Last Man in Tower

by Aravind Adiga

  ‘Why is it taking him so long to come back?’ Mrs Puri asked.

  Half a dozen residents had gathered in the Secretary’s room to celebrate Masterji’s return. The moment he would walk in with a smile and say, ‘Yes.’ A microphone had been placed near the black Cross; the plan was to hold an impromptu general meeting and have the whole thing done with in ten minutes.

  The Secretary patted his comb-over into place. ‘He is stuck in the train, maybe.’

  Ajwani had been standing in a corner of the office punching away on his mobile phone: now he turned the phone around and tapped it against a filing cabinet.

  ‘I’m getting worried. Look here…’ He smiled at the Secretary. ‘… why don’t you type out our Acceptance form now? Just type a form saying, All Members of Tower A have agreed and signed. As soon as he comes, get him to sign it. He may change his mind any minute. A man like that, he’s unpredictable. Remember what he did to the modern girl’s boyfriend?’

  Ajwani gave the air a push.

  Kothari put two fingers over the keys of the Remington, and then retracted them one by one.

  ‘I think it’s against the rules to type a form like that until everyone has actually said yes.’

  The broker shook his head, punched on his mobile phone and murmured something.

  ‘What did you call me?’ The Secretary got up. ‘I know that you’ve been calling me that behind my back, Ajwani. Nothing man.’

  The broker looked up from his mobile phone. ‘I speak my mind, Kothari. Don’t hide things.’

  ‘What does that mean? What have I been hiding all these years?’

  Ibrahim Kudwa was waiting in the office; Mumtaz was by his side, with baby Mariam on her lap. He was going to intervene in the quarrel when Mrs Puri walked in and said: ‘Ibby.’

  He smiled. ‘Sangeeta-ji,’ he said.

  ‘Ibby, the internet connection at home is a bit slow today. I don’t know if it’s a loose cable or…’ She smiled at Mumtaz. ‘Your husband is so good with computers and wires.’

  Mumtaz watched her husband follow Mrs Puri up the stairs. He would come down speaking like her. Saying ‘Oy oy oy’ in every other sentence. In the way that the body of an unfaithful husband took on other fragrances, Ibrahim’s voice took on the accents of the women he was trying to impress.

  If asked to decide who made the most incompatible couple in their building, the residents of Vishram would have had a hard time choosing between the Puris and the Kudwas. Before Mohammad’s birth Mumtaz Kudwa had worked at a dental clinic in Khar (West); now she left home once a day, to bring Mohammad back from school, and the other residents rarely spoke to her except on festivals like Republic Day. Ibrahim made his nest in other people’s homes. Always pressing the bell to chat, to offer a ride on his scooter, the free use of his internet café, and you felt he would have been happier watching TV on your sofa than on his own.

  It had been an arranged marriage; even in the earliest, happiest days, Mumtaz had noticed odd things about her husband. If Ibrahim was treated like an adult, he acted like a child. Grateful to be included in a group, he would do anything others wanted of him, even if it demeaned or endangered him. In his own home, with his own father and mother, he was so thrilled when he got attention at the dinner table. One day she felt bold enough to ask: ‘Why do you worry so much about what they think about you?’ He was angry for days; and then, without consulting her, he announced that they would now live away from his family. They moved to an old building full of Hindus and Christians, and Ibrahim’s behaviour became worse. Mrs Puri pestered him for little favours – a free tube of potassium nitrate toothpaste for Ramu’s sensitive teeth, for instance – and Ibrahim, incapable of saying no, had forced her to smuggle six tubes out of the dentist’s clinic (‘it’s not stealing, it’s for a neighbour’).

  She thought it would be worth leaving Vishram just to take her husband away from that woman.

  With her child on her lap she looked at the door, only dimly aware that voices were rising around her as Ajwani and the Secretary argued.

  Feeling too weak for the evening train, Masterji had hailed a taxi outside Gaurav’s building. Why not? A rich man could travel like a rich man. He put his hand out of the window and tapped at the side of the black Fiat. The trip by road took at least half an hour longer than the train would have; by the time he passed the Mayor’s mansion near Shivaji Park, Masterji felt stronger. Alighting near the Bandra mosque, he crossed the busy road and waited for an autorickshaw to economize on the last leg of his trip home.

