Selection Day

  ‘What does my brother say about me?’

  ‘I just want to be your friend, Manju,’ Sofia said, and bit her lip, and told herself she sounded exactly like one of the men who creep closer and closer but claim they are only looking for ‘friendship’. But talking to Manju was so much harder than talking to his brother, who was a simple soul, after all.

  Enough. She leaned forward and yelled at the driver’s shoulder:

  ‘Salim, stop the car at Ram Ashraya. Tendulkar,’ she touched his shoulder, ‘relax, okay? This is the twenty-first century and you are in junior college. Be who you are. Look at me, dude. Other day I told my father, I’ve grown up. I told him, Dad, I’m on the college committee to protect turtles and birds. We go to Crawford Market every Sunday to free them from cages. I’ll protect you too, Manju.’

  ‘Protect me?’

  Fine. To make it clear to one and all she was not behaving with Manju the way boys sometimes behaved with her, but out of a genuine and sincere interest to protect him, Sofia just cut through the bullshit and told Manju it was normal, perfectly normal, 100 per cent normal, lots of people these days were homosexuals, it was no big deal any more, there was even a gay and lesbian club in Xavier’s for chrissakes, so why make a fuss over the fact his brother was going around telling everyone he was a—

  The next thing Sofia knew, cymbals and drum-beats were deafening her and her driver had had to brake hard; because a door had opened in the moving car and a body had leapt out and run. Sofia reached over and shut the door at once.

  •

  Off stump line pakado, bhai. Kaise bowling kar rahe ho? New ball hain, waste mat karo!

  Waiting, waiting. Now bowling.

  Lavkar daud – Ramesh!

  From the Fort Vijay Club, Manju had gone counter-clockwise around Azad Maidan, past the Lord Northbrook Cricket Club, the Times of India Sports Club, and the Bohra Cricketers Club until he was just outside the Young Hindu Cricket Club. Cloud and wind and unbearable sun; the smell of woodsmoke in the breeze; spike-marks in red mud; the sounds of balls being struck and bodies colliding from one match and another.

  And at last he found what he had been searching for.

  Radha Kumar, his brother, fielding in the covers, fingers spread out, eyes on the wicket.

  There was a loud cry: a fielder, running after a ball from his own match, had been hit in the shin by a ball flying from another match, and had fallen with a cry. Now there were spots of blood on the mud. As he stood up, with torn trouser and bloody knee, the fielder grimaced at Manjunath.

  At the far end of the maidan stood two traffic policemen.

  Manju watched them.

  When at last the match was over, Radha returned with the other boys, tossing the red ball from hand to hand with a big grin. Reaching his tent, he stopped.

  He dropped the ball, and looked at his younger brother.

  ‘Radha,’ Manju said. ‘What have you been telling people about me?’

  Looking at the earth, Radha bit at his right thumbnail, tore away a part of it and let it fall.

  ‘Radha. What have you been telling people about me?’

  He did the same thing with his right index fingernail, and then looked at the ring finger as if he were considering whether to bite it; instead, he turned and began to run. In his cricket whites Radha ran – and in T-shirt and jeans Manju ran after him – all the way down Azad Maidan and past Xavier’s College, past the soccer ground from behind whose wall and barbed-wire fence came the noise of a marching band, and then to Metro Cinema, and through Dhobi Talao, before taking a left at Alfred, the dance bar he had visited only that weekend with his friends, and further past the blue Parsi Dairy Farm, and up the bridge, past a basket of peeled pineapples carried on a coolie’s head, and down past the flyover, and out into Marine Drive and all the way to where the pigeons had huddled in the noisy kabootarkhana, the metal enclosure designed for them to gather and feed. A man in white pajamas, having just emptied a sack of grain for the birds, stood with his palms folded before their auspicious gluttony.

  Radha stopped, panting: from here he could see a game of cricket being played in the Gymkhana beyond the pigeon-stand; and another game of cricket in the Gymkhana beyond that one; and another game of cricket beyond that one too. There was nowhere to escape.

  He turned around to see Manju slowing down.

  Sounding its long horn, a train drew into Marine Lines station.

