‘I’ve screwed a rich man, my boys,’ he said, even though he had taken a liking to Anand Mehta. He clapped his hands. ‘A man in a red foreign T-shirt. I flipped him over and screwed him royally. Come and see.’
His boys gathered around; Mohan Kumar showed them a paper napkin from the MIG club, which was covered with writing in a blue ballpoint pen. A contract.
Until mountains fall and rivers dry this contract will be honoured by Mohandas Kumar of Alur Taluka and Anand Mehta of Mumbai. One-third of all future earnings of my two sons Master Radha Krishna and Master Manjunath will be the legal property of Shri Mehta, in return for his commitment to sponsorship. May God fill our mouths with worms if either breaks this contract.
‘Isn’t it beautiful, boys? Words are magic, remember this: words are magic. There is a man who comes to our village and with a spell and a secret poem he makes an elephant dance for him. Today, I made a rich Gujarati man dance for me. At first he said, No, no, I don’t want Manju, his voice hasn’t broken, but I said, you will take Manju, because I made two champions! Yes, he said, and he’s giving us five thousand rupees each month! But I wasn’t done. Made him sit down and bought him a samosa and told him about this flour-mill and how it pollutes the air, until he said, oh, terrible, how terrible, and then I said, there are rats and stupid neighbours, how can I raise champions here — so he gave us a loan, interest-free, of 50,000 rupees, so we can get out of this hole, boys! To a more “hygienic location”. His words! Screwed him.’
Manju and Radha looked at the contract that guaranteed their future, and the older boy asked: ‘But where are we moving to? And when?’
Mohan Kumar rubbed his hands, and pointed one of his warmed palms at Radha: ‘Get ready for a check-up. Manju, stand outside. Stand at attention.’
Radha began removing his shirt. Manju closed the tin door behind him and stood outside with his arms pressed to his sides like a soldier at a drill. It was evening in the Shastrinagar slum, and men were returning to their homes after work; their faces, dark from fatigue, glowed with the anticipation of seeing their children again. There are times when only a sick man knows how warm and bright the rest of the world is. Manju watched his neighbour, Ramnath, showing his daughter how to stack up a pile of fresh shirts and cover them in newspaper, so that they could be delivered in the morning.
He strained his ears: from inside the hut, his father’s voice rose.
‘Are you thinking of shaving? I can see in your eyes that you are thinking of shaving.’
‘No, Appa.’
‘A boy mustn’t shave until he’s …’
‘Twenty-one.’
‘Why must a boy not shave till he’s …?’
‘Hormones.’
‘Which are not good for …’
‘Cricketers.’
Tap, tap, tap. On a coconut tree beside their hut, Manju saw a woodpecker hammering away. He thought at once of Mr ‘J.A.’ with his beak nose. Working with his beak — tap, tap, tap — the woodpecker raised his enormous profile, which looked like a tribal mask, and disappeared, only to reappear half a foot higher on the coconut stem — tap, tap, tap — before his dark face again vanished, to rematerialize another foot higher: as if he were ascending via masks. In school, Javed had invented a new ‘look’ for himself these days by wearing his blue monogrammed cap backwards, like an actor in an American film. Watching the woodpecker, and thinking of Javed, Manju smiled until he heard Radha pull up his trousers, and promise to take more scientific care of his cricketer’s body.
The tin door opened; one brother came out, and so the other had to go in.
Now safe, Radha buttoned up his shirt, looking at the dark sky; he whistled. He put his hands on his thighs, spread his legs, and walked like a duck. To build strength on the insides of his thighs. Mohan Kumar, after minutely analysing his older son’s body, had pronounced the quadriceps as the problematic area of Radha’s athletic anatomy.
The brothers had exchanged their roles; inside the closed tin door, Manju was now the one making noises — outside, Radha eavesdropped.
‘Didn’t you take off your shirt and chaddi out there, while I was looking at your brother?’
‘Sorry, Appa.’
‘Don’t move. Manju. What are you doing? Stay still. You think you’ll insult me now? You think you’ll treat me like Tommy Sir or Coach Sawant?’
‘Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.’
The boy shrieked from inside the closed tin door. Outside, Radha kept walking with his arms on his legs like a duck, as his father had taught him, conscious with every step of the need to build up his weak inner thighs and overcome the flaw in his otherwise perfect body.
Inside, done with the teeth, tongue, forehead, neck, chest and stomach, Mohan Kumar was checking his second son’s particular area of recalcitrance: his failure, his refusal to take proper care of a sportsman’s penis.
‘Pull the foreskin back, each and every time you do number one, each and every time you bathe — pull it all the way back, otherwise it will become filthy, and filth will become septic, and we’ll need to operate on it. Which your father doesn’t have money for.’
Manju stood with arched back: his father had moved his foreskin back scientifically and now touched him with a finger. Manju felt his body splitting in two where his father touched. He said something.
‘What did you say?’ Mohan stared at his son. ‘Did you say “Enough of this shit?” Did you?’
Manju shook his head. Certainly he had not said that. So his father zipped him up: weekly inspection done.
Leaning against the wall as his sons did their pre-sleep stretching exercises, Mohan Kumar made a call to his village in Alur, to check on the status of a piece of ancestral land that was tangled in litigation; the boys saw their father use his cell phone as if it were two parts of a walkie-talkie, placing it in front of his mouth when he spoke, and transferring it back to his ear to listen.
Already in bed, waiting for his father to turn the lights out, Manju watched his elder brother dry himself, and lie down in the bed next to his. He watched his father stand by Radha’s skull and whisper into it: ‘Go to sleep with one thought, son. What is that one thought?’
‘That I should be the world’s best batsman.’
Manju knew it was coming. He stiffened his body; then his father whispered into his skulclass="underline"
‘And your turn, Manju. Quickly, so I can turn the lights off.’
When the boy said nothing, his father’s voice changed, turning high-pitched and whining.
‘… fighting with his own father. Complex boy. Fighting with his own …’
And he tickled Manju in the stomach until the boy gave in and said, ‘… second-best batsman …’ and ‘I love you, I love you.’
Manju’s legs were still thrashing and his big powerful eyes were shining. Because his father’s expert fingers were warming his tummy.
‘Angry with me?’ Mohan said.
‘Stop. Stop!’
‘You’re angry with me, Manju. I look into your heart and see the truth. No one has loved your poor old father in his life but you, Manju, and now even you fight with him. Listening? Yes, I know you are. The one thing I never had in life was a friend, Manju. A friend is someone who sees the best in you when everyone else sees the worst. I never had that. I only had you, my second son, to talk to.’
At last the man was gone to his side of the green curtain, and the world was quiet and dark, but beneath their closed eyelids both boys were awake.
‘Did he touch your balls this time?’ Radha said to the dark, as his brother sniffled in his bed.