Serious Men

which slowly grew. A crowd was approaching. Oja surveyed her home nervously. She spotted a strand of a cobweb under the wooden attic.
    ‘Is there time to clean?’ she asked.
    ‘Are you mad?’ Ayyan said.
    ‘At least the milk is boiled,’ she said, easing the creases of her sari. Ayyan tried to understand what she had said.
    ‘Why did you boil the milk?’ he asked.
    ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘When I don’t know what to do, I boil the milk.’
    Outside, on the corridor, a girl in a fitted shirt and jeans walked with an enormous man who was carrying a camera on his shoulder. Behind them was a mob. The corridor was so packed that the men and children at the edges were squeezed against the pale walls, and some fell festively into the open homes.
    The girl was escorted by about a dozen men to the only shut door on the corridor. They knocked. It opened partially and the face of Ayyan tried to evaluate the situation. But the force on the door was too much for him and he yielded. The reporter andthe cameraman were taken into the house by a tide of happy neighbours.
    ‘Not everybody,’ the girl screamed. ‘Who is Ayyan Mani?’ she asked.
    Ayyan began to push the people out. ‘This is crazy. Let them do their jobs,’ he said.
    ‘You’ve already forgotten us, Mani,’ a tiny man said angrily, as he was being shoved outside. ‘You have become a big man, have you?’
    ‘You come inside then, I will go out. OK?’ Ayyan told him, with a playful slap.
    It took five minutes to evict all the neighbours and shut the door. In the sudden calm, the girl turned to Oja and smiled. The cameraman looked around and decided to squeeze himself between the cupboard and the fridge. He wore a headphone and turned on a light that blinded everyone for an instant.
    ‘Are you ready?’ the reporter asked the family.
    They nodded.
    ‘Answer only in Hindi. Don’t use too many English or Marathi words,’ she said.
    She turned to the camera. Her face transformed. She looked alert, smart and excited. She told the camera, ‘We are inside the humble one-room home of Aditya Mani, the wonder-boy who has cleared one of the toughest exams in the world. The eleven-year-old is only an interview away from joining the postgraduate course at the Institute of Theory and Research.’
    ‘Stop,’ the cameraman said. ‘Too much noise outside.’ He opened the door and screamed, ‘Keep quiet.’
    The crowd fell silent for an instant. Then the murmurs grew about how a stranger whom they had helped find the way was now asking them to shut up. But they calmed down eventually.
    The girl repeated what she had just said. She knelt down beside Adi.
    ‘How do you feel?’ she asked.
    ‘I feel hungry,’ he said.
    She smiled kindly at him and asked, ‘How did you manage to do this, Aditya? At such a young age. How did you do it?’
    ‘I knew all the answers,’ he said, and smiled at his father.
    ‘Of course you did,’ she said.
    ‘What are your future plans?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    After a few more questions to Adi, the girl turned to Ayyan. ‘Sir, it must be a very special day for you.’
    ‘It obviously is,’ he said. ‘I cannot believe this.’
    ‘What are your plans for him?’
    ‘It’s too early to say.’
    ‘When did you know that he was a genius?’
    ‘He was always a bit different. He thinks differently.’
    ‘Will he be wearing shorts or trousers to college?’ she asked.
    ‘That has not been decided,’ he said, without a smile. ‘Actually, he has not got in yet. There is an interview process.’
    The girl turned to Oja Mani and said, ‘You must be a very proud mother.’
    Oja laughed coyly and looked at her husband. After a brief silence, she moved closer to the mike and said, ‘I want my son to be a normal child.’ She fell silent again. Then she asked, ‘Do you want some tea?’ That made the cameraman wince.
    The girl tried to extract more information from the family, and when she was satisfied she signalled to the cameraman that the session was over. Ayyan told her that he was going to hold a press conference in Minister Waman’s office on Tuesday. ‘I am making an important announcement,’ he said. ‘You will not want to miss it.’ That made her curious, but he did not divulge anything more.
    The girl walked out, followed by the cameraman who had resumed shooting. The crowd, which had grown further, greeted her with a roar, and a few whistles. She was quickly engulfed by giggling men. She shoved her