‘Simple. I’ll give you a certain sum a month. You can pay all your son’s expenses using this certain sum. In return, I negotiate for him in the future with Adidas or Nike or whoever wants him when he joins the Indian Premier League. And I’ll take a certain interest, by which I mean a fair percentage, in his marketing revenues. Fair enough?’
‘No, sir,’ Mohan said, clearing his throat. ‘No. It is not fair in the least.’ He joined his thumb and index finger in the manner of a maestro. ‘My sons are not sportsmen. They will grow into the Bhimsen Joshi and Ravi Shankar of cricket. Sir—’
Tommy Sir slapped his hand on the table. ‘You know where these two boys are from, Mr Anand? Dahisar. From a slum. Hungry Lions.’
‘Sir, let me finish.’
‘Angry Lion, I think, was what the television people said,’ Anand Mehta suggested. ‘The boy Radha has these very … film-star eyes. And long hair, like Sachin’s. Pepsi, Coke will love those eyes and hair. He will act in films one day, I say.’
Mohan Kumar found himself still sweating from his bicycling, which put him at a disadvantage in the negotiations.
‘Sir, I will finish. Returning to the process by which I created two geniuses of will-power, sir, it must be noted that the first principle of my system is diet—’
Tommy Sir turned to Mohan Kumar and indicated, with ‘down, boy’ motions of his palm, that it was time for silence.
The investor proposed terms.
‘I am being asked, to invest, in a highly speculative manner, in a young person, whom we shall call Person X.’
Anand Mehta smiled at the Cricket Scout, and then drew a square with his fingers.
‘Is there a guarantee that said Person X will get into the IPL team? Can you give me this’ — he drew a smaller square inside the first — ‘guarantee?’
‘Sir, a growing body, scientifically speaking, needs three things, known as the triangle of—’
‘Shut up,’ Tommy Sir told the father, ‘right now.’ He turned to the investor. ‘Radha Kumar is the best batsman I’ve seen in ten, maybe fifteen years. And he has the right background. Because a middle-class boy can no longer make the Bombay team. You saw for yourself what that Javed Ansari did today. He has everything, money, background, pedigree, but he will never make the team. He comes to practise in an air-conditioned car, with nurse and driver. Can’t sit in the sun for five minutes. This boy, on the other hand, this Radha—’
‘Maybe you didn’t hear me, Mr Tommy.’
The investor drew that magic square again.
It was one of those moments when Tommy Sir realized his age: a decade ago, he would have got up and walked out at this point.
Having taken up painting many years ago as a way to calm himself when cricket-related tension grew unbearable, Tommy Sir now thought about his own watercolour copy of Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night, a reproduction which in some ways improved on the original, and which he had framed and hung in his living room so that its stimulation, direct or recollected, would regulate his heartbeat and lower his blood pressure at moments precisely like this one.
‘If you want guarantees, play carrom. And if you don’t want the boys,’ Tommy Sir looked the investor in the eye, ‘we will go to Reliance and Nike and the Big Boys. Directly.’
‘Relaaaaaaaax.’ Anand Mehta smiled at the old scout. ‘I make an offer of … four thousand rupees a month. Four thousand. Done? Are we done?’
‘Eight thousand,’ Mohan Kumar said. ‘For one boy. And fifteen thousand for both.’
‘Two?’ The investor broke into an incredulous smile. ‘Two? I’ve done plenty of charity in my time, mate, but I did not come here to make a donation.’
‘Two. Two is the opportunity.’ Tommy Sir bunched his fingers together. ‘Two is the visionary aspect. Listen. Sport alone isn’t enough today. People want sport and a story. I know, because I am also a writer. Two brothers from the slums making it big. One of them looks like a film-star. It’s a story.’
Anand Mehta rubbed his moustache.
‘Maybe you’re right,’ he said. ‘As I often ask my wife, Asha: what are Indians? To which I give the answer: Indians, my dear, are basically a sentimental race with high cholesterol levels. Now that its hunger for social realist melodrama is no longer satisfied by the Hindi cinema, the Indian public is turning to cricket. Brothers X and Y from the slums. Playing cricket for Bombay. I can see the potential. I once donated a lakh of rupees to a school in the slum near Cuffe Parade, back when I had just returned from New York. You know what the Mumbai Sun did? Called me a hero, and printed my photo. Page four. But Brother Y is too young. Voice hasn’t broken yet.’
‘Manju is almost fourteen,’ Tommy Sir said. ‘In this city we throw boys out of the women’s compartment of the train when they are seven, and tell them, go to the men’s compartment. Push and survive. In sport there is not always a difference between a boy and a man. What is cricket, anyway, Mr Mehta? Game of chance. Take two, one may win.’
Anand Mehta looked at the ceiling so sadly.
‘What is cricket?’
Meaning, no. He was not taking two boys.
He pointed at one man, and then at the other, and asked:
‘Done?’
So the scout put his large palms on the table and got to the point.
‘Doing well in Mumbai is nothing: being noticed while you do well is everything. There are competitions, shields, trophies, prizes I have to get these boys into. There’s a fine art to getting a boy selected in this city. No guarantee, but … if I support a boy, he is well supported.’
Anand Mehta did not smile.
‘For all this work that I will do for the boys, I don’t want any money, Mr Mehta. Not one rupee. But I have a simple question, Mr Mehta: tell me, what makes a great batsman great? Hard Work? Sacrifice? Mother’s Prayers? Each is necessary, yet all together are still insufficient. Even I don’t know. It is a shroud before my eyes. Believe me when I say I could be running a very profitable coaching academy for fat and rich mummy’s boys, instead of which I am out here day after day, in the field, in the sun, trying to solve this mystery of mysteries and find a great, I mean great batsman. The shroud must part, and that is the only reason I—’
Anand Mehta had other things to do with his life.
‘I’ll compensate you a thousand a month for your time, Tommy Sir. Done deal?’
The scout looked away.
‘Two thousand. Final offer.’
‘Plus I want a T-shirt,’ Tommy Sir said.
‘T-shirt?’ Anand Mehta frowned.
‘Yes. Like the one you’re wearing. Manchester United Gold. For Lata, my daughter.’
Everyone shook hands with everyone else; they bought South Indian paans, rich with clove and pulverized sugar, and placed them on their tongues to close the deal; before the sugar had melted, Tommy Sir had disappeared.
At once, Mohan Kumar caught the rich man by his wrist and said: ‘Finally, I can open my mouth.’
•
Revenge is the capitalism of the poor: conserve the original wound, defer immediate gratification, fatten the first insult with new insults, invest and reinvest spite, and keep waiting for the perfect moment to strike back. Because every mocking remark that Mohan Kumar had heard about his plan to produce champions had been stored away in his keen memory, he knew only one way of telling his sons he had secured their future for them: