Serious Men (11 page)

‘I don’t remember.’

‘You remember all the science rubbish, but you don’t remember what you were telling yourself?’

Adi continued to write in silence.

‘This boy never answers me properly,’ Oja said, looking accusingly at Ayyan. ‘You have spoilt him. All those secrets you two have is not good for him. He talks to me only when he wants food.’ That reminded her of something. ‘He has left half the food in the lunch-box.’

‘Did you give him Lady’s Finger?’

‘My god, no! This boy is already abnormal. Lady’s Finger makes you do sums better. I would never give it to him.’ And she said in an affectionate way, ‘Strange boy. He has not troubled the science teacher for some time. I wonder why. But it will come soon, the next summons from the Principal.’

‘He has done something else,’ Ayyan said, with a mysterious smile.

‘What is it?’

‘I can’t tell you now.’

‘Tell me.’

‘You will know in the morning.’

‘What is it?’

‘Don’t waste your time. I am not going to tell you. Wait till morning.’

‘Why morning? What’s going to happen?’

‘Wait and see.’

‘Adi,’ she said, trying to be stern. ‘What have you done?’

‘I’ve not done anything.’

‘What is going to happen in the morning?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’

‘Don’t confuse me,’ Adi said, annoyed.

‘Come here,’ she screamed. Adi threw the pencil down and came to his mother. ‘Look here,’ she told him, trying to look severe. ‘You are too young to keep secrets from me. What is happening? I have to know. Otherwise I will give you a slap and the truth will come out of your mouth.’

‘I’ve not done anything,’ he said.

‘If you keep doing only what your father asks you to do, you will come to grief, boy. A lamb that follows a pig will eat shit.’

‘Don’t confuse me.’

‘Tell me, what have you done? What’s the secret?’

Adi turned to his father in exasperation.

‘Don’t bother him,’ Ayyan told his wife, and that was that.

Adi went back to his imposition. In the brief silence they heard the faint noise of horns, boys playing cricket and the unmistakable sound of a man, somewhere, beating his wife. Adi raised his head from his notebook and smiled at his father. Ayyan smiled back. That set off Oja again.

‘What is it?’ she almost pleaded.

Ayyan pointed a finger upwards, his eyes inviting her to follow him.

The attic was built a few weeks ago, in the tremors of a carpenter’s violent hammer, its every blow landing on Ayyan’s heart and shaking a secret pride within. He never thought the day would come when he too would build an attic. It reminded him of the failed men of BDD and their desperation to sleep with their wives, away from the sight of the others. Ceilings were high in BDD and almost everyone had an attic. Most of the loud, insufferable children of the chawls were conceived in the attics. In the homes where there were more than one married couple, they took weekly or even daily turns to use the elevated bedroom. The conjugal attic was a sign here. That a man had failed to escape, that he was now stranded.

Oja looked cautiously at her son. He was absorbed in his imposition. Ayyan had a packet with him now and she was curious to know what it was. She had not seen it when he came home. It was remarkable, she thought, how her husband hid
things and made them spring out when he wanted them to. He pulled down a folding ladder and climbed up into the loft. Oja followed. The attic was about six feet by three. There was a thin mattress and a blue table fan, and a lot of books that Oja wanted to throw away. They crawled on to the attic floor and sat there.

‘What is it?’ she asked in a whisper.

‘I’ve got something for you,’ he said. He opened the packet and took out a bra.

‘This? It looks so fancy. How much is this?’

‘Look, how stiff it is,’ he said, pointing to the hardwire frame of the cups. She giggled.

‘It’s metal. What if lightning strikes?’

‘It’s plastic.’

‘It’s metal.’

‘To be on the safe side, don’t wear it in the rains.’

‘It’s so funny. Where do you find these things?’

‘It’s not funny, you idiot. This is what girls are wearing these days.’

‘How do you know so much about girls?’ she asked, toying with the bra. ‘It’s so funny. I can’t wear it. What will people say?’

