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14
A whistle signals
the end of the game.
A second whistle,
the start of the next.
My cousin’s entrance
provokes
looks,
whispers,
gasps,
and not because he
takes
center field as if it’s his kingdom
and everyone else
his lowly pawns.
The reaction is to
his outfit—
the one he wore to play
a sport. Any sport:
Cricket?
Badminton?
Rugby?
And yet, he’s wearing
cleats,
shin pads,
striped socks,
as if the sport
was not a secret
at all.
Not to him.
Standing opposite him—
the gentle breeze to his cyclone—
is my young boy.
His kurta fades into the mass of green,
his legs poking out like two
wilting weeds.
I don’t see Five
until the ball is in play.
until everyone moves.
Everyone except him.
Unlike my young boy,
he doesn’t look unfit.
The opposite.
He looks
made
for the field.
He’s a sheen of
bay coloring
with black points of hair,
and he reminds me of the
Marwari at my riding club.
All power in pause,
and as gentle as a foal,
but if he wanted to,
he could crush you
like a nut.
I part my lips
to argue,
to remind him
he must play.
And yet the fact that he
doesn’t
makes me want to say it even
LOUDER!
Am I really that bad?
A prize not worth winning?
A companion less desirable
than the Grim Reaper himself?
Maybe
for him.
Too bad not
for everyone else.
15
Two minutes into the game,
my cousin scores his first.
No surprise.
He has prepared for this moment
his whole life.
The other girls don’t cheer.
I stay silent, too.
My cousin’s goal
doesn’t help them.
It definitely
doesn’t help me.
Nani doesn’t agree. She breaks my silence
with a clap and a hoot.
Her allegiance—
her direction—
as clear as the sapphire sky.
Three goals later,
my young boy gets the ball.
He goes
for the goal.
Gets
my cousin’s cleat instead.
He falls to the ground,
clutching his shin.
Blood seeping
between his fingers.
Cries pouring
from his lips.
No one on the field goes
to help him,
to move him,
to comfort him,
and I wonder if
they’ve forgotten compassion.
If the feeling was flushed to the sea
with freedom.
with opinion.
With choice.
I look over my shoulder.
See Mummy’s eyes
rimmed in red.
See Papa’s jaw
set in rage.
And so I stand.
Make a stand.
Don’t know what else to do.
Can’t ‘see another’s grief
and not seek for kind relief.’
Nani grabs my hand,
her tone a plank
when she commands,
“Sudasa, sit.”
I pull away.
Want to ask her
if she’d feel the same
if that were her grandson
moaning in pain.
But sadly, I know the answer.
Nani’s allegiance is to her
anger
and
anger
runs deeper than blood and skin.
It’s set in bone
and bone, once broken,
never
heals the same.
The young boy hobbles off.
The game starts again.
But it’s not the game
I was watching before.
My strong silent horse
sets his sights on a target—
not the goal.
He’s after my cousin.
He hovers behind him.
Steals the ball.
Gets in the way.
Whatever it takes to show my cousin
his moat
is not secure.
My cousin endures,
and yet as time draws near the end,
he starts to lose
his manners.
his patience.
his lead.
The next time Five
tries to take away the ball,
my cousin gives him
an elbow.
Gets a gush of blood
in return.
Five stops in place,
and with a quick swipe
of his nose,
he leaves a mark
much less visible than the
shock
on my cousin’s face.
Five turns sculpture again.
Until
my cousin gets the ball.
Until
he’s almost at the goal.
Until
it’s seconds before the end.
And then, with the power
of a stallion,
and the innocence
of a foal,
Five flattens my cousin
like he’s a
leaf
on the ground.
I jump to my feet.
See Nani do it, too.
But her stance is in
protest,
whereas mine is in
support.
My cousin stands,
his face a kettle at full steam.
He wants a fight.
Has not the fists.
Goes for a sword of lies instead.
“He tripped me!” he tells the referee
as he clutches a healthy knee.
“And it wasn’t by accident.
He did it before.
He should be disqualified.”
With a glance at the young boy
doubled over on the bench,
the referee listens.
