Last Man in Tower

by Aravind Adiga

  Tomorrow by this time I will be different from all of them, he thought: and his hands became dark fists.

  5 OCTOBER

  When Masterji opened his eyes, he was still kneeling before the open green almirah. Sunlight had entered the room.

  It was a new day: the anniversary of Purnima’s death.

  My legs are going to hurt, he thought, searching for something to hold on to, as he raised himself up.

  He walked over the underwear lying around the washing machine and went into the living room.

  It was his wife’s first anniversary, but Trivedi had refused to do the rites. Where could he get them done at the last minute?

  As he brushed his teeth, it seemed to him that the face in the mirror, enriched by wisdom from the foaming toothpaste, was offering him a series of counter-arguments: so what if Trivedi said no? Why a temple, why a priest? Physics experiments could be done by oneself at home: the existence of the sun and the moon, the roundness of the earth, the varying velocities of sound in solids and liquids, all these could be demonstrated in a small room.

  True, he acknowledged, as he washed his face and mouth at the sink, very true.

  He cupped the weak flow from the tap in his palm. It seemed that water was a part of all Hindu religious ceremonies. The Christians used it too. Muslims gargled and cleaned themselves before their namaaz.

  He clutched a handful of water and went to the window. Sunlight too was congenial to religion. He opened the window and sprinkled water in the direction of the morning sun. Something was usually said to accompany this sprinkling. People used holy languages for this purpose. Sanskrit. Arabic. Latin. But the words came out of him in English. He said: ‘I miss you, my wife.’

  He sprinkled more water.

  ‘Forgive me for not being a better husband.’

  He sprinkled the last of the water into the light.

  ‘Forgive me for not protecting you from the things I should have protected you from.’

  One drop of water had fallen on Masterji’s fingertip; it glowed in the morning light like a pearl.

  The iridescent drop spoke to him, saying: I am what you are made of. And in the end I am what you return to. In between there were puzzling things a man had to do. Marry. Teach. Have children. And then his obligations were done and he would become drops of water again, free of life and its rainbow of restrictions. Death said to Master ji: Fear me not. Purnima your wife is more beautiful than ever, she is a drop of shining water. And Sandhya your daughter is right by her side.

  The creeper from the Secretary’s home had grown down to Masterji’s window again; tender, translucent in the morning light, its blind pale tip curled up, apparently searching for him, like Sandhya’s infant finger, the first time he came close to her.

  He fed it the water drop.

  Something was usually done for others in remembrance rituals. When he had performed his father’s last rites in Suratkal, they had left steaming rice balls on a plantain leaf for the crows.

  He came down to the compound, where Mrs Puri was clapping to keep time for Ramu; with a gold-foil sword in his hand, the boy, whose cheeks had been rouged, walked four measured steps, swished his sword, and bowed before an imaginary audience. Masterji remembered: the annual pageant.

  ‘Good luck, Ramu,’ he said.

  Ramu, despite his mother’s stern gaze, thrust his golden sword at Masterji.

  Ajwani woke up and found himself under arrest.

  Two samurai had taken his arms in theirs. ‘Tae kwon-do time, Papa’ – little Raghav brought his fist right up to his father’s face. ‘You’ve over-slept.’

  In brilliant white outfits embellished with Korean symbols and a small Indian flag in the upper right-hand corner, the boys arranged themselves before the dining table in kicking-and-punching positions. Though not formally trained in the martial arts, Ajwani understood the basic principles of strength and speed well enough.

  ‘Hey-a! Hey-a!’

  The two of them kicked; Father watched from the sofa, yawning.

  ‘Harder. Much harder.’

  Then the three of them sat down at the green dinner table for a breakfast of their mother’s toast.

  Now in their blue ties and white school uniforms, Rajeev and Raghav lined up for the spoon full of shark liver oil that their father held out for them. Wetting his fingers at the kitchen tap, he wiped shark liver oil from each boy’s lips and sprinkled his face to make him laugh.

  ‘All right. Off to school.’

  Ajwani’s wife, a heavy swarthy woman, was frying something in sunflower oil in the kitchen. She shouted out: ‘Will you bring some basmati rice in the evening?’

