The Benefit Season (8 page)

Auntie has poured two stiff Jack Daniels,
finished hers, refilled it quickly and turns to me and says,’
happiness!’

We drink to that; Aarti toasts with a glass
of water.

Auntie walks over to the window, throws it
open, leans against the wall and digs out a pack of cigarettes from
deep within her gown and lights up. ‘You don’t look like you
smoke’, she says, blowing the smoke out the window. ’Or drink’.

I hold up the shot and gulp it down,
grimacing as it scorches down.

‘
What a fine couple you
two make’, auntie says, ’fine, healthy, beautiful kids with no bad
habits. Your parents have done fine by you. How’s your mom
doing?’

‘
She’s well. A bit
lonely.’

Khosla, auntie, and my mom, all of them are
alone now: a gaggle of widowers and widows. I wonder how come she
knows this much about me.

‘
When are you planning to
ask for Aarti’s hand in marriage’, auntie asks me
disarmingly.

‘
Auntie’, Aarti screams,
‘don’t ambush the poor thing’.

‘
Okay, fine, I’ll ask
later then’, auntie entreats, ‘but Aarti talks about you all the
time. Not just now, or recently, but ever since she was a toddler
visiting me during her vacations. Inseparable, you two, haven’t you
been?’

Aarti looks over at me and gives my hand a
squeeze while I blush.

‘
Even her papa talks about
you quite a lot.’

It’s my turn to ask for a shot now, after
this blow. I wonder what choice expletives the old rogue has used
for me. I try to recall his favorite terms of endearment for me;
surprisingly nothing comes to the befuddled mind presently. I
wonder why she let me take her niece out after what the old man
would have said about me.

‘
He’s pretty fond of you,
it seems, and proud too. He calls you a self-made man, and says you
are the son he never had.’

I am stupefied. I nearly choke on the drink
but control myself. And all this, while I believe the grand old
fool thinks I am an abomination to him and to his, and a dodgy
contender for inheriting the kingdom of god.

‘
He’s not one for wearing
his affections on his sleeve’, I mutter.

‘
He’s a gruff old man,
with little use for useless form. All bark no bite’, auntie says. ‘
He didn’t hesitate one bit when I told him Aarti was going out for
dinner with you. He said he trusts you completely with his
daughter’.

To be fair to the old man, he packs a fair
punch with his vocabulary, especially when it concerns directly
addressing me with a certain sense of endearment. On my back
however, he seems to be a doting chief. How could I have been so
blind to his charms, beats me fair and square? Aarti is already
giggling, seeing my mortified expression. This one night has been
too much for both of us, and I feel it is well nigh brought to a
satisfactory conclusion; as I cannot handle any more heavens opened
and revelations beheld.

I rise, and bidding goodbye to the ladies,
beat a weary retreat.

ϖ

Chapter 5

The Twelfth Man

“
May the Twelfth Man save
the game…”

(Anonymous)

I have just rolled into office and knocked
the groaning, hung-over guy in the next cabin with a crushed paper
ball when I receive Monal’s summons through her nerdy assistant,
who I believe has been lurking in the dark corners, timing me. I
wonder if Monal sleeps in the office, with her assistant that is.
They are always in before you, no matter when you blow in. I
hastily dig Aarti’s photo out of my satchel and place it in a
corner after clearing the muck on my crammed desk. I skate on the
shiny floor to Monal’s office, knocking a sheaf of papers off a
tall girl’s hands.

‘
You have fine taste
indeed, Mr. Pasricha’, the back of her head says.

I smoothen the pleats of my tailored,
bourgeois trousers with my palms and find nothing remarkable in
them: no genie to be awakened there. ‘ I can’t afford fine taste
ma’am’.

‘
I was referring to women-
your taste in women- not clothes’.

‘
Ah, that.’ The
Mr. Pasricha
has come
back; am I relieved, or am I disappointed- I’m not sure. But I did
expect things to be taken to another level- of comfort zone- I’m
happily engaged, you might recall. With her it’s a roller coaster
ride; one moment you are on a high, the next, you’re in a
free-fall.

