Last Man in Tower

29 SEPTEMBER

Humming a favourite film song (… geet amar kar do) and walking up to his flat with a packet of fresh milk, Masterji found Ms Meenakshi waiting at his door. The girl showed him a set of keys.

‘I’m leaving today.’

Masterji nodded. ‘In that case you must come in, Ms Meenakshi. Tea? Biscuits?’

She wore a white T-shirt, and a denim skirt that left most of her knees uncovered; she sat on the sofa while he put milk on the gas stove and chopped a piece of ginger in the kitchen.

‘Masterji, your life could be in danger and you’re talking about tea and biscuits?’

He ignited the burner of the stove with a match.

‘What will that man Shah do, Ms Meenakshi? We have gone through things in our generation that I can’t explain to you. Do you know about PL 480? During the 1965 war the Americans stopped our food supply to help Pakistan. PL 480 was their wheat programme, and they cut it off. Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri asked each Indian to give up a meal to help the nation win the war. This trouble is nothing.’

The living room filled with the smell of burned milk. Masterji came out of the kitchen with two cups of steaming ginger tea.

Ms Meenakshi sipped her tea. ‘You’re all alone here, Masterji. Do you really understand this? A man with a gun could come to your door and shoot you. It’s been done before.’

Masterji put his cup down on the teakwood table.

‘No. I am not alone, Ms Meenakshi.’

He wanted to throw shadows on the wall to explain to her.

‘There are more parties involved in this dispute than just Mr Shah, my neighbours, and me. Millions are involved. Even after you leave Vishram, you will still be involved.’

She waited for him to explain. He smiled and stirred the sediment in the teacup.

Wiping her hands on her skirt, the girl said: ‘You asked what Public Relations is, Masterji. Go to the papers. Tell them your story.’

‘I wrote to a student of mine at the Times… and it came to nothing.’

‘Not the pucca papers. A tabloid. My boyfriend works for the Sun, Masterji — the one you…’ She smiled. ‘I told him what is happening here, and he said at once: “It’s a story!” He’ll interview you. The paper will run your photo. You’ll become famous. People will follow you on FaceBook.’

Masterji got up.

Everyone wants something from me, he thought. Shah wants to steal my home, and she wants to take my story.

He went to the window and opened it. A potted creeper from the Secretary’s flat had grown down to his window; its lush green tendrils were blocking a part of his view. He began to snap its tendrils.

Ms Meenakshi realized that this was a sign for her to leave.

‘I ask you once again, Masterji,’ she said from the door. ‘Will you tell your story? Every day, the danger to your life grows.’

He stood at the window until she closed the door behind him. So now she was gone: soon she would be moving out of the building, this girl who had once disturbed him so much. He could not locate within himself the man who — just a few feet from where he now stood — had shoved Ms Meenakshi’s boyfriend with more-than-human strength. Maybe that was why she had been sent to this building: to discompose him at the time Shah made his offer.

An autorickshaw entered the compound. He saw the girl get into it with her suitcases and bags.

She was right. The deadline was coming close: and Mr Shah was going to send someone round soon.

With a smile, he continued to break the creeper, which now smelled of raw, invigorating sap.

30 SEPTEMBER

Despite the runny noses, high temperatures, and inflamed conjunctiva that accompanied the change in the weather, Ram Khare still conceded that it was the ideal time of the year to enjoy life.

October was almost here. The sun was now bothering other people in other cities. Evenings were becoming pleasant. So he did what he did once a year, and invited security guards from around the neighbourhood for a round of chai.

They gathered around his booth in grey or khaki uniforms, smoking beedis or twirling keychains; Khare, perhaps more conscientious as a host than as a guard, made sure each one had a full glass of tea, before he took one for himself from the tray that the chai-wallah had left.

‘Well, Ram Khare, what is happening at Vishram Society these days? Has it been hockey sticks or knives recently?’

The other guards had heard the news about old Mr Pinto and the boy with the hockey stick. Looking around, Ram Khare confronted an impromptu tribunal of his colleagues. He put down his tea glass and stood before them.

‘Look: was Mr Pinto threatened inside the wall — or outside the wall?’

‘Fair enough,’ one of the guards said. ‘He can’t watch over every bit of the earth, can he?’

‘But is this Masterji of yours a good man or a bad one?’ another guard asked. ‘Does he give good baksheesh?’

Khare snorted. ‘In sixteen years, eight months, and twenty-nine days of knowing him, not a single tip.’

General outrage. Let him be thrown from his window, kicked senseless, shot to death — anything!

Since the holy digest was sitting right in the window of his booth, Ram Khare had to point out, in fairness: ‘But he did include my Lalitha in his lessons. The residents were not happy that a guard’s daughter was being taught with their children, but he said, nothing doing. She is a student like everyone else.’

A piercing whistle came from the gate in front of Tower B: the guards turned.

A truck began to move in reverse gear into the compound, directed by the whistle-blowing guard of that tower.

‘My friends, things have been bad in Vishram Society,’ Ram Khare said, raising his tea in a toast, ‘but from today, they become worse.’

Mrs Puri and Ibrahim Kudwa watched from her window.

Wooden beds and Godrej cupboards, carried down the stairwell of Tower B, were loaded on to the back of the truck. Then came writing tables covered in old newspaper and personal luggage wrapped in plastic.

Having received their second instalment of money from the Confidence Group (paid by Mr Shah, in a surprise move, ahead of schedule), the families of Tower B were leaving for their new homes, one by one.

Mrs Puri had heard the news from Ritika, her friend in Tower B, a couple of weeks ago.

‘One morning the money just comes into our Punjab National Bank account,’ Ritika had said. ‘More than a month early. The first instalment he paid as soon as we signed the vacating forms. We’ve got two-thirds of the money now — all those zeroes in our bank statements, Sangeeta. Everyone has run out and put down a deposit on a brand-new place. No one wants to stay in Vishram Society one day longer than they have to.’

The schedule of departures had been posted for the residents of Tower A to see on Ram Khare’s booth. The last family would leave Tower B by 5 p.m. on Gandhi Jayanti, 2 October.

‘Isn’t the builder supposed to give eight weeks’ rent while they search for a new home?’ Kudwa asked.

‘That’s in the bank too. Some of them are moving into a rental home first. I wouldn’t do that. Why rent when you can move into your own home right away?’ Mrs Puri smiled sadly. ‘You see, Ibby, I always told you Shah would pay. All the new builders are like this, they say. Honest men.’

Ibrahim Kudwa put both hands in his beard and scratched.

‘It is very strange, Mrs Puri. Paying people ahead of schedule. There is some kind of plan here.’

‘Plan, Ibby? What kind of plan can the builder have?’

‘I don’t know exactly…’ Ibrahim Kudwa scratched his beard faster. ‘… but something is going on here.’ He picked up an India Today magazine that was lying on the floor and brushed it clean; then he picked up a Femina magazine and did the same.

Telling Ibby to let the magazines stay on the floor, Mrs Puri offered him a glass of milk with rose-syrup stirred into it; as he drank she checked on Ramu, who was sleeping under his blue aeroplane quilt.

In the evening, she went down to see Ritika, who was leaving. The two women stood by the gate of Tower B, watching over the workmen who were loading the bags on to the truck. Ritika held a big red box of sweets, which the Secretary of Tower B was handing out to each departing family as a farewell gift from the builder. Mrs Puri saw that this red box was twice the size of the earlier ones.

‘Do you want an almirah for free, Sangeeta?’ Ritika asked. ‘We can’t take that old one with us.’

‘Can’t take it to Goregaon? Why not?’

‘We’re not going to Goregaon,’ Ritika said. She tapped on her red box. ‘We’re first going to Bandra, to stay with my in-laws. Next year, we’ll be moving to Kolkata. What is one and a half crores in this city, Sangeeta? Nothing. Ramesh asked for a transfer. We can have a nice big place near Minto Park for the same money. He grew up in Bengal, you know.’

