After being forced by Coach Sawant to leave his sons at the MIG Cricket Club, Mohan had returned to Dahisar, mounted his bicycle, tied two stainless-steel containers of chutneys to its side, and visited a Mysore Sweets, an Anand Bhuvan and a National Hindu Restaurant, before cycling down to Deepa, the Restaurant-Bar near the Dahisar train station. No one bought a thing from him. Heaving his bicycle over his head, he walked over the Dahisar river on the all-but-submerged bridge of bricks, then slammed the bike down, and cycled through the cardboard WELCOME TO OUR HOME arch (shielding his eyes from the gaze of the grinning politicians), past the broken homes and little shops, until he got to his own, where the sight of his neighbour Ramnath pressing white shirts with a stupid industriousness was so unbearable that he went to a teashop for relief.
He squatted by his bicycle and blew on the hot tea. He seethed. Tommy Sir thinks he can cut me out of my own sons’ future. I know what he is telling that visionary investor about me. He is calling me a chutney salesman. A thug. A peasant. An idiot.
When he got angry, Mohan Kumar’s right eyebrow rose up rakishly, which highlighted the comic element in his small and moustached face.
Looking at his glass of tea, he delivered the speech he wanted to give Tommy Sir (but had had to desist for the sake of his sons):
‘Other parents pay tens of thousands of rupees for cricket coaches, but I, a penniless migrant to Mumbai, am the pro-gen-i-tor of pro-di-gies. Mr Tommy Sir, I say these words slowly, why? So that even a man of your mental capacities may understand them. Here are two more words pronounced slowly for you. Amoxycillin. Azithromycin. Do you know what they are? Do you know how to prescribe them? I do. I have taught myself medicine and pharmacology. Mr Tommy allegedly Sir: where were you when my sons fell ill? Where were you when they needed someone to sit by their side and record their temperature every half hour? Mr Tommy: when my Radha becomes famous and glorious, I’ll call the reporters to the MIG Cricket Club. To the very place where you humiliated me. And I’ll have my press conference right there.’
Even in tea, there is no peace today. The moment Mohan Kumar began sipping, the legless man had to make noise on his flute in a corner of the shop. This legless fellow performed every morning in the train station, and came here afterwards. Holding up his glass of tea, Mohan Kumar looked at the flautist.
Brother. Have pity on me. Think how much I have suffered in life. Please stop.
The flour-mill began its rumbling, giving off pungent fumes — it ground red chillies in the second shift, adding burning eyes to its customary noise pollution.
Mohan Kumar kept looking. The legless flautist kept playing.
Until the father put his glass down, walked over, slapped the flute out of the man’s hand, and returned to his spot to pick up his glass, only to find that his phone was ringing.
It was the boys’ cricket coach, and he said: ‘It’s payday, Mohan. Congratulations.’
•
‘But where is Coach Sawant?’
Three-quarters of an hour had passed, and Mohan Kumar, an aureole of sweat on his back, had pushed through the crowds around Bandra train station, and returned to Kalanagar, walking past Matoshree for the second time that day, to find a tall grey-haired man, whom he recognized from his one previous meeting nearly six months earlier as the man who hated all sporting fathers, Tommy Sir, waiting at the entrance of the MIG club, along with a stocky middle-aged man wearing a wonderful red T-shirt.
‘Gone with the other boys to school,’ said Tommy Sir, without smiling at Mohan Kumar.
‘I’m Anand Mehta.’ The man in the T-shirt, who smelled of cologne, stuck his hand out. ‘Just seen your boy bat. Very impressed.’
When he smelled the rich man’s hand, Mohan Kumar was overcome by shame. He almost cried.
‘Forgive me,’ he said, refusing to touch the perfumed flesh. ‘For my wet state, forgive me. For my lateness, forgive me.’
‘No problem, mate,’ the rich man said, slapping Mohan on his wet back. ‘My wife Asha says, if people sweat it means they’re honest. Can you read my T-shirt? Manchester United Gold Key Supporter. I have a cricket academy near Azad Maidan, did Tommy Sir tell you? Last year, I was happy to escort, at my own expense, seventy-six of the brightest young cricketing bodies in this country under the age of fifteen to Bowral, New South Wales, home of the one, the only, the eternal, the infinite, Sir Donald Bradman, where, in addition to a master class conducted in the Don’s own town, the boys also enjoyed a sumptuous meal of Aussie lamb wrapped in brown pitta bread. Australia is the reality principle in cricket, Tommy Sir: otherwise we Indians would think we were good at this game. Am I right, or am I right? Come in, come in, let’s eat and do business.’
They sat in the cafeteria of the MIG club, and a waiter came for their order.
‘Nothing for me,’ Tommy Sir said.
‘Order,’ Anand Mehta retaliated. ‘Order samosas.’
Like many others of his class in Mumbai, Mehta gave an impression of dogged and uncerebral strength. A small square forehead, held tight by close-cropped hair, expanded into a powerful black brush moustache over a stonecrusher jaw; a white fold of fat at the back of his skull broadened down a thick neck into a wide chest and wider paunch whose width he exaggerated by letting his shirt hang loose. His fleshy palms had clearly done no hard work, and yet seemed to sweat a lot. His English was international; he drew his phrases equally from the American, British and Indian dialects, and had acquired the democratic Australian habit of calling everyone around him ‘mate’. Halfway through each sentence came a pause in which he stared at a corner of the ceiling with an open mouth, as if just then realizing what he had begun to say; and he had the child’s habit of raising his voice when he repeated himself.
‘This man,’ Tommy Sir said, pointing a finger at the investor, ‘is a visionary. He wants to start the world’s first cricket sponsorship programme, and of all the boys in Mumbai he has picked yours as his first candidates. You are a lucky man, Mohan Kumar.’
‘No, sir,’ the chutney salesman replied. ‘No, sir.’
‘No?’
‘He is a lucky man.’ He took a breath, and turned to the investor: ‘Mr Anand, sir, I was not allowed to be present when my own sons were exhibited to you like goods at the market’ — an angry glance at Tommy Sir — ‘so I could not present a full picture of their talents. Let me share with you the whole A — Z of Future Champion-Making. Now, sir—’
Everyone stopped talking. Like a gangster introducing a gun into the discussions, Mohan Kumar suddenly placed a white cotton handkerchief on the table. Within the handkerchief was something black and heavy; he unwrapped the white layers to reveal a very large cell phone, which he proceeded to squint at.
‘Just checking if any customer has asked for a new batch of chutneys,’ he said, re-wrapping his phone in the handkerchief. ‘To keep germs away,’ he explained.
‘Excellent idea.’ Anand Mehta grinned. ‘Does look a bit odd — but then who cares what they think? There is a wonderful European philosopher named Mister Nietzsche who said, the man who doesn’t care about what other men think becomes a superman. I congratulate you on shedding all inhibitions. Now, relaaaaaax. Don’t bore me with details. Has Tommy Sir told you the arrangement I am proposing?’ Mohan indicated with his head that, no, the arrangement and its details were not known to him. Since he was not allowed to be present when his sons were exhibited like buffalo at a weekly fair.