Aerogrammes and Other Stories - By Tania James Page 0,4
seven times in the face. Before Dhingra could turn the revolver on himself, he was subdued, arrested, tried, and hanged.
Imam looks over Gama’s shoulder at the article. They stare in silence at the soft-skinned boy with the starched white collar choking his throat. He looks much like the interpreters who sometimes tag along with the English journalists, a few stitches of hair across their upper lips, still boys to the mothers they must have left behind.
Gama folds the paper roughly, muttering, “Half of it is nonsense, what they write.” He tosses the newspaper on the coffee table and goes upstairs. This clipping they will not take back home.
Imam remains in the sitting room, waiting until he can hear the floorboards creaking overhead. From his kurta pocket, he removes the pocket watch he has been keeping on his person ever since it landed at his feet. The silver disk, better than any medal, warms his palm. He draws a fingertip over the engraved lines, each as fine as a feline whisker.
As word spreads of the Lion and the Panther of the Punjab, all the European wrestlers fall silent but one—Stanislaus Zbyszko, the winner of the Greco-Roman world championship tournament at the Casino de Paris four years ago, ranked number one in the world before his more recent scandal with Yousuf the Terrible. This time, Zbyszko is looking to rebuild his name and promises a match with no foul play. He and Gama will face off at the John Bull Tournament in early July.
“This is it,” Mr. Benjamin says to Gama. “You pin him, you’ll be world champion. You—” Here he jabs a finger at Gama’s chest. “Rustom! E! Zamana!” Mr. Benjamin’s pronunciation brings a smile to Gama’s face.
Imam is less amused. He detects a growing whiff of greed about Mr. Benjamin in the way he goads Gama toward desire and impatience, the very emotions they have been taught to hold at bay. Just as troubling is his refusal to offer a clear figure of ticket sales, though he promises to give them their earnings in one bulk sum at the end.
Out of habit and innocence, Gama puts his faith in Mr. Benjamin. Through him, Gama dispatches a single message in Sporting Life: he will throw the Pole three times in the space of an hour.
Imam has seen pictures of Zbyszko: the fused boulders of muscle, the bald head like the mean end of a battering ram. Even hanging by his sides, his arms are a threat. Gama has seen the pictures too, but they never speak of Zbyszko, or his size, or his titles. They refer only to the match.
News of the bout spreads to India. Mr. Mishra, their Bengali patron, writes Gama a rousing letter, imploring him to prove to the world that “India is not only a land of soft-bodied coolies and clerks.” Mishra rhapsodizes over Bharat Mata and her hard-bodied sons, comparing Gama to the Hindu warrior Bhim. Regarding Europeans, Mr. Mishra has only one opinion: “All they know is croquet and crumpets.”
Imam isn’t sure if Mr. Mishra knows that Zbyszko is a Pole. He considers writing back, then recalls the article with Dhingra’s picture, the words “traitor” and “treason” captioning it. Once, a journalist asked Gama and Imam about their political leanings, whether they considered themselves “moderate” or “radical.” Imam turned to Gama, each searching the other for the correct answer, before Gama, bewildered, said, “We are pehlwan.”
Those words return to Imam later, as he sets a lit match to the letter. They do not want trouble. He holds the burning letter over the sink and then rinses the ash down the drain.
A week remains until the John Bull Tournament. Life narrows its borders, contains only wrestling and meditation, bethak and dand, yakhi and ghee and almonds. Food is fuel, nothing more. They wake at three in the morning and retire at eight in the evening, their backs to the sunset slicing through the crack between the curtains.
For all their time together, Imam has never felt further from his brother. He can detect some deep tidal turn within Gama, a gravity at his core, pulling him inward and inward again into a wordless coil of concentration. He declines all interviews. His gaze is a wall.
Lying in bed, Imam imagines entering the ring with Zbyszko. He pictures himself executing an artful series of moves never witnessed on these shores, the Flying Cobra perhaps, an overhead lift, a twirl and a toss. The papers would remember him all over