Selection Day

  Manjunath Kumar was gone. And he would never find another boy like that.

  Six Point Two.

  Tommy Sir had to go to Lilavati Hospital for another round of tests for his blood sugar, B.P. and cholesterol. He smoked a cigarette on the way.

  Near the Kalanagar Signal, he stopped, and looked up at the billboard that had once said, ‘When Sachin Tendulkar dreamed of becoming the world’s best batsman, so did . . .’ Now it featured an advertisement for Coca-Cola. From the advertisement, his eyes moved up to the skywalk, the zig-zagging metal bridge that connected various locations in the neighbourhood to the Bandra train station. Behind the metal grid, men moved back and forth. Tommy Sir’s eyes grew tired. He felt that up there, on that seemingly never-ending bridge, shadowy figures were moving towards obscure destinations, possibly only to return to their point of origin, like in an architectural sketch of infinity by M.C. Escher. Hell is a choice, made daily and by millions, and breathing slowly and watching this aerial cage, Tommy Sir saw Mumbai, minute by minute, unbecome and become hell.

  •

  They were in an autorickshaw that was moving slowly through crowded streets towards the train station. Next to him Manju felt Javed’s powerful body, his thick shoulders.

  ‘I know you must be worried about Radha,’ Javed said, ‘but don’t do anything rash.’

  Javed’s forehead had darkened, and the two veins bulged: a sight so impressively real that it drained the life from the hapless crowd around the autorickshaw. Ordinary people, bloodless people. If Manju went back to Mumbai, he would become one of them. If he stayed here, he would become whatever Javed was. These were his choices.

  ‘Manju. When you phoned and said you were coming to Navi Mumbai, you know how happy I was? In the station I looked into each and every train to see if you were there.’

  The autorickshaw hit bumps and potholes in the road, and Javed said, ‘Fuck,’ each time.

  ‘What do you like about me?’ Manju asked. ‘The only thing I’m good at is cricket.’

  Javed turned his face as he spoke. ‘I’m not going to sing your praises, Captain. Javed is not that kind of man. Manju, c’mon. Don’t believe all that shit your father has put in your head. Think.’ Now Javed turned to show that he was tapping his forehead. ‘What would someone like about you? Think.’

  Manju tried.

  •

  Before a background of luminous green mountains, a succession of ponds and wet paddyfields fled past the train tracks, solitary egrets stalking in them, and the bushes sparkling with wild flowers close enough to pluck. Then came the towns, shining and white and set in geometrical grids against the green hills. For Manju’s benefit, Javed pronounced the name of each place where the train stopped.

  Belapur.

  Man-a-sa-saro-var.

  Now and then the sun disappeared, and when it shone down on them again Manju again noticed how fast Javed’s hair was receding. Soon he would have a bald spot on his crown. Manju raised his right hand to block the sun from scorching Javed’s scalp.

  ‘I’m really happy your brother said you could do whatever you want,’ Javed said. ‘Now you’re free.’

  They stood apart from everyone else that morning, two boys older than their years, older and wiser than anyone else on that slow-moving train.

  A man in a grey bush-shirt lit a cigarette and smoked; in between puffs, when he cleared his chest, the mucus made a noise like five hundred years of human history. The light in Javed’s eyes shone playfully on Manju. Then a passenger heaved his luggage to the door and stood between them, and they had to talk around his sweating body, until the train pulled in to Panvel station.

  Once there, they ran. They had been in that train so long. They ran to the end of the platform and up the stairs, and then Manju leant over a bridge to see a train down below. ‘Read what’s written on its side. Nethravati Express.’

  Javed pressed against him and looked down at the train.

  ‘And?’

  ‘This is the train. This is the train we take every summer to see our village.’

  Javed pinched his collar.

  ‘What is your shirt size? We’ll buy you a shirt.’

  ‘Why? I don’t want any.’

  ‘If you have clothes here, you won’t leave.’

  Manju nodded. He moved alongside Javed among the clothes sellers, pretending to look for a shirt, till he found what he wanted: a baseball cap.

  A gift for Javed. He fitted it on his friend’s head, and thought that it covered the receding hairline pretty well.

  Javed slapped the cap off his head.