  ‘If I remember,’ he shouted back, and slapped his armpits with Johnson’s Baby Powder, before putting on a safari suit, and shutting the door behind him.

  Halfway down the stairwell, he stopped and did a set of push-ups leaning against the banister.

  Some time after 10 a.m., Masterji returned from the market with a packet of sweets.

  He walked past the gate of Vishram Society, down to the Tamil temple. He remembered it from the evening he had gone through the slums to see Mr Shah’s new buildings.

  The sanctum of the temple was locked, and two old women in saris sat on its square verandah, in the centre of which a tree grew.

  He put the sweet-box before the old women. ‘Please think of my departed wife, Purnima, who died a year ago.’

  Ripping open the plastic packaging around the sweets the old women began eating. He sat on the verandah with them. Through the grille door with the shiny padlock, he could see the small black Ganesha idol inside the dim temple, anointed with oil and kumkum and half buried under marigolds.

  He watched the old women gobble; he felt their filling stomachs refuelling her flight. Their belches and grunts were a benediction on Purnima’s soul. Through the grille door, he watched the Ganesha, a distant cousin of the red idol at SiddhiVinayak. He was a jolly god, Ganesha, always game for a bit of mischief, and when the wind blew Masterji thought he heard someone whisper: ‘I’ve been on your side the whole time, you old atheist.’

  A blind man sat outside the temple with a tray that held flowers of four colours, strung into small garlands. A few red petals had flown from his tray and floated on a sunken manhole cover that had filled up with black water. Masterji thought of the beautiful bronze tray with petals floating on it that he had seen at Gaurav’s home.

  Water buffaloes came near the temple, coated in dust and dung, their dark bulging bellies spangled by flies.

  Leaning back against the wall of the temple, he saw, through the coconut trees, Mr Shah’s two buildings. The work appeared to be complete: a continuous row of windows sparkled down the side of each building. Soon, catching the angle of the setting sun, the buildings would flash like side-by-side comets. He remembered the blue tarpaulin that had covered their structures when he had last seen them; that must have been in June or July. He became aware of the passage of time, and it occurred to him that the deadline had really passed now. The fifth of October.

  ‘It is over,’ he said softly. And then, he got up and said, in the direction of Mr Shah’s two buildings: ‘You have lost.’

  The tree in the courtyard began to shake. A boy was up in the branches, while a girl held out her blue skirt to collect what he was throwing down.

  ‘What are you doing up there, fellow?’

  The boy smiled and half opened his hand, revealing three tiny green fruits.

  ‘And who’re you?’ he asked the girl.

  She spoke into her skirt.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Sister.’

  Masterji closed an eye against the sun and looked at the boy. ‘Throw me one, and I won’t tell the priest you’re taking his fruit.’

  The boy let one of the fruits slip from his palm; Masterji caught and chewed on it. Citrus-like and sour, it reminded him of things he had once climbed trees for. That was before his thread ceremony in Suratkal at the age o
f fourteen, a full day’s business of chanting Sanskrit in front of a sacred fire and blinking and coughing in the wood smoke, at the end of which a lean, geriatric, crow-like priest spoke to him the formulaic words of wisdom for coming-of-age Brahmin boys: ‘This means no more climbing trees for fruit, my son. No more stoning dogs, my son. No more teasing girls, my son.’ Then the priest had concluded by saying: ‘And now you are a man.’

  But that had not been true. Only now, at the age of sixty-one, did he finally feel like a man.

  ‘Help us down, Grandfather,’ the boy said, and Masterji steadied his waist as he climbed down the branches. The boy and his sister divided the spoils; Masterji watched and wished Ronak were here.

  He thought of that evening at Crawford Market, when he had seen the light behind the buildings and pledged to fight Mr Shah.

  But that fight was over. The deadline had passed, and that builder would go somewhere else. What was he expected to do from now on?

  The residue of citrus on his tongue had turned bitter. He covered his face with his hands, and closed his eyes.

