Serious Men (23 page)

‘How much is a Mercedes?’ he asked his father.

‘What model was it?’

‘C–Class. 220 CDI.’

‘That’s a cheap one.’

‘How much?’

‘Thirty lakhs.’

Adi howled. ‘Expensive,’ he said in English.

‘Not that much.’

‘You should save money. We should not take the taxi to school.’

‘We do this only when it rains and it is only twenty rupees.’

Adi puffed out his cheek and made a fart sound, and they both giggled.

‘Now tell me Adi, what did you do?’

The boy put his hand on his head in exasperation. ‘How many times do I have to tell you? Nothing.’

‘Then why does the Principal want to meet me?’

‘I don’t know,’ Adi said. ‘Yesterday I didn’t do anything. The day before yesterday I didn’t do anything. Day before day before yesterday, I asked the maths teacher, “Is five to the power of zero equal to one, Miss?”’

‘So why is the Principal calling me?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘She had written in your handbook, “Come with the boy to my room.” ‘

‘I don’t like her,’ Adi said.

‘We will go and find out what you’ve done.’

‘I do only what you say I should do.’

‘Good boy.’

‘What if someone finds out?’

Adi’s face turned serious as his father fondled his hair playfully. ‘So much coconut oil your mother poured on your head.’ The oil made the boy’s forehead and ears shine. He was such a
beautiful, healthy boy, Ayyan thought. Then he felt the lifeless hardness of the hearing-aid in the other ear.

Sister Chastity had a scowl on her face. She was sorting out some papers on her table and getting more entangled in the muddle. Behind her, the head of Jesus Christ appeared more tilted than Ayyan remembered, as if to get a better view of her. Across her table were seated two unhappy men and a young skinny woman in a cotton sari.

‘Good morning Sister,’ Adi said, and, turning to the three other teachers, he said quickly, ‘Good morning Sir, good morning Sir, good morning Miss.’

Sister Chastity looked up with a tired face, but she brightened up a little when she saw the father and son. ‘You have come,’ she said. She asked the teachers to leave them, ‘for exactly five minutes’. The teachers carefully gathered their share of papers from the table. The way they treated the loose sheets made Ayyan curious. All he could make out before they put the papers in a file was that every sheet contained numbered questions. The teachers gave a knowing smile to the father and son, and they left the room.

Sister Chastity pointed to the chairs and rubbed her hands in anticipation. She looked at the boy and at his father and then, in a more interested way, at the boy again. She was distracted by the stacks of paper between them. She pushed them away muttering, ‘They gave me a computer saying I’d never need to file papers again. But now, all I am doing is filing print-outs. Do you have a computer at home, Mr Mani?’

‘No,’ Adi said.

‘I am talking to your father, Adi. You must know how to behave.’

‘I am sorry, Sister, I have sinned.’

‘It’s “I am sorry,
Father,
I have sinned”. Genius and all that, and you don’t know simple things?’

‘I am sorry, Sister.’

‘Now what was I trying to say? Yes. Mr Mani, you don’t have a computer at home?’

‘No,’ he said.

‘St Andrew’s Church is selling old computers at unbelievable prices for its less fortunate parishioners,’ she said. ‘Just one thousand rupees for a Perinium 2.’

‘Pentium,’ the boy corrected.

‘Yes, Pentium. Adi, I am talking to your father.’

‘Nice thing the Church is doing,’ Ayyan said.

‘Isn’t it nice? Do you know where St Andrew’s Church is?’

‘No.’

Sister Chastity shook her head sadly. ‘The joys of Christian life are available to all but very few open their eyes before the Lord shuts them.’ Ayyan looked at her meekly. ‘Now, Mr Mani,’ she said, ‘I will come to the point. You are aware of the interschool science quiz we are organizing?’

‘No, Sister.’

She widened her eyes. ‘You haven’t seen the posters?’

‘No.’

‘The posters have been up on the main gate notice-board for over a fortnight now. You must always read the notice-board, Mr Mani. In three days, we will be hosting the quiz finals. Grand Finale, it is being called. Five hundred tenth-standard students from fifty schools went through the written elimination rounds. Six teams have been chosen for the finals. For the Grand Finale.’ Ayyan nodded with evident interest. ‘We were, in fact, finalizing the questions when you walked in,’ she said. ‘That’s the quiz committee waiting outside.’