  ‘I’m not going bald. It’s just the Coca-Cola I was drinking. And even if I was going bald, Javed Ansari is not the kind of man to hide anything. Do you understand?’

  They were at the edge of a flight of steps that led out of the station; Javed ran down the steps. Oranges and chikoos were being sold from cane baskets at the edges of the steps, and four Muslim beggars, each missing a different body part, sat on four of the steps, one above the other. Manju followed Javed, avoiding the beggars. The edges of the stairs, smoothed from wear, were covered with straw, and Javed’s feet were size twelve. Manju knew it was going to happen, but before he could shout a warning, he saw Javed lose his footing, and, arms flailing, drop straight down three steps. Manju leapt to steady his friend, who had held on to the bannister just in time to prevent a major accident. Both looked down at the steps; Javed winced and stretched his right foot. ‘Man,’ Manju said. ‘It must hurt. Man.’ Now, for a moment, they could hold each other in the open, safely and without worry, as poor boys could with impunity, and as people of their class could not.

  Hand in hand, the two continued down the stairs.

  But the moment they reached the foot of the stairs, Javed found himself alone again. Amidst stacks of cargo jeans, shoes, and T-shirts, Manju had seen a man who was selling green mechanical frogs that crawled over the floor. Javed watched as Manju turned the noisy frog toy over and over with his shoe. ‘Complex boy,’ Javed said.

  Manju let go of the frog, which crawled in circles until the vendor of clothes repossessed it.

  ‘If you go back, your father will marry you off, Manju. That simple.’

  ‘No,’ Manju said, and with greater emphasis each time, ‘No. No. No.’

  ‘Yes. And one more thing, Manju: you’ll have to marry your father, too, and look after him like a wife. You know all this, and you’re still thinking of going back?’

  Manju shrugged, as if he didn’t care.

  ‘My life is not limited by your imagination,’ Manju said.

  ‘Good,’ Javed said. ‘Good. Tell them that.’

  Instead, moving away from Javed, Manju narrowed his eyes and searched again for the Nethravati Express, which he spied among the trains behind him. But when he turned around to view it better, he found that the roof of the train had suddenly turned into glass; and Manju saw its compartments filled with familiar faces of relatives, cousins, and neighbours from his village: all of them, like his uncle Revanna, dressed in their cotton shirts and white dhotis, chit-chatting in their loud dialect, and smelling of rural curry, as if the entire village had arrived in Mumbai. Now everyone sitting in the glass train went quiet and gazed at Manju, as if they had come here just to ask him a question.

  The hallucination ended – the roof of the train turned into metal again; something was tickling Manju’s ankle. He looked down to find that another of the noisy mechanical frogs had found him out, and had propped itself against his shoe, as if it meant to crawl up his leg; turning it round with his shoe, he kicked it back in the direction of its vendor.

  ‘Javed,’ he said. ‘Javed.’

  But when he looked around, Javed had disappeared.

  Manju ran into the crowd looking for him. He ran up and down steps, and came out of the station, yelling, ‘I’m not going to leave you! I’m not going back to them!’

  ‘Manju.’

  He turned around to see Javed waving at him.
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  ‘You’re mad. I just came outside to get a coconut. You are completely mad. You know this?’

  ‘I thought you had left me.’

  Javed shook his head. ‘Why would I leave you?’

  The coconut-seller was watching, but Manju put his arm around Javed.

  They took turns drinking from the tender coconut.

  Before Javed was done, Manju knocked the nut out of his hand. ‘Kambli!’

  ‘You’re Kambli!’

  ‘You! You!’

  The two chased each other down the road.

  From behind, they heard the coconut-seller yelling; the boys stopped.

  ‘Shit. We didn’t pay.’

  ‘We should go back, no?’

  ‘No! Just run. He can’t come after us.’

  ‘He is coming after us! He is coming!’

  Manju held on to Javed’s shirt, and they ran, and then he went ahead and Javed held on to his shirt; in this way, one holding on to the other, shrieking and laughing, they charged down the mud road that led into Panvel city.

