Serious Men (25 page)

The quizmaster said, ‘But was it the right answer?’ He looked blankly at the audience. He began to nod. ‘It’s Isaac Newton, of course.’ The applause was long, but nobody stood this time.

‘Now I have to find another question,’ the quizmaster said above the din. ‘We are running short of questions. Adi, as the Principal said, you have to behave. When the question is passed to the audience, you may answer. Or we may have to ask you to leave the hall. OK? Am I clear? Team F. Are you ready?’ Team F looked nervously towards Adi.

‘Easy question. If you know the answer, be very fast,’ the
quizmaster said, and looked towards the boy. ‘Who was the second man on the Moon?’

‘Buss Adrin,’ Adi screamed.

The quizmaster looked down at the floor. Sister Chastity got up. Ayyan jogged down the aisle. The kids lifted their legs again to let him through. They were now enjoying this. Ayyan went to his son and led him out of the row and through the narrow aisle. Hand-in-hand, they walked towards the exit. They heard the quizmaster say, ‘Buzz Aldrin it was,’ and there was a standing ovation once again. Ayyan tried to look embarrassed. Adi was beaming.

They stood on the corridor outside the auditorium, laughing. Soon, Oja appeared at the far end of the corridor, crying and running. She stopped abruptly, adjusted her hair, looked to her left and right sheepishly, and walked hastily. Then she ran again. This woman’s life, Ayyan told himself, is not ordinary any more. For that moment alone, he knew it was all worth it. Did she ever imagine when she was growing up as a waiter’s daughter, when she walked into a humid one-room home as a new bride, or when she discovered one evening that her son could not hear well in one ear, that she would see a day like this. But he also felt the odd unnerving mix of fear and excitement. He was stretching the limits of the game. And it had to end. Probably right now. It was fun, we got away with it, but the game is over now.

Oja fell on her knees beside her son and held him by his hair, ‘Adi, how do you know all this?’ She hugged him and then pushed him back, holding his arms tight. ‘You are so bright, Adi. You are so weird,’ she said, kissing his nose fondly. She looked up angrily at her husband and said, ‘I am going to put an evil-eye on his cheek.’

‘Nobody does such things any more,’ Ayyan said.

‘I don’t care. Did you see how those women were looking at my son?’

‘How did they look?’

‘They were such diabolic women, all of them. Did you see? They coloured their hair.’

‘What’s the connection?’

‘I don’t know. All I know is that my boy is going to get a black dot on his cheek every morning when he goes to school.’

‘All I know is that my boy is not going to have any silly dot on his cheek. We don’t believe in superstitions, do we, Adi?’

A man appeared on the corridor. Oja rose from the floor and eased the large wrinkles on her starched sari. She joined her palms and smiled at the man as he stood beside them. He was a stout, harrowed-looking man with thick muddled hair, and his shirt was slipping out of his trousers. He shook hands with Adi.

‘You were brilliant,’ he said. ‘I am Anil Luthra,’ he told Ayyan, as he extended his hand. ‘My son is in the tenth standard. Amit, his name is. I had only heard about your son. Today, I saw him in action.’

‘He is just a little boy fooling around, really,’ Ayyan said.

‘Don’t be modest … sorry, what is your name?’

‘Ayyan.’

‘Ayyan, you are a very lucky man. For a moment out there I thought the school had leaked the questions to him,’ he said, and started laughing to emphasize that it was only a joke. Ayyan laughed sportingly. Luthra gave him his card. It said: ‘Metro Editor,
The Times of India’.
When Ayyan’s card was not forthcoming, he asked pleasantly, ‘And what do you do, Ayyan?’

‘I work in the Institute of Theory and Research.’

‘Oh,’ Luthra said. ‘Jal is a good friend. Jana Nambodri too. I have met Acharya once. Difficult man, isn’t he?’

‘Yes. But he is a good man,’ Ayyan said, because he did not trust strangers.

‘He is, he is,’ Luthra said without conviction. He studied Adi. ‘I am sure this boy is going to be famous very soon. What did he say out there? “I’m eleven. And eleven is a prime number”?’ Luthra laughed.

‘He is obsessed with prime numbers,’ Ayyan said. ‘You know something. He can recite the first thousand prime numbers.’

Oja looked at her son with a grimace.

Luthra became serious. ‘Really?’ he asked.

‘Really. But he is so shy with strangers. I can try to get it out of him though.’

