IV. The Bat
IV
The Bat
I was reunited with my bat exactly one month to the day that I’d met Ganesh. Ruhee was gone that week, she was at her grandmother’s place for a family function.
I’d been walking towards the gymkhana to meet Ganesh when I saw Arjun Wadhwa standing outside his house, holding my bat.
I exclaimed, sprinting the last few paces towards him.
He grinned, and held it out to me. Arjun Wadhwa said something, but I barely heard him.
I examined the bat. The wood was chipped and stained here and there, the handle had grease marks.
I held it to my chest and suppressed the urge to cry.
Just inside the gate, Arjun’s father was standing across from Satti.
Mr. Wadhwa was a bear of a man. He was broad and tall.
He towered over Satti. Mr. Wadhwa lowered his voice, I couldn’t make out the words, but whatever it was Satti looked frightened.
Mr. Wadhwa drummed his fingers against the side of Satti’s head forcefully, Satti staggered but remained standing, his eyes on his feet, his arms folded.
With a flick of his wrist Mr. Wadhwa dismissed Satti.
Though I had no reason, I felt afraid when he turned towards me.
I thought he might berate me for losing the bat.
But he called me son, in Hindi. Beta, he said.
Beta be careful, don’t leave it here and there, that guy is a complete thief.
And a drunk to boot. Beats his wife even.
What will your papa say? You have to take care of your belongings.
“Look, Arjun-beta,” he said, addressing his real son, “don’t stay out too late. Your ma’s making chicken.”
“Arjun Wadhwa,” I said, when his father left. “Come to the gymkhana! That’s where I’ve been going to play all this time.”
He looked unsure, “Can’t we just play here? All those rowdy boys go there.”
“Come!” I demanded.
At the gymkhana, reunited with my bat, Arjun Wadhwa by my side, I felt like a different person, I felt like myself.
Ganesh came towards me, he was smiling. “You’ve found it!
” he said, holding his hand out. He took the bat from me and examined it, lifting it to arm level and putting it down.
He held a batting position and flicked it.
Arjun Wadhwa raised his eyes at me, a puzzled look on his face.
Who’s this guy? he mouthed. I shrugged, grimaced, and when Ganesh handed the bat to me again, I took it and followed Arjun Wadhwa without a backwards glance.
I fell in with the schoolboys. My bat was the ticket.
I played against Ganesh and the others. I cheered when one of them was run out.
I committed an LBW and refused to concede it.
I missed this feeling―winning―and being amongst those who were like me.
I screamed ‘Fuck’ and put my hands on my head when Ganesh hit a sixer.
I stood in a huddle with the schoolboys, put my arm around Arjun Wadhwa.
Ganesh never told me how he felt about that.
The way I refused to meet his gaze even by accident.
Amongst the schoolboys I spotted someone from my own school, I waved at him, and the summer holidays seemed to have finally brought me to level ground where everyone else stood.
I felt a distinct pressure between my shoulder blades throughout, like someone was pressing their foot against my back and holding it there.
It disappeared only when dusk fell, when it didn’t matter where I looked, I could barely see the ball, much less anyone’s face.
Ganesh could be Arjun Wadhwa, or anyone else in that semi-darkness.
Ganesh did not try to talk to me, or approach me in any way.
I appreciated that he understood our social contract, what reason did he have to expect anything else?
When I noticed Arjun Wadhwa falling into conversation with the others, the group making its way towards the gates, I fell back.
I knew Ganesh would sit in the stands, stay behind after his friends left.
Sometimes he and I stayed there awhile before going to Ruhee’s tutor.
At night, and only at night, Ganesh was allowed to stay out as long as he wanted.
He could also choose not to go home if he wanted, he told me.
There was no work to do, and his parents let him watch as much television as he wanted alongside them, sitting on a cane easy chair next to their sofa; soap operas or singing contests or old Telugu movies or the news.
But he stayed at the gymkhana until the stars came out.
Why did he do that? I asked him once. Why don’t you want to watch TV?
He said that it was only when he was alone―not around his parents, not around his friends―that he could truly be a nobody.