  •

  One morning when she was about ten years old, Manju’s mother had discovered that the man she loved more than anyone else in the world, her father, had left a toy on her younger sister Prema’s bed. He had never placed anything there for her. She went out to the courtyard, and found the rusty saw that her mother used to cut jackfruit: tiptoeing back in, she went to the bedroom, and slapped Prema awake. Twice. Thrice. When her younger sister woke up, she held the saw right at her throat. ‘If you take his love away from me . . . if you even think of taking his love away from me . . .’ Her sister Prema wailed at the top of her voice and her father came running into the bedroom: dropping the saw at once, she tried to explain, but that was the only time he had ever struck her in the face.

  •

  Manju opened his eyes: someone had clapped his hands right in front of them.

  ‘How much do you dream every day?’

  Manju took stock of his situation; he was lying on the golden bed and had been dreaming once again of his mother’s childhood.

  Showered and fragrant and back from the hot day’s running around, Javed stood wiping his hair with a thin cotton towel.

  ‘Your turn now.’ Javed threw the wet cotton towel at him.

  Manju tied the wet cotton across his face, tucking it behind his ears like an armed robber’s mask, making his friend laugh. Inhaling the scent of freshly shampooed hair, Manju spoke through the mask.

  ‘Javed. When do you have to go back to your father’s place?’

  Javed shrugged. ‘Before it’s dark. That’s when my father thinks I might get up to something with you.’

  Tearing away the wet towel from his face, throwing it to the bed, Manju pursed his lips, licking them from inside his mouth, before he said: ‘Javed.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Go down and get some condoms,’ he said. ‘We have three hours left.’

  Javed looked at him with a frown.

  ‘What? Condoms?’

  ‘Yes. Go get some. It’s time,’ Manju said. ‘I’ll take a shower while you’re gone.’

  ‘You want me to go get condoms?’ Javed asked, trying to figure this out.

  ‘Yes. I’m shy. You go down and get them from the chemist’s shop,’ Manju said.

  This was it: it was going to happen now.

  When Javed left, to make sure of his resolution, Manju went to the wardrobe and opened it again. The helmet was there, waiting for him. Then he leaned forward, picked up the helmet, and brought it, with its metal visor, to his eye-level; he peeped into the three round holes that had been bored into the top to make it lighter, before turning the helmet over. He smelled Javed’s head-sweat, and recognized the indentations made in the foam padding by Javed’s skull; from the padding, his eye was led down into the black bowl of the helmet; and that curved darkness, along with the cold touch of the metal visor, reminded him of the well with the rusty grille in Dahisar, where the turtles with glints of gold swam, and as he brought his nose closer and closer to the smell of Javed’s head, he felt himself fall through the rusty grid and down through the well’s darkness into something deeper – into fear, all the fear that had ever been born on earth, his brother’s fears, his runaway mother’s fears, Mohan Kumar’s fears, the fears of his village, fears of the time before he was born – and then instead of turtles Manju saw the faces of Mohan Kumar, Radha, Tommy Sir and Anand Mehta merge into one collective animal – and this animal bellowed at him: ‘Do you know what name we’ll give you if you stay with Javed?’

  Yes. I know.

  Manju was sick in the stomach; he dropped the helmet, and kicked the wardrobe door shut.

  He was sweating: it had begun, and it would recur throughout his life. Confusion in Manjunath would lead to fury in Manjunath: and this fury – against the way things are – would grow and grow until it destroyed every single alternative to the way things were.

  Back in the living room he sat on the floor. Curling his hair with one forefinger, he sketched ‘V’s in the air with the other. The ‘V’s burned, and disappeared, and he saw darkness. He gave it its oldest name: Kattale.

  He stood up. Step by step he returned to the wardrobe; and as he did so, he could see already that years from now, he might look back at this moment and these steps, and think of them as the last moment and the last steps when he still had a choice; but he would know in his heart that there had been no choice and no selection to make.

  He opened the wardrobe. The helmet was waiting – of all the masks you will have to choose from, it asked, why not take me as your own?

  As he strapped the helmet on, from behind him he heard the door open, and Javed come in.

  ‘Manju.’

  When he turned, helmeted and with his lips pressed tight, Javed gaped at him. Something in a brown paper bag fell to the floor, and Manju saw the packet of condoms.