  Mrs Puri applied mascara, fluttering her lashes to even the colour. In a corner, Ramu fluttered his eyelashes too.

  Boxing with him all the way, Rum-pum-pum-pum-pum-pum, Mrs Puri led him down to 1B and pressed the bell.

  When Mrs Rego opened her door, Mrs Puri stopped boxing with Ramu, and asked: ‘Didn’t you tell me you were going to your sister’s place this evening? The one who lives in Bandra?’

  ‘No… I didn’t tell you that.’

  Mrs Puri smiled.

  ‘You should go to see her, Mrs Rego. And you should take my Ramu with you, too.’

  ‘But… I promised the boys who play cricket at the Tamil temple I would take them to the beach.’

  ‘This is a favour I ask of you as a neighbour. Have I ever asked you, in all these years, to take care of Ramu?’

  Mrs Rego looked from Ramu to his mother, waiting for an explanation.

  ‘Ramu has to be David, Slayer of Goliath, in the school pageant. I will have to stay back to help them remove the stage decorations until nine o’clock.’

  ‘But Ramu can stay with me right here.’

  Mrs Puri put her hand on her neighbour’s shoulder.

  ‘I want you to go to your sister’s house. It’s a simple thing, isn’t it?’

  The five-second rule. As children in Bandra, Mrs Rego and her sister Catherine had played it each time a chicken leg or a slice of mango had fallen to the floor. Pick it up before a count of five and you did not have to worry about germs. You would stay safe. She remembered this now.

  Saying, ‘I’d be happy to do this for you’ – one, two, three, four – Mrs Rego closed the door.

  ‘Be brave, Ramu. I have to leave you with Communist Aunty. Mummy must help the other Mummys clean the stage after the pageant – or who else will take responsibility?’

  Ramu hid inside his aeroplane quilt and sulked with the Friendly Duck.

  Sitting beside her son, Mrs Puri checked her mobile phone, which had just beeped. Ajwani had sent her a text message: ‘Going city. Back 6 clock.’

  She knew exactly which part of the city he was going to.

  Falkland Road.

  Her brother Vikram had been in the Navy, and in the mess they had been issued with bottles of Old Monk rum every week. It brought the heat into the blood. Men performing bold physical action needed heat.

  In her mind’s eye she saw Ajwani crouching on the terrace, now moving fleetfoot behind Masterji, until the time came for the push. Heat: a man needed it for these things. If he had to go to Falkland Road for his heat, then so be it.

  An arm slid out from the aeroplane quilt and bunched the bangles on Mrs Puri’s forearm together, until her wrist was plated with gold like a warrior’s. She shook her arm, and the bangles trinkled down; the sweet music drew Ramu, beaming like sunrise, out of his quilt.

  Up and down his mother’s forearm he rubbed her golden bangles. Her flesh grew warm and the hairs on her forearm were singed from the friction.

  Mrs Puri wanted to wince. She smiled and let her son continue to play.

  Mumtaz Kudwa called her husband some time after noon to say she had overheard Mrs Puri asking Mrs Rego to take care of Ramu in the evening. And then the Secretary knocked on the door to say that no one was to leave the building after nine o’clock.

  ‘What are they going to do to Masterji this time?’ Kudwa asked his wife.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I thought they would have told you.’

  ‘They always leave me out. They didn’t tell me when they got the duplicate keys done… what do you think I should do – should I go to Sangeeta-ji and ask her what is going on?’

  Mumtaz started to say something but stopped, and settled on the old formula: ‘It’s up to you. You’re the man of the house.’

  Typical, he thought, stroking Mariam’s hair as he sat in his cybercafé, typical. A man has a right to expect his wife to make a decision for him now and then, but not Ibrahim Kudwa. As alone after marriage as he was before marriage.

  On a corner of his table was the black helmet of his new Bajaj Pulsar. He wished he had listened to Mumtaz and waited until the deadline before buying the bike: if they didn’t get the money now, how would he pay its monthly instalments?

  If only you were older, he thought, bouncing Mariam on his knee. If only you could tell your father what to do.

  He looked at the helmet.

