Last Man in Tower

by Aravind Adiga

  Removing his glasses, Ajwani smiled. ‘I’ll give you the point, Masterji. I’ll give you one hundred debating points. But in return, will you do something for me? Both my boys are in your science top-up. Your two biggest fans in the world. Tell me everything you say. We must always make experiments before we believe things. Correct? Just for today, Masterji, let this Ajwani be a teacher to you. Make an experiment for him? Will you walk down the road, and take a look at what Mr Shah is building beyond the slums? And then will you honestly say that you are not impressed by this Mr Shah?’

  Ramu, in T-shirt and jeans, had come down the stairs with his mother’s NO NOISE sign in his hands.

  ‘We’re going to SiddhiVinayak temple – we’ll pray for everyone,’ Mrs Puri said, telling the boy to wave at his three uncles, who waved back.

  Ajwani, drawing his chair up to the Secretary’s table, summoned the other two with his fingers.

  ‘She comes back every day with brochures for new buildings, which turn up in her rubbish next day. Yet she says she goes to the temple.’

  Masterji whispered back: ‘Your competition has just increased, Ajwani. God must have joined the real-estate business.’

  Three men burst out laughing, and one of them thought: Exactly like old times. Nothing has changed.

  When Masterji went outside, he found Ram Khare by the compound wall, examining a gleaming red object, a brand-new Bajaj Pulsar motorbike.

  ‘It’s Ibrahim Kudwa’s,’ Ram Khare said. ‘Bought it yesterday.’

  ‘He shouldn’t be spending money he doesn’t have.’

  The guard smiled. ‘The mouth waters before it has food. It’s the human way, Masterji.’

  The Pulsar’s metal skin gleamed like red chocolate. The segments of its body were taut, swollen, crab-like; the owner’s black helmet was impaled on the rear-view mirror. Masterji remembered the scooter he had once owned, and his hand reached out.

  A rooster, one of those that wandered about Vakola and sometimes slipped into the compound of a Housing Society, flew on to the driver’s seat and clucked like a warning spirit.

  This is what a woman wants. Not gold, not big cars, not easy cash.

  This.

  Rich dark fine-grained wood, with a fresh coat of varnish and golden handles.

  Mrs Puri moved her hands over the face of the built-in cupboard, pulled the doors open, and inhaled the fresh-wood smell.

  ‘Madam can open the drawers too, if she wants.’

  But Madam was already doing that.

  The family Puri were in a sample flat on the sixth floor of the Rathore Towers – beige, brand-new, double-bedroomed, approximately 1,200-square-foot built-up area. Mr Puri stood by the window with Ramu, showing his son the common swimming pool, the gym with weight-loss guarantee, and the common table-tennis room down below.

  The guide, who was holding a brochure in her hands, turned on a light.

  ‘And here is the second bedroom. If Madam would come this way?’

  Madam was too busy opening the drawers. She was imagining the sunlight glowing on this beautiful piece of dark wood every morning for the rest of her life. Stocked chock-a-block with Ramu’s fragrant clothes. His towels in this drawer. His T-shirts here. T-shirts and shorts here. Polo shirts here. Fluffy trousers here.

  ‘Come this way, sir. And the child. And you too, madam. I’m sorry, I have another appointment after this.’

  ‘He’s not a child. He’s eighteen years old.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ their guide said. ‘Observe the fittings and finishings. The Rathore Group is all about fittings and finishings…’

  ‘Why are there no curtain rods in the rooms?’

  ‘Madam is correct. But the Rathore Group would be happy to add curtain rods for someone like Madam.’

  Red curtains would be perfect here. The place would look like a lighthouse at night. Neighbours would notice; people on the road would look up and say, ‘Who lives there?’

  Mrs Puri pressed the soft hand that was in hers. Who else?

  What an enormous, high-ceilinged, light-welcoming apartment. And look at the floor: a mosaic of black and white squares. A precise, geometrical delineation of space, not the colourless borderless floors on which she had fought and eaten and slept all her married life.

  In the lift, she asked her husband: ‘You didn’t tell anyone you were coming here, did you?’

  He shook his head.