  He had barely unlatched the gate of Vishram Society when a dark body ran out of the bright building and put its arms around his neck.

  ‘Thank you, Uncle! Thank you so much.’

  Radhika Saldanha – he realized, after some confusion, as she turned and bolted back into her home.

  Mrs Saldanha, watching through the tear in her window, smiled at him as he entered the building.

  He stopped, from habit, at the noticeboard: a new typewritten sign had been hammered with a nail into the central panel.

  NOTICE

  Vishram Co-operative Hsg Society Ltd, Vakola, Santa Cruz (E), Mumbai – 400055

  Minutes of the extraordinary general meeting of ‘A’ Building, held on 6 July

  Theme: dissolution of Society

  All members were present by the time, 5.30 P.M.

  Ramesh Ajwani (2C) took the chair and presided over the meeting.

  ITEM NO. 1 OF THE AGENDA:

  All members have agreed, unanimously, to accept the offer made by the Confidence Group. The residents of the Society have agreed unanimously to the dissolution of the Society, and to the demolition of its physical structure.

  No other items were discussed in the meeting.

  For the Vishram ‘A’ Tower Executive Committee,

  Signed,

  Ashvin Kothari,

  Secretary, Vishram Tower (A)

  Copy (1) To Members of ‘A’ Building, Vishram

  Co-op Hsg Society Ltd

  Copy (2) To the Secretary, Vishram Co-op Hsg

  Society Ltd

  Note: Signatures of all members of the Society are listed below, next to their respective unit numbers (with square footage in brackets)

  The Secretary emerged from his office with a smile.

  ‘What is this?’ Masterji asked, his index finger on the noticeboard. ‘I just got back to Vishram. I haven’t signed anything yet.’

  Kothari came to the noticeboard and squinted; the lynx-like laugh-lines spread from his eyes. ‘Well, I was just saving time, Masterji. Since you’ve agreed, I thought I’d type up the notice.’

  Masterji’s index finger had not moved.

  ‘Did I agree? When did I agree? I said I was going to speak to my son. That was all.’

  The Secretary stopped smiling. ‘It was not my idea, actually. Ajwani’s idea. He forced me to put it up before you came back… he…’

  Dislodging Masterji’s hand from the glass, the Secretary lifted it open. He tore off the notice, one half of which fell to the floor.

  ‘There, Masterji, are you happy?’

  He was not.

  ‘Who gave you the right to say I have agreed? Why do you say I’ve signed something?’

  ‘Thank you, Masterji.’ Mrs Puri was coming down the stairs. ‘Thank you for thinking of all of us.’

  Masterji’s index finger was again on the empty noticeboard.

  ‘Sangeeta, did you know the Secretary thinks he can forge my signature?’

  ‘Masterji!’ The Secretary raised his voice. ‘This is too much drama. It is just a simple thing – a simple mistake that we made! And I keep telling you, it was not my idea. It was Ajwani!’

  Masterji took the crumpled form from the floor and straightened it out. He read it again.

  ‘It is a signature,’ he whispered. ‘My signature.’

  ‘Mrs Puri…’ The Secretary looked up. ‘You are his champion in the building. Talk to him, won’t you?’

&n
bsp; ‘Masterji. We waited for hours for you. I didn’t collect water for Ramu’s evening bath. You did tell us you would sign it.’

  A voice boomed: ‘Don’t blame us, Masterji. We just put that notice up half an hour ago. Why did you take so long to come back?’

  Ajwani’s small black face looked down from the second-floor banister.

  ‘It’s true, Masterji,’ the Secretary said. ‘If you had come back just half an hour ago…’

  ‘I couldn’t come sooner, because… I wasn’t feeling well…’

  People looked down from various places along the stairwell: Mr Ganguly, Ajwani, Mr Puri, Ibrahim Kudwa, Mr Vij.

