The Men Who Are Fine

On Sunday mornings twelve men play badminton at a club in Secunderabad, and afterwards they stand around the tea counter in damp T-shirts for forty minutes, talking. They have done this for eleven years. They know each other’s backhands, cars, children’s entrance ranks and views on the new flyover. On this particular Sunday the talk covers an electric SUV one of them has booked, the price of flats in Kompally, a school that has raised its fees again, and whether the national team’s coach ought to go.

Naveen has not been for three Sundays. Somebody mentions it. “Travelling, must be,” someone else says, and that closes the subject. Naveen runs a small packaging unit. He is forty-six. He is funny, in a dry way, and generous about line calls.