‘This is what I am going to do,’ Luthra said excitedly. ‘Take my mobile number. When you think he is ready to recite the first thousand prime numbers, call me. I will send a reporter. What do you say?’

‘That’s very kind of you.’

In the taxi, Oja asked, ‘What is this pime number?’

‘Prime number,’ Adi corrected, putting his hand on his head. ‘A prime number is a number that is divisible only by itself or one and no other number.’

‘So?’ she asked, looking worried.

‘So nothing.’

‘I don’t understand all this. Tell me, Adi. You know the first thousand prime numbers?’

‘No,’ Adi said.

‘He knows,’ Ayyan said. Adi looked at him and they smiled.

‘What is this sign language you both have?’ she asked angrily. ‘Sometimes you make me feel like a stranger.’

‘I am hungry,’ Adi told his mother. Somehow that consoled her.

H
ER LARGE INSECT
eyes were popping out of their sockets. Her hair was brown in patches, her cheeks puffy and, for some reason, Ayyan was certain that her double chin would feel cold if he touched it. She was in a thin red top through which he could see at least two layers of slips, and that her bra strap was astray. Her light blue jeans were stretched taut over her large tree-trunk thighs. The Feature Writer, as her card proclaimed, was in the discomfort of the peculiar humidity of BDD. She was wiping her face constantly as she sat on one of the two red plastic chairs in the house. Adi was on the other. Oja was not at home. She had gone to see the fourth baby of an aunt. The reason why this was even possible.

A pale, somewhat detached photographer hovered in the background holding a camera.

‘Can we begin?’ Ayyan asked.

The Feature Writer nodded.

Adi was in a smart full-sleeve shirt and black jeans. His lush oiled hair was neatly combed. He looked intelligent and beautiful. The earpiece of the hearing aid was fixed to the right ear. A white wire ran from the earpiece and disappeared inside his shirt. Ayyan went to his son and playfully ruffled his hair. And gently eased the creases on his shirt. It was then that Ayyan felt a stab of cold fear. What am I doing? This is foolish. Everything is going to go wrong. He felt those familiar acidic vapours rise in his stomach. Until a few moments ago he was so certain that it was all going to be easy. Even when the reporter and the photographer had arrived he had not felt nervous. But it now
struck him that what he was about to do was crazier than he had imagined. The world was stupid, of course, but not so stupid. It was not too late yet to withdraw. He could end it right now. He could tell the reporter that Adi was not feeling very well.

But the fear somehow subsided and the chill in his throat was now the chill of excitement. He had thought carefully about this for many days and he knew in his heart that nothing could go wrong. ‘You look so smart, Adi, Ayyan said. ‘Now show them what you know.’

Ayyan took a few steps back. Adi waited for a little while, and began the recital: ‘Two, three, five, seven, eleven, thirteen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty-three …’

The Feature Writer listened with a keen face. The photographer took some pictures. Ayyan made a gesture to the photographer to suggest that he should not take pictures now. It was very important that the pictures were not shot at this point. Ayyan had not considered the possibility of the photographer jumping the gun, and he kicked himself for overlooking that. It could lead to disaster, Ayyan knew.

Adi went on, occasionally swallowing his saliva but without disrupting the pace of the recital: ‘One seventy-nine, one eighty-one, one ninety-one, one ninety-three, one ninety-seven, one ninety-nine, two hundred and eleven, two twenty-three, two twenty-seven, two twenty-nine …’

The reporter referred to a printed paper. It was a list of the first thousand prime numbers. She was checking if Adi was on the right track. Ayyan heard the clicks of the camera again, but when he turned, the photographer stopped.

Adi went on: ‘Six sixty-one, six seventy-three, six seventy-seven, six eighty-three, six ninety-one, seven hundred and one, seven hundred and nine, seven hundred and nineteen, seven twenty-seven, seven thirty-three …’

The reporter looked at Ayyan and raised her eyebrows.

Adi went a bit faster now: ‘4943, 4951, 4957, 4967, 4969, 4973, 4987, 4993, 4999, 5003 …’ He went on and on like this and
raised his voice as he finally said, ‘7841, 7853, 7867, 7873, 7877, 7879, 7883, 7901, 7907, 7919.’ And he stopped.

The reporter lifted her head from the sheet and clapped.

Adi removed the earpiece and threw a quick glance at his father when he realized his mistake. He put it back. The photographer started clicking.