‘I hope people won’t know what you are wearing underneath.’

She slapped his thigh. The sight of the fancy skin-colour bra made her giggle again. Ayyan told her, in a professorial way, ‘This will keep your breasts firm. Or they will begin to sag like your mother’s.’

‘Don’t talk like that about my mother.’

Ayyan poked her breasts. ‘Breasts have eyes, Oja. They look at me now. I don’t ever want them to look down at the floor, like your mother’s.’

He remembered a curious fact, one of the many he collected almost every day for her. ‘You know, Oja,’ he said, as he always started these things, ‘an average woman’s breasts weigh eight kilos.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s very heavy,’ she said. Then her eyes fell on a smaller parcel. ‘What’s that?’

‘That’s for Adi.’

Ayyan went down the ladder with the packet. Oja followed.

‘I’ve got something for you,’ he told his son. Adi jumped. He tore open the packet and a toilet roll fell out. The sight of the roll made Adi almost breathless with laughter. He always found it funny. So, occasionally, Ayyan stole toilet rolls from the Institute. There was something else in the packet. It was a Rubik’s cube.

‘You keep turning till every face of the cube has the same colour,’ Ayyan said, ‘Not many people in the world can do it. But you are a genius.’

‘Some boys in the school have it,’ Adi said.

‘Don’t give him such things,’ Oja said, snatching the cube from Adi’s hand. The boy tried to take it back from his mother, but he was not tall enough. ‘Do your imposigen,’ she said. ‘You keep giving him such things,’ she told her husband, ‘Don’t play with his mind.’

‘But he is a genius.’

‘I want him to be normal. We have to make him do normal things.’

‘What can we do if he is not?’

‘That scares me,’ she said.

Adi snatched the cube back from his mother.

Oja looked angrily at her husband. ‘Don’t do these things,’ she said.

‘These are the toys he needs. He is just too intelligent. You will not believe it in the morning.’

‘Tell me, what has he done?’

‘You will know in the morning.’

‘Tell me, she said.’

‘Wait till morning.’

Oja was so angry that night that she punished Ayyan with silences and refused to sleep in the attic. She slept with her son on the floor. From the wooden loft, Ayyan saw his wife through a dim streetlight that was coming through the kitchen window.
She looked weak and sad when her big eyes were shut. He wanted to pinch her till she yelped and tell her that he did not like it when she was sad. He wanted to tell her that she should never be sad because to be sad was to be afraid. And to be afraid was to respect the world too much. The world was not a scary place, he always told her. It was full of ordinary people who did ordinary things, even though some of them went in cars and lived in very big homes and spoke in English. He wanted her to know that he was smart enough for this world and that he knew how to take care of her. He whispered from the loft, ‘You know, Oja.’ She did not respond. ‘Oja … Oja,’ he said.

‘What do you want?’

‘A shark can sense a drop of blood miles away.’

‘Let me sleep,’ she said.

‘Isn’t it amazing?’

Ayyan lay awake the whole night. When morning came, he heard the no-talent pigeons first and then the crows whom he liked because they were clever and mean. He heard the rustle of Oja’s silver anklets going to the kitchen. Steel vessels moved. He heard the hush of
The Times of India
slipping under the door. He went down the narrow folding ladder and put on a shirt.

Oja was by the stove, yawning. ‘It’s morning,’ she said, still angry. ‘Now tell me.’

Ayyan left without a word.

At the end of a lane outside the fringes of BDD was a newspaper-seller whose transient plywood stand that vanished at noon was now neatly packed with papers and magazines. Ayyan felt his tongue go cold as he approached the vendor. He ran his eyes over the stand but could not find it. Then he saw it in a corner. It was called
Yug,
a Marathi daily. He turned the pages impatiently and stopped when Adi’s face beamed from a snippet. ‘A
Special Boy,’
the headline said.

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.’