Serious Men

was right. He admitted that the Earth goes around the Sun. He was a good man.’
    Nambodri left the room with a melancholy smile, thinking ofthe charming old conflicts he was never a part of. That smile, Acharya knew, was the summary of all men who stay out of fierce enchanting battles because they want to build their place in the world through the deceptions of good public relations.

A YYAN MANI ALMOST sprinted up the steep colonial stairway of Block Number Forty-One carrying a plastic bag which had two caps for Adi and prawn fry that was still hot. The faint smell of prawns made his stomach rumble and he was in a hurry to get home, but he stopped on the first floor when he saw the outsiders. Two girls in smallish T-shirts and fitted jeans, and a tall reptilian boy were surrounded by the tiny women who lived on that floor. ‘The morons have come again?’ Ayyan asked a man who was going down to drink.
    These three were among the pubescent scholars of International Board schools who landed occasionally in the name of social work to add a glow to their imminent applications to American schools. They brought food for children, pens for illiterate old men (who hated them) and generally tried to empower the women. They often wandered around the corridors, knocking on random doors. Once they told Oja that she should, ‘share responsibilities’ with her husband and make him wash clothes and cook some days.
    Ayyan stood at the edge of the small crowd and studied the scholars. Their faces were so lit by good breeding; they were so distinct, so large. This time the saviours were here to influence women to send their children to English-medium schools. They were also running a campaign to convert all municipality schools into English-medium. When the women noticed Ayyan they smiled at him.
    ‘His son goes to a good school,’ a woman said pointing to him. The two reformist girls looked at him and smiled approvingly. He wanted to slap them really hard.
    ‘You came in a Honda Accord?’ he asked anxiously.
    ‘No,’ one of the girls said, ‘it’s a Lancer.’
    ‘Yes, yes. That’s the car. The boys are scratching it and trying to break the windows.’
    ‘Oh my gaad,’ the girls yelped together. ‘Where is the bloody driver?’ one screamed. They ran to the stairs. The boy ran behind them.
    Ayyan looked at the crowd of women through a moment of silence and they all burst out laughing.
    ‘Why do you stand like this and listen to those fools?’ he asked.
    ‘Timepass,’ someone said, wiping her tears, and they shook again with seismic laughter.
    He was confused when Oja Mani opened the door and asked him sternly, ‘Did you read the full story?’ The question was meant for Adi, who was standing near the gas-stove looking exasperated. Oja was in the middle of interrogating her son. She had bought a comic book for him to ensure that he read something normal, something far more ordinary than the fat reverential books that his father was encouraging him to read. She was worried that her son was becoming abnormal. She had seen him on the terrace last evening, standing aloof during a cricket match. She had encroached into the notional pitch and asked the boys to let him bat. They looked at her confused and then ignored her. Adi, from the fringes of the game, had made an embarrassed face asking her to leave. The fear of raising a strange genius was eating her for some time. It had inspired her this evening to buy him a
Tinkle
comic even though it cost twenty rupees. After just a few minutes of sitting with it near the fridge, Adi had declared that he had finished reading it. She did not believe him.
    ‘Did you read the full story?’ she asked again, pointing to
Tinkle.
The smell of prawn fry distracted her for a moment and she threw a foul look at her husband because she took outside food as a direct affront. Adi came to his father sniffing like a dog.
    ‘Praan,’
he said.
    Oja dragged him away from his father and looked at him severely. ‘Tell me the truth,’ she said. ‘Did you read the whole story?’
    Adi made a tired face at his father, pleading for rescue with his large eyes, and said, ‘Yes, I read it’.
    ‘So fast?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘What happens in the end?’
    ‘There are many stories. Which end do you want?’
    ‘What happens in the end of the end?’
    ‘Don’t confuse me.’
    ‘Tell me, Adi, what happens in the end of the last story.’
    Adi took off his hearing-aid and shut his good ear with