Two Powers ran the Ali Weinberg International School. One Power was seen. In her air-conditioned office, Patricia D’Mello sat beneath a framed black-and-white photograph of M. K. Gandhi, father of India, and a colour photograph of the Unseen Power, Karim Ali, father of modern education in the suburb of Bandra. (The students, naturally, assumed there had been ‘hot stuff’ between the Seen and Unseen Powers at some point in ancient history.)
Expecting to find Javed Ansari already in the Principal’s office, Manju discovered that only he had been summoned. Moreover, Principal Patricia looked pleased. She was a plump woman with jowls, whom the students saw in the assembly hall on Independence and Republic Day, when she delivered solemn 40-minute speeches about patriotism and universal love that often turned sentimental and ended with references to herself as the ‘mother of all those gathered here’; but in the privacy of her office she assumed a paternal, punitive avatar.
‘Good afternoon, Principal Patricia.’
He held his broken thumb against his chest for her to see.
The Principal lowered her glasses and smiled at him, several times.
‘Manjunath,’ she said, dragging the final vowel wide. ‘Do you know something about me?’
She smiled at him.
Shit, the boy thought, imagining that this was the start of some particularly baroque punishment.
‘I too once had a future, Manju.’ Removing her glasses, the Principal looked at a corner of the ceiling and smiled.
‘People thought I had a future as a writer, Manju. I wanted to write a great novel about Mumbai,’ the Principal said, playing with her glasses. ‘But then . . . then I began, and I could not write it. The only thing I could write about, in fact, was that I couldn’t write about the city.
‘The sun, which I can’t describe like Homer, rises over Mumbai, which I can’t describe like Salman Rushdie, creating new moral dilemmas for all of us, which I won’t be able to describe like Amitav Ghosh.
‘The sun, which I can’t describe like Akira Kurosawa, rises over Mumbai, which I can’t describe like Raj Kapoor, creating new moral dilemmas for all of us, which I won’t be able to describe like Satyajit Ray.
‘I filled five hundred pages like this, Manju. Five hundred. I called it Phraud. In the end I gave up writing and thought, let me do some good to society, let me teach young boys.’
Realizing that his broken thumb would not be needed as an excuse, Manju lowered it from sight. He understood that some extraordinary and unknown event had ushered him and Principal Patricia into an unprecedented intimacy.
She placed her glasses back on her nose and smiled.
‘You and your brother Radha Krishna – you two are not phrauds. What Radha did today in the Oval Maidan, that was remarkable. Founder Ali himself called to tell me, Manju. The Founder called! He was so proud of you two Kumars – and of me. A new city-wide cricket record!’
She put her glasses back on and smiled, so Manju felt he had to say something.
‘Yes, Principal Patricia.’
‘Global cricket record. Isn’t it?’
Manju tried to read the Seen Power’s mind, as she kept smiling.
‘You do know what your elder brother did today, don’t you, Manju?’
•
On his way home to Chheda Nagar, Manju had the sweetest experience a younger brother can: a woman stopped him to ask for directions to the Tattvamasi Building. ‘Where that boy lives – you know, the one who broke the batting record, you know, the chutney-seller’s son.’
‘My father,’ Manju announced, ‘is a businessman in gold and real estate. Radha Kumar, the global-record breaker, is my brother. You may walk behind me.’
When they reached the building, they found the living room already full of people; some of them saw Manju and cheered, Hero! Hero! – ‘Not this one, not this one,’ Mohan Kumar corrected them, ‘this is tomorrow’s hero’; and on the television, a news reader was announcing,
‘Not only is this the highest score ever recorded by a batsman under the age of sixteen in Mumbai, this is also the first time in the history of our inter-school Elite Division cricket that 300 runs have been scored by a batsman in one day’s play. The young magician of the cricket bat, Radha Kumar, of Ali Weinberg High School, spoke to our correspondent . . .’
More guests came, and more after them; and at 9 p.m. Anand Mehta himself turned up.
‘This man,’ Mehta told the people gathered around Mohan Kumar, ‘is the only other man in Mumbai who has no inhibitions. He is the only other man creating new value in a dead city.’
