‘Tatas batting, Reliance bowling. That’s all it is,’ Javed grumbled.
And now Manju thought he could read Javed’s mind at last: where others saw a game called Test match, or one-day, or twenty-twenty, Javed saw only a circle of fat rich men, like the ring of glossy black birds that sit in the middle of the Bandra talao.
Javed yawned.
‘I come here to the library to write poems. Do you want a write a poem with me?’
Manju bit his lip. He sat down.
‘Can you make magic with a poem?’
‘I don’t write that kind of poem. I make brain-waves with poetry.’ Javed winked. ‘But first you have to be on the right wavelength. First you have to learn the rhetoric.’
‘The what?’ Manju asked.
Amidst the cricket gloves and centre pad in his kitbag, Javed had hidden a long green notebook: he took the book out of the bag, and, as Manju spied over his shoulder, flipped through the pages — sketches of their teachers and fellow students from Ali Weinberg, handwritten couplets — until he reached a particular page, which he snapped with his fingers before turning to the other boy: ‘Read.’
Leaning over, Manju did so.
My rhetoric
Javed Ansari
Analogy: As the tiger is brave in the jungle, the king was brave in battle.
Comparison: The king was as brave in battle as the tiger is brave in the jungle.
Simile: The king was like a tiger in battle.
Metaphor: The king was a tiger in battle.
Epithet: The Tiger-King.
Apostrophe: O thou Tiger-King!
‘I don’t understand,’ Manju said.
‘That’s because you have no brain-waves, man.’ Javed closed his notebook and returned it to his cricket bag.
‘Give me that book one more time,’ Manju retorted. ‘I have brain-waves.’
‘No. No. I don’t feel any brain-waves around you.’
Manju showed Javed his middle finger. ‘You’re full of shit. You talk big but you’re scared of a woman who wears half-moon glasses. Listen. Enough of this poetry of yours. I have a serious question. Do you know a cure for pimples? They became worse in Manchester. I think it was the cheese.’
‘I never had pimples. Though I get worms when I eat bhelpuri.’
They watched the garden, and the taxis going around the curved colonnade of Horniman Circle.
‘Have you been to Las Vegas?’
‘No. Have you?’
‘No. Where do you want to go?’
‘There is a lighthouse all the way at the end of Mumbai, did you know?’ Javed asked. ‘It’s true. It’s the last thing in the city. Beyond Navy Nagar. You can see it as you come in a taxi from Babulnath: there are these little dots, and then a white tower. The lighthouse. Actually, it’s white, red and black. You can walk to it over the rocks and mud at low tide. I tried it once, but the police chased me away. Fuck them. They’re always after Javed Ansari. But I will do it, I will climb to the top of the lighthouse and scream to all of Mumbai, “Here is Javed Ansari! Here is Javed Ansari!” I have my birthday parties at the Taj or near the Taj. Where do you have yours?’
Manju jabbed Javed in the ribs.
‘How many times have I told you? Don’t talk about my father.’
‘Who talked about your …? I asked where you have your birthday parties. Wait. He never threw one for you?’
‘I know what you’re thinking, that my father is a bad father. I don’t like that.’
‘Bullshit. You know what I’m thinking? You?’
‘Yes. I know what everyone’s thinking,’ Manju stated, proudly.
Nostrils flaring, Javed prodded the mind-reader in the ribs.
‘Okay. Tell me what I am thinking about you right now.’
At which the back of Manju’s head tingled and his feet began to tremble, even though he couldn’t say why. He saw that Javed had gone quiet. His jaw was set, and he was holding his breath. Manju followed his eyes and spotted a man in a sailor’s white cap and uniform walking past the library. Strong, thick, hairy arms; and his bell-bottom trousers fitted him snugly around the waist. The sailor now stopped, as if he could sense something, and turned his head.
‘He saw you,’ Javed whispered. ‘Manju, he’s coming here! He’s going to beat you and rape you!’
But Manju had long ago disappeared.
•
He got back to Chheda Nagar, climbed up to the fourth floor of the Tattvamasi Building, and at once something was wrong.
Mohan Kumar turned up the volume on the TV when he saw his son. ‘You just missed the news. Sit.’
As Manju obeyed his father, the newsreader announced that two more ministers in Madhya Pradesh had stated that the increasingly fashionable practice of homosexuality, sanctioned neither by the Indian Penal Code nor by four thousand years of Hindu civilization, should be curbed at once and that nationwide ‘rehabilitation centres’ should be established, incorporating a daily regimen of cold showers and group exercises for young deviants, so they could learn the value of physical hygiene and family life.
Wiping his face with the back of his palm, Manju turned his eyes towards his father, who did not move.
Next, the newsreader announced that the record for the highest cricket score by a Mumbai schoolboy, only recently held by Radha Kumar (388 runs), and surpassed by his own brother Manjunath (497), had now been super-surpassed.
A fifteen-year-old left-hander named T.E. Sarfraz Khan, batting at number four for IES Sule Guruji, in a Harris Cup match at the Fort Vijay Cricket Club, had broken Manju’s record by scoring 603 not out. He had flicked, cut and pulled for two days; and at the end of the match, he had gone in a car to Bandra to see Shah Rukh Khan, who had called him a teenage human skyscraper.
Mohan Kumar turned to his son. So this was the news. I am not the best anymore. Manju’s heart beat with guilt. He looked at his father’s shrunken face, and he felt his own face change. This was what came of spending too much time with that makad.
He went and stood by the fridge, looking at the stack of expensive cricket bats next to it. He felt unworthy of touching any of them. Robusta!
That night, as he lay down to sleep, Manju saw the numerals ‘603’ burning in fire on the wall of his bedroom; he got out of bed and, forging a bat from the darkness, he took guard.
He lay down again, telling himself it was time to rest, so his chest could expand and his forearms strengthen, but could not sleep. Now he saw words in fire — on the inside of his eyelids.
Simile: The king was like a tiger in battle.
Metaphor: The king was a tiger in battle.
Epithet: The Tiger-King.
Apostrophe: O thou Tiger-King!
The two words (‘Tiger’ and ‘King’) drew together, tighter and tighter: until they fused and became something new, blacker than the darkness and brighter than fire.
Then it was as if a midnight sun split open his room: because Manjunath Kumar had understood the rhetoric.
In the morning he called Javed from a pay-phone, without wiping the receiver, and said he wanted to know more about the rhetoric. And about poetry.
And about everything.
•
The Gateway of India had vanished. The Taj Mahal Hotel was no more. The entire Indian Ocean? Boiled and evaporated.
‘Is that Ricky Pointing?’
And all because a middle-aged white man with greying hair, wearing a plain T-shirt and blue shorts, was standing in front of the Gateway, signing autographs. Hundreds were gathering.