Mrs Puri felt better at once: how lucky could anyone be, if they were going to live in Calcutta?

‘What do we need an almirah for, Ritika? We too will be moving soon.’

‘Oh, I do hope so, Sangeeta. I do hope so.’

The two old college friends embraced; and then Ritika left Vishram Society for good.

On her way back into the building, Ram Khare came up to Mrs Puri and said: ‘That man wants to speak to you. The one from Confidence.’

Shanmugham, on his red bike, was right outside the gate.

She wished she had had time to put her make-up on. At least a bit of blusher.

She sat on the back of his Hero Honda; they drove down towards the highway, where they stopped at the red light.

At last. Her one-on-one with Mr Shah.

Mrs Rego had been to some restaurant in Juhu; Masterji had been asked to his palace in Malabar Hill; she thought the minimum for her would be a five-star. Probably the Hyatt, right here in Vakola. Over Italian coffee and cakes, Mr Shah would offer her a little sweetener. For the work she had done with Mrs Rego. And a little more, if she could persuade Masterji.

Of course, Masterji and Mrs Rego had been brought to see him in the Mercedes. Not like this. She would have to mention this to the builder. Her disappointment.

To her surprise, Shanmugham did not turn either left or right at the signal, but went straight down to the train station.

The bike stopped in front of Vihar. She knew the place: a dingy south Indian restaurant where she had tea when she took the train home from the city. She brushed her hair as she got off the bike.

Ceremonial strings of fresh moosambi and oranges, tied high up, welcomed visitors to the outdoor eating area. Mr Shah sat at one table, talking to the man in khaki whom she recognized as the constable, Karlekar, who had come once to Vishram.

The constable smiled at her, and left with a red box in his hand.

Shah sat next to a plastic bag full of sweet-boxes; he was sipping tea from a glass. He glanced at her as she sat down.

‘The deadline is almost over, Mrs Puri.’

‘Don’t I know it, Mr Shah? I’ve been telling people from day one to sign your agreement. Maybe if we could have another day or two added to the deadline. I will do my best to help…’

Shah finished his tea. She assumed that a waiter had been told to bring her something.

The builder put his glass down; he licked his teeth and spat into the glass.

‘The same thing that is wrong in this city is wrong in your Society: no will power. One after the other, you have come to me and offered your help. First the Secretary. Then your Mr Ajwani. Now you offer. And one after the other you have let me down. That teacher has still not signed. I don’t want to see you people suffer, Mrs Puri. Good, solid, hard-working people. I began in life like you. When I came to Mumbai I had not even the shoes on my feet. I was a beggar like you. No, I don’t wish hardship on you or your neighbours. But principles are principles. I gave you my word when I came to your Society that I would not extend the deadline by one minute. I own Tower B. I will put a wall down the middle of your compound and build my Shanghai on that side. Half a Shanghai, but it will come up. And then I’ll build another, bigger tower somewhere else in Vakola.’

Shanmugham, sitting down next to them, had taken out his black book, as if he planned to record the conversation. Shah snatched the book and turned one of the pages, with its neat small handwriting, towards Mrs Puri.

He knocked on the page. ‘This is Vishram, Towers A and B.’

He folded it, ripped the page down the middle, and held up one half.

‘This is Tower A.’

He shoved the piece of paper into the dregs of his tea-glass. Sangeeta Puri’s mouth opened; tears came into her eyes. Shah smiled at her.

‘Why are you sobbing? Is it the thought of staying on in Vishram for ever? Is that old building like hell for you?’

Mrs Puri nodded.

‘Yes. I have to clean my son’s bottom every day. That is what the future means for me without your money.’

‘Good,’ Shah said. ‘Good. That old teacher makes you clean your son’s bottom. I know this. Does he know it? Have you made him understand what it is, to clean a child’s bottom day in and day out for the rest of your life?’

She shook her head.

‘Another thing. He has a son in Marine Lines who is fighting with him. I am told you are close to this boy.’

‘He is like a child to me,’ she said.

‘Then use him. Don’t you know how much a son can hurt his father?’

On the way back, Mrs Puri declined Shanmugham’s offer of a ‘drop-off’. She caught an auto to Vishram. Making sure Ramu was asleep, she went up to Ibrahim Kudwa’s door and rang the bell.

‘Gaurav,’ Mrs Puri fought her sobs. ‘I want to speak to Gaurav. This is his Sangeeta Aunty from Vishram Society calling. Thank you, Sonal.’

She was using her mobile phone in Ibrahim Kudwa’s living room. She could not call from her own home; it might upset her Ramu.

The table lamp had been turned on, and excavated half of Ibrahim Kudwa’s face from the evening gloom. Sitting on the sofa with his feet crossed, he watched Mrs Puri. Mumtaz was in the bedroom, with the door closed, feeding Mariam.

‘Wait,’ Kudwa said. ‘Don’t speak to Gaurav, Sangeeta-ji. Don’t do it.’

‘Why not, Ibby?’ she asked, holding the phone an inch away from her ear. ‘I told you what Mr Shah said, didn’t I? The deadline is almost over. We have to do this.’

‘Mr Shah is tricking us. Don’t you see? It’s obvious.’

Kudwa got off the sofa and came up to Mrs Puri. He could hear the ringing from her phone: Gaurav’s number had already been dialled. With a glance in the direction of the closed bedroom door, he dropped his voice to a whisper.

‘You know what his reputation is, Sangeeta-ji.’

Mrs Puri saw flakes of dandruff on her neighbour’s shoulders, and smelled cologne. She nodded.

‘We’ve discussed it in parliament,’ Kudwa said. ‘He pays, but he always delays his payments as long as possible. So why is he paying Tower B on time? Why is he paying them ahead of time? I was thinking about this all of today in my cyber-café. Now I see it. It’s so obvious. But some traps work like that: you have to see them to fall into them. When those people who are left behind see their neighbours getting the money, it will turn them mad with envy. I’m talking about us. He is turning good people into bad people. Changing our nature. Because he wants us to do it to Masterji ourselves,’ Kudwa said. ‘What other builders do to men like him in situations like this.’

Mrs Puri frowned, as if she were going to think about this. But it was too late.

There was a clicking noise from her phone, and then a voice said: ‘Yes? Sangeeta Aunty, is this you calling?’

‘Gaurav,’ she said, ‘the builder just spoke to me. Yes, that Mr Shah. We are about to lose everything.’ As she looked at Ibrahim Kudwa, her eyes began to fill with tears.

‘I’ve been like a mother to you, haven’t I, Gaurav? For so many years. Now you must help me, Gaurav, you are my other son, you are my only help in this building where no one loves me and no one cares…’

Standing by her side, Ibrahim Kudwa shook his head and sucked his teeth, before murmuring: ‘Oy, oy, oy.’

1 OCTOBER

When Masterji came down the stairs in the morning, he saw the Secretary hammering something into the central panel of the noticeboard. Without a word to Masterji, Kothari closed the glass door, tapped it shut, and went into his office with his hammer.

Masterji stood before the noticeboard. He read the new notice, and then closed his eyes and read it, his lips moving, a second time:

To: the Residents of Vishram Society Tower A

I, GAURAV MURTHY, SON OF Y. A. MURTHY, AM PUTTING THIS NOTICE UP TO SAY I HAVE NO FATHER. I am shamed by the actions of the present occupant of flat 3A, Vishram. After promising my wife and me that he would sign the proposal, he has not signed. This is not the first time he has lied to us. Many jewels in my mother’s possession, and also bank certificates in her name meant for me and my son Ronak, have never been transferred to us. My son Ronak, my wife and I will perform the one-year Samskara rites of my mother on our own. We request all of you not to associate us with the actions of the present occupant of 3A, Vishram Society.

Signed,

Gaurav Murthy

Joydeep Society 5A, Marine Lines

Mumbai

He sat down below the noticeboard. Through the open door of the Secretary’s office, he saw Kothari at his desk, behind his Remington, eating a sandwich. Up on the landing, he could smell the stray dog; he could hear its laboured breathing.

