We hear footsteps, as a boy in cricket whites comes running with a red ball in his hand. Leaping high with the red ball he rolls his arms over. The inspirational music reaches its crescendo as the stump is knocked over.
VOICE-OVER:
Three years after the original groundbreaking Young Lions programme, we revisit the boys on whom we were the first to cast a spotlight. Will the pace of Deennawaz Shah triumph over the quicksilver footwork of T. E. Sarfraz, and can either of them match the mighty forearms of Manjunath Kumar?
YOUNG LIONS: THE NEXT GENERATION BURGEONING LEGENDS
MONDAY 6.30 PM REPEATED ON WEDNESDAY
We discovered our first Young Lion this evening three years ago in a slum in Dahisar. Today, he lives in a good neighbourhood in Chembur: proof of the magical power of cricket to uplift lives in today’s India.
In this clip, taken at the Catholic Gymkhana, 23 April this year, Manjunath Kumar shows us why he is so special: the ball, pitched short, moves into him at 110 kilometres per hour. Observe how the Young Lion’s first movement is across the line, ‘I intend to pull this,’ but then he braces his ribs, ‘I will let this go by,’ only to turn his wrists at the final instant, and send it flying down to the fine leg boundary: ‘Fooled all of you.’ Cricketing experts describe young Manju as cunning, deceptive and brutal. Before we talk to him about his practice methods and cricketing secrets, let us see him handling the full-length delivery. This next clip is from MCA, 14 February, Valentine’s Day. . .
A Portrait in Numbers: Manjunath Kumar
Young Lions Expert Panel Ranking: 2nd
Height: 5' 2"
Weight: (no data)
Average (within India): 46.70
Average (outside India): 45.00
Strike rate (per 100 balls): 91.40
Highest score (within India): 497
Off-side to leg-side scoring ratio: 38:62
Coach ranking (city-wide survey of school coaches): 2
Peer ranking (city-wide survey of school cricketers): 19
How angry my brother must be after seeing that programme.
•
The net is held aloft by bamboo poles; inside the net stands Radha Kumar. Blue helmet, trembling bat. The net makes a box around him, as a draughtsman makes cubing for a study of his model. Now a red ball comes at Radha, who lifts his shoulders and lets it go. All around the net, people take a step back. The ball hits the net, it vibrates; the onlookers draw closer again. The batsman shuffles his centre pad, his pads, and then, after sweeping the ground with his bat, suddenly removes his helmet, throws it to the ground, and waits. Now the spinner bowls at him. Down the pitch, cover-driven.
Standing behind the net, Manju feels his big brother’s familiar timing. That remains. What is gone is the power that accompanied the timing.
To Manju’s left, a girl in a grey T-shirt stood watching him: her thick hair, freshly shampooed, parted down the middle, was drawn over her shoulder in a neat, glossy swoop, like an eagle’s folded wing.
Like all celebrity sportsmen, Radha Kumar was allowed the luxury of a pitch-side girlfriend, even if there was some ambiguity about the status of their relationship. Running her fingers now and then through her glistening, geometrically perfect length of hair, Sofia kept watching the younger Kumar, oblivious to the handful of male spectators who were watching her.
‘I’m going to pitch it short, Radha. Helmet.’
As Radha bent down and reached for a blue helmet, his eyes met his younger brother’s.
Radha Krishna Kumar: now a former Young Lion.
Manju smelled fear. He could smell his brother’s sweat: and of the seven types of sweat, this was the one signifying fear. Yes, fear: Manju smelled every fear in the world coming from his brother’s face; and smelled every fear in the world coming from his brother’s bat.
‘Duffer! Duffer! What have you done to your batting?’ Tommy Sir had come to the nets yelling at the top of his voice.
‘You changed your grip! You cut your backlift!’
‘My father. Coach Sawant,’ Radha explained. It had been a decision taken jointly by Sawant and his father, based on computer analysis of Radha’s recent dismissals, the backlift should be sacrificed for a longer stay at the crease.
Tommy Sir placed his hands on the netting and shouted at the boy inside.
‘You’re now batting like a girl. Congratulations.’