  Folding his arms across his chest, Radha braced himself for a blow, as Manju came running up to him. He kept his eyes on the feeding mass of birds, the rippling crowd of emerald necks and grey pulsing bodies, which paid attention only to their free grain, and waited.

  Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

  Manju had moved a pace to his right. There was something new in his face: there was malice in his smile. As Radha watched, he climbed over into the kabootarkhana, lifted his shoe over one of the feeding pigeons, which kept clucking at the grain, oblivious to the danger over its head; he kept his shoe like this, and then, very deliberately, brought it down on the bird.

  ‘Manju!’

  Everything else flew away at once.

  The bird was still alive. Alone in the kabotaarkhana, it thrashed about the grain bed in mad, helpless circles.

  Radha slapped his brother.

  In the train to Chembur they stood side by side, looking at each other.

  Even before the train had come to a stop, Manju leapt out and ran; Radha followed, trying to hit him from behind, all the way past the Subramanya temple, and to Tattvamasi Building, where they went to the backyard and slapped and punched each other by the brick wall, even as the neighbours watched, slapped and punched each other until they were simply too tired. They walked up the stairs to the fourth floor, drank water that their father poured into glasses for them, ate dinner, washed their faces, went to bed, and turned off the lights.

  Manju opened his eyes and saw the figure standing by his bed. He averted his face and clenched his jaw.

  And waited for it to start all over again.

  But no blow came; and the body fell back onto Radha’s bed. Manju heard sobbing in the dark.

  ‘Manju, I’m sorry I said those things about you, Sofia kept asking about you and kept asking and kept asking and I got angry and . . . Manju, you always win, you are the golden boy, what about me? Do you want me to carry your cricket bag for you?’

  The sobbing grew louder.

  ‘. . . he said I was lean, mean and . . . Manju . . .’

  It comes slowly to some: they sink by degrees, over years, into paranoia – and to some the estrangement from reality occurs in a single shearing instant. For Radha it had occurred at the nets: it was the moment Tommy Sir touched his shoulder and said, ‘You are lean, mean and magnificent, son.’

  Because Tommy Sir had never praised him when he was good.

  ‘. . . he said . . . lean, mean, and . . .’

  With a single exertion, Manju had moved his brother’s moist, pathetic body away from his bed.

  ‘You should have practised.’

  Practised? Manju observed that the word went to Radha uninsulated. His body trembled.

  My big brother must be thinking, what else have I done in my life until now other than practise cricket?

  Jumping from the bed, Radha stood over his younger brother and made a fist: Manju grinned as his brother mimed a blow right at his neck.

  ‘Hey. Homo. Listen. You have to throw your wicket tomorrow. Get out early. Tomorrow is my day. If you don’t get out early I’ll kill you. You hear me?’

  Manju just thrashed his feet about.

  Radha tightened his fist, and then let it go, and sagged, and sobbed.

  ‘I’m sorry, Manju. You’re not a gay.’

  Manju ordered: ‘Say it once more.’

  ‘You’re not a gay.’

  After making him say it a third time, Manju sighed: for the fighting was over.

  ‘Now don’t cry like a girl. Go to sleep.’

>   ‘Yes, Manju,’ Radha said.

  Though he could hear his brother, next to him, sobbing, though his own face was bruised and his neck oily with sweat, Manju was exultant: he was thinking only of the moment when he had stepped, knowingly, on the fat body of that pigeon and held it under his shoe. Something new was starting in Manjunath’s life; he had tasted power.

  •

  From Metro Cinema to Victoria Terminus the black avenue is deserted beneath a series of pulsing red traffic lights. The Municipal Building is lit up, but VT station is just a white circle inside a rim of gold: just a clock that says ‘5.45 a.m.’ People are sleeping, entire clans are asleep on the footpath, but in a blue stall near the station, the first cups of tea are ready, served by a young man who is so fresh from the village that he does not know what you mean when you ask him for ‘takeaway’, or ‘parcel’, or even ‘just give it to me in a plastic cup, will you?’ Now a policeman blows a whistle: the traffic moves. The sky is a faint violet, and the great mass of the Gothic train station, like a dreadnought that has lain in wait all night, emerges into view. Pigeons cluster on rooftops, landing and taking off, flying in loops and returning, as if rehearsing their movements for the whole day. Outside Azad Maidan, a boy wearing a black eyepatch sleeps on his mother’s stomach, his mouth open, as a blue-masked municipal worker advances towards them with her broom. In this chaos of rubble, raw earth and dust, an articulate sound announces that it is morning: a cricket bat is tapping the earth. Beyond the fence at Azad Maidan, a wilderness of waste paper and abandoned plastic appears to have risen up and taken human form: hundreds of young men in whites are bowling and batting, and more join them every minute.

