Selection Day

  ‘. . . missed. Missed by this much. But the umpire . . . blind. And mad, too . . .’

  From his side of the road, Manjunath grinned.

  Hello, average cricketer.

  This was the wreckage of the first match at Azad Maidan – this fellow who was half a foot shorter than he had been at 7 a.m., who was blinking and arguing with the air, cursing the umpire and the bowler and his captain and their captain, and growing shorter every minute, because he knew in his heart that he had never been meant for greatness in cricket.

  Hauling his kitbag off his shoulders and lowering it to the pavement, Manju unzipped the bag and extracted his new bat: he held the black handle in both hands, and gripped tight.

  And waited.

  The average cricketer removed his green cap and raised his head, and the eyes of the two boys met.

  Manjunath Kumar showed him how to drive through the covers. He showed him how to attack, defend, and master the red cricket ball.

  After which, like W.G. Grace, he stood with his weight on the bat handle. And then stuck his tongue out and rolled his eyeballs.

  Across the road, the green cap fell onto the pavement.

  Goodbye to you, Prince Manju waved to the average cricketer, and goodbye – Prince Manju turned to his left, then to his right – to all average things.

  I am the second-best batsman in the whole world.

  •

  ‘Stop right there. We were talking about you last night. I said, stop.’

  The silhouettes of the Municipal Building and the spiked dome of the Victoria Terminus struggled against the morning smog, and the air in between them was scored by cable wires. Blue smoke rose from the garbage burning in a corner.

  Between the buildings and the burning garbage stood a fat man, trying to catch Manjunath like a football goalie.

  ‘Come back, boy. Come back at once.’

  With a grin, Manjunath surrendered, and walked back to where Head Coach Sawant stood.

  ‘Did you hear what I was saying? I said, we were talking about you last night. “We” means two people. So, who was the other man talking about your future? Ask me.’

  Instead of which, Manju, drawing a hand from his cricket bag, showed the coach something.

  ‘What is this?’ Sawant asked, as the boy handed him a disturbingly large page of the Sunday newspaper.

  ‘Please, sir. What is the answer?’

  Sawant took the Paradox in both hands. His brain struggled with High School Physics and his lips with Newspaper English.

  . . . place a glass of boiling water in . . .

  ‘I have no idea, Manju. No idea at all. Take it back. Manju,’ the coach said, ‘why have you brought this to cricket? Is there no one at home you can show this to? What about your—’

  ‘My mother is away on a long holiday, sir.’

  As Manju folded his precious piece of newspaper and tucked it into his cricket kitbag, Sawant studied him from head to toe, like a man wondering if he has made a bad decision.

  ‘Tommy Sir was the other man talking about you. You know what it means if he takes an interest in a boy.’

  But Manju had flown.

  ‘Hey, Manjuboy! Come over here!’

  Twenty other young cricketers stood around a red stone-roller with ‘Tiger’ written twice on it. They had been waiting for him.

  ‘Chutneyboy! Look at the chutneyboy come running.’

  ‘Chutneyboy who wants to be a Young Lion. Come here!’

  It was a court-martial: a boy was holding up one of those new phones that were also tiny television sets, and Manju was told to stand on the stone-roller, while the circle tightened around him.

  As Manju rose above the circle of white, Sawant, hands on his hips, walked around the stone-roller for a better view.

  The boys were making Manju watch, as a woman reporter aimed a mike at a tall teenager, handsome enough in every other way too, but whose eyes, cool grey clouds, were like a snow leopard’s.

  ‘Chutney Raja! That’s what they call your father, Manju. Chutney Raja!’

  ‘You heard them on TV. My big brother is a Young Lion.’

  ‘Chutney Raja SubJunior! All you’re good for is your science textbooks. What do you know about batting?’

  ‘Thomas, today I’ll hit you for three fours one after the other. Then, I’ll hit you for three sixes. What did you say about my father?’

  ‘He’s a Chutney Raja.’

  ‘And what is your father then?’

  ‘Your brother is Chutney Raja Junior. That makes you—’

  YOUNG LIONS

  ‘Join us in the quest to find the next generation of sporting legends!’

