The Boy Who Always Had a Reason

Everything Ayaan said was true. That was the difficulty with it.

On Monday he came in eleven minutes late, and the bus really had been late. Everybody’s bus had been late. There had been a lorry across the road by the petrol pump. Half of Class 4 came in behind him, so nobody said anything at all.

On Tuesday his homework had a long blue smear across the bottom of it, and the pen really had leaked. He showed the pen. The pen was, without question, guilty.

“All right,” said Miss Kurien. “Do it again tonight.”

On Wednesday it rained, and the shortcut by the field turned to soup, and his shoe really did come off in the mud. He had to go back for it. He came into assembly at the end with one wet sock and one shoe, holding the other shoe. The sock left a mark on the floor of the hall.

Everybody agreed the mud was bad that week. It was.

Ayaan was good at football. Properly good. Quick, and brave about going in for the ball, and able to pass with either foot. Almost nobody in Class 4 could do that.

The team played on Saturday mornings. There were cones out on the grass, and a bag of balls by the post, and a whistle on a string round the coach’s neck.

In September he missed one because his cousin’s wedding ran late, which it did.

In October he missed one because he could not find his boots. The boots really were not where he had left them. His brother had moved them.

In November he came, but at ten past, because the auto-rickshaw had not come and then had come and then had gone the long way. All of that was exactly what happened.

By the time he got to the ground in November, they had started, and Ronit was playing on the left, where Ayaan played.

Ronit was not as good as Ayaan. Everybody knew this, including Ronit.

Ayaan sat on the bench with his bag between his feet and watched the whole first half. The grass at that end was worn down to mud and stones.

At the end, the coach read out the side for the next match off his clipboard. He did it the way he always did, in a flat voice with his pen in his mouth. Eleven names.

Ayaan’s was not one of them.

Ayaan waited for somebody to explain it. Nobody did. The coach just clapped twice and said Thursday, five o’clock, and then went off to wind up the corner rope.

Ayaan stood there for a bit with his bag on one shoulder.

He could feel the reasons lining up inside him, all of them true, all of them ready. The wedding. The boots. The rickshaw that went the long way. He could have said any of them and every single person would have nodded, because every single one of them was a fact.

He did not say any of them.

He went home and put his boots by the door, on the shoe rack, at the end where his brother never went.

On Thursday he came at ten to five.

Nobody said anything about it, because nothing had happened. He was just there, early, doing the warm-up with everybody else. At the end of practice the others were pulling their socks down and going off to their bags. Ayaan ran one more lap of the ground on his own.

The coach was winding up the rope and did not look up.

Ayaan finished the lap and got his bag and went home, and did not mention it to anybody, not even his brother.

He did it again the next Thursday.