Radha removed his helmet; he wiped his face with his shoulder; he tried to deny the charge.
Tommy Sir’s voice softened when he saw the boy’s face inside the helmet.
‘You should ask me about these things, son. But don’t worry: you are lean, mean and magnificent.’ He reached over and patted Radha’s shoulder. ‘We’ll fix your problems, don’t worry. Now it’s time for your brother to bat. Manju, pad up.’
When she heard this, Sofia turned with a smile towards the younger Kumar, letting him see all the dark spots on her neck. At once Manju glowed with pleasure: for he knew that he was the only boy in all of Mumbai who was truly lean, mean and magnificent with a cricket bat.
•
After sixteen days apart, the two friends were meeting again, at a table in the Golden Punjab Hotel, not far from the Vashi train station.
Javed was still grinning and wobbling his head like Harsha Bhogle. He had gone with his father to Aligarh, and from there they had taken a taxi around Uttar Pradesh. It was the first time he was seeing his home state. From the Taj in Agra, they went to Benaras, and then to Kanpur. UP was one big fucking brain-wave, man. Amazing. Near Agra, Javed and his father went to this dargah – ‘You know what that means, Manju? – and there was this marble slab inside, and there was this long groove in the marble, and you know what my father told me, Manju? That in the old days a Persian poet used to sit on that marble slab and write with a peacock feather, and that when he grew tired, the poet would set his peacock feather down in that groove in the stone. I touched that groove, Manju: look!’
Javed showed his fingertip, brought it nearer, and touched it to Manju’s forehead: Manju smiled, as if thrilled, but then began to cry.
As he sat curling a lock of hair over and over again around a finger, he could see, through his wet eyes, grey tubes of chicken seekh kebab in a rich red sauce lying on a plate in front of him. Using three fingers, Javed picked one up, squeezed the kebab in two with his thumb, and rolled the longer half towards his friend. Manju shook his head; he kept working at the lock of hair on his forehead.
‘And what are you crying over this time, my little Sachin?’
‘You don’t know what happened to me. You were gone for so long and you don’t know what happened. You didn’t even call me from Aligarh,’ Manju said, and the tears came out freely.
‘Sorry. Tell me what happened.’ Javed left his food. He came and sat by his friend and listened.
Chemistry Practicals Lab made him nervous, Manju confessed, so he had misread the level of the hydrochloric acid in the long test tube during titration. He kept taking the upper meniscus reading – he showed Javed how the liquid sticks to glass and gives you a false reading. After that even his litmus tests were screwed. Screwed. He was going to fail and they were all going to mock him, and then throw him out of college, and he would never become a scientist in America.
‘That’s all? No one’s going to throw you out of college. Before the year end you will be the best student in Chemistry. I promise you. Does Javed ever lie?’
‘No,’ Manju said, still curling the lock of hair in his forehead. ‘Have you made new friends in college, Javed? Even before you went to Aligarh I didn’t hear from you for two days.’
For once Javed spoke slowly and clearly. ‘I’m here, you’re there, how can we meet every day?’
It made sense to Manju, and yet it was unfair. He thought it had been a deal; he would study hard and get into Science at college and in return he would see Javed every day.
‘What about you, Sir Manju?’ Javed asked. ‘Other day I called, and you
didn’t pick up the phone.’
‘The pictures.’
‘You saw a picture? With who?’
‘Alone.’
‘Only mental patients go to the movies . . . alone,’ Javed said. ‘Come to Navi Mumbai and watch movies with me.’
Manju felt a sense of elation. ‘Really?’ he asked, hoping that Javed would say more good things about him. He moved closer.
Only the sound of the laughing warned Manju that Javed’s mood had changed, and that he had turned into the other “J.A.” – the nasty one.
‘U-ha, U-ha. Hey, Tendulkar. Find a new mirror.’
‘Find a new mirror?’ Manju asked. ‘What does that mean?’
‘It means you’re not that good-looking. And you’re always looking at yourself in the mirror. Even in the cinema hall I bet you were looking at yourself in any glass surface. Right? U-ha, U-ha.’
Manju had to contract the muscles in his throat to avoid replying to that. He felt the same numbness in his face and neck that he did when his father slapped him.
