Serious Men

maverick mind of Acharya might see the charm in a little boy asking for a chance, but the absurdity of his request had just sunk in and he felt a bit foolish. In fact, Ayyan did not really want Adi to take the test. The boy, obviously, would not have the faintest hope of passing it. What he wanted was the news of the juvenile being allowed to attempt one of the toughest tests in the country to travel for a day in the newspapers, and probably on the television channels, and create one last festive commotion in his home and in the toilet queues.
    The Joint Entrance Test (also called JET) exuded the terror of an excruciatingly selective screening process. But it also had the peculiar aura of art. It was a three-hour, objective-type test that carried about a hundred questions, broadly divided into physics, chemistry and maths.
    Of the ten thousand candidates who sat the JET every year, two hundred would be shortlisted for interviews, half of them fated to make it — fifty in the postgraduate courses and fifty in research positions. How the JET question-paper was set, how it was printed, stored and eventually distributed to the exam centres, was a closely guarded secret known only to the old hands. Ayyan knew some bits of the secret. He even knew how tomake a small hole in the fortress of security systems that were built around the question-paper. The weak brick in the otherwise impenetrable walls was, improbably, a modest bill-file stored in a lockless steel cupboard in the accounts department. Unknowingly, Ayyan began to doodle the ramparts of a fort on his scribbling-pad and then the images of a siege. Finally, he drew a crow flying away from the fort holding something in its beak. A phone rang on his table, and he was shaken out of his daydream. As he took the call, he wondered why he was thinking of the JET question-paper.
    It preoccupied him the whole afternoon and made him fear that he was getting obsessed with an insane idea. But in the evening, when Acharya gave him the handwritten letter for Adi, his fever began to subside. It was now confirmed. Adi would not take the test. By the time Ayyan entered the perpetual laments of the BDD chawls, his nefarious excitement had died away without a trace.
    In the inner reaches of BDD, there was a festive spirit that evening. Ayyan realized that all heads on the broken cobbled pathways were turned in one direction. Children were sprinting to where the elders were gawking. Near Block Thirty-Three, a crude stage had been erected. A small crowd was gathering near it. Huge speakers were piled on both sides of the stage. Some men were stringing fairylights between two lamp-posts. There was a sudden roar from the crowd. A thin, spirited boy had just walked on to the stage. He was wearing black leather trousers and a black shirt with gleaming silver dots. He took his position at the centre of the stage. His back was to the audience and his legs were parted. That suggested breakdance.
    The boy stood waiting for the music to begin. The crowd grew. The boy turned and looked unhappily at his friends near the stage who were having a problem with the sound system. They somehow always did before a breakdance. Ayyan had seen this a thousand times – a boy in leather trousers standing with his back to the audience, legs parted and waiting sheepishly for themusic to start. But this time, the wait was brief. Portentous drum-beats filled the night. The boy’s hips began to sway. And he stretched his hands sideways. From the tip of his left hand, a wave began and moved like a violent fit towards his shoulder and then to his right hand, and was about to return the same way when the music died abruptly. His hands fell. He parted his legs again and waited.
    Ayyan resumed his walk home. From the shadows emerged a drunkard in loose shorts and a T-shirt that said ‘Smart’, and loose shorts.
    ‘Mani,’ the drunk said. Even though the man was swaying in a personal gale that only a mixture of rum and egg-roast could unleash, there was something deep and strong about his voice. It was an authority that came from another time, when they were just boys and so close and their simple fates seemed interwoven. Ayyan, who usually handled such defeated friends by continuing to walk with nods and murmurs, was forced to stop. ‘Mani,’ the man said, ‘You know what happened to Pandu?’
    Ayyan shook his head. Pandu was the fastest underarm bowler Lower Parel had probably ever seen. That was a long time