‘
Are we resting on our
laurels, Mr. Pasricha? Done, are we? The new lands; no more to be
found?’

To be frank, I thought so. But I manage a
faint, ’ no ma’am’.

‘
Well then?’ She raises a
brow at my reflection in the window. I don’t notice when she moves
away; I am still staring at the window when she snaps her fingers
at me from her chair; ‘ I am here now’, she says.

There are some other things I haven’t
noticed as well. For one, there is a seedy character sitting on a
sofa in the far corner of Monal’s office. And two, there is a
seedier character sitting to the left of the first party.

‘
Sit you down’, she
commands and tosses a folder across at me. ’ Do you know who he
is’?

I nod. He’s the captain of the India
under-19 team, who has just returned from a world cup victory at
South Africa. He is a known punisher of the ball and his average
run rate has been in the order of a couple of centuries. He is a
tempest come at the crease and his ways at the slips are of the
whirlwind. He rebukes the bowlers, dries up their wickets and
brings the floods of chastised balls to the stands. He is my man.
He is Mukut Chand, whom I have been chasing unsuccessfully for the
last several weeks. He is guarded over by an overzealous uncle who
won’t let the boy out of his sight for one unearthly wink. Nor will
he deign to speak to agents of commerce like me. The uncle has
carefully quarantined the boy from all social contact, and hoards
him like grain in a famine. The company had assigned me to secure
the boy’s promising future, and interminably entwine it with
theirs. So far, the boy has evaded contact.

‘
Where are we on this
case?’ Monal wishes to know.

‘
The boy has no cell
phone, no landline numbers, and he’s never alone. Even at the nets.
He has this uncle; coach of some kind in a village school; who
trails him like a shadow, and won’t let anyone come near
him.

‘
Now why would anyone do
that?’

‘
Grapevine says that the
elder sibling, also a promising athlete, also in the care of the
alleged uncle, was lured away a long time ago with the promise of a
bright future by agents like myself and ultimately, unable to
handle the freedom of choice, the boy succumbed to the lure of
bedazzling city lights and the weaknesses of the flesh, to find an
early end in a sad gutter after a massive drug overdose. Now the
uncle, apparently wracked by guilt, is in no mood to offer up the
second brother also to the gluttonous ways of the city; hence the
seclusion.’

‘
Can’t we buy him or
something? Everyman has a price’.

‘
I believe the man to be
above frivolous considerations such as money. He truly believes he
can serve only one master, and god it is. And he finds it hard to
invest his trust in city men- wily creations of god- in these
difficult times’.

‘
If he doesn’t need money,
there must be something else’.

‘
It’s not that he doesn’t
need money. I’m given to understand, by most reliable men in the
know, that his fiduciary situation is far from being worthy of
emulation. He seems to be deeply in the clutches of an unscrupulous
lender of monies in his village- bondage- we might say’.

‘
See- such things still
happen. What’s holding us back then? Can’t we work around the man’s
morals somehow? If he doesn’t come to the phone, what’s stopping
you from hauling your sweet posterior to where he lives, or works,
or trains?’

‘
I’ve tried that as well
ma’am, several times. I’ve bribed the housekeeping, the cable
company, the security and earned an unlawful entry at great risk to
myself into his personal abode on several occasions, and pitched;
pitched resolutely when he was showering, pitched shamelessly when
he was sleeping, and pitched even when he was awake; but he has
always managed to give me the slip, by raising the alarm, by
escaping on the terrace, and even by spraying red chilies in ‘em
eyes.’

‘
Then what is the
option?’

The slippery characters, two in number, lean
in for a hushed discussion. They reach a conclusion and draw in
Monal for congress.

‘
Why don’t you reach out
to them in the dressing room or the player’s gallery? It’ll be hard
for the old man to make himself scarce when a match is going on and
his protégé is out there in the field by himself.’

‘
Regrettably ma’am, I’m
not entitled to enter the sanctum of the gods of cricket in various
states of undress’.