I am no longer fighting Mr Shah, he thought. I am fighting my own neighbours.

Through his tears Masterji saw a mosquito alight on his forearm. He had been weak and distracted; it had seen opportunity. He watched its speckled stomach, its tingling legs, as the proboscis pierced his skin. Not a second wasted in a calculating world. Not his neighbours — he was fighting this.

He slapped his forearm: the mosquito became a blotch of someone else’s blood on his skin.

He went up the stairs to his flat and lay in bed, covering his face with his forearm. He tried to think of all the insults that bearded labourer in Crawford Market must have had to put up with.

It was evening before he came out of his room.

He walked down the stairs, trying not to think about the notice-board. He went out of the gate and into the market: and there he received his second shock of the day.

His story was in the newspaper.

Ramesh Ajwani had his back angled to the ocean breeze to shield his copy of the Mumbai Sun. He was reading an article on page four.

OLD MAN IN TOWER SAYS NO TO BUILDER

Residents of Vishram Society, Vakola, have become trapped in a peculiar ‘situation’ that has pitted one retired teacher against all the other members of his Society, and also against the might…

He closed the newspaper and folded it on his knees. Such bad news. But it was a pleasant evening, and Ramesh Ajwani was in the heart of the city of Bombay. He took a deep breath and exhaled Masterji out of his body; then he looked around.

Marine Drive. The commonwealth of Mumbai had come to sit by the water’s edge. Ajwani saw representatives of every race of the city around him: burqa-clad Sunni Muslims with their protective men; Bohra women in their Mother Hubbard bonnets chaperoning each other; petite, sari-clad Marathi women, jasmine garlands in their braided hair, nuggets of vertebrae in their fatless backs glistening at each twist of their excited bodies; two thick-shouldered sadhus, saffron robes streaming, chanting Sanskrit to the waves; shrieking clumps of college students from Elphinstone; the baseball-cap-wearing sellers of small fried things and chilled water.

Ajwani smiled.

Sunbaked and sweating, looking like a big pink baby, a foreign man in a singlet and blue shorts was jogging down the pavement, slowly enough for his Indian minder to follow him on foot.

Ajwani saw four young men in polyester shirts gaping at the foreigner. They had been chatting and cackling a moment ago, commenting on every passing car and young girl. Now they watched in silence.

He understood.

Having dreamed all their lives of better food and better clothes, the young men were looking at this rich foreigner’s appalling sweat, his appalling nudity. Is this the end point, they were wondering: a lifetime of hard work, undertaken involuntarily, to end in this — another lifetime of hard work, undertaken voluntarily?

The city of wealth was playing its usual cat-and-mouse games with migrants: gives them a sniff of success and money in one breath, and makes them wonder about the value of success and the point of money in the next.

The broker turned his neck from side to side to relieve a strain.

A man wearing black and white came through the crowd and sat on the ocean wall next to the broker.

‘Nice to see you here,’ Ajwani said. ‘First time we’ve met in the city.’

‘I was in Malabar Hill when your call came. What are you doing here?’ Shanmugham asked, looking at the newspaper on Ajwani’s lap.

The broker grinned. ‘I come to the city every now and then. Business, you know.’ He winked. ‘On Falkland Road. Fun business. Girls.’

Shanmugham pointed at the newspaper. ‘You saw the story?’

The broker turned the pages. ‘I opened the paper on the train, and I closed it at once from shame. A man wants to read about other people’s Societies in the Sun, not his own.’

He glanced through the article again, and closed the newspaper.

‘The Confidence Group is being mocked in public. If I were in your position…’ Ajwani cracked his knuckles. ‘… I kept hoping something would have happened by now to Masterji. Not a thing. Even the phone calls have stopped. What is wrong with your boss?’

Shanmugham twisted round to look at the ocean. Marine Drive is buffered from the waves of the Indian ocean by a row of dark tetrapodal rocks, which look like petrified starfish and run for miles along the shore. A man in rags was hopping from tetrapod to tetrapod, like an egret on a hippo’s teeth. From between them he pulled out discarded bottles of water, which he tossed into a sack.

He spoke as if addressing the scavenger.

‘I asked the boss, the deadline is here, what should the people in Vishram do? And he said, they must help themselves. The way I helped myself. Do you know his life’s story?’

Ajwani did not. So Shanmugham, as the breeze blew in from the ocean, told the story of how Mr Shah came to Bombay on bare feet.

Ajwani closed one eye and looked towards Malabar Hill.

‘So that’s how men become rich. It’s a good story. Have you paid attention to it, Shanmugham?’

The Tamilian turned to face the broker. ‘What does that mean?’

Ajwani drew near. ‘I know that in many redevelopment projects, the left-hand man is smarter than his boss. He skims ten, fifteen per cent off each project. And he gives some of the money to those within the redevelopment project who have been his friends.’ Ajwani placed his hand, covered with iron and plastic rings, on top of Shanmugham’s.

‘Why don’t you get rid of the problem in Vishram? Show some initiative, do it on your own — do it tonight. I can help you in return: I can show you how to skim a bit off the Shanghai. Men like you and me are not going to become rich off mutual funds or fixed deposits in the bank, my friend.’

Shanmugham shook the broker’s hand off his. He stood up; he brushed the dust from his trouser bottoms. ‘Whatever has to happen now to your Masterji, you have to do yourself. Before midnight on 3 October. Don’t call me after this.’

Ajwani cursed. Crushing the newspaper, he threw it at the tetrapods; the startled scavenger looked up.

Masterji realized he had become one of those things, like good cabbage, ripe chikoos, or rosy apples from the United States, that people came to the market looking for.

As he went about his rounds for milk and bread, strangers followed him and waved; three young men introduced themselves. They said they were his old students. Da Costa, Ranade, Savarkar.

‘Yes, of course, I remember you. Good boys, all three of you.’

‘We saw you in the newspapers, Masterji. There was a big article on you this morning.’

‘I have not yet read the article, boys. He didn’t speak to me, that reporter. I don’t know what he’s written. I gather it’s a small article, just three or four inches.’

Yet those three or four inches of newsprint, like a bugle call, had instantly summoned these students whom he had failed to locate for all these months.

‘We are proud you’re not letting that builder push you around, sir. He must give you good money if he wants you to leave.’

‘But I don’t want the money, boys. I’ll explain again. India is a republic. If a man wants to stay in his home, then it is his freedom to do so. If he wants to go, then…’

The three listened; at the end, one of them said: ‘You used to quote Romans in class, sir. The one who knew about the sun.’

‘Anaxagoras. A Greek.’

‘You’re as tough as any Roman, sir. You’re like that fellow in the movie… Maximus the Gladiator.’

‘Which movie is this?’

That made them laugh.

‘Maximus Masterji!’ said one, and all three left in a good mood.

Masterji saw his story — the interpretation of his recent actions, which had until now been held securely in his conscience — slipping away from him. He had become part of the market: his story, in newsprint, was used by the vendors to cover their produce. The okra was wrapped in him; fresh bread lent him its aroma.

‘Masterji!’ It was Mary. She had a copy of the Sun.

‘You’re in the English papers.’ She grinned and showed him her big front teeth. ‘We’re all so proud of you. We passed it around the nullah. When my son comes back from school, I’ll have him read it to us.’

‘I haven’t read it, Mary,’ he said.

‘You haven’t?’ Mary, scandalized, insisted that he take the paper. She turned to the article with the photograph of Vishram Society.