Nods. Then
points to me:
The real judge?
16
Appa says, “There are no bad people. Only bad choices.” I thought this was true before I met the boy in blue, but now I know Appa was wrong. There are definitely bad people, and I’m watching one of them stomp off the field like a spoiled little girl. As he passes the wrinkled old water wallah, he swats away the cup the man is holding, spilling it all over his grayed dhoti. He kicks divots into the grass and spits words that have never passed my lips and never will.
I glance at the girl in her box. She looks almost as angry as him. Her arms are crossed, and her brow is so creased I almost can’t see her jeweled bindi. I bet she never expected someone to challenge her precious rich boy. I bet she’s standing there seething because I made him look bad and that will make her look bad when she picks him.
Good.
If she wants to marry a cheater, she’d better get used to weari
ng his shame.
She turns in my direction. I hold her gaze long enough to make sure she knows I’m not sorry for what I did. Yes, I should be, but not because of her. Because of Appa. I promised him I would follow the plan, and here we are, two tests in, and I’ve deviated from it twice. I must be more careful next time. The plan won’t work if I get disqualified. Or worse, if I win. Ha! As if that could ever happen.
I hear some yelling, so I turn back toward the boy in blue. He’s screaming at the audience, pointing at the field and then at me and his slightly soiled sock. Although a lot of people are watching him, I can’t tell if any of them care that he’s upset. The ref certainly didn’t. After he heard the rich boy’s same complaints, he told him the girl’s in charge of who wins and who loses and then he took off for the change rooms. I can’t say I was surprised. His presence here today is part of his State-assigned job, and I’d be willing to bet that caring about us is not part of its description.
I turn back, pretending to scan the audience, although what I really want to know is whether the girl noticed the rich boy’s tantrum. Is she angry that the referee didn’t kick me out—that he left it to her to do the dirty work? Or was that merely the finale of their show? The audience is dying to see some real competition. Half of them jumped to their feet when I tackled him, and I’m sure I heard some cheers when he elbowed me in the nose. Perhaps she told him to go after the young boy because she knew I’d react. Again. Perhaps they wanted to show everyone that a boy like me might be bigger and stronger, but can never beat a boy like him. Not when it counts. And perhaps they’re right. I will finish this test with no rocks. By most people’s standards, that’s nothing to be proud of.
I allow myself to glance at the girl for just long enough to see that she’s talking to the woman with the white hair. Her grandmother, I suppose. The woman’s hands are flailing about, making her gold bracelets bounce around her wrists like a tarp that has come loose in the wind. She’s obviously angry about something as well. Then again, women of her generation are always angry. I wouldn’t be here otherwise.
I drop my gaze to my feet for a moment so they won’t think I’m watching them. But I’m dying to watch them. I count—
One…
Two…
Three…
Four…
—and then I pretend to study two men in the stands right behind her box. The girl isn’t nodding like she agrees with her grandmother or bowing like she knows she must act like she does. She actually looks even more annoyed than before.
Strange. Could her grandmother be concerned about having a cheater in her home? Women like her have worked very hard to make sure boys know their place, and that rich boy isn’t acting like he knows his. Still, he scored the most goals, and the girl would also be a cheater if she didn’t award him the five rocks. Perhaps that’s why she’s angry? Perhaps her grandmother is telling her she must choose the most respectable boy and she realizes that her precious rich boy is many things, but not that.
I’m about to look away when the grandmother points at me and waggles her finger as if to tell her granddaughter she can’t pick me, either. But why would she have to tell the girl that? She doesn’t want me.
Does she?
Of course she doesn’t. I’m poor and uneducated and would never amount to anything more than a farm boy if I stayed in Koyanagar. How could I possibly be good enough for a stranger when I was not good enough to keep my own amma? Even if she hated Koyanagar and thought the State was corrupt, and even if she had never fallen in love with Appa after their marriage was arranged, she would have put up with these things if she loved me enough. I know I would put up with them as well if Appa asked me. But would Appa do the same for me? He refused to leave Koyanagar when Amma asked him, and he wouldn’t agree with me going if it was only to find her. I tried to explain to him once why I wished I could see her, even if it was only for five minutes. I told him I felt like a wheelbarrow with no wheel. He shrugged and said, “Boy, if you’ve lost your wheel, then you must use a rock instead.” He didn’t understand why I need to know why Amma did what she did. She left me, a young boy of five years of age, in a country that had decided that boys were dispensable. As far as I’m concerned, I’m like those baby girls Koyanagar’s grandmothers had to abandon in deserted parks, only those girls were left because their mothers had no choice, while I was left because my mother did have a choice.
