The next two papers were a blur. He managed to get four hours of sleep over two days, collapsing at his desk and then violently springing awake at the piercing scream of the alarm. Mrs Bala wondered how the coffee was getting over so quickly. She solved the mystery when she saw Rishabh bouncing off the walls of his room.
‘Did you sleep at all?’ she asked.
‘Yes, Mumma,’ lied Rishabh, his pupils pinball-ing in their sockets.
Each exam was equally exhausting. Though he wore a watch, he never managed to pace himself properly, always scribbling in long, incoherent scrawls until the paper was snatched from him. During the chemistry exam, he held on to the paper, writing desperately, even as Pillai Miss tugged and pulled at it with all her might. He only let go when the answer sheet threatened to get ripped apart.
The fourth exam was physics. Studying a subject he despised while being critically low on sleep tested his resolve. Yet he ploughed on, rubbing his eyes, splashing icy water on his face, pumping his system with dark brown coffee. The next day, even a bath couldn’t wash the tiredness off his face. I’m going to be happier on the other side of this paper, he consoled himself.
He sat at his desk and stared vacantly at the blackboard. His mind raced through the phrasing of definitions as he double-checked if he remembered them. The bell rang, the nervous chattering ceased. Bobde handed out the question papers, and Rishabh received his with trepidation. He slapped it on the desk and rapidly scanned it for questions that seemed familiar, but there were none. It was the oddest physics paper he had ever received. He didn’t know a single thing on it; in fact, not a single thing he had studied was on it.
He searched frantically for questions on light (refraction, reflection, lenses), energy, force, electricity, magnetism, at least Ohm’s law . . . but instead he found that he was being asked to write code and explain functions and define constructors. Finally, his eyes slid to the top of the paper. ‘Subject: Computers,’ it said.
To say the world swam in front of Rishabh Bala would be an understatement. The world did the freestyle, butterfly and even the backstroke before coming to a stop. Rishabh, in his heightened sense of panic, heard every sound around him: the squeaking of the rotating fans, the agitated scrawling of pens, the swishing of Bobde’s dangling foot. They drove him mad. This can’t be, he thought.
He glanced at Puro across the room, who felt Rishabh’s eyes on him and looked up. Helplessness was written all over his face. ‘Sorry,’ he mouthed. Rishabh flared up. He shouldn’t have trusted Puro with the timetable! He should have taken it down himself. How could he have made such a mistake? Puro was prone to clumsiness, ditziness and irresponsibility—everyone knew that. It had always been hilarious. But not any more. These moments flashed in front of Rishabh’s eyes and he saw them for what they were: immature stupidity, a kind of fatal foolishness that bred failure and despair. They were both going to flunk this paper, and all for what? Puro’s silly mistake of wrongly copying the timetable and Rishabh’s even sillier mistake of copying it from Puro.
There was no time for anger now, Rishabh reasoned. He still had to attempt answering the questions. Buckling down, he strained his memory, trying to recall any useful scrap of information. In his mind, the computer classes were a disjointed mass of reminiscences, mainly about the illegally downloaded football clips that were distributed across the network. He tried summoning what Vishala Miss had said about functions, but all he remembered was how annoying her voice had sounded. He also vividly recalled the hum of the ACs, the antiseptic smell of the room and the chill in his forearms, but about the subject itself he remembered nothing.
So he faffed his way through the questions, fusing half-remembered garble with invented wisdom, even shoehorning in his physics knowledge for good measure. When Vishala Nath would eventually go through his paper, she’d be appalled by how little he knew but also secretly impressed by his brave effort at bullshitting. The way he had weaved Ohm’s law into iterations was truly admirable.
When the exam ended, Rishabh was the first one out of the room.
‘Rishabh!’ called Puro. ‘I’m sorry, re!’
Rishabh didn’t turn around. He was fuming. Puro ran up behind him, struggling to hold on to his writing pad, pencil box, the question paper and bag. He touched Rishabh on the shoulder, who shrugged him off.
‘Fuck you,’ said Rishabh. The menace in his voice stopped Puro in his tracks. He stood still and watched Rishabh stalk down the corridor.