  He wanted to breathe in the camphor-scented air from his wife’s cupboard. Mrs Puri stepped aside to let him go. The sick dog lay on the first landing, trembling from its joints. Masterji stopped in front of it and looked up at his neighbours. It was like being at the train compartment’s edge again, with the warm wind blowing into his eyes and the other train rushing past: he saw the demonic faces crowding around him.

  He spoke so all would hear:

  ‘… have not said yes, have not said no.’

  BOOK SIX

  Fear

  15 JULY

  ‘… you said it was over, Shanmugham. A week ago.’

  Driving through Juhu in the morning, sunk into the black leather cushions of his Mercedes, chewing gutka from his blue tin, Mr Shah watched the only thing there was to watch.

  All night long rain had pounded Mumbai; now the ocean retorted.

  Storm-swollen, its foam hissing thick like acid reflux, dissolving gravity and rock and charging up the ramps that separated beach from road, breaking at the land’s edge in burst after burst of droplets that made the spectactors, huddled under black umbrellas, scream.

  Shah told his driver to take slow circles around Juhu; as the car made a U-turn, he moved to the other window, so he could keep watching the ocean. ‘I don’t care about that old teacher and his mood swings. Now you tell that Secretary, he won’t see one rupee of his sweetener – what did we promise him, an extra one lakh? – unless he earns it. Didn’t I tell you from the start, that teacher was going to make trouble? And you, Shanmugham, don’t ever again tell me something is done, until it is done, until the signature is there, until—’

  Mr Shah threw the mobile phone into a corner of the car.

  He had hoped there would be no fighting this time. With an offer this generous. But there would always be a fight. The nature of this stupid, stupid city. What he wouldn’t have built by now if he were in Shanghai – hospitals, airports, thirteen-storey shopping malls! And here, all this trouble, just to get started on a simple luxury housing…

  The mucus in his chest thickened; his breathing sounded like a feral dog’s growling. Shah coughed and spat into his handkerchief. He checked the colour of the spit with a finger.

  Bending down to pick up the mobile phone, he dialled Shanmugham’s number again.

  Parvez, the driver, turned on the windscreen-wipers. The rain had started again.

  ‘Wait,’ Shah said. ‘Stop here.’

  The boys inside the bus stand to their left were cheering.

  Across the road, in the sheeting rain, one man in rags was bearing another on his back towards the bus stand. The fellow on top was covered in a cape of blue tarpaulin which billowed around them both. The man doing the carrying was pushed sideways by the wind and the weight on his shoulders; vehicles flashed their headlights at him through the rain; yet he came closer and closer to the cheering spectators, who, as if by will power alone, were pulling him to safety.

  ‘Sir?’ Shanmugham was on the line. ‘Do you want me to start taking action in Vishram? Should I do what I did last year in that project in Sion?’

  Shah looked at the men in the rain. Adding his will to that of the spectators, he urged the two of them on until they staggered into the bus stand.

  The builder smiled; he struck the window with a golden ring, making Parvez turn around.

  21 JULY

  Fine wrinkles radiated from Ram Khare’s eyes as he read from his holy digest, like minute illustrations of the net that Fate had cast over him.

  When he was in his teens he had had hopes of playing cricket for Bombay in the Ranji Trophy; when he was in his twenties he dreamed of buying a home of his own; when he was in his thirties of taking his old parents on a pilgrimage to the city of Benaras.

  At the age of fifty-six, he found that his life had contracted to three things: his daughter Lalitha, an alumna of St Catherine’s School, now studying computer engineering in Pune; his rum; and his religion.

  Mornings were for religion. Standing inside his guard’s booth with a string of black rudraksha beads in his left hand, he kept a finger on page 23:

  ‘What are the marks by which a soul may be known? Listen to the words of our Lord Krishna. The soul is not born and it does not…’

  Footsteps came towards Vishram Society. He turned to the gate and said: ‘One minute, Masterji. One minute.’

  Opening the tin door of the watchman’s booth, Khare stepped to one side, inviting Masterji to enter. The old teacher, who was returning with a bundle of fresh coriander for the Pintos, held it up: a gesture of protest.

  Khare said: ‘One minute.’

  Disarmed by the servant’s insistence, Masterji gave up, and so, for the first time in thirty-two years, entered the guard’s booth at Vishram Society.