OLD MAN IN TOWER SAYS NO TO BUILDER

Masterji skimmed:

… only one man, Yogesh Murthy, retired teacher at the nearby school, has resisted the generous offer of the reputable… ‘it is a question of an an individual’s freedom to say Yes, No, or Go to Hell’…

By describing himself thus as the small man in this situation, Murthy may hope to win the sympathy of some, but how honest is this picture he paints? One of the residents of the Society, not wishing to be identified, said, ‘He is the most selfish man in the world. His own son does not speak to him now…’

…was borne out by many others to whom this reporter spoke. According to one of Mr Murthy’s former students, who did not wish to be named, ‘He had no patience and he was always ready to punish. We used to call him names behind his back. To say that we remember him fondly would be the biggest…’

Mary bent down to pick up the paper; it had fallen from Masterji’s hands.

Looking down, Masterji saw a bird, smaller than the centre of a man’s palm, thrashing about on the ground like a vitalized chunk of brown sugar. This only makes things worse, he thought, as he followed the bird’s dizzying movements. My neighbours will blame me for it.

A little boy with a black string amulet around his neck began circling Masterji in off-balance, chick-like loops, hands flapping by his side. The onion-seller came running behind him: ‘Bad boy!’ He caught the little fellow and pinched him; the chastised boy cried with operatic emotion: ‘Pa-pa-jee!’

Seconds later, he had escaped his father again, had been caught again, and was now bawling: ‘Ma-maa-jee!’

To make the boy stop crying, Masterji offered him a piece of bread. ‘Would you like this?’

A big nod of the little head; the boy nibbled.

Masterji insisted that Mary take the rest of his fresh bread for her son.

For over thirty years he had handed out sweet, soft things to the children of Vishram Society on Gandhi Jayanti.

He stopped at the whitewashed banyan outside Ibrahim Kudwa’s cyber-café. Arjun, Kudwa’s assistant, had placed a photograph of the Mahatma in a niche in the banyan, and he and the Hindu holy man who sometimes stopped there, clapping their hands in unison, were chanting Gandhi’s favourite hymn:

‘Ishwar Allah Tero Naam

Sabko Sanmati de Bhagavan.’

‘Ishwar and Allah are both your names

Give everyone this wisdom, Lord.’

The national tricolour had been hoisted above the Speed-Tek Cyber Café; Masterji saw it reflected in the tinted window of a moving car, streaming in reverse like a dark meteor over Vakola.

In the middle of the night, Ashvin Kothari woke up sniffing the air.

‘What is that smell?’

He turned on his bedside lamp. His wife was staring at the ceiling.

‘Go back to sleep.’

‘What is it?’

‘Go back to—’

‘It’s something you women are doing, isn’t it?’

The Secretary followed the smell down the stairs to the third floor.

Something brown, freshly applied by hand, the fingermarks still visible in it, covered Masterji’s door. A fly buzzed about it.

The Secretary closed his eyes. He raced up the stairs to his flat.

His wife was on the sofa, waiting for him.

‘Don’t blame Mrs Puri,’ she said. ‘She asked me and I agreed.’

The Secretary sat down with his eyes closed. ‘O Krishna, Krishna…’

‘Let him smell what we think of him, Mr Kothari. That’s what we women decided.’

‘… Krishna…’

‘It’s Ramu’s shit — that’s all. Don’t become melodramatic. Masterji talked to the Mumbai Sun, didn’t he? Famous man. He wants Mrs Puri to clean it herself for the rest of her life, doesn’t he? So let him clean Ramu’s shit one morning, and see how much he likes it. Let him use that same Sun to clean it.’

With his fingers in his ears, her husband chanted, as his father had taught him to do, years ago in Nairobi, the name of Lord Krishna.

Their noses covered with handkerchiefs, saris, and shirtsleeves, they filled the stairs to see what had been done to the door of 3A. Hunched over, Masterji was scrubbing his door with a wet Brillo pad. He had a bucket of water next to him, and every few minutes squeezed the Brillo pad into it.

Brought back down the stairs by his sense of responsibility, the Secretary dispersed the onlookers. ‘Please go back to bed,’ he whispered. ‘Or the whole neighbourhood will find out and talk about us.’

The door to 3C opened.

Had Masterji shouted, Mrs Puri would have shouted back. Had he rushed to hit her, she would have pushed him down the stairs. But he was on his knees, scraping the grooves and ridges into which Ramu’s excrement was hardening; he glanced at her and went back to his work, as if it did not concern her.

A man pushed from behind Mrs Puri and stepped into the corridor.

Sanjiv Puri saw what was on Masterji’s door; he understood.

‘What have you done, Sangeeta?’ He looked at his wife. ‘What have you done to my name, to my reputation? You have betrayed your own son.’

‘Mr and Mrs Puri,’ the Secretary whispered. ‘Please. People will hear.’

Sangeeta Puri took a step towards her husband.

‘It’s all your fault.’

‘My fault?’

‘You kept saying we couldn’t have children till you had a manager’s job. So I had to wait till I was thirty-four. That’s why Ramu is delayed. The older a woman is, the greater the danger. And now I have to clean his shit for the rest of my life.’

‘Sangeeta, this is a lie. A lie.’

‘I wanted to have Ramu ten years earlier. You talked of the rat race. You complained that migrants were taking the jobs, but you never fought back. You never became manager in time for me to have a healthy child. It was not the Evil Eye: it was you.’

Masterji stopped scrubbing.

‘If you shout, Sangeeta, you will wake Ramu. No one did this thing. Sometimes plaster falls from the ceiling, because it is an old building. I say the same thing has happened here. Now all of you go to sleep.’

The Secretary got down on his knees and offered to help with the scrubbing, but Masterji said: ‘I’ll do it.’

He closed his eyes and remembered the light from behind the buildings at Crawford Market. Those labourers pulling carts under the JJ flyover did work that was worse than this every day.

2 OCTOBER

The compound wall was dark from Mary’s morning round with the green garden hose. Water drops shivered off the hibiscus plant; Ramu was prodding its stem with a stick.

Walking up from the black Cross, where she had been standing for a while, his mother called to him. The hibiscus plant shook.

She came near and saw what he was doing.

‘… what is the meaning of…?’

The boy would not turn around. He had sucked in his lips; he kept poking the thing at the root of the plant. Mrs Puri pulled him back and looked at him with disbelieving eyes.

‘Don’t hurt the poor worm, Ramu. Is it hurting you?’

Shaking his mother’s hands off him, he thrust his wooden stick back into the coiled-up earthworm, which squirmed under the pressure, but did not uncoil. Mrs Puri felt as if someone had poked a rod into her side.

‘Oy, oy, oy, my Ramu, it is Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday. What would he say if he saw you?’

He must have overheard someone talking in the stairwell or in the garden. He knew what had happened last night.

‘If Masterji doesn’t say yes, we won’t ever get our new home. Remember, Ramu, the wooden cupboard in that nice new building in Goregaon… the fresh smell, the sunlight on the wood?’

He did not turn around. She saw that he had cut the earthworm into two writhing pieces.

‘I promise: not one thing to upset Masterji after this. I promise. Don’t hurt the worm.’

But he would not turn.

‘Ramu. Are you fighting with your mother?’

Masterji, who had walked in through the gate, came towards the hibiscus plant. ‘Happy Gandhi Jayanti,’ he said to the woman who had applied excrement to his door only a few hours ago.

She said nothing.

The boy dropped his stick and came to him; the old teacher put his arms around his neighbour’s son and whispered: ‘Mustn’t fight with Mummy, Ramu. The deadline will end soon. After that your Mummy and I will be friends again.’

He left the two of them alone and went up to his flat.

Standing at the window of the living room, he was hoping to see some celebrations for Gandhi Jayanti. It was traditionally a big day at the Society. An old picture of Mahatma Gandhi kept inside the Secretary’s desk for such occasions would be placed over the guard’s booth. A black Sony three-in-one would play old film songs from Ibrahim Kudwa’s window.

His phone rang. It was Ms Meenakshi, his ex-neighbour. She was calling from her new home in Bandra.

The response to the story about him — the one her boyfriend had written — had been ‘fantastic!’ Would Masterji consider a follow-up? Would he keep a blog? Not a blong, a blog.