While Manju brought him white bread to snack on, Anand Mehta talked superman-to-superman with Mohan Kumar, suffering the others, mere humans, to stand around them eavesdropping. ‘Entrepreneurship. Most of what we hear about it in the media is absolute bullshit, Mr Mohan. Don’t invest in a new business in India. That’s some shit we feed the Yanks and Japs. Real money is in turning around old businesses, because the heartland of this country is a Disneyland of industrial disasters: thousands of socialist factories, sick, or semi-sick or partially shut down.
‘See, Mr Mohan, Mumbai is finished. Proof. Other night, I’m visiting my aunt. Lives in the ground floor of Pallonji Mansion. You have to do these things, go see these bores once a month, to make sure the maid hasn’t murdered them. Usually, all you get from these ladies is the usual South Bombay talk: Haan, girl is looking for a husband in Carmichael Road, maybe even Altamount Road, but certainly not beyond Pedder Road. But this time – this time, I go there, and my old auntie is talking politics. First time in her life. She looks at me and says, “Anand, Anand, did you know Bal Thackeray is slowly dying?” So what? I say. Indian politicians always die slowly, unless they’re Gandhis. And she says, “Anand, Anand, when the Permanent Boss is gone, who will take care of the city?” And then it hits me. My God, it hits me, Mr Mohan. What is Bombay? Shit scared. Deep down no one is khadoos. They’re all waiting for a Daddy Figure to hold ’em and protect ’em and maybe even hump ’em. That’s why I say, we in the city of Mumbai know the future is in distressed assets because we’re living in one. Get it? It hurts – but it’s the truth, right? That’s why, I said, Goodbye, Mumbai. I’ve got an inside man in north India, an IAS officer’s son, and we’re going about the city of Dhanbad looking for old industrial plants to turn around.’
Chewing a lump of white bread, Mehta sprayed his host with hard truths and moist starch, and asked periodically that Mohan Kumar’s cell phone be extracted from its handkerchief cover (his own phone had broken down, he explained). As Mehta made calls, and told people that ‘his investment’ had broken a global record, he kept chewing, seemingly bent on devouring all the bread in the Kumar home.
At nine thirty, Mohan Kumar, scratching his ankle with one hand, raised the other and gestured, like a statesman, for the people to behave themselves and quieten down, and confirmed the buzzing rumour.
‘Please keep it to yourself, but it is true: Shah Rukh Khan has asked to see Radha. It is true.’
That is why the boy wasn’t home: he had gone straight from the cricket grounds to the Bandra Bandstand to meet the world’s most famous film-star. The crowd sighed.
Later, they saw him on television. Master Radha Kumar, holder of the record for the highest score in Mumbai school cricket, still in his soiled cricket whites, which the TV people had insisted on for authenticity, and whose shabby state only heightened the power of his grey eyes, stood before Shah Rukh Khan’s mansion in the Bandra Bandstand, answering questions from a TV reporter:
‘Shah Rukh Khan called me a teenage human skyscraper, because I made so many runs, and he said two things in Mumbai keep going up and up, skyscrapers and school cricket scores, then he asked how does a young man like you have the concentration to become a teenage human skyscraper, and I said, my father has trained me in will-power, and then he said, which part of the innings was the hardest, and I said, for me, no part of the innings was hard, because my father told me first become a centuri
on, and then become a double centurion, and then become a triple centurion, and then . . .’
‘Hopeless,’ his father said, slapping his forehead in front of all the visitors. ‘Stammers when he’s asked a simple question.’ He and the remaining visitors discussed and dissected Radha Kumar’s performance, and though they identified a few good things in it (Radha’s snow-leopard eyes could never lose their glamour), they awarded it, on the whole, very poor marks; with the result that when Radha Kumar finally returned to his home, he was, to his surprise, received as a failure.
He and Manju would have to wait till the next day for their first taste of cricketing stardom: which is to say, their first real chance to do some fucking.
•
‘What is Shah Rukh Khan’s bungalow like? How many Ferraris does he have? Is it true that two German fans, both blonde girls, wait all day long outside his house for autographs? Did you get to meet Gauri?’
