Serious Men

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 abouthim. 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