There was no time to feel despondent. Three more excruciating papers awaited their attention. The only consolation was that Rishabh was prepared for the actual physics paper. Puro tried apologizing again. He called Rishabh’s home and was told he was studying. Before each paper, Rishabh brushed him off and after the bell rang, shot off before Puro even got out of his seat.
The final paper was Hindi. Rishabh was so sleep-deprived by this point that he wrote his roll number for his name and his phone number for his roll number. Pinto was not happy about giving him a fresh supplement. As with every paper, it came down to the very last second. His fingers were numb with scribbling; he had to shake his wrist to get the blood flowing again. Finally, the exams were done. He could sleep. He sat back in his seat and dreamed of his bed.
When he looked up again, Puro was standing over his desk. Rishabh got up to leave.
‘Here, take this,’ Puro said solemnly and placed a rolled-up tube of paper on the desk.
Rishabh unrolled the paper. It was the poster of Ronaldinho that used to be stuck on Puro’s wall. Rishabh could see it was freshly taken down. The poster had peeled where the tape had held it up. It was one of Puro’s prized possessions, a poster of his favourite star. Rishabh frowned. He wanted to be angry with Puro, but he couldn’t muster it any more. It pissed him off that he couldn’t be more pissed off.
‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘It’s fine.’
‘I’m sorry, bro.’
‘I know. Forget it, it was a mistake. What’s done is done.’
‘So we’re still friends?’
‘Of course.’
Puro darted his eyes to the poster and lingered on it.
‘You can have this back.’
‘You sure you don’t want it?’ said Puro a little too eagerly.
‘Definitely.’
‘Definitely want it or definitely don’t want it?’
‘Definitely don’t want it. If it were Beckham, I would have kept it . . .’
‘Ah,’ said Puro, relieved. He rolled up the poster and carefully slid it back in his bag in record time. ‘But I have something you’d definitely want.’ He thrust a hand inside his pocket, rummaged about and then pulled out a small chit.
‘It’s a little late for copying.’
‘Copy this!’
Puro held up the chit. Scribbled on it was a number. Rishabh looked at it quizzically and then waggled his eyebrows.
‘Guess whose?’
Rishabh squinted. Then his eyes widened. ‘It’s her number?’ he yelled. People turned to look. He dropped his voice. ‘It’s Tamanna’s?’
‘Her landline it is, my boy.’
‘How’d you get this?’
‘I have my sources.’
‘Krupa?’
Puro nodded sheepishly.
‘This is amazing!’ said Rishabh. The exhilaration had left him feeling fresh and wide-eyed.
‘I knew you’d like it.’
‘How many exams do I have to fail to get her address?’
‘Fuck you.’
September 2006
‘I’VE NEVER BEEN to school on a Saturday,’ said Puro.
‘Me neither,’ said Rishabh.
The first weekend of September was here. The exams were a distant and mostly suppressed memory. The textbooks had been cast aside and the studs had been brought back into circulation. The tournament they had been preparing for all term was finally about to begin. It was going to be an intense weekend of football, and the boys hoped that when they returned
to school on Monday, they would be doing so as champions.
The two turned the corner and saw the expansive ground in front of them. In the grey light of the cloudy September sky, it looked lush, inviting and, most importantly, familiar. Dattatreya, the portly groundsman, was bent over as he put the finishing touches to the white lines on the pitch. He huffed with every step and adjusted his interrupting paunch to extend his reach. On the sidelines and all along the giant steps swarmed boys from the participating teams. They seemed enamoured by the ground and intimidated by the infrastructure. Rishabh had never felt prouder of the imposing three-storey facade of the school—of its towering beams and columns, of the high standards of cleanliness it boasted—as he was when he saw these outsiders ogling at it. He realized what a difference it made to play a tournament at home—where you knew the surface of the ground, were acquainted with its bumps and patches, had spent years shooting at and missing its white posts. It inspired a kind of love that Rishabh didn’t think he could feel for a patch of land.
‘Aye, you two! Where were you?’ snarled the coach when he spotted them loitering near the cash counters—windows where the accountants of the school sat and collected the fees. The area was better known as the ‘vasooli zone’.
‘Sir, we couldn’t get a rickshaw,’ said Puro.