  ‘Now if you wait just a second, sir, I’ll show you my life’s work.’

  There was a large spider’s web growing in a corner of the guard’s booth; Khare seemed to have no objection to its existence. Objects from the ground – twigs, chalks, pen-tops, snippets of metal wire – had been conveyed into this web, several feet off the ground: the whole thing looking like a project in mild black magic that Khare carried on in his spare time.

  ‘This is my life’s work, sir. My life’s work.’

  Ram Khare’s fingers rested on another magical object: the long, stiffspined Visitors’ Log Book.

  He ran his clean fingernail down the columns.

  Guest Name

  Occupation

  Address

  Mobile Number

  Purpose of Visit

  Person to See

  Time Entry

  Time Exit

  Remarks (if any)/Observations (if any)

  Signature of Guest

  Signature of Guard

  ‘Every single guest is noted, and his mobile number registered. For sixteen years it has been this way—’ he pointed to the old registers stuffed into plastic trays. ‘Ask me who came into the building on the morning of 1 January 1994, I’ll tell you. What time they left, I’ll tell you. Sixteen years, seven months and twenty-one days.’

  Khare closed the log book and sniffed.

  ‘Before that I was the guard at the Raj Kiran Housing Society in Kalina. A good Society. There too they had an offer of redevelopment from a builder. One man refused to sign the offer – a healthy young fellow, not like you – and one morning he tripped down the stairs and broke his knees. He signed in his hospital bed.’

  Masterji closed his eyes for a beat.

  ‘Are you threatening me, Ram Khare?’

  ‘No, sir. I am informing you that there is a snake in my mind. It is long and black.’

  The guard spread his arms wide.

  ‘And I wanted you to see this black snake too. Every day Mrs Puri or Mrs Saldanha or someone else comes to your door and knocks, and asks: “Have you made up your mind? Will you sign?” And everyday you say: “I’m thinking about it.” How long can this go on, Masterji? Now it makes no difference to me whether you say yes or no. If this building stands, I have this job. If it falls, I have a job somewhere else. But…’

  Ram Khare opened the door for his guest: ‘… there is the question of my duty to you. And whatever happens now, I’ve discharged it. The Lord Krishna has taken note of that.’

  And with that, he went back to his holy digest: ‘
… it does not die. It cannot hurt and cannot be hurt. It is invincible, immortal, and…’

  What cheek, Masterji thought, walking to the entranceway of his Society. Talking of a ‘black snake’ in Vishram.

  He should complain to the Secretary. Mrs Rego was right; Ram Khare was drinking too much. He had smelled molasses in that booth.

  Mrs Puri was at her window, watching him from behind her grille.

  ‘Mrs Puri,’ he shouted, ‘will you listen to what Ram Khare just said? He said I should be worried about what you and my other neighbours will do to me.’

  As he watched, she shut the window and pulled down the blind. Must not have seen me, he thought. He did it all the time himself, ignored people right in front of him. Can’t be helped after a certain age.

  He walked into the building with the coriander.

  Retreating to the mirror in her bedroom, Mrs Puri brushed her long black hair to soothe herself.

  Her husband had yelled at her in the morning as he left. The first time he had yelled at her in Ramu’s presence. He had never trusted that old man. She was the one who described Masterji as ‘an English gentleman’. She was the one who had called him a ‘big jackfruit’.

  Ramu, sensing his mother was upset, sat by her side, and imitated her with a phantom brush. She saw this, and in gratitude, sobbed a little.

  Wiping her mobile phone clean on her forearm, she re-dialled a number.

  ‘Gaurav, it’s me again,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you come here, Gaurav. Speak to him. Bring Ronak. He will change his mind: he is your father. Don’t be obstinate like him, Gaurav. You must come to see him. Do it for your Sangeeta Aunty, won’t you?’

  Wiping the mobile phone on her forearm, she put it down on the table and turned to her son.

  ‘Can you believe it, Ramu? All those mangoes, all those years. I cut them into long thin slices and put them in his fridge. You remember, don’t you?’

  She could hear Masterji opening the fridge to pour himself a glass of cold water.