‘Thank you for your help, Ms Meenakshi, and give my regards to your boyfriend. But my answer remains no.’

He put the phone down. He went back to the window.

Another truck had stopped in front of Tower B; beds and tables had been brought down from the building and were being loaded on to it. The last residents were leaving. The remaining children of Tower B were playing cricket by the truck with the children of Tower A.

He closed his eyes: he imagined the living room full of his neighbours’ children again. Dirty cricket bats and bright young faces again.

‘Today we shall see how sound travels at different speeds in solids and in liquids’ — he stretched his legs — ‘right here in this room. And you, Mohammad Kudwa, make sure you don’t talk while the experiment is going on. No, I haven’t forgotten what you did last time…’

When he woke from his nap, the truck was gone.

The security grilles, removed from what used to be Vishram Tower B, had left rusty ghost-shadows around the windows and balconies, like eyebrows plucked in a painful ceremony. Pigeons flew in and out of the rooms, now no one’s rooms, just the spent cartridges of old dreams. Yellow tape criss-crossed the base of the building:

THE CONFIDENCE GROUP (HEADQUARTERS: PAREL) HAS TAKEN PHYSICAL POSSESSION OF THIS BUILDING MARKED FOR DEMOLITION

*

Holding the latest letter from Deepa in her fingers, re-creating her daughter’s face and voice from the texture of the paper, Mrs Pinto lay in bed. The stereophonic buzz of evening serials from TV sets on nearly every floor of the building penetrated her thoughts, as if they were long-wave messages from her daughter in America.

The door to the flat scraped open; she heard her husband’s slow footsteps.

‘Where were you gone so long?’ she shouted. ‘Leaving me alone here.’

Her husband sat down at the dining table, breathing noisily and pouring himself a glass from a jug of filtered water.

‘The deadline has almost passed, Shelley. I really thought he would say yes in the end, Shelley. I really did.’

She spoke softly.

‘What will that Confidence Man do to him now, Mr Pinto?’

‘Anything could happen. These are not Christian men. These builders.’

‘Then you must save Masterji, Mr Pinto. You owe it to him.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The number of times you cheated him, Mr Pinto. You owe him.’

‘Shelley Pinto.’ Her husband sat up on his side of the bed. ‘Shelley Pinto.’

‘In the No-Argument book. When you were an accountant at the Britannia Biscuit Company you cheated people at work. I think you cheated Masterji too.’

‘This is a lie, Shelley. How dare you speak to your husband like this?’

‘I have been your wife for thirty-six years. That one time you and Masterji went to Lucky Biryani in Bandra. You came back very happy that night and I thought: He must have cheated Masterji again. Didn’t you change numbers in the No-Argument the way you changed numbers at the Britannia Biscuit Company?’

She heard a creaking of springs; she was alone in the bedroom. Mr Pinto had turned on the television set.

She went to the sofa and sat by him.

‘We don’t have to save him, Mr Pinto. The others will do it. We just have to keep quiet.’

‘What are they going to do?’

She motioned for him to increase the volume of the television.

‘Sangeeta and Renuka Kothari came today and said, if all of us agree to do something — a simple thing — would you and Mr Pinto agree?’

‘What is this simple thing, Shelley?’

‘I don’t know, Mr Pinto. I told them not to tell us.’

‘But when is it happening?’

‘I told them not to tell me anything. Now turn the television down a bit.’

‘What did you say?’

‘Turn the TV down.’

‘I like it loud,’ Mr Pinto said. ‘You go into the garden.’

Treading on ‘the Diamond’, Mrs Pinto went down the stairs.

She thought of 1.4 crore rupees of Mr Shah’s money: the figure was part of the dark world around her. She went down two more steps. Now she thought of 100,000 dollars, sent to Tony, and another 100,000 dollars, sent to Deepa: her eyes filled with light, and the wall glowed like a plane of beaten gold.

When she had descended another flight of steps, her foot struck something warm and living. It did not smell like a dog.

‘Stop prodding me with your foot.’

‘Why are you sitting on the steps, Kothari?’ she asked.

‘My wife won’t let me watch television, Mrs Pinto. Renuka has cut the cable connection. My wife of thirty-one years. Without TV, what is a home?’

She sat a step above him.

‘What a strange situation. But you can watch in our house.’

‘My wife of thirty-one years. Yet she does this. See what is happening to our Society.’

‘If I may ask, Mr Kothari… why has she cut your cable connection?’

‘Because I won’t do the simple thing. The one she and the others want to do to Masterji. Do you know what the simple thing is?’

‘They did not tell me what it was. I thought it was your idea.’

‘Mine? Oh, no. It was Ajwani’s.’

The Secretary tried to remember: was it Ajwani’s idea? It didn’t matter: like one of those wasps’ nests that sometimes grew on the walls of the Society, the idea of the “simple thing” had materialized out of nowhere, swelling in size in hours, until every household in Vishram seemed to have become one of its cells. All of them wanted it done now. Even his own wife.

‘This simple thing… will it hurt Masterji?’

‘I don’t know, Mrs Pinto, what the “simple thing” is any more than you do. It’s Ajwani’s idea. He has connections in the slums. They just want me to give him the duplicate key to Masterji’s flat. I can’t do that, Mrs Pinto. It’s against the rules.’

Mrs Pinto sucked in the dark air of the stairwell.

‘Will Mr Shah really not extend the deadline?’

The Secretary exhaled.

‘Every time I hear a car or an autorickshaw, the tea spills from my teacup. It could be that Shanmugham fellow, coming to say, Sorry, it’s over.’

‘Then we won’t see the dollars.’

‘Dollars?’

‘Rupees.’

‘Why doesn’t Masterji see it the way we do?’

‘He doesn’t even come down to have dinner. Thinks he’s too good for Mr Pinto and me. After poor Mr Pinto broke his leg for Masterji’s sake. Thinks he’s a great man because he’s fighting this Shah. Went and spoke to the papers about his own Society.’

‘After all the times he came down to your house and ate your food. Ingratitude is the worst of sins, my father always said.’ He paused. ‘My father was the greatest man I ever knew. If he had stayed in Africa, he would have become a millionaire. A prince. But the foreigners didn’t want him to succeed. Isn’t that always the story of our people?’

Mrs Pinto placed her cold hand on his. ‘Is someone walking up the stairs?’ she whispered.

The Secretary peered down the stairwell. ‘Just the dog.’

With his palm he wiped the sweat from his forehead.

‘Why don’t you make a duplicate of Masterji’s key?’ Mrs Pinto put her hand on the Secretary’s shoulder. ‘That won’t be against the rules. The key will always be in your possession. Just give the duplicate to Ajwani.’

‘I could do that.’ Kothari nodded. ‘It would be within the rules.’

‘My husband will come with you, if you want.’

‘No, Mrs Pinto. It’s my responsibility. I’ll go to Mahim, so no one will recognize me.’

‘Bandra is far enough.’

‘You’re right.’ He smiled. ‘In all these years we’ve never talked like this, Mrs Pinto.’

‘In parliament we have. But not like this. I have always admired you. I never thought you stole money from the Society. I never did.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Pinto.’

She got up, with her hand to the wall. ‘It’s for his own sake, remember. This Confidence Shah is not a Christian man.’

Kothari prodded the stray dog to get it out of Mrs Pinto’s way and she went on down the stairs.

In the lowest drawer of his desk, the Secretary of Vishram Society keeps a box of the spare keys to all the units in the building. To be loaned to the rightful owner in case of emergency: no key to leave the box for more than twenty-four hours.

A pair of fingers disturbed the keys. One key was removed. Then the man who had stolen the key closed the door of the Secretary’s office behind him.

Something growled at him from the black Cross: the stray dog was looking up from its bowl of channa.

Kothari bought a twice-buttered sandwich at the market; he ate it in the autorickshaw that took him to the train station, and licked his fingers as he stepped out.

