20
‘I am good at chemistry. I need help in physics,’ Manjunath, nerd-embryo and
Ananya’s younger brother, spoke with eh energy of a rooster. His eyebrows went
up and down as he spoke, in sync with the three rows of ash on his forehead.
I had come for my first class. Ananya had left for Madurai the night before for a
weeklong sales trip. My head hurt from waking up early. Ananya’s mother had
sent coffee to Manju’s room. It didn’t help.
Neither did the fact that I had only read up chemistry.
“let’s revise it anyways,’ I said and opened my sheets.
‘Hydrocarbons?’ he said as he saw my notes. ‘I’ve done this thee times.’
I offered him a problem and he solved it in two minutes. I tried a harder one,
and he did it in the same time. A tape played in the next room. It sounded like a
chorus of women marching towards the army.
‘M.S. Subbulaxmi,’ Manju said, noticing my worried expression. ‘Devotional
music.’
I nodded as I flipped through the chemistry books to find a problem
challenging enough for the little Einstein.
‘Every Tamilian house plays it in the morning.’
I wondered if Ananya would play it in our house after we got married. My
mother would have serious trauma with that sound. The chants became stronger
with every passing minute.
‘What is IIT like?’ he asked.
I told him about my former college, filtering out all the spicy bits that occurred
in my life.
‘I want to do aeronautics,’ Manju said. At his age, I didn’t even know that word.
He took out his physics textbook after an hour. He gave me a problem and I
asked for time to solve it. He nodded and read the next chapter. The tutor was
being tutored.