They walked, at first in silence, towards the train station. But suddenly Javed’s face and mood changed, and he became playful again.
‘Are you going to practise, Captain? Are you?’
Manju said nothing.
‘Are you?’
‘Yes.’
‘No. You’re not, Captain.’
‘I’ll find a way to study chemistry and practise cricket.’
‘No. There is another reason, Captain,’ Javed said, ‘that I had to leave cricket, and it’s the same reason you too will have to leave, sooner or later.’
Javed tickled him in the ribs.
‘When we were in Uttar Pradesh, my father asked me if I wasn’t interested in girls.’
As they crossed the road an autorickshaw came between them; Manju hurried to catch up with Javed.
‘And you said?’
‘And I said, if I’m not, what is your problem, Daddy?’
‘And he said?’
‘Do whatever you want, as long as it doesn’t cost me any money. Man, I love my father sometimes.’
Javed laughed: Manju could smell fat and meat and freedom.
‘One time the wicket-keeper from that Dadar school asked me, you’re a gay or what? Manju. Has no one yet asked you?’
The question burned away the sun and the day; now Manju felt small and dark and as though a litre of pink disinfectant had invaded his stomach.
‘Why . . . they would . . . me?’
He wished he had said it louder. He wished that Radha were here, by his side. But the only one here was Javed, grinning.
‘Manju, stop being a slave. What’s your problem if someone calls you a gay?’
Manju felt the sweat on his forehead.
‘I know you’re scared of everything, so I don’t even talk about anything to do with sex when you’re near me. But why just look at everything? It’s not normal. Do something.’
‘Fuck you.’
Now run.
‘I’m asking you, what are you scared of? It’s all normal, man. Don’t let them brain-control you.’
But Manju stood frozen: Javed, as if he had read his mind, was laughing at him. U-ha. U-ha. In the coarseness of Javed’s croak, in the length of pink gum that showed above his canines, Manju saw nothing but the contempt of one who knew more about the animal truths of sex and life.
‘Fuck you.’
Without looking back, Manju ran to Vashi station, boarded a train and sat still all the way to Chembur. At dinner he looked at his father, and said,
‘I’m going to cricket practice every evening from now till Selection Day.’
Mohan Kumar sighed.
‘And will you un-shave? But I forgive you, Manju. Just promise me one thing, son. Promise me and Lord Subramanya you won’t learn to drive a car, but from now on will stay pure and think only of cricket.’
Manju promised everything.
•
He loved playing tricks on her, her father. One morning every April he filled the house with green mangoes and then led her in, blindfolded, while the scent of raw fruit drove her mad. As his hand moved down his stomach, on which he could feel the downy hair that was growing up from his groin, Manju thought again of her childhood. Not his – hers. His mother’s. Lying in bed with his eyes closed, he thought of the stories his mother had told her sons about her life in her father’s home, and through which Manju understood what a childhood must be like for everyone else. His mother had loved her father more than anyone else on earth. He was tall, fair, handsome – people in the village used to call him their ‘European uncle’, because he was so light-skinned – and he loved her back. Each time he went to the market he returned with toys for her, but would say nothing to her, just leave them, as if by accident, on the dining table, or lying on the floor: and how she screamed with joy when she discovered them. One day, her father and she – just the two of them, no sisters or mother with them – took a bus and went up a mountain and all the way to the great temple of Tirupati. Yes! Just the two of them. Still rubbing his stomach hair, Manju nuzzled against his cotton pillow. This was the only place he had ever felt entirely safe: his mother’s childhood.
•
Sitting at a terminal in the computer lab at Ruia College, he had been googling morgues in Manchester in a bid to revive the attractions of forensic science, until the noise from outside made it impossible.
It was the day of Durga Puja: the festival of the Mother Goddess.
Carrying his three textbooks, he came out of the college, and headed towards the source of the noise – the makeshift wooden pandals, each adorned with its twelve-foot idol of Ma Durga slaying the pitch-black buffalo-demon, in front of which devotees beat drums and burnt incense.
He stopped in front of the Matunga Gymkhana to watch the girls in white playing tennis. He looked at the legs of one of the girls, pale brown, glossy, with strong diamond-shaped calf muscles, and then up at her tight T-shirt, from which a golden necklace dangled.
‘Wrong game, Tendulkar.’
A Honda City had stopped beside him, and a girl held a door open for Manju.
‘Don’t act as if you don’t know me now,’ Sofia said, as Manju looked about. ‘Get in.’
‘Is Radha here with you?’
‘Why should he be? I was just going to Ram Ashraya to meet a friend. Get in. Manju, don’t worry. Your father isn’t here. That man tried to kill me in Ballard Estate. I feel sorry for you. Get in.’
The door was still open and the car was holding up traffic; so, Manju got in, closed the door behind him with one hand, and sat with the textbooks pressed against his chest.
Sofia smiled. He tried to read her mind.
‘Tomorrow is your big Selectors’ Day, isn’t it? Everyone is so nervous right now. Are you nervous?’
As the car moved, Manju felt his stomach starting to churn.
‘Hey. I asked, are you freaked out by Selectors’ Day? I know that they asked you to come even though you’re one year younger than everyone else.’
He wanted to raise his palm and just block Sofia out.
‘No. I’m not nervous.’
‘Salim,’ the girl told her driver, ‘this boy has no blood pressure. Look how cool he is the day before Selectors’ Day.’ Leaning in to him she whispered: ‘Manju, be honest with me. I’m on your side, understand?’
‘Yes,’ Manju said.
The traffic was bad; a colossal image of Durga, seated on the back of a lorry, was approaching, surrounded by chanting and singing devotees, some of whom carried their own smaller idols of the Mother Goddess.
‘Salim.’ Sofia touched her driver’s shoulder with her BlackBerry. ‘You know who this is, Salim? He’s Radha’s brother. But he doesn’t look like Radha, does he?’
‘No, ma’am.’
An idol of Durga with a red tongue scraped past the windscreen as devotees transferred the goddess from one side of the car to the other.
‘By the way, I’m
participating in a paid marketing brand survey for Amaze cars versus Polo. Which do you prefer? Sorry. You can’t drive. Your father won’t let you.’
Manju concentrated on the image of the Goddess Durga, still in the distance, to calm himself.
‘Radha has taught himself to drive. He’ll teach me one day.’
Sofia clicked her tongue: sure, sure.
‘You know Radha and I broke up, right? One day he hit me, and I said, Don’t dare do that again. It’s abuse. Get out of my life. But we’re still friends. Do you approve of friendship after a relationship?’
‘Yes,’ Manju said.
Her magenta T-shirt had a gold-rimmed hole around her navel, and big letters above it said: POW. How silly he would look, Manju thought, wearing something like this; how silly anyone would look in it. Not Sofia, though. She pulled it off, she could pull anything off: she knew her prerogative as a rich girl in Mumbai, which was to be one step ahead of the city she lived in.
Sofia helped him understand Javed. The same note of irritation sounded in her voice even the first time she asked for something; and the same carelessness when probing the personal life of one not of her class.
‘Salim,’ Sofia said suddenly to her driver, ‘Salim, be careful, we’re going to hit and kill someone. Look at all these mad people doing this puja. All these Hindus! Did they walk out of a film set? Now, Manju, I’m on your side. We’re all on your side. No one likes what your brother is saying about you, okay?’
Manju felt that churning in his stomach grow stronger and stronger. Ask her what your brother says about you, he told himself. Ask her.
She knew this; Sofia, like his mother, like most women, could read minds.
‘Are you scared of me, Manju? Don’t be.’
She had rehearsed for this encounter: it was not by chance she had driven up just as he had stepped out of the college.
‘People discuss you a lot, do you know this, Manju?’ Sofia said at last. ‘But we’re all on your side. I told Radha, stop talking of your brother like this. I mean, it’s Manju’s choice, Manju’s lifestyle, let him be whatever he wants. I defended you.’
That he was being talked about, analysed, and gossiped about, came as a shock; and as Manju sat with Sofia, he felt a net falling over him. Frenzied devotees of Goddess Durga pressed against the windows of the car.