  The Evil Eye had blighted Mrs Puri’s life once. Back when she was pregnant, she had bragged to her friends that it was going to be a boy for sure. The Evil Eye heard her and punished her son. She was not going to make that mistake again.

  She had kept up the same charade for weeks now, announcing to Ram Khare that she and the boy were off ‘to the temple’ – before catching an autorickshaw to the latest building she was inspecting. Her husband arrived directly. Everything was hush-hush. The Evil Eye would not hear of her good fortune this time.

  Mr Puri placed his hand on his son’s head, tapping along the close-cropped hair to the whorl at the centre.

  ‘How many times have I told you not to do that?’ Mrs Puri pulled Ramu away from his father. ‘His skull is sensitive. It’s still growing.’

  When the door opened, Ritika, her friend from Tower B, and her husband, the doctor, were waiting outside.

  They stared at each other, and then burst out laughing.

  ‘What a surprise, if we ended up neighbours again,’ Mrs Puri said, half an hour later. ‘A lovely surprise, of course.’

  The two families were at a South Indian restaurant just below the Rathore Towers, in an air-conditioned room with framed photographs of furry foreign dogs and milkmaids.

  ‘Yes,’ Ritika smiled. ‘Wouldn’t it be?’

  Mrs Puri and Ritika had been at the same school in Matunga, then together at KC College in Churchgate. Mrs Puri had had her nose ahead. Debating. Studies. Prize competitions. Even when they were looking at boys to marry. Her groom had been taller. Two inches.

  Now Ritika’s two children by her short husband were short, ugly, and normal.

  ‘How much are you getting for your place?’ Ritika asked. ‘We have 820 square feet.’

  ‘Ours is 834 square feet. They were going to put common toilets in Tower A, then added that little bit of floor space to the C flat. There are advantages to being in an old building.’

  ‘So that means you’re getting…’ Ritika looked around for pen and paper, before sketching into the air.

  ‘1.67 crores,’ Mrs Puri said. ‘And you?’

  Ritika withdrew her finger from the air, smiled with dignity, and asked: ‘Did you see one of those three-bedroom places on the top floor? That’s what we were thinking of buying.’

  ‘We can’t spend more than sixty-five lakhs.’ Mrs Puri mouthed the next sentence: ‘The rest is for Ramu’s future. Only problem is, this gentleman…’ She leaned her head towards her husband. ‘… wants to leave the city.’

  Fighting, like love-making, should be hidden from the child: the eighteen-year rule in the Puri household. But this was open provocation.

  ‘Why would anyone want to live in Mumbai today?’ Mr Puri snapped at his wife. ‘Let’s go to a civilized place like Pune. Some place where ten thousand beggars don’t come every morning by train. I’m sick of this city, I’m sick of its rat race.’

  ‘The thing to do in a rat race is to win it. Not run away.’

  ‘A civilized place. Pune is civilized. So is Nagpur.’

  Mrs Puri tied a knot into her sari to remind herself. This would be settled after Ramu went to sleep with his Friendly Duck.

  ‘We have checked this Confidence man,’ Ritika’s short husband said in a low voice. ‘I know someone who knows someone in the construction business. He delays with the money: always delays. But he does pay. We may have to fight him in court to get the money, but we will get it. I don’t worry about him. Not about him.’

  ‘Then who?’

  ‘Sangeeta…’ Ritika smiled. ‘… we hav
e heard that some people in Tower A are opposing the deal?’

  ‘Absolutely no one in our Society opposes it. One person is saying “Maybe”. She’s a Communist. We’ll make her change her mind.’

  ‘But she’s not the only one, Sangeeta. That old teacher in your Society too.’

  ‘Masterji?’ Mrs Puri laughed. ‘He’s just a big jackfruit. Prickly outside, soft and sweet inside. He’s a born quarreller, not a born fighter. Always complaining about this, about that. But the moment the Pintos say yes, he’ll say yes. I know my Masterji.’

  The waiter approached with plates of crispy dosas.

  ‘Just you wait and see, Ritika, we’ll beat you to it. Tower A will have our special general meeting and hand in our forms first.’

  When the waiter put down their dosas, everyone noticed that the biggest one had been placed in front of Mrs Puri.

