Waving at him, Radha again took guard.
The sun shone on the Municipal Building; a drum-beat rose from a distant part of the ground. Radha saw white sandbags piled up to his right and wondered why they had been placed there. A crow swooped low.
Deennawaz Shah had started his run-up.
•
Ninety seconds later –
Though the boy’s head is between his knees, and though thick hands cover his ears: the words still penetrate.
‘You hopped. A weight-transfer issue. After so many years of my coaching, you did it again. On Selection Day.’
Radha opened his eyes and saw Tommy Sir standing over him. He was back in the tent at the far end of the maidan.
His brother, Manju, was now taking guard at the wicket.
‘I practised for months, Tommy Sir. Even in the rains. I stood in the nets every day from seven thirty to eleven o’clock and from three to five thirty.’
It was all over now. Deennawaz Shah had smelled out Radha’s weakness: his first ball had pitched short, and jagged back into the batsman. It hit Radha on the right thigh pad and fell on his foot, and as he watched through the corner of his eye it found its way through his prayers and fifteen years of early mornings and late evenings at the nets. Mohan Kumar’s first son saw the bails fall.
‘Your brother listened to me, Radha. Manju always listened to me, but you …’
Radha opened his eyes.
‘My brother’s talent comes from God, old man. You had nothing to do with it.’
Extracting Sachin Tendulkar’s glove from his pocket, Radha held it high in the air. Had everyone seen it? Good. He tried to rip it with his hands — then he tore at it with his teeth, and spat it out to the ground.
Tommy Sir stared at the departing boy.
Tommy Sir always has a short speech for when it is over: the speech he delivers when there is no further hope of selection. When the kid is angry, when he wants to scream at his own mentor: Why did you make me play cricket, old man? At such a moment, hand on the boy’s shoulder, Tommy Sir will respond: We had no choice, son. But if you have learnt how to give this absurd game everything, you will have learnt how to do the same in business or medicine or anything else, and you will be a king in that life.
But this Radha — look at him go, look at him go — what could you tell a creature like this? Finding his throat dry, he drank half a bottle of Bisleri, gargled the last of the water, and discharged it into the red mud.
Some boys fall.
•
In a teashop near Azad Maidan — low ceiling — Radha sat with his palms over his face, and sweat running down his forehead onto his nose. When he opened his eyes, a man had materialized at the table in front of his, silver polyester shirt, big paunch, hennaed hair, and parted, panting lips. Radha observed the man’s paunch, which jiggled constantly, as if it were a battery-operated toy. He gaped at that tummy, until its owner, leaning forward, whispered:
‘Are you a sportsman, son? A sportsman?’
Four small fans turned on simultaneously: hot air hit everyone in the restaurant.
Radha lifted his eyes from the paunch, which continued to jiggle on its own behind the silver shirt, to the man’s face, anxious and avid beneath his red hair.
‘You look tired, son. You played hard, no?’
The man held up his teacup, whose sides were coated with thick brown liquid.
‘Want a taste of my tea? My nice tea?’ With a grimace, he reached over his paunch, and placed his cup on Radha’s table, then nudged it forward with a finger.
Tears filled Radha’s eyes. He bit his fingernails as he watched the cup of tea being nudged closer and closer to him.
Leaning against the wall, an old waiter sucked his cheeks and scraped at the peeling plaster with his left foot. One by one, three more barefoot waiters joined him to watch the fun.
‘Don’t worry about fat uncle here,’ said the waiter who was scratching the wall with a foot. ‘He’s harmless. Uncle, stop giving your tea to young boys.’
‘Why can’t the sportsman have some of my chai?’ the fat man whined. ‘Such a nice thing to have, chai.’
Banging his fist on the table, spilling the tea, Radha said something to the fat man. His paunch no longer jiggled. And the waiters told the crazy adolescent to get out at once.
•
Small green typewriters hammered all along the edges of Azad Maidan: men with thick glasses struck the keys, filling out legal forms for their clients. Smoking a beedi, an old man spread himself on the footpath behind a painted sign.
PALM / FACE READING
ON THE SPOT SOLUTIONS
FOR ANY 5 LIFE PROBLEMS: Rs 150
FOR FULL LIFE PROBLEMS: Rs 500
‘Five of your problems solved for seventy-five rupees.’ He squinted at Radha, who was inspecting the sign. ‘I like your eyes, son.’
Radha stepped back. You too? He looked at the grinning old palmist. You too?
In the slums along the edge of the maidan, aluminium pots were on the boil. It was lunch hour. At the triangular wedge of grass at the end of the park, Radha saw red flags tucked into the fencing. Something behind the trees blared:
‘Kohinoor Mills. Swan Mills. Sreeram Mills. India United Mills Number One. Where is our compensation, where is our justice, where is our share in Mumbai?’
Radha ran. Past the clattering typewriters. Past the men smashing wood. Back to Azad Maidan, where Manju was showing off with the bat for the selectors.
Radha came near the tent with all the other cricketers but remained outside: he could not go in and face them again.
Two homeless men squatted nearby, watching the cricket. A black hen, after clucking around them, came to peck at the earth at Radha’s feet, making him shiver.
‘Sorry I got you out, man. No hard feelings, no?’
Having slipped during the game, Deennawaz Shah, the young Pace Terror, was limping over to the tent, rolling up his white trousers to expose the red wound on his shin.
He smiled at Radha, in a docile, even ingratiating way, and said: ‘Give me some water, man.’
Deennawaz turned back towards the cricket. From behind him, Radha observed the boy’s small neck.
Whack! The sound of the ball striking the meat of the bat made Deennawaz look up with an open mouth.
‘Your brother is on fire today. He’s pulling good-length balls. Fast balls. And off the front foot. Give me some water, dude.’
His jaw clenched, Radha thought of Javed Ansari: he was the one to blame for everything. Everyone knew he was the homo. When he thought of ‘J.A.’, he saw a boiling pot of steam behind which his baby brother’s face was hidden.
Radha was now right behind Deennawaz: close enough to see where the bone thickened on the boy’s neck and the downy hair started to climb down his back. One Muslim would do as well as another.
His tongue curled up like a bull’s to touch his upper lip: and the right hand that was no longer good for cricket turned into a fist.
Deennawaz was about to turn around to ask again for water, when he felt something hit him at the top of his neck, pounding him like a sledgehammer, compressing the length of his backbone, until the tip of his spine almost pierced through skin.
The cricket stopped when the players heard the scream.
•
Instructing his father to stand still for a moment, Manju signed the guard’s register for both of them. The lift waited behind a collapsible lattice gate. There was no lift-boy inside: just a cold wooden stool. Getting in, Manju held the lattice gate open for his father.