  This is, at last, Selection Day.

  Selection Day

  Mohan Kumar woke to find that Manju was missing from his bed, but he was relieved that his bat and his cricket gear were also missing. The father of champions went to the kitchen, turned on the lights, and looked about for the earthen pot filled with boiled water that the maid left by the fridge every night.

  From the kitchen, he could see Radha, sleeping on his bed like a cat, all his white teeth showing.

  Mohan sat down next to his older son and sipped his water.

  Radha opened his eyes, but did not move.

  ‘I wondered all night: did Lord Subramanya mix things up? Give one boy the talent and the other the desire? But no, such things don’t happen to those who have trusted God, Radha. You will be selected today.’

  With a kick of his legs, Radha rose from the bed.

  From a drawer in his room, he took out a plastic envelope, placed it on his table, and withdrew a sacred cricket glove. He raised it to his face, touching it to his right eye, and then to his left.

  At the Subramanya temple, the doors were opening for the morning, and it took a few minutes for the priest to chant the necessary Sanskrit and circle the dark image with the sacred fire, the aarthi. Because everyone in the neighbourhood knew it was Selection Day, the priest revived a South Indian tradition; raising a silver crown, God’s own crown, he placed it three times on the cricketer’s head. The third time it touched his skull, Radha had the hallucination that the God of Cricket, Subramanya, was standing before him, mounted on his sacred serpent Vasuki, and saying, in a voice familiar from a thousand television advertisements, in Sachin Tendulkar’s own voice:

  ‘My son, you were not born to fail: believe in me, today of all days.’

  An hour later, at the Azad Maidan, Radha Kumar was heading to the crease; a sacred glove, Sachin’s own, bulged from his pocket. He stood at the crease, taking guard with his SG Sunny Tonny bat, genuine English willow.

  Bad luck can take a million forms at the start of an innings. A feather touch on an outswinger; a French cut onto the stumps; a deflection off the pads into the hands of forward short leg. Survive till you reach 20, and you are settled in. When you cross 50, the selector’s brain will say: ‘This boy is special.’

  Radha batted as many of them had not seen him bat in over a year. The bowlers pitched it short at him, and then they pitched it full. He cut; he drove.

  When he reached 20, he took guard again. Subramanya God of Cricket, it’s only thirty runs from here to safety.

  A ball had rolled onto his pitch from another game. With the natural cricketing grace he had first revealed at the age of four, Radha, one hand on his bat, scooped up the ball just as a fielder came running for it, and hit it into his hands. ‘Thanks, man!’ shouted the other boy.

  Waving at him, Radha again took guard.

  The sun shone on the Municipal Building; a drum-beat rose from a distant part of the ground. Radha saw white sandbags piled up to his right and wondered why they had been placed there. A crow swooped low.

  Deennawaz Shah had started his run up.

  •

  Ninety seconds later –

  Though the boy’s head is between his knees, and though thick hands cover his ears: the words still penetrate.

  ‘You hopped. A weight-transfer issue. After so many years of my coaching, you did it again. On Selection Day.’

  Radha opened his eyes and saw Tommy Sir standing over him. He was back in the tent at the far end of the maidan.

  His brother, Manju, was now taking guard at the wicket.

  ‘I practised for months, Tommy Sir. Even in the rains. I stood in the nets every day from seven thirty to eleven o’clock and from three to five thirty.’

