.’
‘Who talked about your . . .? I asked where you have your birthday parties. Wait. He never threw one for you?’
‘I know what you’re thinking, that my father is a bad father. I don’t like that.’
‘Bullshit. You know what I’m thinking? You?’
‘Yes. I know what everyone’s thinking,’ Manju stated, proudly.
Nostrils flaring, Javed prodded the mind-reader in the ribs.
‘Okay. Tell me what I am thinking about you right now.’
At which the back of Manju’s head tingled and his feet began to tremble, even though he couldn’t say why. He saw that Javed had gone quiet. His jaw was set, and he was holding his breath. Manju followed his eyes and spotted a man in a sailor’s white cap and uniform walking past the library. Strong, thick, hairy arms; and his bell-bottom trousers fitted him snugly around the waist. The sailor now stopped, as if he could sense something, and turned his head.
‘He saw you,’ Javed whispered. ‘Manju. He’s coming here! He’s going to beat you and rape you!’
But Manju had long ago disappeared.
•
He got back to Chheda Nagar, climbed up to the fourth floor of the Tattvamasi Building, and at once something was wrong.
Mohan Kumar turned up the volume on the TV when he saw his son. ‘You just missed the news. Sit.’
As Manju obeyed his father, the newsreader announced that two more ministers in Madhya Pradesh had stated that the increasingly fashionable practice of homosexuality, sanctioned neither by the Indian Penal Code nor by four thousand years of Hindu civilization, should be curbed at once and that nationwide ‘rehabilitation centres’ should be established, incorporating a daily regimen of cold showers and group exercises for young deviants, so they could learn the value of physical hygiene and family life.
Wiping his face with the back of his palm, Manju turned his eyes towards his father, who did not move.
Next, the newsreader announced that the record for the highest cricket score by a Mumbai schoolboy, only recently held by Radha Kumar (388 runs), and surpassed by his own brother Manjunath (497), had now been super-surpassed.
A fifteen-year-old left-hander named T.E. Sarfraz Khan, batting at number four for IES Sule Guruji, in a Harris Cup match at the Fort Vijay Cricket Club, had broken Manju’s record by scoring 603 not out. He had flicked, cut and pulled for two days; and at the end of the match, he had gone in a car to Bandra to see Shah Rukh Khan, who had called him a teenage human skyscraper.
Mohan Kumar turned to his son. So this was the news.
I am not the best any more. Manju’s heart beat with guilt. He looked at his father’s shrunken face, and he felt his own face change. This was what came of spending too much time with that Makad.
He went and stood by the fridge, looking at the stack of expensive cricket bats next to it. He felt unworthy of touching any of them. Robusta!
That night, as he lay down to sleep, Manju saw the numerals ‘603’ burning in fire on the wall of his bedroom; he got out of bed and, forging a bat from the darkness, he took guard.
He lay down again, telling himself it was time to rest, so his chest could expand and his forearms strengthen, but could not sleep. Now he saw words in fire – on the inside of his eyelids.
Simile: The king was like a tiger in battle
. Metaphor: The king was a tiger in battle.
Epithet: The Tiger-King.
Apostrophe: O thou Tiger-King!
The two words (‘Tiger’ and ‘King’) drew together, tighter and tighter: until they fused and became something new, blacker than the darkness and brighter than fire.
Then it was as if a midnight sun split open his room: because Manjunath Kumar had understood the rhetoric.
In the morning he called Javed from a pay-phone, without wiping the receiver, and said he wanted to know more about the rhetoric. And about poetry.
And about everything.
•
The Gateway of India had vanished. The Taj Mahal Hotel was no more. The entire Indian Ocean? Boiled and evaporated.
‘Is that Ricky Pointing?’
And all because a middle-aged white man with greying hair, wearing a plain T-shirt and blue shorts, was standing in front of the Gateway, signing autographs. Hundreds were gathering.
‘No. Are you mad? And it’s Pon-ting anyway.’
‘I hate cricket, dude. How will I know who that is?’