‘I didn’t see anyone outside,’ Ayyan said.

‘The three teachers, Mr Mani,’ Sister Chastity said, making a face of immense patience. ‘They went out right now, didn’t they? They are the quiz committee.’

‘OK,’ Ayyan said. ‘Can parents come and watch the quiz?’

‘Parents have to come. We are having the event in our main auditorium.’ (She always said ‘main auditorium’ though the school had only one. She also said ‘main gate’ though there was only one entrance.)

‘We will be there,’ Ayyan said.

‘There is a reason why I asked you to come with Adi,’ she said softly. ‘The teams from our own school couldn’t make it to the finals. They were disqualified in the preliminary rounds. You know how fair we are. We wouldn’t do anything shady to favour our teams. We are the host school and we have graciously accepted that our teams were not good enough. But it is sad, isn’t it?’

‘It is sad.’

‘It’s very sad. But I have an idea,’ she said, now beaming. ‘I can still make a place for a special participant from our school who will not compete for the prize but for the honour.’

‘And you want Adi to be that special participant?’

‘Obviously.’

Ayyan looked thoughtful.

‘What’s the problem with that?’ she asked, looking at Adi. ‘A small brilliant kid competing against the brightest seventeen-year-olds in the city. It will be a sight. How old are you now, Adi?’

‘I am eleven. Eleven is a prime number.’

Sister Chastity imitated him fondly,’”I am eleven. Eleven is a prime number.” What an odd angel this boy is.’

‘He is just a little kid who is fooling around,’ Ayyan said feebly.

‘But he is a genius.’

‘He has stage fright.’

‘Stage fright?’

‘Yes. He becomes frightened when he has to face a lot of strangers.’

‘We will all be there to make him feel comfortable,’ she said, her face now beginning to lose its pleasantness.

‘But there is something we have to think,’ Ayyan said carefully in English. (Sometimes he spoke to her in English. For practice.)

‘You mean there is something we have to
consider,’
she said severely, and looked with sympathy at the boy.

‘Yes, something we have to
consider,’
Ayyan said.

‘What is it?’

‘Think: Adi is sitting on the stage. Sorry,
imagine
Adi is sitting
on the stage. Then the questions come. Adi begins to answer those questions, it will be great.’

‘Yes. It’ll be incredible.’

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘It will be so unbelievable that people will accuse you of leaking the questions because he is from host school.’

Sister Chastity ignored the missing definite article. She saw his point. She nodded. ‘I didn’t think of it that way,’ she said.

Ayyan looked at the stacks of papers on her table. He wondered where the quiz questions were. Probably with the three teachers who were waiting outside. Or, probably right here.

‘You have a point,’ she said and exhaled. ‘OK, then. The classes are going to start now. Adi, you should get going.’

‘How many teams in the finals?’ Ayyan asked.

‘Six,’ she said.

‘Girls and boys?’

‘Yes,’ she said impatiently. ‘Mostly boys. But one team has only girls.’

There was something here, Ayyan knew. There was an opportunity. ‘The plan to expand the computer lab – any progress?’ he asked.

‘Yes, parents will be notified,’ she said, now overtly irritated.

‘Any increase in fees because of computer lab?’

‘We’ve not made any decision on that front. Now Mr Mani, if you’ll …’

One of her phones rang. ‘Hello,’ Sister Chastity said. ‘Oh dear. Where? I am coming.’ She put the phone down and rushed out. ‘A girl has fainted,’ she muttered on her way out.

The door shut behind her, but Ayyan could hear her fading footsteps. He counted them. She seemed to have gone far. He stood up and arched towards her side of the desk, and rummaged through the stacks of paper. He did not look at the door even once, but he listened for the slightest sound. He removed whole sheets of paper from of envelopes and went through them swiftly.
There were bills and more bills and a lot of letters from the office of the Archbishop.

Adi looked at his father with his large keen eyes. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked.

‘Shhh,’ his father said.

‘What are you doing?’ Adi whispered excitedly.

Ayyan opened the drawers and looked in. There were invitations, rosaries and letters to the municipality. But nothing appeared to contain quiz questions. He found some mid-term question-papers though. He then threw a decisive look at the three land phones lying on her desk. He picked one and dialled his own mobile number. He took the call and put the mobile back in his trouser pocket. Very carefully, he placed the receiver slightly askew on its cradle.