‘Actually,’ Ayyan said, standing between the photographer and his son, ‘Can I make a request?’ He removed the earpiece from Adi’s ear and pushed it inside the boy’s shirt, ‘Can you take pictures of my son without the earpiece? You see, we don’t want him appearing as though he is handicapped in any way.’

‘I understand,’ the reporter said.

‘Could you please ensure that he does not appear in the paper with the hearing-aid?’

‘Don’t worry about that,’ she said, kindly.

The photographer asked Ayyan to stand by his son. And he started clicking.

‘How many pictures are you going to carry?’ Ayyan asked, somewhat amused.

The photographer did not respond. He continued to click and then stopped abruptly. He put the camera back in his bag and left without a word.

The reporter set her scribbling-pad on her lap, poised a pen in the air and smiled at Adi.

‘You are really brilliant, Aditya,’ she said in English. ‘Can I ask you some questions now?’

Ayyan put the earpiece back in the boy’s good ear. It was a Walkman earpiece, fixed to the shell of the hearing-aid. The Walkman was inside the boy’s shirt, taped to his stomach.

‘Can you hear?’ Ayyan whispered to his son. The boy nodded.

‘I’d like to ask you some questions now, Aditya,’ the reporter said.

‘OK,’ Adi said, gulping down a glass of water.

‘Why are you interested in prime numbers?’

‘Prime numbers are unpre … unpredictable. So I like prime numbers.’

‘How are you able to recite all these numbers, so easily, from memory?’

The boy lifted his finger as though to point to the earpiece. Then he started giggling. ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

‘What are your future plans?’

Adi shrugged and looked at his father. ‘He is very shy, you know,’ Ayyan said.

‘What do you want to become?’ the reporter asked, ignoring Ayyan.

Adi looked at his father again and giggled coyly.

‘He is not very easy to talk to,’ Ayyan said. ‘I can answer for him, if that makes it easier for you.’

She considered the offer.

‘About a year ago,’ Ayyan said anyway, his voice soft and conspiratorial, ‘When I was teaching him numbers, I observed that he was seeing patterns. He would select numbers like three, five, seven, eleven and tell me that he liked them. I later realized that he felt that way about all prime numbers. How he began to identity prime numbers is a mystery to me.’

I
N THE GLOW
of the morning light that illuminated the flies, people stood with their little buckets in two silent lines. Even though they never spoke English here, when they stood like this every morning, they regarded themselves as Ladies and Gents. The two arched windows high above the common toilets, some of their glass broken long before the memories of these people began, were ablaze in a blinding light as if God were about to communicate. Ayyan arrived at the end of the gents’ line, in loose shorts and an oversized T-shirt, holding a blue bucket and
The Times of India.
A man who was ahead in the line spotted him and said, ‘I saw the article today.’ Slowly, heads turned, and the news went round that Adi had now appeared in
The Times of India.

Portions of the toilet queues disintegrated and people gathered around Ayyan whose copy of the newspaper was now unfurled. At the bottom of the ninth page was an article that said, ‘Boy Genius Can Recite First Thousand Primes’. There was a striking photograph of Adi, beaming. In the picture, he was wearing what looked like a hearing-aid. When Ayyan had seen the item in the morning he had silently cursed the reporter and the photographer. But nobody noticed that Adi was wearing the earpiece of the hearing-aid on his right ear, the good ear. Not even Oja. It was not an easy thing to spot.

Some women set their buckets on the floor and jostled to get closer to the paper. ‘But I don’t understand what the boy has done,’ someone said.

So, in the faint stench of urine, shit and chlorine, and in the
enchanting illumination of morning light, Ayyan explained what prime numbers were. And the people of the toilet queues looked at the father of the genius with incomprehension, affection and respect. Mothers asked him what they should do to make their children half as bright, what must they teach, what must they feed? Was Lady’s Finger really good for maths? Should boys be allowed to play cricket? Then matters moved beyond Adi.

‘Another offer has come from a builder,’ a man said. ‘What is your suggestion, Mani? Should we sell?’

‘How much?’

‘I hear he is offering twelve lakhs for a flat.’

‘We should sell,’ Ayyan said. ‘We should sell and leave this place. We should live in proper flats. How long must our children live in this hell?’

‘But we are used to this, aren’t we?’

‘Our lives, my friend, are over. For our children, we must move.’