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 willpower, 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 centurion, 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!