Full, he dozed on the Churchgate-bound local, until the smell of the great black sewer outside Bandra woke him.

Straightening his comb-over to make sure it covered his baldness, Kothari descended on to the platform. A pink palm shot out at him from a dark blazer: ‘Ticketticket.’

He handed over his three-month first-class rail pass to the ticket inspector; as the man in the blazer checked the validity of the pass, he recited:

‘Do as you will, evil king:

I, for my part, know right from wrong

And will never follow you,

said the virtuous demon Maricha

When the lord of…’

Except for that one time he thought he was going to jail because he forgot to pay his advance tax, the Secretary had never felt like this.

The evening rays of the sun, intercepted by trees and shop fronts around the station, fell near his feet like claw marks on bark. He was heading down one of the alleys by the side of the Bandra train station. On every side of him, he saw bananas, cauliflower, apples, burnished and expanded by the golden light. Like another strange kind of fruit, giant cardboard keys, yellow and white, dangled from the branches of the next banyan tree; each bore the legend:

RAJU KEY-MAKER. MOBILE PHONE: 9811799289

Beneath them, the key-maker sat on a grey cloth, his tools and keys spread before him. He worked with a knife, cutting a piece of iron into a new key, closing an eye to compare it with another key that he brought out from his shirt pocket.

‘Can you make a duplicate for me?’ the Secretary asked. ‘It’s for my mother-in-law’s house — in Goregaon.’

The key-maker indicated that he should move so his shadow fell to the side.

Kothari felt the key grow hot in his hand.

‘Had some free time on Gandhi Jayanti, thought, let’s get it done… Go to my mother-in-law’s house in Goregaon and check for yourself. The building is right there. Near the Topi-wala cinema hall.’

‘Look here,’ the key-maker said. ‘I’ve got six orders ahead of yours.’

Nearly two hours later, Ajwani opened his door to find the Secretary standing with something wrapped in a handkerchief in his hand.

He smiled and reached for the handkerchief; but the Secretary hid it behind his back.

‘Look here, Ajwani, if you’re getting anything extra for this from Shah — and I know you are — I want half of it. I did all the work today.’ Coming close to Ajwani’s ear, he whispered: ‘I want a large glass panel in my living room in Sewri. For a full view of the flamingoes. A large glass panel.’

Ajwani grinned. ‘You’re becoming a man, Kothari. All right, fifty fifty.’

He reached behind the Secretary’s back and took the thing wrapped in a handkerchief; in return he handed the Secretary a large soft packet.

‘Cotton wool,’ he said. ‘Distribute it to everyone in the Society. Before 9 p.m. I’m going right now to see the boys.’

The Secretary turned his face to the right and held the cotton bale up to his ear. ‘Don’t tell me what is going to happen.’

Outside Vishram Society, the street lamps were flickering to life. Mrs Puri was out in the market, shopping for fresh, vitamin-rich spinach with which she would stimulate her son’s slow neurons.

A jarring noise of brakes tore through the market. The Tata Indigo, which had swerved from the main road, slowed down, but not fast enough: there was a mad squealing, and a thrashing of living limbs under its wheels.

‘You’ve killed it!’ someone shouted at the driver. ‘And on Gandhi Jayanti!’

Two men came out of a grocery store; one of them, who wore a blue lungi, tied it up around his knees. ‘Pull him out of his car and give him a thrashing!’ he yelled.

The Indigo sped away; the grocery-store men went back to their work.

The stray yellow dog, an uninvited and unexpelled guest at Vishram Society for so many months, lay in a puddle of dark sticky blood near the market. A crow hopped by the side of the animal. It picked at its entrails.

Mrs Puri shielded Ramu’s face with her palm. He whimpered. Hugging him into her side, she led him back to Vishram, and left him there with Mrs Saldanha.

She shook Ram Khare out from his guard’s booth.

Ram Khare brought water in the channa bowl Ramu had left near the black Cross. The dog was too weak to drink it. They lowered the animal into the gutter, so that it might pass away in dignity, if not in comfort.

‘Ask the municipality men to take it with them when they come here in the morning, Ram Khare. We can’t leave its body out here.’

She went back and explained to Ramu: that wasn’t their friendly stray dog. No, it was another dog that looked a bit like theirs. Ramu brightened. His mother promised that they would see their yellow dog in the morning, eating channa from the bowl. Promise.

She was tucking him into bed with the Friendly Duck when the Secretary knocked on the door.

‘Double lock your door tonight, Mrs Puri,’ he said.

She came to the door and whispered: ‘Is it really going to happen? The simple thing?’

Kothari said nothing; he handed her a small plastic bag full of cotton wool, and went down the stairs. Mrs Puri stood in the stairwell, listening as he knocked on the Pintos’ door.

‘Double-lock your door tonight, Mr Pinto.’

‘We lock them every night.’

‘Lock it extra tight tonight. Wear cotton in your ears if you have any. You don’t? Then take some of this. It’s in the bag. Wear it at night. Do you understand?’

‘No.’

‘Try. It is a simple thing, Mr Pinto.’

She heard Kothari’s footsteps go down another flight of stairs, and then his voice saying: ‘Double-lock your door tonight, Mrs Rego.’

Just as he was turning from Mrs Saldanha’s door, the Secretary saw Mary, standing near his office. She was staring at him.

‘What do you want?’ he asked.

‘I clean your office every evening at this time,’ she said. ‘I was going to get the broom.’ And then she added: ‘I didn’t hear anything.’

‘Clean the office tomorrow, Mary. You may take the rest of the day off.’

She stood there.

‘Mary’ — the Secretary lowered his voice — ‘when the Shanghai comes up, they’ll hire you. I’ll make sure that they do. They’ll give you a uniform. Good pay. I’ll make sure. Do you understand?’

She nodded.

‘Now go home,’ Kothari said. ‘Enjoy the evening with your son.’

He watched until she went out of the gate and turned left towards the slums.

There was now a night-time silence in Vishram such as they had not heard in decades; the deserted Tower B with the yellow Marked for Demolition tape around it seemed to secrete stillness. The Pintos, as they lay in bed, could hear once again the roar of the planes going over Vakola.

‘There,’ Mr Pinto whispered.

‘Yes,’ Mrs Pinto whispered. ‘I heard it too.’

Masterji was back in his room. He was washing his face in the basin.

‘Maybe nothing will happen tonight,’ Mrs Pinto whispered.

‘Go to sleep, Shelley.’

‘He has stopped walking. He’s gone to bed,’ she said. She strained her ears.

‘But someone’s walking above him.’

A little after midnight, the Secretary woke up.

He had dreamed that he was standing before a panel of four judges. They wore the expected black robes and white wigs of the judiciary, but each had the face of a flamingo. The senior judge, who was larger than the others, wore a shawl of golden fur. The face of this flamingo-judge was so terrible that the Secretary could not look at it; hoping for sympathy, he turned to the lesser judges. All three were reading aloud, but all he could hear was one word, repeated endlessly, Bye-law, Bye-law. The senior judge, adjusting his wig, said: ‘Human beings are only human individually: when they get together they turn…’ His three junior colleagues were already tittering. ‘… birdy.’ The three laughed together in high-pitched cackles. Then the senior flamingo adjusted his golden shawl, for he was a vain judge, and spoke in a deep voice, which the Secretary recognized as his father’s:

‘Now for the verdict on Ashvin Kothari, Secretary, Vishram Society Tower A, incorporated in the city of Mumbai, who made a duplicate of a key entrusted to his care to facilitate a break-in into his own Society, and that too on the holy day of Gandhi Jayanti. In accordance with the law of the land, and to avoid giving offence, the verdict of this panel shall be read in English, Marathi, Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Gujarati…’

Kothari opened his eyes. He turned on his lamp so he could see the clock. His wife, lying next to him, began to grumble.

In the dark Kothari walked over the carpet in his living room. Holding his comb-over in place, he lowered himself on to the sofa.