  Now he saw it creeping over his table again: the black swamp. He heard his neighbours standing behind him, and yelling for him to reach into it.

  Little Mariam cried. Her father had banged his fist on his desk and shouted: ‘No.’

  Giving instructions to Arjun, his assistant, to double-lock the door, he shut his internet café and went home with his daughter.

  Something very bad was going to happen to his Society this evening: unless he stopped it from happening.

  After eating lunch in his office at two o’clock, Ajwani had taken the train into the city; he had brought along his copy of the Times of India real-estate classifieds to read on the journey.

  He got off at Charni Road. Grant Road would have been closer, but he wanted to see the ocean before seeing the girls.

  He crossed Marine Drive to the ocean wall and stood on it. Except for a rag-picker down among the tetrapod rocks, he was alone.

  All his life he had dreamed of something grand – going across the Kala Paani to a new country. Like Vasco da Gama. Like Columbus.

  ‘Just a push,’ he said aloud. He practised pushing a phantom body off the ocean wall into the rocks, and then did it again.

  At Chowpatty beach he crossed the road to stop at Café Ideal for an ice-cold mug of draught beer. Done with his drink, he was startled to find a phrase written all over the Times of India real-estate page: ‘Just a push’. Ripping the paper to shreds, he asked the waiter to make sure it went into the waste bin.

  Outside, he hailed a taxi and said: ‘Falkland Road.’

  Marine Drive is flooded with light from ocean and open sky; but a simple change of gear, three turns on the road, and the ocean breeze is gone, the sky contracts, and old buildings darken the vista. When you have gone deep enough into this other Bombay, you will come to Falkland Road.

  Ajwani stopped the taxi, and paid his fare with three ten-rupee notes from a wad in his pocket.

  ‘I don’t have any change,’ the driver said.

  Ajwani told him not to worry. One and two rupee coins wouldn’t matter after today.

  He put the wad of notes back in his pocket, patted it, and felt better. Having money made things so much simpler, as one grew older.

  There were friendly hotels by the Santa Cruz station and all along the highway, but it would do a man no good to look for pleasure where he might be recognized. In the old days – oh, five, six years ago – Ajwani went to Juhu and visited a pretty young actress there once or twice a month. Then real-estate prices went up in Juhu. Even those h
oles-in-the-wall became too costly for that actress and the other nice girls like her. They packed up and went north: to Versova, Oshiwara, Lokhandwala. Ajwani’s trips grew longer. Then real-estate prices went up in the north too. The girls moved to Malad, too far for him. And that wouldn’t be the end of it. Sooner or later a man would have to drive all the way to Pune for a blowjob. Real-estate speculation was destroying Bombay.

  Thank God, Ajwani thought, there will always be Falkland Road.

  Greying multi-storeyed buildings stood on either side of the road, each collapsing in some way. Some of the windows had been gouged out, and men in banians sat in the open holes, looking down. Ajwani passed dental shops with plaster-of-Paris dentures on display, dim restaurants as greasy as the biryani they served, and cinema theatres with garish film posters (collages of violent action and sympathetic cleavage) outside which young migrant men stood in queues, withering in the heat and the shouting of theatre guards. Muck was congealed in between the buildings, and spilled on to the road. As if summoned for contrast, a row of silvery horse carriages shaped like swans, the kind that took tourists on joyrides near the Gateway of India, had been parked by the rubbish. Neither the horses nor the drivers were around, but women leaned on the carriages, sucking their teeth at Ajwani.

  He smiled back at them.

  This early in the day, Kamathipura would be quiet, and the second floor of the discreet building behind the Taj Hotel would be closed, and Congress House might or might not accept gentlemen callers. But Falkland Road was always open for business. The women waited in bright blue doorways, squatted on thresholds, and stepping forward from the silvery carriages taunted Ajwani.

  A girl in a green petticoat sat hunched over in a bright blue doorway; cigarette smoke rose up her face like sideburns.

  He was about to speak to her when he heard metallic noise, and saw flashes of light behind the prostitute.

  Smiling at the warm green petticoat to indicate that he’d be back, Ajwani took a few steps down the lane behind her brothel.