Serious Men (24 page)

‘You should wear that coat you have,’ she said. ‘You look like a hero in it.’

‘No, no. You are not supposed to wear a coat for something like this. You are supposed to look like you don’t care much.’

‘Adi,’ Oja screamed, ‘finish your bath.’

Adi was in the stained-glass enclosure in the corner of the kitchen. And he was singing aloud, ‘D-I-S-C-O. Disco, Disco.’

‘Adi, get out now.’

The boy emerged in a towel. Oja went hastily into the enclosure, giving him a foul look. ‘Disco, disco,’ Adi told her.

Ayyan dried him, glancing at the stained-glass bathroom he had once built with love. The boy showed the hearing-aid to his father. Ayyan helped him put it on. He bound the small white box around Adi’s stomach. A white wire ran out of the box. He blew into the boy’s left ear to dry it. Adi giggled. So Ayyan did it again. Then he fitted the earpiece into Adi’s ear.

When Oja stepped out of the enclosure, she looked at them for approval. This is a very beautiful young woman, Ayyan thought. He pouted his lips at her in a raunchy code. She smiled. She didn’t mind dirty thoughts because she didn’t have to do much beneath them. She went to the full-length mirror of the cupboard. Ayyan and Adi watched her closely as she bulged her eyes and drew around them with a black pencil.

They had an argument in the taxi. Oja had wanted to take the bus or walk. Ayyan wanted to take the taxi.

‘It’s going to rain,’ he told her.

Adi was squeezed in the back seat between his parents.

‘It does not rain inside the bus,’ she said angrily.

‘And from the bus-stop to the school?’

‘We have umbrellas, don’t we? And anyway, I don’t think it’s going to rain.’

‘It’s just twenty rupees.’

‘Little grains make a fat man’s meal,’ Oja and Adi said together, and that made them laugh.

By the time the taxi approached the gates, Oja had fallen silent. She was nervous. The left side of the lane was completely taken up by parked cars. And there was a commotion near the gates. Drivers who couldn’t find a parking space were trying to turn around, and that was causing a jam. The guard looked at Oja, breast to toe, and beamed at Ayyan.

‘All the rich folks have come,’ the guard said.

‘I have to go to the class,’ Adi said, extricating his finger from his father’s fist. ‘Parents have to go to the hall. Students will come in a line,’ he said. Then he gave quick instructions. ‘Parents don’t have to walk in a line. They can walk anyway they want.’ He pointed to the main block to his right. ‘The main auditorium is here. Don’t call it “hall”. It is called “The Main Auditorium”.’

He walked briskly down the front path towards the stairway. After a few paces he turned and gave a knowing smile to his father. Oja waved at him, and for a moment tried to decipher what the stealthy smile between father and son was about. She went quietly with Ayyan towards the main block. Two little girls in blue pinafores, much younger than Adi, were walking in front of them and talking animatedly in English. Oja laughed. ‘So fast they speak in English,’ she said.

Outside the auditorium’s rear entrance, parents chatted above the din of the festive murmurs coming from inside. They directed occasional glances towards the students who were arriving in orderly lines and vanishing through the front door.

‘Should we go in now or later?’ Oja whispered to her husband.

‘Why are you whispering?’

‘I am not whispering,’ she whispered.

They were standing a few feet away from a group of parents, about a dozen of them, who were talking about the horse-riding classes in a new international board school that had sprung up in the suburbs. The mothers were in T-shirt and jeans, and trousers that reached just below their knees, and long skirts. Some were in salwars. All of them – they looked so expensive. Oja inched closer to her husband.

Ayyan studied the fathers. His own shirt, he knew, was good. It had cost him five hundred rupees, but there was something about the shirts of these men and their trousers and the way they stood, that made him feel that he looked like their driver. In the morning, when he had inspected himself in the mirror, he was certain that he measured up to them, but now, in their midst, he was somehow smaller. And Oja looked like their cook.

‘Let’s go and talk to them,’ Ayyan said.

‘No,’ Oja said, but he had already started walking towards them. She trailed behind him. They stood at the periphery of the group. Ayyan maintained a smile of being involved in their conversation and tried to make eye-contact with a man he remembered meeting earlier. The women surveyed Oja briefly. One of them looked at her feet, and Oja curled her toes.

When there was a brief pause in the conversation, Ayyan said to his acquaintance, in English, ‘We have met. I am Aditya Mani’s father.’