‘And we’re only five minutes late,’ added Rishabh.
‘Late is late, remember? If you hadn’t done all this fashion, maybe you would have come on time.’
The coach was referring to the windcheater-jeans-and-skullcap look that Rishabh was sporting and the wrist-chain-beanie-flip-flops-and-baggy-jeans ensemble that Puro was carrying off. The coach had an odd quirk: while he was avant-garde and brave on the pitch, off it he was a conservative middle-aged man with no regard for the sartorial needs of the modern footballer.
‘Yes, sir . . .’ said Rishabh.
‘What “yes, sir”? Idiot. Go and change.’
They turned on their heels to head back to where they had come from.
‘Not there. Go to 5 A. That is the changing room for you boys for the whole tournament,’ said Mehfouz Noorani with his back to the two and his eyes trained on the ground.
‘Sir . . . we have . . . a changing room?’ Rishabh gaped at the coach.
‘I said something different or what? Go to 5 A. Full team is already there.’
‘Sorry, sir. Going, sir,’ said Rishabh.
They darted into the nearest entrance and found that 5 A was the first classroom on the left. Puro shoved open the door and was greeted with a mighty uproar as the team were in various stages of undress. It turned into a boisterous welcome when they saw it was just Puro and Rishabh.
‘Dressing room!’ said Rahul with a happy glint in his eye as they made their way in. ‘Like Chelsea.’
‘Yeah, because Chelsea players change in fifth standard classrooms, no?’ Dave rolled his eyes.
‘Arre, at least it’s better than the toilets,’ reasoned Floyd.
‘I swear,’ said Bhupi, who had once fallen into a urinal while struggling to put on his shin pads. ‘I hate changing there.’
‘Good to change without holding my breath,’ added Oza.
‘That phenyl smell. Ugh.’ Rakshit retched.
‘And the urine,’ said Bhupi.
‘You would know,’ said Rishabh.
‘Change, change!’ thundered Puro, knowing that a re-enactment of Bhupi’s tumble was in the offing.
They sat kitted up—the coach had commissioned a new kit that matched their measurements—nervously tapping their feet. Rishabh’s stomach was flipping around like a paratha on a tawa. Let’s go, let’s get out there, he thought. He couldn’t it take any longer, sitting around with fourteen other jittery souls. The room had grown stuffy with the tense energy escaping their bodies.
Finally, the door creaked open and Ghadge Sir stuck his large head in. ‘Phootball team! Coach is calling you. Come phasht.’
Puro sprang up from the table on which he had been perched. He clapped his hands rapturously. ‘Okay, boys! Time to go! Up, up!’
The boys began barking and hollering as they filed out, their cries echoing through the empty school.
The coach met them at the edge of the ground. He waited with crossed arms for them to rally around him. Then he said in a low rumble, ‘Rehearsal time is over. Now it is time for the show. Are you ready?’
They woofed back.
‘Good. I also think you’re ready. I wanted you to train last week even, but the bloody exams . . . Anyway, we have the best chance to win. You have trained like champions.’
Rishabh’s lips involuntarily parted in a smile. Every chin was pointed skyward.
‘Now, the first draw has been announced, and it’s good for us. You are playing Bodhi. I will tell you only one thing: don’t be arrogant. You might think they are weak or stupid, but give them respect . . . and give your full best on the pitch.’ Then the coach proceeded to name his team and dismissed them to start warming up.
When they set eyes on the boys from Bodhi Deenanath High School, they finally understood the coach’s disclaimer. The Bodhi players didn’t have a kit. In fact, by the looks of it, they didn’t even have clothes. They were huddled together at the other end of the ground, wearing white banyans and uncoordinated shorts. A bunch of them didn’t even have shoes. They had shown up in bathroom slippers. The sight of them repulsed Rishabh. They looked pathetic—more to be pitied than to be pitted against.
But a draw was a draw, and when the referee called for the captains, Rishabh grew grim. This was their best chance to win a cup, and they had to make the best possible start. Looking at the Banyan boys, Rishabh felt like fate was on their side.
The Banyan boys are abysmal. They play worse than they look. They clearly don’t have or know any tactics, getting hypnotized by the ball as they follow it in a flock.