  You can see from these images that Radha Krishna Kumar has grown up in what some would consider less than ideal conditions, at the very edge of Mumbai. His father is a variety-chutney salesman, whose main business is his sons. In his own words:

  ‘We have a family secret which makes us superior to every other cricketing family in the city of Mumbai. There is a secret blessing given to my son Radha by the Lord Subra manya, who is our family deity . . .’

  (Secret from God? Shit. Your father really is mad.)

  (Ashwin. I heard that. Two fours!)

  ‘Mr Mohan: is it really true that your son got Sachin Tendulkar out in a practice match or is that just a story?’

  ‘There is a saying in our language: he who steals a peanut is a thief. He who steals an elephant is also a thief. This means we do not lie in matters big or small. Radha Krishna clean bowled Sachin Tendulkar with his fourth ball.’

  (This is true! This really happened!)

  (Shut up, Chutney Raja SubJunior! And why is your brother called Radha? Isn’t that a girl’s name?)

  Radha Kumar has the status of a super-star in his neighbourhood. We spoke to his neighbour, Mr Ramnath, seen here in front of his ironing stand.

  ‘Dahisar was famous, they used to shoot films here before the river became dirty. The moment I saw Radha, when his father brought him here over ten years ago, I told my wife, this boy will make Dahisar famous again.’

  YOUNG LIONS

  MONDAY 6.30 PM REPEATED ON WEDNESDAY

  Follow us on Twitter

  •

  Enough! Flailing his arms, Manju scattered his tormentors from the stone-roller: time for real cricket, at last.

  ‘. . . SubJunior! Get ready to bat!’

  ‘Oh Champion of Champions!’

  A drum-beat had begun at the far end of the maidan. Padded up, helmeted, and swinging his bat in circles over his head, Manju walked up to the crease.

  At noon, he was still batting. Manju Kumar had kept his word to the bowlers, punishing each one of them in a different way for what they had said about his father (and about his brother having a girl’s name), lofting Thomas over mid-wicket, driving Ashwin twice through the covers, and cutting, pulling and flicking the others.

  Pramod Sawant stood, arms folded across his chest, and watched Manju: passing over the boy’s dark, eye-heavy face, pointy chin and solitary pimple, and then over his shoulders and biceps, to settle on the crucial part of a batsman’s body. In Australia they bat with their footwork. In India we do it with our wrists. Manjunath Kumar’s forearms in action made his coach’s mouth water. Dark and defined cunning, those forearms were broader than the biceps; they were a twenty-five-year-old man’s forearms grafted onto the body of a four-foot ten-inch child; they were forearms which, as they petted, coaxed, and occasionally bludgeoned the hard red ball to the boundary, made Head Coach Sawant remember, with a shiver, the muscular man in black shorts who had come to his village with the travelling circus three decades ago.

  •

  There – shirtless, on the floor of a 320-square-foot box of brick. Home. Manjunath was back in the one-room brick shed, divided by a green curtain, where he had lived since his father brought him and his brother to Mumbai, nine years ago. Pressing his palms against his cheeks, the boy went over the newspaper once again:

  On
e theory relies on the ‘Lake Effect’, which is seen in the cold countries of northern America . . .

  His cricket gear lay around him, and he was stripped to his waist.

  Manju saw shadows moving in the blade of light beneath the closed metal door of his home. His father was outside, answering the neighbours’ questions. When is Radha Krishna coming back? Does he think he is too big now to talk to his own neighbours?

  On the table there was dinner made by his aunt (or possibly great-aunt) Sharadha. The world was in order, except for one Scientific Paradox.

  A quick crust of ice forms over the lake, keeping the water underneath it liquid all through winter. Similarly, when lukewarm water freezes, a thin crust forms on top. In a glass of boiling water, in contrast, evaporating steam stops the . .

  A clattering noise made him look up: a vermin cavalry went galloping over the corrugated tin roof. Rats, rushing towards the flour-mill in the centre of the slum. Manju turned on the television, and increased the volume.

