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" Great inventions. The story goes that at one time he was a great student. This is not unexpected; his father and an older brother were prominent medical men, another brother was a high-up at the Bank of India. When he was young, his sisters used to take him to walk along the shore on Lord Elphinstone Rd. This was before there was a promenade, and since then the road has been given a different name. Most of the streets are named for Hindus now, even the city is no longer Bombay.  Back then, before the park, before the benches facing the sea, they walked the long curling shoreline past the fishing village. There may have been signs even then. He was always in the company of his sisters, reluctant to walk alone. He chatted freely to his family but outside the house did not like to speak, even to close neighbors or visiting cousins. His parents might shake his shoulders or box his ears, but finally explained that the boy was shy and jostled him back into the row of sisters and brothers.  He refused to attend school until his brother, a year younger, could accompany him. They went together, the younger leading the older, and only then it was discovered that he had a gift for mathematics. His father began to tell his cronies that the boy was genius. There are some who recall his pride at this time, though not many of that generation are living. Neville Gonsalves knew the family but he is 90 now and his memory has rotted like wood, patches of his youth gone soft.  It was expected the boy would place highest in his class, win a scholarship to university. But on the day he went to sit for his exams, there was an incident on the road. A bird flying overhead soiled his shirt with droppings. He was fastidious about his appearance and began to shout, clutching at his collar, ripping the shirt from his trousers. He was frantic, wild, running through the streets as if he had been burned, until he reached the Santa Clara Beach Club and jumped fully clothed into the swimming pool. The other bathers with their tidy caps all clung to the sides of the pool, watching him splash and flail. It was fortunate he&amp;#039;d gone into the shallow end, Neville says, since it was not known whether he could swim.  The pool attendants shouted but could do nothing. Finally the family was called. His younger brother coaxed him out, exhausted and dripping. There was no further talk of university; it was said that he suffered from a nervous complaint and required rest. Years later he was still living at home. His mother had hemmed all his trousers up to nearly his knees to prevent him from wandering off on his own. It was said he would not venture from the house in a state of such indignity. A good set of trousers was kept locked in her wardrobe for church on Sundays.   When his mother died, a widowed sister came to stay with him. By then he was in his sixties and had lived quietly for so many years that she restored his hems to the proper lengths. For years you could see him in the evenings, walking near the shore in a clean shirt and straight tie, his pant legs brushing the tops of his shoes. He seldom spoke but occasionally smiled at those he recognized: Neville, who used to walk in the evenings also; perhaps a few other old-timers.  When he died, it was rumored that his room was full of papers. He had filled notebooks with figures, crowded newspaper margins with his notations, sketched on napkins and the backs of envelopes. These might have been great inventions, Neville says, that man was genius, but who can know? The papers looked like rubbish and were thrown away.  The sister went to live in the South some years later and even the house has been knocked down. Neville himself can no longer walk. But he watches from his window, where a chair has been settled so he can enjoy the evening air. They have come to build a scaffolding on the site, he sees, and in a few months, a new flat building will be ready.  Nalini Jones&amp;#039;s debut collection, What You Call Winter, was published in August. She received an M.F.A. from Columbia University, and she is a Stanford Calderwood Fellow of the MacDowell Colony. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a3476/napkin-nalini-jones/>