No one should point a finger at him. Ajwani had arranged for the ‘simple thing’.

Yet he wanted to scream for help, or run to the police station near the highway and tell the fat constable Karlekar everything, before something terrible happened in the night, and they woke to find Masterji with his legs broken, or worse, much worse…

His wife snored from the bed. Getting down on his knees, Kothari put his ear to the carpet and listened. All he could hear was the sound of his own voice, whispering:

‘Do as you will, evil king:

I, for my part, know right from wrong…’

A little after two o’clock, the Pintos heard Masterji’s door open again.

It was like the way you hear someone making love in another home, their bed creaking and their sighing, and you’re trying hard to shut it out of your ears. They wanted not to hear.

Something was walking upstairs. Two somethings.

‘The boys are here.’

‘Yes.’

The two old bodies moved in bed, following the footsteps; a flurry of steps, and then a little cry of pain: bone had hit table.

‘The teakwood table.’

‘Yes. Oh, no.’

This was followed by more shuffling; the table fell over; a scream.

‘Thieves!’

No one stirred. No one moved. The two Pintos joined hands. Everyone in the building, prostrate in the same way, must have heard the cry. The Pintos could feel the warming of hearts in every listening bedroom — the same ‘At last.’

Then there was a muffled wrestling — and then there was the sound of swatting, as if someone was hitting at a rat running around the room. Then — piercing the night — not a human cry, but the howling of an animal.

The Rubik’s Cube saved him.

One of the boys stepped on it, slipped, and hit his knee against the teakwood table, which toppled over.

Masterji awoke.

He had grabbed the blue Illustrated History of Science at once — had some secret part of him been waiting for this, rehearsing this moment? — and rushed out of his bedroom; before they had even seen him he had hit the first one on the head with the book. Screaming — Thieves! — and with a strength that he would not be able to reproduce in daylight, he had shoved one of the boys — who, staggering back, had hit the other one, who fell by the phone. The Illustrated History of Science went up high and then came down on the skull of the boy, who howled. It was by now a rout, and the two hooligans rushed out through the open door, where one tripped and tumbled down the stairs; by which time they were in a frenzy just to survive, realizing they had been sent to bully and threaten not a helpless old man, as they had been told, but a live ogre. They ran into the compound and leapt over the gate.

Masterji pushed the sofa against the door, to barricade it against a second attack. Purnima, he chanted, Purnima. He moved the chair against the sofa.

Then it seemed to him that this was the wrong thing to have done. He had to be able to run in and out if there was another attack, and the door should be open. He moved the sofa and the chair back to their places.

He let the water run into a pot; he turned on the gas, and brought water to a boil. He would pour it on their heads when they came back. On his knees, he examined the gas cylinder. Perhaps he could explode it in their faces?

Purnima, he thought, Purnima. He tried to summon his wife’s face but no image came into his mind: he could not remember what she looked like. Gaurav, he called, Gaurav, but he could not remember his face, either… he saw only darkness, and then, emerging from that darkness, people, men of various races, standing in white shirts, close together. He recognized them: they were the commuters on the suburban train.

Now a ray of sun entered the compartment and their varied faces glowed like a single human light refracted into colours. He searched for the face of the day-labourer from Crawford Market; he could not find him, but there were others like him. The vibrating green cushions and the green-painted walls of the carriage were luminous around them. ‘Calm down, Masterji,’ the radiant men in the white shirts said, ‘for we are all with you.’ He understood now that he had not struck the two boys down: they had done it for him. Beyond the grille, the faces in the yellow second-class compartment turned to him, and said: ‘We are with you too.’ Around him they stood thick and close; he felt hands come into his hand; and every murmur, every whisper, every jarring of the train said: You were never born and you will never die: you cannot hurt and cannot be hurt: you are invincible, immortal, indestructible.

Masterji unbolted the latch, left his door open, and slept.

3 OCTOBER

‘Sir.’ Nina, the Pintos’ maid, turned to her employer. ‘You should see for yourself who it is.’

Mr Pinto, rising from a breakfast of a masala three-egg omelette, served with buttered toast and tomato ketchup, came to the door dragging his brown leather sandals along the floor.

He saw who was at the door and turned around: ‘Nina,’ he cried. ‘Come back here.’

Masterji was standing outside.

‘I was sure in the night it was Mr Shah who had done it,’ Masterji said. ‘And I felt safe until the morning. But when I woke up, I thought, those boys did not break down the door. They had a spare key. Who gave them this spare key?’

Mr Pinto turned and gestured to the table.

‘Come have breakfast with us. It’s the three-egg omelette. Your favourite. Nina — one more omelette, at once. Come, Masterji, sit at the table.’

‘Did you know what was going to happen last night?’ Masterji asked. ‘Did the Secretary tell everyone to keep quiet when I screamed? That was something else I didn’t think about until this morning. No one came to help me.’

Mr Pinto gestured helplessly. ‘For our part, honestly, we heard nothing. We were asleep. Ask Shelley.’

Mrs Pinto, rising from the breakfast table, stood next to her husband, and took his hand in hers.

‘We wanted to save you, Masterji,’ she said in her rasping voice. ‘They told us if we kept quiet we would save you.’

‘Shelley, shut up. Go back to the table. We didn’t know anything, Masterji. We thank God that you are safe. Come in and eat now—’

‘You’re lying, Mr Pinto.’

Masterji pulled the front door from Mr Pinto’s grasp and closed it on himself. He pressed his forehead against the door. Rajeev and Raghav Ajwani, in their school uniforms, tried to tiptoe past him.

Hearing voices from below, Masterji went down the stairs.

Three women sat in the white plastic chairs.

Mrs Puri was speaking to the Secretary’s wife; Mrs Ganguly, bedecked in gold and silk, apparently on her way to a wedding ceremony, was listening.

‘So what if the Sisters at the Special School want Ramu to play David Slayer of Goliath in the pageant? What is it to me that David was a Christian and we are Hindus? Jesus and Krishna: two skin colours, same God. All my life I have gone in and out of churches like a happy bird.’

‘You’re right, Sangeeta,’ the Secretary’s wife responded. ‘What difference is there, deep down?’

Masterji went from Mrs Puri to Mrs Kothari to Mrs Ganguly, trying to find a face that revealed guilt when he stared at it. None paid the slightest attention to him. Am I looking at good people or bad? he thought.

Mrs Puri brushed a housefly from Mrs Kothari’s shoulder and continued.

‘Didn’t I pray at St Antony’s and then at St Andrew’s and then at Mount Mary that the doctors should be wrong about Ramu? Just as I prayed in SiddhiVinayak temple, Mrs Kothari.’

‘You are a liberal person, Sangeeta. A person of the future.’

‘Did all of you know what was going to happen last night?’ Masterji asked. ‘Am I the only human being in this building?’

Mrs Puri continued to talk to the Secretary’s wife.

‘I make no distinction between Hindu and Muslim and Christian in this country.’

‘So true, Sangeeta. Let the heart be good, that’s what I say.’

‘I agree with you one hundred per cent,’ Mrs Ganguly joined in. ‘I never vote for the Shiv Sena.’

Now Masterji saw Tinku Kothari, the Secretary’s son. Squished into a plastic chair with his miniature carom board, the fat boy was playing by himself, alternately striking black and beige pieces. With his fingers tensed to hit the blue striker, he paused, turning his eyes sideways to Masterji.

He was chuckling. His jelly-like flesh rippled beneath his tight green T-shirt with its golden caption, Come to Ladakh, land of monasteries. The grins of Tibetan monks on the boy’s T-shirt widened.

The blue striker scattered the carom pieces. One black piece ricocheted over the board’s edge, and rolled through parliament, until it touched Masterji’s foot: he shivered.

He went up the stairs to his living room and waited for his old friend. If only Shelley would persuade that stubborn old accountant to knock on the door and say one word. ‘Sorry.’

Just one word.

