The peon had the smile of a man who had just discovered a free ATM.
"Sister, I can help you," he said, rocking on his heels. "But..."
That but hung in the air like a bad smell.
Shilpa did not even blink. Her purse was open before the word finished leaving his mouth, and a five hundred rupee note slid into his palm with the elegance of a magician's coin.
"Bhaiya, look at your nephew," she said, in a voice so soaked in motherly sorrow that I almost felt sorry for myself. "Without school, how will he become a learned man?"
Nephew. Two minutes ago I was a stranger, now I'm family. Mumbai's economy is truly a marvel.
The note vanished into his pocket faster than a lizard on a wall. "Arre, Didi, how can I not help? A genius like Vijay, they will welcome him with garlands!" He pulled a greasy diary from his shirt, scribbled an address, and tore the page out with great ceremony.
Then he lowered his voice. "I'll tell you the truth. Their results are a little... weak compared to other schools. But staff, building, facilities, nothing is lacking."
I read the page. St. Xavier's High School.
The thing about a trainee from the NIA is that he learns to hear what people don't say. Weak results, perfect infrastructure. Somebody was spending money on that school, and it was not going to students' marks.
I looked at Shilpa. She was already looking at me. Neither of us said a word.
The Mumbai traffic that afternoon was not traffic. It was a hostage situation.
We crawled for thirty minutes, a hundred honking horns screamed in unison, and a man on a scooter carrying an entire wardrobe on his back overtook us like it was nothing.
"Remind me," Shilpa muttered, gripping the steering wheel, "why we don't just arrest the whole city."
"Paperwork," I said.
When the gates of St. Xavier's finally rose in front of us, the peon had been right.
White stone, a manicured lawn, a clock tower that actually kept the correct time. It looked like a school that had never once been short of money, and that bothered me more than any crumbling wall would have.
The principal's office smelled of sandalwood and ambition.
Principal Menon was a tall woman with silver hair pinned so tightly it looked like a legal argument. She listened to Shilpa's well-rehearsed story about her gifted son, then turned her gaze on me, over the rim of her glasses. It was the look of someone checking whether a coin was fake.
"Gifted," she said slowly. "Everyone's son is gifted, Mrs. Shilpa."
I decided it was time.
"Ma'am," I said, politely, "I can pass the Class Nine exam with full marks today. You may ask me anything."
Silence. Shilpa's fingers tightened slightly on her handbag.
Overconfidence is a wonderful weapon, right until it becomes a grave.
Principal Menon's lips curved, just barely. "Confident. Let's see how long that lasts." She picked up the phone. "Call the senior teachers to my office. All of them."
Ten minutes later, five teachers stood around me in a semicircle.
A mathematics teacher with a pencil behind each ear.
A physics teacher who looked like he had not smiled since 2009. They were not there to examine a student.
They were there to watch a boy embarrass himself.
The mathematics teacher went first, cracking his knuckles. "Factorise this. x cubed minus six x squared plus eleven x minus six."
I did not even reach for the pen. "Put x equals one. The sum is zero, so x minus one is a factor. Divide it out, and what remains is x squared minus five x plus six, which splits into x minus two and x minus three." I paused.
"So, x minus one, x minus two, x minus three. Sir, you gave me a lazy one. Even the polynomial looked bored."
Someone coughed to hide a laugh.
The mathematics teacher blinked twice, then slowly took one pencil from behind his ear and wrote it down to check. His mouth fell open an inch.
The science teacher stepped forward, the first crack appearing in his stone face. "A stone is dropped from a cliff eighty metres high. How long to hit the ground? And what is its speed at impact? Take g as ten."
"Four seconds," I said. "And forty metres per second. Which, by the way, is a very poor way to arrive anywhere."
"Show the working," he demanded.
"Eighty equals half into ten into t squared. So t squared is sixteen. And v equals g into t, ten into four. If you'd like, I can also show you the stone's feelings on the way down."
The silence that followed was the loudest I have ever heard. Principal Menon set down her pen very carefully,
the way people do when they are recalculating their entire day.
"Gentlemen," she said at last. "Ladies. Please continue."
They did. For forty more minutes they threw everything at me: chemistry, history, a tricky grammar question that I suspect was designed purely out of spite.
By the end, the physics teacher was nodding at me with something close to reverence, and the mathematics teacher was muttering, "Where did this child come from?"
From a place where the exams are harder and the criminals are smarter, sir.
That night, Neelam sat curled on the sofa in her pyjamas, a tub of ice cream in her lap and a news anchor shouting at the television. She took one look at our faces and narrowed her eyes.
"Both of you are smiling," she said. "Which means somebody has committed a crime. Who?"
"Nobody," Shilpa said. "Today I completed my mission. I found a school for Vijay, where he gets admission, homeschooling, and a scholarship."
Neelam's spoon froze halfway to her mouth. "Impossible. No school is that charitable. Not in this century."
Shilpa grinned. "You know, sometimes you're dangerously accurate. You're right. The principal agreed, but she came with some demands. Difficult ones. Outrageous ones, even."
"Like what?"
"Like Vijay must be present in school one week every month."
"Fine."
"He must represent the school in extracurricular events. District, state, and national level."
"Also fine, he likes attention."
"Hey," I said.
"He must score ninety percent or above to keep the scholarship."
Neelam shrugged. "Child's play for the genius."
Shilpa's voice dropped. "And the most important one. If he topples the school or the board, he can never talk about it in any media interview. Not a word."
That made Neelam put the spoon down. "And in return?"
"In return, they will not interfere with his schedule.
They won't control him in class, or his time.
They will give scholarship in his full fees, one lakh for Class Nine, three lakh for Class Ten, and so on.
And they'll sponsor his sports, matching whatever results he brings them."
Neelam stared at us.
The ice cream was melting in her lap, and she did not notice. "Nobody gives a deal like that. How did you get them to agree?"
This time, I took over. "Simple. The moment I entered, I told the principal I could pass the Class Nine exam with full marks, and she could ask me anything. She called all her senior teachers to test me. A polynomial and a falling stone later, they had stopped looking at me like a child."
"They were scared," Shilpa added happily. "One teacher looked at him like he'd seen a ghost wearing a school uniform."
Neelam looked at me for a long moment. Then she said quietly, "Doesn't it bother you? A school that gives away this much money for silence?"
The room went still. Shilpa's smile faded a little. I was already thinking the same thing, and I had been thinking it since the peon wrote that address.
"It bothers me very much," I said. "That's exactly why we said yes."
Neelam studied my face, then sighed and stole the last scoop of ice cream from the tub as if it were a closing argument. "Tu serious hai ya drama kar raha hai?"
(Are you serious, or just being dramatic?)
"Dono," I said, grinning. "Dono hi hoon."
(Both. I'm both.)
She threw a cushion at my head. It was a direct hit.
Later, after the dessert plates were cleared and the lights dimmed, I lay awake staring at the ceiling fan. It turned slowly, patiently, like a man waiting for an answer. Somewhere out there, a school was paying to keep a secret, and tomorrow I would walk through its gates holding a pen, a smile, and the best cover story in the history of the NIA.
Let the classes begin.