  They sat on a bench in the small open square outside the restaurant, in the shade of a small Ashoka tree. Mrs Puri had not forgotten the knot in her sari, but it had to be established that there was no fighting between Mummy and Daddy, so they sat close to each other. Ramu, swinging his legs in between them, played alternately with her fingers and his.

  A couple came up to them. The woman asked: ‘We’re looking for Rathore Towers.’

  ‘Right behind us.’ Mrs Puri pointed.

  The woman wore a svelte black salwar kameez. Her man was in a nice business shirt. Smart young couple.

  Mrs Puri put her arm around Ramu and told the young woman: ‘This is my son. His name is Ramesh. We may be your neighbours.’

  Mr Puri raised his eyebrows: a thing like this had never been done before. Introducing Ramu to a stranger.

  All these years his wife had lived a leper’s length away from people. Her normal response when strangers came by was to tuck Ramu behind her body; that may have been why she let it grow so fat after his birth. He was still thinking about her extraordinary behaviour, when:

  ‘This Sunday we are all going to the Taj. Did you hear me?’

  ‘The Taj?’ Mr Puri asked. ‘Have you gone mad now, Sangeeta?’

  Of course not. Since she was a child, she had seen its pale conical lampshades behind the dark windows: the Sea Lounge at the Taj Hotel. This Sunday they would walk in, hand in hand, and ask the waiter: ‘A table in Sea Lounge, please.’ (‘The Sea Lounge,’ Mr Puri corrected her.) Then they would sit down and say: ‘We want coffee, please.’ Good behaviour would be observed by all, especially by Ramu, who would not rub his gums, drool, or kick legs about. Maybe a film star would come in. After settling the bill (hundreds and hundreds of rupees), they would keep it as a memento.

  Mr Puri, who was going to protest, kept quiet. Why not? he thought. Other human beings did it.

  Two sharp fingers scraped his leg: a beggar child. Feeling guilty for his Taj fantasy, he gave the child a two-rupee coin.

  ‘Don’t criticize me for doing that,’ he said, expecting the worst from his wife.

  ‘Why would I?’

  ‘For twenty-five years I’ve always wanted to give to beggars. Even one rupee, and you became angry.’

  This was a slander on her; but she let it stand – if it made Mr Puri happy, let him say it. He too had suffered enough in life.

  It began to rain. They scampered for a rickshaw; Mr Puri got in first with the boy, and his wife, after undoing the knot in her sari, joined them.

  25 JUNE

  The end of the earth. As the sun dies out, it cools and turns into a red giant, and then expands and expands, until it has consumed all the inner planets, including the earth.

  At this point, the ceiling lights go off – to add drama. Shadows are cast on the wall in the glow of the lamp light.

  The preparations for the day’s ‘top-up’ were all in place. With two hours to kill, Masterji picked up The Soul’s Passageway after Death and made another attempt to finish it.

  He followed the atma’s flight of enlightenment over the seventh and final ocean of the afterlife, beyond which glittered the peaks of snowy mountains. Another 10,000 years of purgation awaited it here.

  He closed his eyes. At the age of sixteen, when other boys his age in Suratkal were playing cricket in the maidan or chasing college girls, Masterji had gone through a ‘spiritual’ phase, spending his afternoons reading Dr Radhakrishnan on Hindu and Buddhist philosophy, performing exercises from a second-hand copy of B. K. S. Iyengar’s Light on Yoga, and teaching himself Sanskrit. This ‘spiritual’ phase ended the night he watched his father’s corpse burning in the cemetery and thought: That’s all there is to life. Nothing more. After his father’s death, when he went to Mumbai to live with an uncle, he left Dr Radhakrishnan and B. K. S. Iyengar behind him. Bombay was a new world, and he had come here to become a new man. Now it seemed to him that, oddly enough, he had spent his forty-four years in Bombay exactly in the manner prescribed by the Hindu philosophers: like a lotus in a dirty pond, be in the world but not of it. Nothing had made him cry for years. Not even his wife’s death. Was he really sorry that she had died? He did not know. The hypodermic needle of the outside world had bent at his epidermis and never penetrated.

  He heard something strike the floor, and realized it was his book. ‘I’m falling asleep. During the day.’