  ‘Why are you wearing my helmet?’

  ‘You have the condoms?’ Manju asked.

  Javed nodded.

  ‘Good.’ Manju pointed at the thing lying on the floor. Then he looked Javed in the eye: ‘Why don’t you pick one, put it on, and then fuck yourself.’

  Unstrapping the helmet, he threw it to the floor so hard it bounced once, and then smacked against the wall.

  Javed just stood. This was his other face – the small, scared one.

  Walking around him to the open door, Manju stopped, and just to make absolutely sure that this had all not been a waste, that this would be final, and he would not see this pathetic face again in the morning at cricket practice, he whispered, as he went past, the word that he and his brother had written three years ago on Javed Ansari’s chestguard.

  ‘You homo.’

  With that he left, and walked as fast as possible to the train station.

  •

  The flight landed at 11.45 a.m., disgorging, in addition to the usual mob of men and women shuffling between Delhi and Mumbai, a businessman who had been forced to discover, yet again, how fucking fully this atavism among nations, this Republic (so-called) of India, was filled to the brim with the repressed, depressed, and dangerous.

  Anand Mehta had returned two days later than scheduled. Another failure – after all the money he had put into turning around the power plant, into developing his relationship with Rakesh the IAS officer’s son, what does it all come down to in the end? Rakesh the IAS officer’s son turns out to be a very inhibited character, their local lawyer was incompetent, and this nexus of second-rateness ensures, even after they have paid the politicians and bureaucrats, that some other IAS officer’s son (the very opposite of inhibited), who is in tandem with some other Mumbai entrepreneur, coolly occupies the power plant one morning; and the moment those guys are inside, and have their lock on the compound, the police – as always in India, Constitutional Defender of the first and fastest to encroach – take their side, and tell Anand Mehta he is in the wrong, and he should think himself lucky he’s leavin
g Dhanbad a free man. On his way home from the airport, observing a dark Victorian Gothic building with its complicated white windows, Mehta felt as if all that nineteenth-century tracery had been knotted across his chest.

  You’re back to begging your classmates for money now, mate.

  ‘Beer.’ He touched his driver’s shoulder.

  He got out of the car by the yellow awning of Café Ideal on Chowpatty.

  ‘Tuborg,’ he told the waiter as he sat at the window with the view of the ocean and the beach, and then checked: ‘Costs the same as Indian beer?’

  One big green Tuborg down, and half of another.

  Sea breeze streamed in through the open windows. So here I sit, in strong sunshine, and my imperishable mistakes. Well done, son. Well done. One more flop. Anand Mehta wiped away his tears. Ah, fuck it. The whole world is a Failure, anyway. America is ten trillion billion dollars in debt. They’re fucked. Everything is fucked. Which is why, Anand Mehta decided right there, that his next move should be to short-sell the entire S&P 500 index, plus the FTSE, plus European equities and bonds. ‘I’m betting against every-fucking-thing out there. If the stock market crashes,’ Mehta said, summoning the waiter over, ‘I make a lot of money. If the world ends,’ he winked, ‘. . . I make a killing.’

  ‘One more Tuborg, sir?’

  •

  Six beers! Enough, enough. Mehta left the cafe, and with some effort climbed the bridge that led to Chowpatty beach. His stomach churned, and he wondered if he should find a toilet. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine, sir. My liver is a freak of nature, sir: my liver is bigger than Pfizer. Don’t worry about me, don’t, sir, don’t. A stray copy of the Mumbai Sun was fluttering around; bending down with care, he picked it up. He began looking for that page in the middle with all the stuff about which actress was . . . and with who . . .

  He stopped turning when he reached the sports page.

  Two each from Ruia and Jai Hind in

  Mumbai Under-19 squad.

  T.E. Sarfraz, record holder, is Captain.

  Five boys had been captured in a photograph below the article. There. Mehta put his finger on the lower right hand of the photo. That boy. The one with the bat slung on his shoulder like a hero, sitting with a big smile on top of the stone-roller. That boy. I know you, I know you. Anand Mehta turned the paper over, and read it again, and then took out his cell phone and went down the speed dial address book until he got to ‘T’.