  Reaching far behind the television set, he picked up an instant-noodle cup filled with dark mud in which two horsegram beans, planted forty-eight hours ago, had sprouted. New life, fathered by Master Manjunath. He looked at the tender shoots paternally, spilled big drops of water from a glass into the pot, and then returned the life-bearing cup to its hiding place behind the TV.

  The final image of the day’s episode flashed on television: the cadaver of an American man lying naked on a green dissecting table under a cone of hard white light, before the screen went black and the credits rolled.

  Manju looked down at his own body: that thing had started again – he was hard. It was happening all the time now, sometimes even when his father or brother were in the same room. He lay down and pressed himself against the floor.

  He wondered what colour his cock had become under the pressure of his own body: and then he felt that it was liquefying under the weight, and spreading, an icy liquid, all around him.

  Now he found himself on a frozen lake. He was not alone here. Beamed from the CSI inspection table, the foreigner’s cadaver now lay in the middle of the lake.

  Promoted to the elite squad of CSI Las Vegas, Agent Manjunath Kumar-Grissom crawls, scraping the surface of the ice with his right toenail, inching nearer and nearer to the naked dead body that he must retrieve; but when he is almost there, click, crack, the surface of the lake starts to break under him.

  Whistles and cheers explode all around – Ra-dha! Ra-dha! – for a Young Lion has just returned to the slum, but Manju, who must now go out and smile for the neighbours, is still on the floor, trying to crush his hard-on.

  •

  An egret flew in from the river and watched the boy, who lay above a well, watching a turtle.

  It was an open well, the kind that still exists in a suburb like Dahisar, raised three inches from the ground and covered by a rusty iron grille: and as he lay face down on it Manju watched something beneath the water’s skin.

  His legs made a ‘V’ on the chequerwork of the grid, which creaked as he shifted his weight. Through its interstices, he shone a pen-torch down on the black water.

  He lanced his beam of light around the well. There! Splashing out of the black water, it came curiously to the light, a dark and domed creature, its limbs paddling fast.

  Manju turned his pen-torch off, and put his face to the cold grille. His heart beat hard against his ribcage which beat in turn against the metal of the grid. In a few hours he would have his chemistry class. He knew a surprise test was coming.

  Which of the following is used to make bleach?

  A. Hydrogen

  B. Hydrochloric Acid

  C. Sodium Phosphate

  D. Chlorine

  Please, please, help me: O God of Cricket and also of Chemistry.

  From the depths of the well, a cool draught tickled his cheek; the boy’s imagination transformed it into a breath from a range of blue mountains. He felt his hair blowing in the breeze: the mountain air of the Western Ghats.

  Each summer, the family went back to their village. Taking the train from Mumbai to Mangalore, they then got on a bus that carried them over the hills and towards the shrine of the God of Cricket, their family deity, Kukke Subramanya; past trees with red leaves, and little streams that skipped a heartbeat when a schoolboy leapt into them, past waterfalls shrouded in waterfalls, until they reached a temple hidden deep inside the Western Ghats, where, leaving the bus, and standing in line for hours, moving past burning camphor and sharp temple bells, past a nine-headed painted snake, the protector Vasuki, they finally came to the silver doorframes, beyond which, lit by oil lamps, waited the thousand-year-old God of Cricket, Subramanya.

  ‘Remind Him, my sons. We can’t offer Him much money. So remind Him, monkeys.’

  ‘One of us should become the best batsman in the world, and the other the second best.’

  Mohan Kumar had his own way of reminding God. As he did each year, he rolled barechested over the hard granite floor of the temple, rolled from one side of the wall to the other, and then back again, until his torso was lacerated, and the secret contract was renewed in his blood.

  ‘Are you licking yourself again?’

  ‘No,’ Manju said. ‘Just watching.’

  ‘Get up.’

  Manju didn’t.

  And now Radha lowered himself beside Manju, and there were two bodies lying on the old metal grid over the well.

  ‘Let’s go. He must have woken by now,’ Radha said.

  Manju pointed the pen-torch to a spot below them.

  ‘It’s that turtle again. She’s the mother.’

  ‘Maybe. Let’s go home. He may hit you again if he’s in a bad mood, Manju.’

  ‘It is the mother. I’m not going till you agree that it is the mother.’

  ‘I can’t see it from here, Manju.’