It was after class, and Radha and Manju, who were supposed to report for cricket practice at the MCA, had instead been ‘picked up’ by Sofia, and were being driven by her chauffeur to the city, for a bit of ‘shopping’. Manju, assuming he had been brought along for the sake of appearances – to provide some cover while his brother and the girl got up to some serious ‘shopping’ – sat stiffly in the back of the car, while Sofia, from the front seat, fired questions at Radha.
‘But don’t get a big head, okay? You’re bad enough as it is.’
Sofia’s thatch was even more pronounced now, and Manju wondered how she managed to see through the hair covering her eye.
‘We have a dictatorship of cricket in this country,’ the girl said, opening her handbag with the silver ‘H’ and rummaging about in it till she found a mirror. ‘Everyone in school was trying to talk to you today, it was crazy. But they’re bringing Lionel Messi to Mumbai, and that will be the end of your stupid cricket.’
Leaning forward from his waist, Manju saw a large cell phone, lipstick, a round mirror, some hundred-rupee notes, some change.
While she checked her lipstick, Sofia watched the younger boy in her round mirror, but addressed the older:
‘What happened to your brother’s thumb?’
Sofia frowned, and, as they passed Mahalaxmi temple, reached over to touch Manju’s bandaged thumb – ‘poor thing’ – leaving him confused.
‘Have you seen this road before, Bandage Boy?’ she asked, letting go of his thumb.
‘No.’
She laughed a little.
‘It’s Pedder Road. You must have heard of it?’
Manju said, ‘No,’ because that was what she wanted him to say.
Maybe he should have done a namaste when they passed the temple. She would have enjoyed that.
Radha intervened: ‘One thing you must know if you are going to be with me – never tease my younger brother. He’s a bit shy. Don’t bully.’
‘I’m not bullying him,’ Sofia said. ‘I am strictly opposed to all forms of harassment. Hey, Manju,’ she turned around to him again, ‘you know I have this project for class that fights discrimination against women? My dad gave me the idea. I am calling up chemical companies everywhere in India and finding out where it is safe for a woman to work in sales and marketing. You know, because she has to go by herself in buses and rickshaws selling the company’s chemicals to strange men, right? My dad is helping me, and together, we’re going to make this map of India, which will show where it is perfectly safe for a woman to work in sales and marketing. Like South India is safe. But not Andhra Pradesh, because my dad says that Andhra men have a chicken-eating and macho culture. We have drawn a big map at home and we’re filling it in blue, for woman-safe, and red, for not-so-woman-safe places, where the men eat too much chicken. Manju boy, are you listening? I’m not bullying you. Okay?’
‘Okay,’ Manju said.
Half an hour later, he was open-mouthed, gazing at a magic horse that lived among handkerchiefs, perfumes and jewels. He was standing outside the Hermès luxury store in Horniman Circle, gazing through the windows.
Radha and Sofia were inside, ‘shopping’.
His nose pressed against the glass, Manju gaped at the torso of the horse, which was composed of tiny, multicoloured enamel bricks, and was split into three parts, to fit the three display windows. A real kitten examined Manju as he examined the jewelled horse.
The most valuable thing we have in our family, Manju wanted to tell the kitten, is wrapped in cellophane and kept inside the almirah: Sachin Tendulkar’s own glove, given to my brother Radha. But the kitten grew bored and licked its paws.
The door opened, releasing scent, golden light, and Sofia. Radha had his arm around her waist, and said: ‘They don’t have anything good here. We’re going to another place to shop.’ The top button on Sofia’s shirt was undone, exposing more of the dark spots on her cream-coloured neck.
Manju followed them in the direction of Ballard Estate, until his brother turned around and made a rude gesture.
So he went back to his magic horse. Inch by inch, Manju brought his nose closer to the glass.
The kitten meowed: Manju looked at its open mouth, at its little teeth.
His heart began to beat.
Two evenings ago, he had been watching the history channel, as a tall thin European man stood by an exposed stone arch and talked about the Mughals, and about Emperor Akbar the Great, how he liked paintings of wild leopards and wild peacocks and wild ducks and hunting dogs. Watching the European man’s chiselled nose, his soft hair, his powerful Adam’s apple and tense lips, against the backdrop of all that raw Islamic stone, Manju felt the need to hide beneath the sofa (settling instead for turning the TV off and picking up a new bat and standing in front of the full-length mirror to practise his extra-cover drive); and now, as he thought about that European with the chiselled nose – bang, it had happened, even as the kitten was watching: his cock was stiff, and he had to walk with his feet wide apart to hide behind the safety of a pillar.