‘It’s Steven Waugh.’
‘Who?’
‘Steven Waugh?’
‘I’ve never heard of him. Now go get his autograph.’
‘No way. Waugh will want my autograph next year. Just you wait.’
Sofia laughed. ‘Sure.’
Avoiding the crowds around Steve Waugh, the two went down the steps to the boat docked at Jetty Number Two. It was getting ready to leave, and Radha had to help Sofia on board just before the trembling plank was pulled away. They found her ‘crew’ waiting on the upper deck of the boat – a girl with blonde streaks in her hair, and two boys, each of whom had big curly hair and wore horn-rimmed glasses. One of them, so Sofia said, was the son of a policeman.
The water began to seethe; a milky wave slapped the stone wall that stands around the Gateway of India, returning to the tourists some of the rubbish they and their predecessors had tossed into the sea.
Burning diesel generously, the ferry was heading away from the city.
‘That’s the RC Church. In Cuffe Parade. It’s too gorgeous.’
‘She’s just learnt this word, so she’s using it everywhere. Too, too gorgeous.’
‘Fuck off.’
‘Have you noticed how girls these days use dirtier language than boys?’
‘Shut off.’
‘You said “Shut off.” Everyone, did you hear?’
Their chit-chat was interrupted by a dark, sweat-covered man, climbing onto the upper deck and asking for tickets.
‘That . . . ?’ The conductor pointed at Radha’s bag, ‘. . . is goods. Means you have to pay extra.’
‘It’s not goods,’ Radha said.
He removed an object from the bag to substantiate his claim. It was a shining slice of true wood: a Sunny Tonny Genuine English Willow bat with brand-new leather handle. All the noise was knocked out of the ticket-collector: hadn’t he too once hoped to play for Mumbai? He opened his mouth and left. br />
Radha had grown his hair long and tied it in a ponytail; with his powerful chest and arms and the contrasting delicacy of his eyes, he had fulfilled his boyish promise of film-star looks. Sofia slid a foot from her chappals, and touched Radha’s cricket bat with her toes. Then one of his feet came to the bat’s defence.
The ferry passed near oil tankers anchored in mid-ocean; garbage and seagulls bobbed up and down on the waves.
The girl with blonde streaks in her hair had been studying Radha.
‘You were on TV, yes or no?’ she asked, when the foot wrestling had ended. ‘You scored that 300. Shah Rukh Khan met you, yes or no?’
Radha gave her his television smile. ‘I scored 388. Yes. I met Shah Rukh Khan. He called me a human skyscraper. On Selection Day I will be picked for Mumbai.’
The blonde girl looked impressed.
‘Here’s a quiz for you: What does the term KKK stand for in modern cricket?’ Radha asked her.
‘No. What does it mean?’
‘Kiss, Kock and Kuddle. KKK. Isn’t that funny?’ Radha grinned. ‘Hey, Sofia, I made that up myself.’
Perhaps he could score with Sofia and this one with the blonde streaks. Anything goes on Alibagh, right?
‘His brother scored 600 or something and broke his record,’ Sofia said. ‘Why don’t you ever bring Manju along?’
In the distance, Alibagh just about made itself visible.
Radha persisted with his TV smile.
‘Your brother has big eyes, so cute. The girls are going to go crazy for him.’
Still smiling, Radha narrowed his eyes and lowered his voice: ‘For your information: one, he didn’t score 600, and two, he’s not going crazy for the girls.’
But no one had heard him: because the policeman’s son, rummaging about in his backpack, had produced a pack of condoms.
‘Hey cricketer,’ the other boy shouted. ‘You know what this is? KKK. Kondom, Kondom, Kondom.’ The girls laughed.
‘I have many more inside my bag. The real KKK.’
‘He’s so funny,’ Sofia said.
He stole my joke, Radha thought. To hell with these rich kids. Big thief walks free. He knew that Sofia was the only one here who was different – for the others, I’m just the boy from the slum, he thought, and looked down at his dirty shoes.