It was wonderful, he said. To be a nobody is such a natural state of being.
What about with me, I asked. Or Ruhee. Only with you, he said. It felt wonderful to hear him say that.
Arjun Wadhwa yelled from the gate, asked if I was coming along. I said I was right behind him. He left with the last of the schoolboys. I waited until the grounds emptied completely. Then I walked towards the stands where Ganesh was sitting.
He watched me come closer. Did he look doubtful?
Why did he stand up? He was not wearing his Nike shirt, he was in his regular clothes, a chocolate-brown shirt that was a size too small for him.
I asked him if he wanted to go to the Red House again.
But before his lips formed the words I said, “Did you bring your bike?” He did not reply.
I looked over my shoulder again. I felt my body relax.
The flood lamp above us turned on, its orange glow falling in a circle around the two of us.
When I turned Ganesh’s face was in sharp relief.
He was so close. I was scared, to mention going to the Red House again, to say anything.
He looked angry, he looked like he hated me.
He wanted me to leave, I realized. But I didn’t.
Stubbornly I remained standing there. I was sweating, but I did not wipe my face, I felt a bead of sweat slide down on my nose, fall away and dampen the front of my shirt.
Ganesh was the first boy I ever kissed. I don’t know what he meant by this, kissing me, or what I understood.
But from this moment on, I knew Ganesh was going to abandon me.
I was sure of it. He and Ruhee would reject me the way my mother was rejected by her society of relatives.
I wished there was some way we could keep standing there in that orange light of the flood lamp, his lips against mine, never having to step outside its lighted borders, be pulled by the lurking things.
A moment later he made that motion with his head that meant Let’s Go. I followed him to his bike. When he slowed at the Red House, I said, “No.”
“Where then?” he said.
“My house.”
When I pushed the gate open, it creaked loudly at the hinges.
I stopped. “Here,” Ganesh said, “give me the bat.” I used both hands to bear weight on the gate’s hinges, then inched it open.
I lifted the window grille and we climbed into my room.
There was enough light from the streetlight falling into my room that we didn’t need to turn the lights on.
Ganesh moved through my room freely. He stopped at my desk and examined my He-Man stickers, touched the pencils in the pen stand, he unscrewed the ink bottle and smelled the ink inside.
He opened the slim tin in which I stored the 2H graphites I used for sketching my watercolors, he opened my Faber-Castell geometry box, took out the compass, put it back in its slot.
I crossed the room and shut my door, bolted it.
“This is you?” Ganesh said. He was stooping to look at a picture on my desk from our family trip to the sea.
Priya and me, flanked on either side by my mother and my father, standing on the beach at Visakhapatnam.
My mother laughing, holding on to the end of her sari so it didn’t fly up, my father pressing down on the top of my head. Priya, her arm wrapped around mine.
“They’re nice people,” Ganesh said, examining the photo.
Then he said, “I shouldn’t―couldn’t―wish for more. They are nice people too.” I knew he meant his parents.
“I came to them when I was seven or so, can’t remember. Lived with another family before, they were not nice people.”
I sat on the edge of my bed.
“Here, when I went to bathe they insisted on giving me hot water. Insisted on a toothbrush and white foamy toothpaste. Insisted on giving me new clothes. A trip to the barber to cut my hair, comb out the lice, scrub my nails. A trip to the doctor for my skin rash, an ointment to heal the scabs. Medicine for tapeworms in my stomach. And they let so many things slide, you know? Never said they’d send me away for the things I did.
I broke cups, they said nothing. And all those nights in the beginning when I used to scream and scream, remembering the fire and the shrieks of the other children, Rekhamma used to wake me up, make me drink ice water.
She’d stroke my head like this,” Ganesh said.
He came closer and moved his palm across the top of my head. I felt like crying.
“Let’s not go to the gymkhana anymore,” I said.
“What?”
“Let’s not go there. We should only meet at the Red House. Ruhee too.”
“She told me that she loved me,” Ganesh said conversationally.
It felt as though he’d punched me in my stomach.
“Who?” I said.
“Ruhee. Ru-hee. She said she loved me. She said that when she’s older she wants to marry me.”