The acquaintance looked kindly at him and said, ‘Of course, I remember.’ He turned to the gathering and said, ‘Guys, this is the father of the genius.’ Oja did not realize it, but she was nodding like a spring-headed doll and smiling at the women.

‘Genius?’ a man asked in a whisper.

‘Yes. He is what, eleven or something. And he talks about relativity and all that.’

‘Really?’

‘Aditya, yes,’ a woman’s face lit up. ‘I have heard stories about
him. So he really does exist.’ She told Oja in Hindi, ‘Your son is very special.’

Oja looked coyly at her husband and giggled. She whispered to her husband, but everybody could hear it, ‘Let’s go.’

Six tables were arranged in a semi-circle on the stage. On a blue background was a thermocol board that said, ‘St Andrew’s School. First Interschool Science Quiz’. The participants were yet to arrive but the hall was packed. On either side of a red-carpeted aisle, students sat on wooden benches. They filled most of the auditorium. Adi was somewhere in the sixth row. In the last rows, some boys had faint moustaches.

‘These boys are so big,’ Ayyan told his wife. ‘And these girls have breasts.’

They were towards the end of the hall, on cushioned chairs, with other parents and teachers. The little group of parents Ayyan had spoken to outside were in the row in front. Oja toyed with the pendant of her thin gold chain and studied the necks of the mothers.

The lights dimmed and the murmurs of the students grew louder. On the darkened stage, six pairs of students appeared. There were two beautiful adolescent girls in olive-green skirts and white shirts. Others were pubescent boys in various uniforms. They sat at the desks and waited. The stage lights came on and the audience clapped. There were a few whistles too. Sister Chastity appeared and she walked smartly to the middle of the stage holding a wireless mike.

‘Who was whistling?’ was the first thing she said. That brought about an absolute silence. ‘Students of St Andrew’s do not whistle.’ She then smiled at the gathering and said, ‘Good morning parents, teachers and students. Welcome to the first Interschool Science quiz of St Andrew’s.’

She spoke about the school, its recent achievements, its plans and then she introduced the quizmaster. He was the senior maths teacher of the school, one of the men Ayyan had seen in the Principal’s office the week before.

There was a loud applause when he walked on to the stage. He looked happier now and smarter in a black suit and blue tie. He too had a wireless mike in his hand. He had an amiable way of speaking, and he spoke very fast as if he were reading out the risk factors in a mutual fund commercial. He laid down the rules and asked the contestants to introduce themselves. Sister Chastity went down the aisle and sat among the parents and teachers. She was in the same row as Ayyan, but on the other side of the aisle.

‘Let’s begin the first round,’ the quizmaster said. ‘The first round is the physics round.’ He looked at Team A and said, ‘Are you ready for the very first question of the first Annual Interschool Science Quiz Contest of St Andrew’s English School?’

The grim boys of Team A did not nod.

‘All right. Here goes,’ the quizmaster said, looking at a card that he was holding. ‘These two gentlemen wanted to prove the existence of something called ether. Instead, they accidentally discovered that light travels at a constant speed irrespective of the speed of the observer. Who are these men?’

The boys looked perplexed and thoughtful. They passed. The next team too considered the question deeply, and also passed. The third team was the all-girls team. They passed immediately, without fuss. The question was passed by all the six teams.

‘Nobody?’ the quizmaster asked, with a touch of triumph. He looked at the audience. ‘The question passes to the audience.’

There was a silence that was heavy with embarrassment. Oja looked at her husband apologetically, as if she was ashamed she did not know the answer.

‘Albert Michelson and Edward Morley,’ the quizmaster said, and there were hisses of agony from the boys on the stage. One boy spread his hands in overt exasperation.

‘Michelson and Morley,’ the quizmaster said, ‘set out to prove an old theory that the universe was filled with an invisible thing called ether. As we now know the universe is not filled with ether. But they accidentally discovered through their experiments that light travels at the same speed irrespective of how fast or slow an observer is moving.’

The quizmaster looked at Team B.

‘Are you ready? All right. Here is the second question. What discovery is Sir James Chadwick known for?’ A small voice pierced the silence of the hall.

‘Neutron,’ it said.

There was a stunned silence and then murmuring. Everybody on the stage looked confused. Team B looked angry.

‘Who was it?’ the quizmaster asked, looking at the audience. The parents were looking at each other with soft chuckles.