‘
Gentlemen here, will take
care of that’, she says, obviously referring to noone in
particular. As I look around for gentlemen in bewilderment, she
motions with her eyes to the two scoundrels on the sofa as being
the object of her affections at the moment.

‘
Fine then, in there I
think he will have a hard time with his disappearing
act’.

‘
Exactly what we meant!
This man has just made it to the India XI. The IPL auctions are a
couple of weeks away. We have every reason to believe’; the two
wagon-robbers nod in unison; ’that this boy is sure to be put away
for a princely ransom of a couple of crores. And then the
endorsements will flood in like the wrath of god, drying up the
riverbeds and turning the deserts into green whatnots. And sweet 30
% of all that reparation will be ours. And I want to be there when
it happens, and I want you to make it happen for us’, she
says.

‘
Am I given to understand
that I have some leeway in making an offer to the uncle?

‘
Let him name a price. And
if you swing this: a penthouse, a sports car, a promotion etc.
await you. Take it as your trousseau from my side‘, she
chuckles.

‘
Take it as done. Done it
is’, I reply.

ϖ

The next morning the two
iffy blokes are honking at the gates, to haul me to the Wankhede
Stadium, India XI dressing room. They slip around my neck an ID
card that says I’m a press photographer. One of them has an ID of a
sports injury specialist and the other is some sort of media
coordinator. They breeze me through the pearly gates with the
smiling guards, whose grins get wider as notes are stuffed into
their pockets, and plant me in the midst of a jam-packed dressing
room. I sit around and observe. It’s unlike any dressing room that
I have seen, and I have seen plenty in my short-lived career as a
track and field guy. There are more officials than teammates in the
room. Everyone is on the phone. Noone is gathered round in
discussion on strategy, no coach is giving a last minute advice,
noone is in prayer and surely noone seems to be in need of a pep
talk. The senior players aren’t listening to the captain, the
captain isn’t listening to the coach, and noone has anything to say
to the junior players, who are huddling in a corner and hoping they
have a lucky outing. The physio is stretching the nutritionist who
is cramped after sitting still for hours on the couch watching TV.
She in turn is telling him what to avoid to get rid of that paunch
he’s getting for want of anything to do. My two escorts are busy
speaking in sign language with the seniors, and taking instructions
on their cell phones. It is more like a stock market than a place
that grants privacy and room for contemplation to sportsmen engaged
in grueling combat. I spot my man Chand sitting quietly in the far
corner, listening to his uncle read from what I assume is the Gita.
I head over to their corner.

‘
Hello uncle’, I fold my
hands in Namaste.

From instinct the uncle rises to make a dash
for the door but stalls when he realizes there is no getting away
from me this time.

‘
Who let you in?’ he looks
around for help from any quarter to evict my unlawful intrusion but
finds noone is interested in us. ‘So you are a journalist now! God
save the press corps!’

I figure it’s high time I gave up the
aggressive salesman pitch and stopped making him feel cornered. I
grab his hand holding the Gita and put it on my head. ‘Uncle
please; swear on the Gita that you will give me just five minutes
of your time’.

‘
You stubborn fool! All
right! Spout your lies and deception’ he says. Chand grins
widely.

‘
Uncle’, I begin’, ‘please
tell me what have you got against me’.

‘
You rich city guys will
never understand what a poor man’s life in a village is. Then
what’s the point?’

‘
Uncle, I am neither rich
nor a city guy. I am a poor man without a father; trying to stand
on my two feet, like Mukut here. But unlike him I am not lucky
enough to have the support of a wonderful uncle like you. So please
discard those ideas from your mind that I belong to some other
world.’

The old man melts somewhat. He seems open to
hearing me out.

‘
Please tell me what is
worrying you.’ I place the Gita on my head. ‘I swear, that we mean
the very best for your boy here’.

The man stares at his sandaled feet and
struggles with his thoughts; finally he looks up and says,’ I am
afraid my boy will be taken away from me. I made a promise to his
father, my elder brother, god bless his soul he’s no more. I broke
that promise once and I lost Mukut’s elder brother to the ways of
the city. I cannot now afford to lose the last of his sons, and the
last of our hopes.’