The kitten followed him, meowing.
As he wiped his sweat with one hand, and then with the other, Manju saw his father, driving a red Bajaj Pulsar right past him: and the nightmare was complete.
Mounted on his bike, the Progenitor of Prodigies had followed his two sons all the way to Horniman Circle. Now instinct was leading him straight to Ballard Estate. He knew exactly where his son had gone with that girl.
He’s going to kill Radha when he finds him with a girl, Manju thought. He sprinted behind the red bike, shouting, ‘Appa! Don’t hurt Radha! He’s your son, remember!’
•
What made you go ‘Wow, that’s crazy!’ about Anand Mehta was not that he had had a Negro girlfriend in America, or that he was loudly contemptuous of his own class, or that he drank too much at the Yacht Club and declared that he could fix all of Mumbai’s problems in five minutes ‘with a guillotine’– no, what really disturbed members of his own class was the horrible but true rumour that Mehta had donated ten or fifteen lakh rupees to a school for slum children in Cuffe Parade. A donation! To a school in the slums! He could have done the decent thing, and given five hundred rupees to the Malabar Hill Lions Club, but no – a donation! To slum children!
Nevertheless, out of respect for his father, his years in New York, and his entertainment value, most of his classmates generally agreed to listen to his next big idea.
‘Imagine an Economist article. A real Economist article. That only the two of us can read, a whole year before it is printed.’
A TV showed an old cricket match at one end of the bar; at the other, a wide window gave a view of trees swaying on Marine Drive. Anand Mehta sat on a sofa with a bottle of Foster’s, and nibbled on two bowls of fried snacks.
His visitor, who had just wiped his face with a white handkerchief, said: ‘I’m sorry I am late, Anand. Really, I am. See, I thought we were meeting at the Taj President.’
The man who had arrived late was Rahul ‘Jo-Jo’ Mistry, whose father, like Mehta?
??s, was a stockbroker; unlike Anand, he still worked with Daddy in Cuffe Parade. When Anand had sent around a mass email about Radha’s triple century, inviting potential investors to purchase equity in his unique cricket sponsorship programme, Mistry was the last man he had expected to reply. Old Money types, unless liberated by an instinct for debauchery, which ‘Jo-Jo’ seemed unlikely to possess, rarely took risks.
Refusing Mehta’s offer of the fried snacks, ‘Jo-Jo’ Mistry, heir to a 200-crore brokerage fortune, insisted on further explaining his tardiness.
‘When you said the Trident I thought you wanted me at the President. I always thought this hotel was just called the Oberoi. Isn’t that funny?’
Anand Mehta took ‘Jo-Jo’ Mistry’s small cold hands in his and pumped some life into them.
‘Relaaaaaaax, Jo-Jo. Relaaaaaaax.’
How, Anand Mehta thought, as he reached for more deep-fried starch, could you live all your fucking life in South Bombay and still mix up the Trident and the Taj President? Only if, like old friend ‘Jo-Jo’ here, you were not required to think in order to survive, because Grandpa Mistry had bought big fat plots in Worli and Chembur in 1955 at eighteen rupees an acre and shoved the title deeds up your baby bum, which you have kept tightly clenched ever since. Reaching for a few more fried rings, Mehta looked at ‘Jo-Jo’ Mistry and licked his lips.
(But his eyes looked up at the ceiling when he was lying, and this had tipped off his friends for years.)
‘Now, I would like to make you the exclusive gift of an Economist article, one year in advance.’
Here they were interrupted again, because ‘Jo-Jo’ had brought another potential cricket investor with him, an old white man in a beige suit. Mehta shook hands with him, and discovered he was American.
‘Are you in sports management?’
The old American smiled and said, ‘I am the one man who is despised on every country on earth.’
Mehta thought about it. ‘Are you a plastic surgeon?’ Which made everyone laugh.