Tommy Sir stopped breathing, for Manju’s face had turned darker and even more vicious.
‘You crazy, bloody …’ Tommy Sir first considered giving the boy a good slap on the head, but changed his mind, and then considered retreating from the room gracefully, but finally just turned and fled.
•
Posed like a hero in the old Hollywood movies, his right foot on the sea wall of Marine Drive, his head erect and scanning the ocean, white hair trembling in the breeze, Tommy Sir thought, ‘If I don’t have a cigarette, my brain will burst open.’ Having left the gymkhana, he had crossed the road for safety (glancing over his shoulder to make sure Manju wasn’t following), then continued to the other side of Marine Drive, and gone a distance for further safety, before stopping at the sight of an ocean liner that had entered into Back Bay. Though it was a lifelong rule never to do this thing in the open, where some young impressionable boy might spot him, Tommy Sir now took out his packet of cigarettes and tapped on it.
First Radha blames him, now Manju blames him. After all he had done for them. He lit a cigarette.
Exhaling, relaxing a little, Tommy Sir observed the pleasure ship on the horizon, the foreign ship. Chock-full of lovebirds. Around the world they go, these little lovebirds: Italy, Scotland, Russia, maybe even to those Pacific Islands where there are still smoking volcanoes. At such moments, Tommy Sir remembered his late lamented wife, in whose company he had never been able to enjoy such pleasures.
Can you believe it? He wanted to shout to the young lovebirds on the cruise liner: You find the new Tendulkar and he doesn’t want to play cricket!
Half an hour later, as he retraced his route, recrossing Marine Drive and returning to the gymkhana, he saw two urchins playing cricket near the parked cars. One ran up and bowled an imaginary ball. The other swung at it with an imaginary bat.
‘Do it like Manju, yaar!’ the bowler shouted. Tommy Sir stopped.
‘Do what like …?’
He sprinted the rest of the way to the P.J. Hindu Gymkhana.
Men had gathered by the boundary wall. Men who had been working all through the night, and who still had an hour-long trip to Govandi or Thane ahead of them, and had come to watch a few overs first; two Indian couples; and a European couple in floppy caps, sitting, backs against the sight-screen, to consult their guide book. Now four pale legs move with a single shriek; for a hard red ball is heading straight at the sight-screen.
‘This fellow, they say his name is Kumar, he can bat, can’t he?’
‘He’s going to play for Mumbai.’
‘India! The World Cup!’
Two trains were passing each other in Marine Lines station; their metal roofs overlapping.
For the first time in four decades, Tommy Sir allowed the Mumbai cricketing public to see him smoking. Cigarette in hand, he watched Manju. Because this was the best the boy had ever been. Earlier, if he had cut and flicked the ball out of a love of batting, now he did so out of hate. His strokes had become crisp, his footwork precise. The story of the past few days was there, in every ball he played. Every flick of his wrist said, do you know how much I hate you, Anand Mehta? Do you know how much I hate you, Mohan Kumar? And do you, Narayanrao Sadashivrao Kulkarni, really want to know what I think about you?
This is what I have not understood in all of forty-two years, Tommy Sir told himself. The shroud has parted: this is the one thing the boy needed to make him a great batsman. He needed to hate the game.
When the Mumbai Sun sends a reporter to interview Manju on my seventy-fifth birthday, let him say Tommy Sir was a Monster. He destroyed my life, he sucked my blood. And if they ask me, I’ll say, a great sportsman is a kind of monster. This was the final discovery of my career as a Talent Scout.
•
‘Why won’t you talk about the match, son? A reporter for the paper called me and told me you were great.’
Mohan perched on the bed, bird-like, beneath the fast old-fashioned fan. His hair was wet. He turned his head from side to side.
Manju sat with his organic chemistry tutorial notes. Pads and bat had been stacked up in a corner of the room.
‘They’ve put him to work in the fields. A son of Mohan Kumar, a big-city boy, and they treat him like this, in the village.’
Turning the fan off, Mohan got down from the bed, bent his head, and rubbed his hair with a thick white cloth.
Now Manju looked up.
‘So why don’t you do something? Write to Revanna Uncle to bring Radha back to Mumbai.’
Mohan had stopped rubbing his hair; he looked about the floor, as if the words he needed were lying down there waiting to be picked up.
It has been a long time, Manju thought, since this small man has tried to hit me. He had to strain to catch his father’s muffled words.
‘The winnowing has begun in the villages. I heard from Revanna just an hour ago. It’s the work I used to do. Breaks the back. Imagine if they found out in Dahisar, in the old neighbourhood. Ramnath, he’ll laugh so hard he’ll forget to press clothes for a day. And then he’ll give us four rupees which we’ll have to take as charity.’
Putting his hands on either side of the cot, Mohan Kumar pressed, as if trying to squash his own bed.
Manju sat facing the kitchen. The maid was making chapatis, stacking them up on a tin plate. He imagined her doing this for years and years, the pile growing higher and higher.
Mohan Kumar was still trying to compress his bed. ‘“On its way into town, the king’s white horse turned into a donkey.” A golden proverb. I had illusions about my sons, and all of us suffered because of them. If you make it onto the Ranji team, that’ll do. One point five lakhs a month will be your salary; first we have to give Anand Mehta his 75,000 rupees for saving your brother from the police. Then we have to give him back his 50,000 rupee house loan. In two or three years, he’ll go away, don’t you think?’
‘What if I fail? Tommy Sir said Radha would make it, now he says I will make it. Who can believe a thing he says?’
‘Who, Manju? Who fails in cricket? Everyone becomes happy in cricket. And you’re the best.’
‘I’m not the best. I don’t want to be the best the way T.E. Sarfraz does, and if you make me stay in cricket I’ll be just a …’
Mohan Kumar sighed and scratched himself.
‘If you are a fraud, you are still my son. You can go to Bangladesh to play. They have IPL there too. You send me the money by mail. They must have a post office over there? And whatever you earn, we’ll give half to Anand Mehta Sir. I signed this on the name of our family god, and let them never say at Deepa Bar that I am the sort of man to break my word.’
Closing his eyes, he recited from memory what he remembered of the contract:
‘… will be the legal property of Shri Mehta, in return for his commitment to … May God fill our mouths with worms if either—’
‘Have some self-respect, Father. Please stop.’
When he opened his eyes, Mohan Kumar saw Manju looking darker and smaller, as though he had lost his essential oils. He clapped his hands.
‘… Oh, I completely forgot, Manju. Completely forgot. A man came from the MIG club and gave you this. It’s a gift from Tommy Sir. To inspire you to bat well tomorrow at Shivaji Park. Here, read it and feel better. You were always a big reader.’
It was an old black-and-white magazine, Classics of Modern Indian Cricket, a photograph of the Nawab of Pataudi on the cover.