He went back to his chair and waited for her. Adi looked at him with a bright smile. They heard the faint voice of Sister Chastity barking orders.

‘What’s wrong with girls these days?’ she said, as she entered the room. She sank into her swivel chair and said angrily, ‘A girl has fainted. Her mother says that after she has a meal she goes to the bathroom, puts her finger inside her throat and pukes out everything she has eaten. She is twelve you see. So Madam came to school having puked her breakfast at home. What happens? She falls down in the corridor. That’s what happens. Lord, what’s wrong with these girls?’

‘Is she fat?’ Ayyan asked curiously.

‘She is a bit on the plump side.’

‘She wants to lose weight?’

‘Obviously.’

‘So she vomits the food she eats?’

‘Yes,’ Sister Chastity said.

‘You should give her one slap,’ he said.

‘She is all right now. We sprinkled some water on her face and gave her glucose.’

‘You didn’t understand,’ Ayyan said. ‘You should give her one good slap.’

‘No no, we don’t do that kind of thing here.’

Sister Chastity called the name of the peon, thumping the bell on her desk. The peon peeped from the doorway.

‘Ask them to come in,’ she said. ‘OK, Mr Mani. Sorry for wasting your time. I’ve to sit with the quiz committee now. Adi, go to your class.’

As the father and son left the room, they saw the three teachers enter. Cordial smiles were exchanged once again. Ayyan took his son to the base of the stairway that led to his classroom. He fished out a notebook from the boy’s bag and tore off several pages. Adi put his hand on his head. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked. Ayyan took a pencil from his box.

‘Adi, now go to the class,’ he said, giving him the bag. ‘And, remember, all this is our secret.’ Ayyan extended his little finger. Adi locked it with his.

‘But what is the secret?’

‘What I did in the room.’

‘Why should that be a secret?’

‘Adi, run now.’

The deafening sound of the morning bell startled them both. They looked at each other for a moment. And they laughed. ‘Go now,’ Ayyan said.

He watched as the boy made his way up the stairs. Then he put his mobile to his ear and poised the pencil against the pages he had torn from Adi’s notebook. As he walked towards the black wrought-iron gate, Sister Chastity’s room came alive in his ear. They were talking, and they were talking about the quiz. He stood in a peaceful back lane near the school listening to their conversation. But he could glean only six questions.

I
T WAS AROUSING.
Oja Mani’s hair was bundled into a thin white towel. The back of her red nightgown was wet. Her silver anklets lay feebly at her turmeric yellow ankles. It was a sight that always made Ayyan look furtively at what his son was doing. In the freshness of marriage, when he used to see her like this, he would pester her to take off all her clothes, except the towel. In time, she refused to yield. But that did not cure him. This post-bath image of the woman that disturbed his peace so easily was also the most enduring symbol of a housewife. He had seen it in the Tamil soaps that Oja was addicted to. Housewives shrouded their hair in a towel. Working women used hairdryers.

Oja opened the steel cupboard, aware that he was watching. The hierarchy in the cupboard had not changed ever since she had established it. The lowest rung was for the grains. Above it were the spices and pickles and then there were special plates for guests. The top three rungs were for clothes. In a blue plastic box were her ancestral ornaments that always reminded her of her good fate. ‘It does not matter if it’s with me or if it’s with you, my child,’ her mother had said before her marriage, ‘it will be his when he threatens to burn you with kerosene.’

Oja took out four of her best saris and showed them to him. He walked to her side to get a better look. She was surprised at how seriously he was taking this. He pointed to the only sari that did not shine. It was a blue cotton sari with small white squares.

‘There will be a lot of rich people,’ he said, ‘and rich women laugh at women who wear shiny clothes in the day.’

‘How do you know so much about rich women?’

‘And no fat gold necklace. What you are wearing is all right. It’s thin. It’s good.’

‘But it is an important day, you said.’

‘Important does not mean gold any more.’

She frowned, but conceded. In these matters, he was usually right. She studied her man. He was in a Rin-white full-sleeved shirt, smartly tucked into grey trousers. His black formal shoes were newly polished. And he was wearing a watch. He wore that only on special occasions. And he was smelling good.