He waited for half an hour. Then he got up and reached for the No-Argument book, still wrapped in a blue rubber band, lying on top of The Soul’s Passageway after Death in the bookshelf.

He undid the rubber band. He tore the pages out of the No-Argument book one by one, then tore each page into four pieces, and then tore each piece into smaller pieces.

Down in 2A, Mr Pinto, sitting at his dining table, turned to the window to watch the snowfall of paper pieces: all that was left of a 32-year-old friendship.

A scraping noise began in the compound. Mary was sweeping the confetti into a plastic bag. Masterji watched. He was waiting for her to look up at him, he was waiting for one friendly face within his Society. But she did not look.

He understood: she was ashamed. She too had known of what was going to happen.

A shadow fell over Mary’s bent back: a hawk went gliding over her into one of the open windows of Tower B.

‘Come to this tower!’ Masterji called out.

From his window he watched as the hawk, as if at his command, came out of Tower B and flew back.

And not just you.

Pigeon, crow, hummingbird; spider, scorpion, silverfish, termite and red ant; bats, bees, stinging wasps, clouds of anopheles mosquitoes.

Come, all of you: and protect me from human beings.

The cricket game at the Tamil temple had ended. A good game for Timothy; his mother had not caught him playing, and he had scored the most runs this afternoon.

Kumar, tallest of the boys who played with Timothy, had not had a good game. His shift as a cleaner at the Konkan Kinara, a cheap restaurant near the Santa Cruz train station, would start soon, and he was walking through the wasteland around Vakola to his home in one of the slums behind the Bandra-Kurla Complex. He was limping this evening; with the cricket bat in his hand, he slashed at the tall grass to either side of the mud path. A few paces ahead of him, Dharmendar, the cycle mechanic’s assistant, walked with his hands in his pockets, staring at the ground.

From the tall grass, a small dark creature in a blue safari suit leapt out at them.

‘Ajwani Uncle,’ Kumar said.

The broker slapped Dharmendar on the head. ‘The simplest of jobs.’ A second slap. ‘All you had to do was scare an old man. A 61-year-old man.’

Ajwani’s forehead bulged and his scalp retracted. The tendons in his neck became taut. His spit came out in a spray; he swore.

Kumar put down his cricket bat, and stood by Dharmendar’s side, to indicate his share of the responsibility. He bowed his head: Ajwani disdained to slap it. He wiped his palms on his safari suit, as if he had soiled them by touching one so unworthy.

‘You had the key, you had to go in and put a hand over his mouth and give him a message. And you couldn’t do that.’

‘He was… very fierce, Ajwani Uncle.’

The broker scowled. ‘And now you’re playing cricket.’

‘Forgive us, Uncle,’ Kumar said. ‘We’re no good for work like this.’

A plane with the red-and-white Air India colours rose into the sky. Below its roar, Ajwani cursed and spat into the grass.

‘How many boys wait for a call like this? A chance to make some easy money. The beginning of a career in real estate. And I had to pick the two of you. Kumar: didn’t I find your family a place in the slums? Was there any other way you could have got a roof over your heads for 2,500 rupees a month?’

‘No, Uncle.’

‘And you, Dharmendar: didn’t I help your mother find a job as a maid in Silver Trophy Society? Didn’t I go there and speak to the Secretary personally?’

‘Yes, Uncle.’

‘And you boys let me down like this. Running from a 61-year-old…’ He shook his head. ‘And now the police will be here. After me.’

‘Forgive us, Uncle.’

‘What happened to the key I gave you?’ Ajwani gestured for it with his fingers.

‘We lost the key,’ Kumar said.

‘When we were running out of the building, Uncle.’

‘Lost the key!’ Ajwani shouted. ‘When the police come to arrest me, I should give them your names and say it was your idea.’

‘We’ll go to jail for you, Uncle. You are like a father to—’

‘Oh, shut up,’ Ajwani said. ‘Shut up.’

Almost choking with disgust, he walked back to the market and crossed the road to his office.

When Mani returned to the Renaissance Real-Estate office, he found his boss lying on the cot in the inner room, with one foot stretched out and playing with the coconuts in the wicker basket.

‘Why, Mani? Why did I give the job to those boys? I know so many people along the highway. I should have gone to a real goonda. Someone with experience.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Mani sat in a corner and watched the boss.

‘I have failed in everything I’ve put my hand to, Mani. I bought Infosys shares in 2000. Four days later the Nasdaq crashed. Even in real estate I keep buying at the wrong time. I am just a comedian in my own movie.’ His eyes filled with tears; his voice broke. ‘Get out of here, Mani.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And take care of my children when the police come to question me, Mani.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Picking up the black curved knife, the broker sliced open a coconut, drank its water, then got down on the floor and did twenty-five push-ups in an attempt to improve his morale.

At three o’clock, when Mani came back to the inner room, he was still lying on the cot, looking at the ceiling.

‘The way he dealt with those two useless boys, Mani. There’s guts in a 61-year-old doing that. Even in an enemy I admire courage.’

Now that he had done this terrible thing to Masterji, Ajwani felt closer than ever before to the stern sanctimonious old teacher, whom he had neither liked nor trusted all these years.

To wake up every morning white and hot and angry. To become a young man again at the age of sixty-one. What must it feel like? Ajwani clenched his fist.

At four o’clock, he called the Secretary’s office.

Kothari’s voice was relaxed. ‘You have nothing to worry about. He hasn’t gone to the police.’

‘He isn’t going to file a complaint against us?’

‘No.’

‘I don’t understand…’

‘I’ve been thinking about it all morning,’ the Secretary said. ‘Like you, I sat here shaking in my office. But the police never came. Why didn’t Masterji call them?’

‘That’s what I asked you, Kothari.’

‘Because,’ the voice on the phone dropped to a whisper, ‘he knows he’s the guilty one. Not going to the police, what does it mean? Full confession. He accepts responsibility for everything that has gone wrong in this Society. And to think we once respected the man. Now listen, Ajwani. The deadline ended yesterday. At midnight. Correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘But no one has come from the builder’s office. To tell us that it is over, and Tower A is no longer wanted by the Confidence Group.’

‘What does it mean?’ Ajwani whispered back. ‘Is Shah giving us more time? He said he would never do that.’

‘I don’t know what it means,’ the Secretary said. ‘But look — all of us have signed and dated our agreement forms before October 3. Correct? If Shanmugham comes tomorrow and says, it is over, we can always say, but we did sign the forms. You did not come yesterday.’

Ajwani exhaled. Yes, it could still work. Nothing had been lost just yet.

‘But this means…’

‘This means,’ the Secretary continued for him, ‘we have to try something even more simple with Masterji. Tonight.’

‘Not tonight,’ Ajwani said. ‘I need a day. I have to plan things.’

The voice on the other end of the phone paused.

‘And you call me a nothing man, Ajwani?’

‘Why do I have to do everything? Do it yourself this time!’ the broker shouted. He slammed the phone down.

You stink. You people.

He could smell them from his room too well. He burned the candle, he burned an incense stick, he sprayed a perfume about the rooms, but he could still smell them.

I’ll go up as high as possible, Masterji thought.

So he climbed the stairs and went out on to the terrace again. Standing at the edge, he looked down on the black Cross, which was being garlanded by Mrs Saldanha.

She must be praying I should die, he thought.

He circled about the terrace. After a while, he saw small faces down in the compound, staring up: Ajwani, Mrs Puri, and the Secretary were watching him.

Those who had tried to attack him in his room the previous night now gaped at him from down there, as if he were a thing to fear. How monstrous a child’s face with a torch-light must seem to a poisonous spider. He smiled.

The smile faded.

They were pointing at him and whispering into each other’s ears.

‘Go down at once,’ he told himself. ‘By staying up here you are only giving them an excuse to do something worse to you.’

Half an hour later he was still up there: with his hands clasped behind his back, walking in circles around the terrace, as helpless to stop moving as those down below were to stop watching.