A portly boy is inexpertly marking Rishabh. The name Ajinkya is written on his back in orange chalk. He is a keen conversationalist. ‘You have a very nice school,’ he says, stomping around in the mud in his slippers.
‘Thanks,’ replies Rishabh. The ball is with Tejas, who’s doing step-overs while two Banyan boys look on in admiration.
‘We are from Bhiwandi,’ continues the boy.
‘That’s nice.’
‘Only English-medium school in Bhiwandi,’ he says with pride.
‘Congratulations.’
Puro gets the ball. He steams ahead. Rishabh is well acquainted with that searching look on his face. He tears down the flank, hollering for Puro to notice him.
‘Oye, where are you going?’ yells his marker.
Rishabh receives the ball and tries to angle a shot in, but it goes wide. The crowd lets out an ‘Ooooh!’
Ajinkya finally pants to a stop. ‘You are too fast, yaar. Next time, go little slower.’ Rishabh lets out a hollow, mirthless laugh and jogs to the halfway line.
The first half is frustrating for Sanghvi. They boast of almost all the possession but can’t seem to convert in the final third of the pitch. Some kind of voodoo keeps deflecting their shots, smashing them against defenders and sending them inches wide from the goal. Rahul finds himself in space and lets rip a vicious strike only to see the ball ricochet off the left post.
‘Post number one!’ yells Rishabh.
Over the course of their training, Rahul has developed a rare disease. Once in every match, he unfailingly smashes the ball into the frame of the goalpost. The team has placed bets on how many times he will strike the posts during this tournament. Rishabh’s guess is five, and he is fastidiously keeping track.
The half ends. The Banyan boys are chirping in delight. They’ve managed to hold on. The Sanghvites are shaking their heads as they walk off the pitch.
The coach was uncharacteristically calm. He told them to sit down and jiggle their calves. ‘It’s a strange problem, but it is happening: you boys are trying too hard. You are so desperate to score that it is not happening. And when it is
not happening, you are getting shaken up. Just relax. Enjoy the game. It is on your ground. No tension. Just play like we always play here. Meaning, just become loose. Look at your opponents, just watch them—’
The boys turned to look at the Bodhi lads. They were squatting a little distance away, happily chatting and chomping on sandwiches and sipping from water bottles. They didn’t have a coach or even the desire to get back to finish the match. But their free and easy attitude felt enviable to the agitated Sanghvi boys.
‘Not a care in the world,’ continued the coach. ‘Just go out there and enjoy yourselves. Goals will come. There is no sense in winning if you don’t feel good about winning. Understand?’
It starts with Dave, who announces before kick-off, ‘If you don’t score in the next five minutes, I’m leaving the goal and going in attack. I’ve forgotten what the ball looks like.’ They laugh. But the minutes tick by and they still haven’t shaken off their stiffness. Then, just as they feel the irritation creeping back in, Puro thunders a low, speculative shot from seventy-five feet out. It’s a stunning strike—the kind that is born only when talent meets frustration. The net ripples, and the Sanghvi boys whoop with relief.
The minute they score, the Banyan boys appear deflated. All their pluck and cheer desert them. They start scampering around, trying to play harder, but end up opening up more space for Sanghvi to attack. The chances come thick and fast, just like the falling rain. Soon Rishabh launches the ball from the right, which finds Rahul, who strokes the ball in. 2–0.
‘Nice kick, re,’ says Ajinkya.
Rishabh nods in appreciation.
‘How much you got your shoes for?’
‘I don’t know . . . some 3000 bucks.’
Ajinkya’s eyes widen. He glances at his slippers. ‘What does your father do?’
‘What?’
‘He must be in a good position, no?’
‘Yeah, he’s vice president of a company.’
‘Okay, okay . . . Look, look, ball is coming!’
Rishabh turns to see that Bhupi has scudded the ball down the line. Rishabh canters forward to meet it. Ajinkya puts up a valiant chase, but suddenly Rishabh sees him drop away from the corner of his eye. He delivers a cross that Tejas sends wide. Turning, he finds that Ajinkya has stopped tracking him because his slipper has come off. He’s hunting for it in the muck.
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