Oja’s hands were trembling. She held the sleeve of her husband and asked in a frightened voice, ‘Wasn’t it Adi?’

Ayyan, breathing a bit hard, said, ‘Yes.’

A man in the row in front of them turned and looked impassively at Ayyan and Oja. Sister Chastity’s head peered from the row across the aisle and her eyes met Ayyan’s.

‘Who was that?’ the quizmaster asked.

Children in the front rows were pointing to the boy who was sitting in their midst.

‘You, Sir, was it you?’ the quizmaster asked, amused and disbelieving. ‘Aditya, will you please stand up.’ Adi stood up, his hands folded behind his back. There were murmurs among the parents. Several heads were turning and looking at Ayyan and Oja. ‘So it was you, Sir?’ the quizmaster asked.

‘Yes, Sir,’ Adi said smartly.

‘Well, I don’t know what to say,’ the quizmaster said, making a face of incredulity. ‘You are absolutely right. Now introduce yourself, Sir.’

‘Aditya Mani.’

‘And how old are you?’

‘Eleven. And eleven is a prime number.’

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ the quizmaster said, pointing to Adi. And there was a round of loud applause. Parents stood, one by one in a standing ovation, and threw glances at the curious couple sitting in their midst. Oja had tears in her eyes as she stood with her husband and clapped.

Sister Chastity went down the aisle and stopped in the middle of the hall. The silence returned. She looked happy, but she spoke sternly. She did not need a mike.

‘While I greatly appreciate the brilliance of our students I request everybody in the audience not to answer out of turn. If none of the contestants knows the answer, the question will be passed to the audience. You can then raise your hands and the quizmaster will decide who will answer the question. Am I clear, Adi?’ She went back to her seat, shaking her head happily at Ayyan.

The quizmaster turned to Team B and was about to speak. Then he looked at Adi again and shook his head. ‘Wait till you get your chance,’ he said, and that made everybody laugh. ‘Now Team B, you get another question.’

Team B was still angry. The two boys made a face to suggest that they had known the answer.

‘Are you ready?’ the quizmaster said, ‘Here it is. What is the connection between Little Boy, Fat Man and Manhattan?’

Oja held her husband’s sleeve again. ‘I hope he keeps quiet this time,’ she said.

‘He will,’ Ayyan said confidently.

The silence was heavy with anticipation. Team B threw a nervous glance at Adi. They looked as though they were anxious to answer before the boy did. Then they appeared to hope that Adi knew the answer. The quizmaster too looked in the direction of Adi. Some children in the audience stared at the boy expectantly. Parents craned their neck to see what Adi was doing. Team B passed. The girls of Team C pounced on the question. One of them answered, as the other nodded furiously: ‘Little Boy and Fat Man are the names of the atom bombs which were dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The atom bomb project was called the Manhattan Project.’

‘Excellent,’ the quizmaster said, and there was a round of applause. He looked at Adi and said, ‘Sorry, Sir, they got it.’ A roar of laughter filled the hall.

Three more questions went this way, with the teams throwing
anxious looks at Adi, the audience waiting for something from the boy and someone on the stage finding the answer eventually. The tension in the hall was now easing.

‘Team F, your turn now,’ the quizmaster said, ‘This is the final question of Round One. Are you ready? All right. An interesting one. This scientist spent his last days trying to convert ordinary metals into gold. He wasted his latter years in …’

‘Isaac Newton,’ said the voice of Adi, and the stunned silence returned to the hall. As the silence broke into murmurs, Sister Chastity stood, arms akimbo, in the aisle.

Oja’s quivering fingers covered her mouth. She looked frightened. Parents turned to her with smiles of regard and envy. Ayyan got up from his chair and said a loud ‘sorry’ to the Principal. He went down the aisle towards his son. All eyes were on him. In the sixth row, children on the wooden bench lifted their legs to let Ayyan through. Ayyan bent towards Adi’s good ear, his index finger pointed sternly, his face poised in a reprimand. And he whispered, ‘Excellent, my son. Just one more time.’

Ayyan walked back to his seat looking embarrassed. Never in his life had so many eyes been on him. He apologized once again to Sister Chastity, who nodded graciously. She shouted from the aisle, ‘Adi, now behave.’ When Ayyan sank into his chair, a man in the row in front turned to him and said, ‘Your son is unbelievable.’ Oja held the sleeve of her husband again. She did not make an effort to contain her tears any more, and they smudged her mascara.