Ayyan bought all the ten copies of the paper.
Oja heard him enter but she was engrossed in the milk. It was always the milk. Adi was still sleeping, hands and legs now spread all over the floor. Ayyan shoved the paper into his wife’s face.
‘What’s this?’ she said, and then she saw Adi’s picture. She switched off the stove. That annoyed her husband who did not expect her to remember to switch off the stove at this moment.
Oja sank to the floor with the paper. Her knees gave way smoothly and she sat in a crouch. She looked frightened as she read. Then a smile appeared on her face. She put her slender fingers on her mouth and looked at her sleeping son. ‘When did he write the test?’
‘Two months ago,’ Ayyan told her. ‘The test was on a Sunday. I didn’t want to tell you. You would have fussed.’
Oja began to cry. ‘My son is famous? They should have carried his full picture. This photo is so bad. He is much more beautiful than this.’ She rubbed Adi’s feet and began to pull his toes. ‘Wake up, Adi,’ she told him. She shook the boy and showed him the paper. Adi stared at his picture and fell back on the pillow.
‘Why didn’t you tell me, Adi?’ his mother asked softly. ‘You should tell your mother everything. Your father never tells me anything. Adi, you should tell your mother everything that you do.’
Ayyan stepped out into the corridor and stood in a line flanked by the jaundice-yellow walls, holding a copy of Yug in one hand and a small blue bucket in the other. The two lines outside the four toilets were long. As always, the women’s queue was longer. That was not only because it moved more slowly but also because fewer men used the toilets here. Several working men of BDD had taught their bodies how to wait till they got to the office. They squatted on the glimmering western commodes of their offices, and on some days even bathed there under luxurious showers. Ayyan too, usually, waited until he reached the Institute. But this morning he chose to stand in the queue with the blue bucket.
The man at the head of the Gents’ line was hollering to the occupant of one of the toilets, ‘How long is this going to take?’ He turned to look at the others in the queue and said in a disappointed way, ‘Boys these days.’ The general suspicion about adolescent boys who spent a lot of time in the toilet was that they were clearing their pipes, and in the mornings, the suspicion drove even the most broadminded of men here crazy. At the end of the queue, Ayyan showed the newspaper to a man in front of him.
Soon, in the glow of a soft ethereal light that was coming through the broken glass of two arched windows above the toilets, a small crowd of men and women, with their own little buckets, gathered around Ayyan. And they read. Some read aloud, some silently.
‘There was always something about him,’ a woman said.
‘The kind of things he talks about,’ a man said shaking his head. ‘I hear he talks about things even adults don’t understand. You are a lucky man, Mani. Look at me. I have a son who lies around like a python.’
The adolescent finally emerged from the toilet and he looked confused at the small commotion outside. The orderly line was now in shreds.
‘All done? Was it good?’ a man asked him angrily, and then with a benevolent face asked Ayyan to jump the queue and finish his job before all of them.
‘Already, the boy is making me proud,’ Ayyan said, and everyone laughed.
*
In the glass enclosure that stood near the kitchen platform, Oja rubbed coconut oil on her naked son. The boy endured the special treatment with a grimace. She was muttering something about the great future that lay before him. ‘But always remember, never be arrogant. People like humility in smart people because that way they don’t feel very small.’ She bathed him in cold water and dressed him up in white short-sleeved shirt and white shorts. She combed his thick oiled hair, holding his jaw violently, and watched like a hawk as he tied his shoelaces. Then she handed him over to her husband. ‘Don’t take the taxi,’ she said, ‘Walk.’
In the back seat of the taxi, Ayyan gave his little finger to his son, who reciprocally locked his in it.
‘Our secret,’ Ayyan said. ‘Our secret,’ the boy said, laughing.
‘You will not tell your mother that we took a taxi?’
‘I will not,’ Adi said. ‘Our secret.’
They didn’t speak for a while. When the car stopped at a signal, the boy asked, ‘What did the newspaper say?’
‘You can read Marathi.’
‘I can’t understand the way the papers write. What did the newspaper say?’
‘That you are very bright.’
‘That’s all?’
‘It also said that you passed a test which five hundred boys wrote.’
‘When did I write the test?’
‘You know that. Think.’
‘Twenty-second April?’
‘Correct. And now you will go to Geneva.’
‘Where is Geneva?’
‘It’s a big city in Switzerland. You know Switzerland.’
‘Yes. But its capital is not Geneva.’
‘What is the capital of Switzerland?’
‘B-e-r-n-e’.
‘You are a very clever boy.’
‘I am a genius.’
Ayyan looked at Adi, a bit concerned for a moment, but when the boy returned the stare both of them burst out laughing.
‘Why do countries have capitals?’ Adi asked.
‘Because every country wants to say this is the most important city in our place.’
‘But don’t other cities feel bad?’
‘No. Do you think Bombay feels bad it’s not the capital?’
‘Yes.’
Adi muttered the name of every car that was passing by. ‘Esteem, Skoda, Fiat, Accent, Accent, Baleno, Accent,’ he was saying. He fell silent for about a minute.
‘Say, “Decimal system”,’ his father said. ‘D-e-c-i-m-a-l s-y-s-t-e-m.’
‘That’s easy,’ Adi said, but a look of concentration came to his face. ‘Decimal system,’ he said slowly.
At the iron gates where the security guard stared at the backs of young mothers, Adi let go of his father’s hand and ran to his class. Ayyan made his way to meet the fierce Salesian Principal. Sister Chastity looked surprised to see him. ‘Something wrong?’ she asked. (She always hoped something was wrong in the lives of married people.)
‘It’s something the boy has done,’ Ayyan said.
Sister Chastity went through the news report. In the brief silence that followed, Ayyan could hear the distant murmurs of a class where the teacher was probably delayed. Sister Chastity’s moustache had grown a bit darker, he thought. He caught a glimpse of Christ in the background: Christ, whose heart was on fire and whose munificent eyes reminded him of the woman who had stepped out of the pastry shop yesterday evening.
Sister Chastity lifted her head and inhaled thoughtfully. ‘This boy,’ she said kindly, ‘What has this boy done? I see his picture. But I am sorry, I cannot read Marathi. I can read Hindi and even French, but not Marathi. The script is the same as Hindi you know but some words …’
Ayyan translated the story for her. ‘This boy,’ she said shaking her head. ‘I am going to put it on the notice-board right away. Praise the Lord! I wish the report had mentioned St Andrew’s, Worli. You know, there are so many schools called St Andrew’s. Praise the Lord!’ She stared at him for a moment and said, ‘I see, Mr Mani, you don’t praise the Lord.’