  ‘I’m showing you, I’m showing you.’

  Radha, the Young Lion, was square-jawed, tall and muscular, and was sometimes mistaken for Manju’s uncle, though there was just a year and a month between them. He strained to see through the grating to where his younger brother was directing the pen-torch beam.

  ‘See. The mother. Do you agree? Then we can go.’

  ‘Wait, Manju. Point the light over there. I think there’s one more.’

  The pen-torch moved: a second turtle was discovered. It raised its head towards its two human observers. How fascinating, it seemed to be saying, to see the turtles that live in that bigger darkness up there. Done, it lost interest in the boys, and sank back into the water.

  ‘Do you agree? That’s the mother. Then we can go.’

  Manjunath Kumar pressed against his brother’s body; the warmth sharpened his senses.

  Suddenly a new turtle came into view: its body angled towards the light, jaw wide open, a rim of gold glistening around its shell.

  ‘Manju, you’re wrong. That’s the mother. It’s bigger.’

  ‘I’ve hidden it behind the TV,’ Manju whispered.

  ‘What?’

  ‘My biology experiment. I want full marks in class this time.’

  Two months ago, his model fighter jet plane, a project for his Physics class, left on the dining table, had mysteriously vanished after he had put four days of work into it.

  ‘He’s going to find it anyway, and then he’ll throw it out, Manju. Come. We have to go. He’s woken up by now.’

  ‘I want to watch the turtle.’

  ‘Manju, it’s not that morning.’

  ‘I want to watch the turtle.’

  ‘Manju, it’s not a check-up morning,’ his brother said. ‘Don’t be afraid.’ Radha poked his brother in the ribs. ‘And if you don’t come now, I’ll show him where you’ve hidden your science experiment.’

  The brothers looked at each other for a moment: then both bodies sprang from the well and ran.

  Their father had already folded up their cots and propped them against the wall, forming two isosceles triangles; his own c
ot was on the other side of the green curtain. Next to the dining table stood a metal almirah, which complained of its years of ill treatment in a rash of rusty patches and livid scars; leaning on three of its sides were seven cricket bats.

  Old Sharadha, relative of some kind, aunt or great-aunt, polyglot remonstrator in Kannada, Hindi and English, the only woman to have entered their home for a decade, perhaps longer (neither boy can remember exactly when She left), was cleaning the stove and last night’s dishes.

  Standing before the mirror on his side of the green curtain, Mohan Kumar was painting his moustache, a grooming procedure that could take a quarter of an hour. He turned around with his dye-brush and looked at his sons.

  ‘Were you looking at girls again? Naked girls bathing in the morning?’

  ‘No, Appa. We were looking at turtles.’

  ‘Boys,’ Mohan Kumar said, closing his eyes and restraining his anger. ‘If you are looking at naked girls, half-naked bathing girls, tell me. I will not punish. But don’t lie. What were you two looking at?’

  Emerging with a pitch-black moustache, Mohan called his second son to him, held his chin, and turned his face from side to side.

  ‘There’s blood in your cheeks, Manju. That comes from hormones. You were looking at girls, weren’t you?’

  ‘No, Appa.’

  When Mohan Kumar raised his hand, his palm rotated ninety degrees to the left and vibrated, like a man having a fit just as he was saluting; Manju cringed and readied himself; the blow fell on the right side of his face.

  In ten minutes, the boys were in school uniform and had packed their cricket bags: they stood at attention while Mohan slid his fingers into the bags to check their contents.

  And then, closing the door of their home behind them, the family Kumar left for cricket practice.

  When they passed the tyre-repair place with the sign saying PUNCHER SHOP, Manju stopped, and shouted, ‘Wrong, that’s wrong!’

  ‘Quiet,’ Radha said.

  But when he looked at his father, Manju knew that he wanted him to continue: he was proud of his son, smarter than everyone else his age in the slum.

  ‘Do You Want Pan Card!’ Manju raised his voice. ‘Pumpkin Carrot Banana Shapes Fruit and Vegetable Salad Decorators! Pandal, Marriage, Birthday Experts! Everything in English is written the wrong way and I alone know!’