And she didn’t choose me.
17
The second Test’s complete.
The boys all line up.
Eight tidy rows,
though they’re not tidy
at all.
Some beaten.
Some bruised.
Some covered in dirt.
Most hurt in some way. Almost all
in pride.
I wait in my place
while the other girls go.
while they award their eight rocks
to the remains of their
battalions.
I’ve four boys left,
with my second one disqualified
for not playing. He’s
relegated to the fate
Five wanted for himself?
Of my four who remain,
only two boys scored,
and yet the rules are clear:
I must reward the winners.
Winners?
I run the rocks through my fingers
as I pace back and forth.
as I try to distinguish
between
foul
and
fair.
If Asha were here,
she wouldn’t vacillate.
To her, decision’s a chessboard.
To me, it’s a blur of muddled gray.
I stop at the third boy
and place a single rock
in his outstretched hand.
He takes it with a smile
and a fervent “Thank you.”
I turn to the young boy,
his head
a snapped branch;
his leg
as broken as
his will
to go on.
I know that he’s done.
He can’t continue to compete.
And yet, if he doesn’t,
he’s disqualified, too.
I could award him
but a smile.
I know he’d understand:
I have no choice.
I must follow the rules.
But as I grip the rocks,
tell myself to step away,
I find I can’t;
can’t tread a path paved
with his pain.
So I place two rocks in his hand,
and I say, “You played fair,
and to me that’s worth more
than a hundred balls in a net.”
I steady myself
as I move on to Five.
as I wonder if I can crown him
the winner of best intent.
I part my lips to speak.
Nothing comes out.
My words are like Mummy:
butterflies
trapped
inside a net.
I meet his eyes instead. They’re
dark. Almost black.
They contain
no praising.
no pleasing.
no pleading.
Just nothing.
Is he like me?
Here by force? Here to vie
for a prize
he doesn’t want?
But why?
Would he really
rather fight?
rather die?
rather do anything
than win me?
What’s wrong with me?
I glance at the seven other girls,
who’ve returned to their boxes.
I’m not like them,
those vapid, selfish girls.
Those girls who’ve made
an idol
of Surina—
the Poster Girl with the perfect life.
No.
I want
a future.
a choice.
a place other than here.
But here we are,
and award I must,
and if I’m forced to choose
a winner—
at least for now—
I choose him.
I take out the five rocks
so I can place them in his palm,
but he snaps his hand away
as if I offered him fire instead.
“Keep going,” he says,
the words soft on his lips.
“Play the game.
Follow the rules.”
The rules?
I want to take the rules.
Push them off Agnimar Cliff.
Watch them smash on the rocks.
Watch them sink in the sea.
But he can’t share my anger.
He’s not shackled by the rules.
They only say
he must compete.
They don’t say
he must win.
So I obey like a prisoner.
Wrists = bound.
Ankles = in steel.
Freedom = nowhere in sight.
When I give my cousin the five rocks
that bring his total to ten,
the injury he had on display
cracks like ice
in tepid water.
Rules?
No rules?
No matter to him.
What matters is winning.
And not just winning me.
18
A break before the next Test. Time for us
to reflect—
to be influenced
(more like lectured…again)
by our families.
Nani has little more to say.
She has looked at the starless sky.
Is sure my husband
“will be chosen by dusk.”
I want to remind her there are
three
more
Tests.
Three
more
chances
for me to choose another.
But to her, this is neither a game of choice
nor a life of choice.
It’s one of influence:
Hers.
And one of acceptance:
Mine.
She leaves me with Surina instead.
Leaves me to peer into her crystal ball.