Back in the living room he sat on the floor. Curling his hair with one forefinger, he sketched ‘V’s in the air with the other. The ‘V’s burned, and disappeared, and he saw darkness. He gave it its oldest name: Kattale.
He stood up. Step by step he returned to the wardrobe; and as he did so, he could see already that years from now, he might look back at this moment and these steps, and think of them as the last moment and the last steps when he still had a choice; but he would know in his heart that there had been no choice and no selection to make.
He opened the wardrobe. The helmet was waiting — of all the masks you will have to choose from, it asked, why not take me as your own?
As he strapped the helmet on, from behind him he heard the door open, and Javed come in.
‘Manju.’
When he turned, helmeted and with his lips pressed tight, Javed gaped at him. Something in a brown paper bag fell to the floor, and Manju saw the packet of condoms.
‘Why are you wearing my helmet?’
‘You have the condoms?’ Manju asked. Javed nodded.
‘Good.’ Manju pointed at the thing lying on the floor. Then he looked Javed in the eye: ‘Why don’t you pick one, put it on, and then fuck yourself.’
Unstrapping the helmet, he threw it to the floor so hard it bounced once, and then smacked against the wall.
Javed just stood. This was his other face — the small, scared one.
Walking around him to the open door, Manju stopped, and just to make absolutely sure that this had all not been a waste, that this would be final, and he would not see this pathetic face again in the morning at cricket practice, he whispered, as he went past, the word that he and his brother had written three years ago on Javed Ansari’s chest-guard.
‘You homo.’
With that he left, and walked as fast as possible to the train station.
•
The flight landed at 11.45 a.m., disgorging, in addition to the usual mob of men and women shuffling between Delhi and Mumbai, a businessman who had been forced to discover, yet again, how fucking fully this atavism among nations, this Republic (so-called) of India, was filled to the brim with the repressed, depressed, and dangerous.
Anand Mehta had returned two days later than scheduled. Another failure — after all the money he had put into turning around the power plant, into developing his relationship with Rakesh the IAS officer’s son, what does it all come down to in the end? Rakesh the IAS officer’s son turns out to be a very inhibited character, their local lawyer was incompetent, and this nexus of second-rateness ensures, even after they have paid the politicians and bureaucrats, that some other IAS officer’s son (the very opposite of inhibited), who is in tandem with some other Mumbai entrepreneur, coolly occupies the power plant one morning; and the moment those guys are inside, and have their lock on the compound, the police — as always in India, Constitutional Defender of the first and fastest to encroach — take their side, and tell Anand Mehta he is in the wrong, and he should think himself lucky he’s leaving Dhanbad a free man. On his way home from the airport, observing a dark Victorian Gothic building with its complicated white windows, Mehta felt as if all that nineteenth-century tracery had been knotted across his chest.
You’re back to begging your classmates for money now, mate.
‘Beer.’ He touched his driver’s shoulder.
He got out of the car by the yellow awning of Café Ideal on Chowpatty.
‘Tuborg,’ he told the waiter as he sat at the window with the view of the ocean and the beach, and then checked: ‘Costs the same as Indian beer?’
One big green Tuborg down, and half of another.
Sea breeze streamed in through the open windows. So here I sit, in strong sunshine, and my imperishable mistakes. Well done, son. Well done. One more flop. Anand Mehta wiped away his tears. Ah, fuck it. The whole world is a Failure, anyway. America is ten trillion billion dollars in debt. They’re fucked. Everything is fucked. Which is why, Anand Mehta decided right there, that his next move should be to short-sell the entire S&P 500 index, plus the FTSE, plus European equities and bonds. ‘I’m betting against every-fucking-thing out there. If the stock market crashes,’ Mehta said, summoning the waiter over, ‘I make a lot of money. If the world ends,’ he winked, ‘…I make a killing.’
‘One more Tuborg, sir?’
•
Six beers! Enough, enough. Mehta left the cafe, and with some effort climbed the bridge that led to Chowpatty beach. His stomach churned, and he wondered if he should find a toilet. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine, sir. My liver is a freak of nature, sir: my liver is bigger than Pfizer. Don’t worry about me, don’t, sir, don’t. A stray copy of the Mumbai Sun was fluttering around; bending down with care, he picked it up. He began looking for that page in the middle with all the stuff about which actress was … and with who …
He stopped turning when he reached the sports page.
Two each from Ruia and Jai Hind in
Mumbai Under-19 squad.
T.E. Sarfraz, record holder, is Captain.
Five boys had been captured in a photograph below the article. There. Mehta put his finger on the lower right hand of the photo. That boy. The one with the bat slung on his shoulder like a hero, sitting with a big smile on top of the stone-roller. That boy. I know you, I know you. Anand Mehta turned the paper over, and read it again, and then took out his cell phone and went down the speed dial address book until he got to ‘T’.
‘Who is this?’ the gruff voice asked.
‘Anand. Anand Mehta. Don’t remember me?’
After an almost audible hesitation, Tommy Sir said:
‘Yes. Remember.’
‘Our boy has made it. I saw the article in the paper. He’s made the Mumbai Under-19s. Our boy. Manjunath Kumar.’
To which Tommy Sir said: ‘Leave him alone.’
Anand Mehta, suddenly transported to the Hernshead lake in Central Park for a brief second or two, returned to Mumbai and said, ‘… leave him alone …? Who are you to tell me what to do?’
There was a sigh, and Tommy Sir, accepting the inevitable, said, ‘He made it, yes. But what a drama. There was too much tension, I tell you. Too much. So the boy runs away at the last minute to Navi Mumbai.’
‘Yes, I know that, Tommy Sir. But he came back?’
‘Yes, Mr Anand. See: out of the blue, my daughter Lata, this morning, tells me, she will turn off the lights in the kitchen every night, so half my life’s worries are solved there. It’s like a Van Gogh scenario; I want to take a canvas and paint a sunrise. Why? Because the other half of my worries were solved four days ago. What happened four days ago? Four days ago, Sofia, formerly Radha’s girlfriend, phones me and says, cool as ice, “He is back. And I’m his new girlfriend.” Gives the phone to Manju and Manju says, “Tommy Sir, I’ll never run away again. I’ll never go to Navi Mumbai again.” Did you hear all that, Mr Anand Mehta? And he has a girl-friend now.’
Mehta took his time to say: ‘I knew it.’
‘Personally I spoke to Srinivasan Sir. Personally I spoke to each of the other selectors. Personally told them lies, that the boy had a family health issue. Nine times in ten they would tell me go to hell. But this Manju is a golden boy, born to shine, never knows what it is to lose. I got him in the team for the Policeman’s Invitation Cup. Selectors turn up to see him. He batted brilliantly, I tell you. Best he’s ever been. Now Manju is in the Mumbai Under-19s. As I’ve always said: some boys rise.’