‘Manju!’
Everything else flew away at once.
The bird was still alive. Alone in the kabotaarkhana, it thrashed about the grain bed in mad, helpless circles.
Radha slapped his brother.
In the train to Chembur they stood side by side, looking at each other.
Even before the train had come to a stop, Manju leapt out and ran; Radha followed, trying to hit him from behind, all the way past the Subramanya temple, and to Tattvamasi Building, where they went to the backyard and slapped and punched each other by the brick wall, even as the neighbours watched, slapped and punched each other until they were simply too tired. They walked up the stairs to the fourth floor, drank water that their father poured into glasses for them, ate dinner, washed their faces, went to bed, and turned off the lights.
Manju opened his eyes and saw the figure standing by his bed. He averted his face and clenched his jaw.
And waited for it to start all over again.
But no blow came; and the body fell back onto Radha’s bed. Manju heard sobbing in the dark.
‘Manju, I’m sorry I said those things about you. Sofia kept asking about you and kept asking and kept asking and I got angry and … Manju, you always win, you are the golden boy, what about me? Do you want me to carry your cricket bag for you?’
The sobbing grew louder.
‘… he said I was lean, mean and … Manju …’
It comes slowly to some: they sink by degrees, over years, into paranoia — and to some the estrangement from reality occurs in a single shearing instant. For Radha it had occurred at the nets: it was the moment Tommy Sir touched his shoulder and said, ‘You are lean, mean and magnificent, son.’
Because Tommy Sir had never praised him when he was good.
‘… he said … lean, mean and …’
With a single exertion, Manju had moved his brother’s moist, pathetic body away from his bed.
‘You should have practised.’
Practised? Manju observed that the word went to Radha uninsulated. His body trembled.
My big brother must be thinking, what else have I done in my life until now other than practise cricket?
Jumping from the bed, Radha stood over his younger brother and made a fist: Manju grinned as his brother mimed a blow right at his neck.
‘Hey. Homo. Listen. You have to throw your wicket tomorrow. Get out early. Tomorrow is my day. If you don’t get out early I’ll kill you. You hear me?’
Manju just thrashed his feet about.
Radha tightened his fist, and then let it go, and sagged, and sobbed.
‘I’m sorry, Manju. You’re not a gay.’
Manju ordered: ‘Say it once more.’
‘You’re not a gay.’
After making him say it a third time, Manju sighed: for the fighting was over.
‘Now don’t cry like a girl. Go to sleep.’
‘Yes, Manju,’ Radha said.
Though he could hear his brother, next to him, sobbing, though his own face was bruised and his neck oily with sweat, Manju was exultant: he was thinking only of the moment when he had stepped, knowingly, on the fat body of that pigeon and held it under his shoe. Something new was starting in Manjunath’s life; he had tasted power.
•
From Metro Cinema to Victoria Terminus the black avenue is deserted beneath a series of pulsing red traffic lights. The Municipal Building is lit up, but VT station is just a white circle inside a rim of gold: just a clock that says ‘5.45 a.m.’ People are sleeping, entire clans are asleep on the footpath, but in a blue stall near the station, the first cups of tea are ready, served by a young man who is so fresh from the village that he does not know what you mean when you ask him for ‘takeaway’, or ‘parcel’, or even ‘just give it to me in a plastic cup, will you?’ Now a policeman blows a whistle: the traffic moves. The sky is a faint violet, and the great mass of the Gothic train station, like a dreadnought that has lain in wait all night, emerges into view. Pigeons cluster on rooftops, landing and taking off, flying in loops and returning, as if rehearsing their movements for the whole day. Outside Azad Maidan, a boy wearing a black eyepatch sleeps on his mother’s stomach, his mouth open, as a blue-masked municipal worker advances towards them with her broom. In this chaos of rubble, raw earth and dust, an articulate sound announces that it is morning: a cricket bat is tapping the earth. Beyond the fence at Azad Maidan, a wilderness of waste paper and abandoned plastic appears to have risen up and taken human form: hundreds of young men in whites are bowling and batting, and more join them every minute.
This is, at last, Selection Day.
Selection Day
Mohan Kumar woke to find that Manju was missing from his bed, but he was relieved that his bat and his cricket gear were also missing. The father of champions went to the kitchen, turned on the lights, and looked about for the earthen pot filled with boiled water that the maid left by the fridge every night.
From the kitchen, he could see Radha, sleeping on his bed like a cat, all his white teeth showing.
Mohan sat down next to his older son and sipped his water.
Radha opened his eyes, but did not move.
‘I wondered all night: did Lord Subramanya mix things up? Give one boy the talent and the other the desire? But no, such things don’t happen to those who have trusted God, Radha. You will be selected today.’
With a kick of his legs, Radha rose from the bed.
From a drawer in his room, he took out a plastic envelope, placed it on his table, and withdrew a sacred cricket glove. He raised it to his face, touching it to his right eye, and then to his left.
At the Subramanya temple, the doors were opening for the morning, and it took a few minutes for the priest to chant the necessary Sanskrit and circle the dark image with the sacred fire, the aarthi. Because everyone in the neighbourhood knew it was Selection Day, the priest revived a South Indian tradition; raising a silver crown, God’s own crown, he placed it three times on the cricketer’s head. The third time it touched his skull, Radha had the hallucination that the God of Cricket, Subramanya, was standing before him, mounted on his sacred serpent Vasuki, and saying, in a voice familiar from a thousand television advertisements, in Sachin Tendulkar’s own voice:
‘My son, you were not born to faiclass="underline" believe in me, today of all days.’
An hour later, at the Azad Maidan, Radha Kumar was heading to the crease; a sacred glove, Sachin’s own, bulged from his pocket. He stood at the crease, taking guard with his SG Sunny Tonny bat, genuine English willow.
Bad luck can take a million forms at the start of an innings. A feather touch on an outswinger; a French cut onto the stumps; a deflection off the pads into the hands of forward short leg. Survive till you reach 20, and you are settled in. When you cross 50, the selector’s brain will say: ‘This boy is special.’
Radha batted as many of them had not seen him bat in over a year. The bowlers pitched it short at him, and then they pitched it full. He cut; he drove.
When he reached 20, he took guard again. Subramanya, God of Cricket, it’s only thirty runs from here to safety.
A ball had rolled onto his pitch from another game. With the natural cricketing grace he had first revealed at the age of four, Radha, one hand on his bat, scooped up the ball just as a fielder came running for it, and hit it into his hands. ‘Thanks, man!’ shouted the other boy.