by a teacher, Punoose, who saw this as

a punishment for my talkativeness.

Punoose was bespectacled, overweight; we disposed

of the “Mrs.” when referring to her, as a way

of cutting her to size in our conversations.

Even here, in B, there was a Birla granddaughter,

a fair, frail girl, without distinction in studies,

passably pretty, whom you’d find difficult

to associate with that industrial empire.

She had a crush on Suresh, a gymnast

and boxer, who became our contemporary because

he’d failed and had to repeat a class

(not for the first time). Finding myself seated next to him,

we argued but became friends of a kind. Shirkers

and hoodlums outnumbered angels around me; and I,

a shy—if intermittently talkative—boy,

felt obliged to pose as a hoodlum.

Thus, I got away with the grudging respect of the likes

of Arun Kapoor, whom Lobo, the physics teacher,

called “monster,” not only because of his size, but for

his one stone eye. There was one brilliant boy

in that menagerie: Subramaniam. This lanky South Indian

from an unremarkable middle-class family used words

like “trepidation” and “verisimilitude.”

He was chasteningly good at science: I once

visited him in his flat—a typical government-service

residence, with its large hall and sparse

furniture, and a smell of spices everywhere.

I watched as his mother brought him a tumbler of milk

and toasted sandwich. He told me, as he ate, that he ran

two miles around the undulating paths

of Altamount Road each morning. Once,

he came to my flat and stood before

the series of encyclopaedias on my shelves

that my father had bought me, and said, with the slightest

hint of irony and envy, and only

the remotest suggestion of judgement:

“Do you ever read these?” I prevaricated

guiltily; he didn’t wait for my reply

but picked one up and went through its pages

intently, as if he’d consume them in a glance.

I’m sure he must be in America,

and that tenacity, which took him running two miles

in the morning, probably got him somewhere at last.

As for me, I took my chances with teachers and exams.

I kept long hair; let my mind wander;

was reprimanded, and yet I managed

to keep afloat. Suresh, who was never expected

to shine in studies, blemished his record further

by refusing to participate in competitive sports

and antagonising his house master, Lewis, the maths teacher,

for whom such things mattered. Suresh had become

a compulsive daydreamer, sitting

on the first row to the left, next to the large, sweet,

but dim Yugoslav beauty, Biljana Obradovic.

He was short but good-looking, with a hooked nose and a slouch,

attractive to girls. Sujata Birla’s attentions

were a source of discomfiture (“She walks funny”), but he liked

Rehab Barodawalla, and the way, by late

morning, her socks would settle into two rings

at the bottom of her ankles. Later, in junior college,