  Not once in his adult life, not even when sick, had he allowed himself this luxury; he had scolded his wife and daughter if he caught them napping in the afternoon, and punished, by a stroke of a steel foot-ruler applied to the knuckles, his son. With a concentrated exertion of will he broke through the settling surface of sleep and got up.

  He turned the tap in the living-room sink to wash his face in cold water, but the customary trickle had dried up completely.

  How, in the midst of the monsoons, could he have no water in his living room? He struck the tap with his fist.

  From the stairwell, as if to taunt him, came the words:

  ‘By the rivers of Bab-y-lon

  Where we sat dowwwwwn.’

  The song was in English and the voice was deep: Ibrahim Kudwa, going up to his flat.

  An hour later, the children were in the room, and Masterji was casting shadows on the wall to show how a healthy star changes into a red giant.

  He was still talking and casting shadows, when the red giant flickered on the wall and vanished. Flashes of light and great explosions from near at hand overwhelmed the stars and black holes of Masterji’s distant galaxies.

  The residents of Tower B were setting off firecrackers.

  The physics students watched from Masterji’s window, craning their necks to get the best view.

  ‘What is going on?’ Masterji asked. ‘Is it a festival today?’

  ‘No,’ Mohammad Kudwa said.

  ‘Is someone getting married, then?’

  The lights came on in the room: Mrs Puri had walked in through the open door.

  ‘Have you read the notice, Masterji?’ she asked, her fat fingers still at the light switch. ‘They beat us to it. Tower B. They have accepted the offer.’

  ‘You are interrupting the physics top-up, Mrs Puri.’

  ‘Oy, oy, oy…’ She flicked the light switch on and off. ‘Masterji. This cannot go on any longer. Speak to the Pintos. Must we all lose the light because of Shelley’s blindness? Here…’ She held out a paper. ‘… read this. And let the boys go. What kind of class can you have with all that noise outside?’

  ‘All right,’ Masterji shouted to the boys at the window. ‘Go down and play with those fellows. That’s what you want, isn’t it? No one cares about physics. Go. And you too, Mrs Puri.’

  She stood at the door with the notice in her hands.

  ‘I’ll go, Masterji. But will you do what Ajwani asked? Will you go down and see Mr Shah’s new buildings?’

  He closed the door behind all of them.

  How did she know what Ajwani asked me to do? he wondered. Are they talking about me behind my back?

  He read what Mrs Puri had left for him:

  NOTICE
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  Vishram Co-operative Hsg Society Ltd, Tower B, Vakola, Santa Cruz (E), Mumbai – 40055

  Minutes of the extraordinary general meeting held on 24 june

  Theme: Dissolution of Society (Approved)

  As the quorum was sufficient, the meeting commenced on time, at 12.30 p.m.

  Mr V. A. Ravi, Secretary, suggested that the members should dispense with formalities and deal with the main issue, which was to consider the generous offer of redevelopment presented by…

  He opened the window and tried to get a good view of Tower B. Standing in front of their building, men and women were lighting sparklers, rockets, dizzying sudarshan-chakras, and things in bottles with no purpose but to emit raw noise and light.

  The doorbell rang.

  ‘Masterji… Please… just go down and look at Mr Shah’s…’

  Mrs Puri had brought Ramu with her this time. The boy smiled; he too was pleading with his Masterji.

  A tower of Babel of the languages of construction.

  Bricks, concrete, twisted steel wires, planks, and bamboo poles held up the interiors. Long metal spokes stuck out from the floors with green netting, which sagged between the spokes like webbing, as if a fly had been squashed into the blueprint of the building. Holes in the concrete as big as a giant’s eyes, and massive slabs that appeared to be aligned incorrectly, overlapping and jutting over each other. Everything was an affront to a man’s sense of scale and order, even the sign that identified the thing, large as a political advertisement, and lit from beneath:

  THE CONFIDENCE EXCELSIOR

  Masterji stood before the two half-built concrete towers.

  One day they would be glassed and sheathed, but now their true nature was exposed. This was the truth of 20,000 rupees a square foot. The area already had a water shortage, how would it support so many new homes… and what would happen to the roads?

  Lights came on at the top of the second tower: somehow a crane had been lifted up there, and it began to move. In the glare of the lights Masterji saw men sitting on the dark floors like an advance army concealed in the entrails of the building.