  It was all over now. Deennawaz Shah had smelled out Radha’s weakness: his first ball had pitched short, and jagged back into the batsman. It hit Radha on the right thigh pad and fell on his foot, and as he watched through the corner of his eye it found its way through his prayers and fifteen years of early mornings and late evenings at the nets. Mohan Kumar’s first son saw the bails fall.

  ‘Your brother listened to me, Radha. Manju always listened to me, but you . . .’

  Radha opened his eyes.

  ‘My brother’s talent comes from God, old man. You had nothing to do with it.’

  Extracting Sachin Tendulkar’s glove from his pocket Radha held it high in the air. Had everyone seen it? Good. He tried to rip it with his hands – then he tore at it with his teeth, and spat it out to the ground.

  Tommy Sir stared at the departing boy.

  Tommy Sir always has a short speech for when it is over: the speech he delivers when there is no further hope of selection. When the kid is angry, when he wants to scream at his own mentor: Why did you make me play cricket, old man? At such a moment, hand on the boy’s shoulder, Tommy Sir will respond: We had no choice, son. But if you have learnt how to give this absurd game everything, you will have learnt how to do the same in business or medicine or anything else, and you will be a king in that life.

  But this Radha – look at him go, look at him go – what could you tell a creature like this? Finding his throat dry, he drank half a bottle of Bisleri, gargled the last of the water, and discharged it into the red mud.

  Some boys fall.

  •

  In a teashop near Azad Maidan – low ceiling – Radha sat with his palms over his face, and sweat running down his forehead onto his nose. When he opened his eyes, a man had materialized at the table in front of his, silver polyester shirt, big paunch, hennaed hair, and parted, panting lips. Radha observed the man’s paunch, which jiggled constantly, as if it were a battery-operated toy. He gaped at that tummy, until its owner, leaning forward, whispered:

  ‘Are you a sportsman, son? A sportsman?’

  Four small fans turned on simultaneously: hot air hit everyone in the restaurant.

  Radha lifted his eyes from the paunch, which continued to jiggle on its own behind the silver shirt, to the man’s face, anxious and avid beneath his red hair.

  ‘You look tired, son. You played hard, no?’

  The man held up his teacup, whose sides were coated with thick brown liquid.

  ‘Want a taste of my tea? My nice tea?’ With a grimace, he reached over his paunch, and placed his
cup on Radha’s table, then nudged it forward with a finger.

  Tears filled Radha’s eyes. He bit his fingernails as he watched the cup of tea being nudged closer and closer to him.

  Leaning against the wall, an old waiter sucked his cheeks and scraped at the peeling plaster with his left foot. One by one, three more barefoot waiters joined him to watch the fun.

  ‘Don’t worry about fat uncle here,’ said the waiter who was scratching the wall with a foot. ‘He’s harmless. Uncle, stop giving your tea to young boys.’

  ‘Why can’t the sportsman have some of my chai?’ the fat man whined. ‘Such a nice thing to have, chai.’

  Banging his fist on the table, spilling the tea, Radha said something to the fat man. His paunch no longer jiggled. And the waiters told the crazy adolescent to get out at once.

  •

  Small green typewriters hammered all along the edges of Azad Maidan: men with thick glasses struck the keys, filling out legal forms for their clients. Smoking a beedi, an old man spread himself on the footpath behind a painted sign.

  PALM / FACE READING

  ON THE SPOT SOLUTIONS

  FOR ANY 5 LIFE PROBLEMS: Rs 150

  FOR FULL LIFE PROBLEMS: Rs 500

  ‘Five of your problems solved for seventy-five rupees.’ He squinted at Radha, who was inspecting the sign. ‘I like your eyes, son.’

  Radha stepped back. You too? He looked at the grinning old palmist. You too?

  In the slums along the edge of the maidan, aluminium pots were on the boil. It was lunch hour. At the triangular wedge of grass at the end of the park, Radha saw red flags tucked into the fencing. Something behind the trees blared:

  ‘Kohinoor Mills. Swan Mills. Sreeram Mills. India United Mills Number One. Where is our compensation, where is our justice, where is our share in Mumbai?’

  Radha ran. Past the clattering typewriters. Past the men smashing wood. Back to Azad Maidan, where Manju was showing off with the bat for the selectors.