Last Man in Tower

4 OCTOBER

They stood, white and pink, on a metal tray in front of the glass-encased figure of the Virgin; their individual flames merged into a thick fire and swayed, alternately answering the sea breeze and the chanting of the kneeling penitents. Thick, blackened wicks emerged from the melting candles like bone from a wound.

White and pink wax dripped like noisy, molten fat on to the metal under-plate, then hardened into white flakes that were blown around like snow.

‘How long is Mummy going to pray today?’

The Virgin stood on a terrace with the sea of Bandra behind her and the stony grey Gothic façade of the church of Mount Mary in front of her.

Sunil and Sarah Rego waited at the wall of the terrace; Mrs Puri stood beside them, ruffling Ramu’s hair and goading him to say the words (which he once knew so well): ‘Holy Roman Catholic.’

It had been Mrs Puri’s idea that they should come here: the black Cross in the compound had failed them. Eaten prayer after prayer and flower garland after flower garland and done nothing to change Masterji’s mind.

So she made them all climb into two autorickshaws, brave the fumes of the Khar subway, and come here, to the most famous church in the city.

Mrs Rego was on her knees before the Virgin, her hands folded, her eyes closed, her lips working.

Sunil had prayed for a respectable time; now he leaned over the edge of the terrace, reading aloud the holy words painted along its steps.

‘That word is “Rosary”. And the next word is “Sacrifice”. And that word is “Re-pa-ra-tion”. It’s a big word. Mummy can use it to trump Aunty Catherine.’

Mummy had not moved for half an hour. The person praying by Mrs Rego’s side got up; an old woman in a purple sari moved in to fill the gap, touching her forehead three times to the ground.

‘Is someone ill? Is it Daddy in the Philippines?’

‘Keep quiet, Sarah,’ Sunil whispered.

‘Why else is Mummy praying so long?’

Half an hour later, all five of them walked down the hill to the Bandra bandstand. They bought four plates of bhelpuri from a roadside vendor and sat in the shade of the pavilion; Sunil and Sarah gobbled theirs, while Mrs Puri brought a spoonful of her bhelpuri to Ramu’s mouth.

Mrs Rego asked: ‘Why did no one come today from the Confidence Group to tell us it is over?’

‘Mr Shah must be preparing the papers for his half-Shanghai. My guess is that he will send Shanmugham over tomorrow.’

Ramu chewed his food. His mother watched him, gently pressing the stray puffed rice to his mouth.

‘Do you know everyone in Tower B got their final instalment last week?’

‘So quickly?’

‘Ahead of schedule, once again. Ritika phoned. This man, this Mr Shah — he does keep his word.’

Mrs Puri fed her son another spoonful.

‘Do you know what Kala Paani means? They used to call the ocean that. People were frightened to cross it. Ajwani says we are all at the Kala Paani now. Mr Shah says the same thing. We must cross the line. The way he did, when he came to Mumbai without shoes on his feet.’

‘How do you know this?’ Mrs Rego’s voice dropped. ‘Did you meet him?’

Mrs Puri nodded.

‘Did you talk about money?’

‘No. He didn’t try to bribe me.’

Mrs Rego looked away.

‘It is a simple thing,’ Mrs Puri said. ‘And then this nightmare is over for all of us. We can phone Mr Shah at once. Before Shanmugham comes.’

‘We already tried the simple thing. I didn’t like it. Criminals inside my Society.’

Mummy smiled and wiped Ramu’s mouth.

‘There is an even simpler thing. Just a push. But it must be done now.’

Mrs Rego frowned; she tried to understand what her neighbour had said.

‘Georgina! What are you doing in Bandra?’

A woman in a green dress was walking towards them; a tall, bald foreigner with a goatee followed behind her.

Introductions were made: the woman in the green dress was Catherine, Mrs Rego’s sister, and the foreign thing with her was her American journalist husband, Frank. His articles appeared in many, many progressive magazines.

‘We read about your Society in the paper, Georgina,’ Frank said, addressing his sister-in-law. ‘And your old teacher. In the Sun.’

Mrs Rego had not paid much attention to her plate of bhelpuri. Now she began eating.

Frank rubbed his hands. ‘I know why he’s doing this. It’s a statement, isn’t it? Against development. Against unplanned development.’

Mrs Rego ate bhelpuri. Mrs Puri stood up and faced the foreigner.

‘He’s not making a statement. He’s mad.’

The American winced.

‘No, I think it’s a statement.’

‘What do you know — you don’t live in Vishram. Yesterday he was walking on the terrace. Round and round and round. With a Rubik’s Cube in his hand. What does that mean, except: “I have lost my mind completely.” And we hear him, don’t we, my husband and I, from next door. Talking to his wife and daughter as if they were alive.’

Mrs Puri looked at Ramu. The boy was playing with Mrs Rego’s children.

‘No statement is happening here,’ she whispered. ‘Just madness.’

The plate of bhelpuri dropped from Mrs Rego’s hand. She began to sob.

Catherine squatted by her sister and rubbed her back.

‘Frank, did you have to mention that horrible man? Did you have to upset my sister?’

‘What did I do?’ The man looked around. ‘I just said—’

‘Shut up, Frank. You are so insensitive sometimes. Don’t cry, Georgina. We’ll get you another plate. Here, look at me.’

‘I’m going to lose the money, it’s not fair,’ Mrs Rego sobbed. ‘It’s not fair, Catherine. You’ve trumped me again. You always do.’

‘Oh, Georgina…’

Mrs Rego’s children came to either side of her and held her hands protectively.

‘Mummy,’ Sunil whispered, ‘Aunty Catherine’s children are stupid. You know that. Sarah and I will make a lot of money for you, and you’ll trump her again. Mummy, don’t cry.’

An hour later, Mrs Puri opened the gate of Vishram Society for her Ramu. Mrs Rego and her children came in behind Ramu.

‘All of Vishram Society is helpless before a bird,’ Mrs Puri said, when she stood outside Mrs Saldanha’s kitchen.

The crow’s nest had come up above Mrs Saldanha’s kitchen window; it had been showering twigs and feathers into the kitchen for days. Mary had refused to do anything; it would bring bad luck to toss the eggs down. ‘I am a mother too,’ she had retorted, when Mrs Saldanha accused her of dereliction of her duties.

Now the eggs had hatched. Two blood-red mouths opened out of little beaks and screeched desperately, all day long. The mother crow hopped from chick to chick and pecked each one consolingly, but they, with raised beaks, cried out for more, much more.

‘We’ll tell the Secretary to call the seven-kinds-of-vermin man,’ Mrs Rego said, keeping her eyes to the ground.

This man, who worked near the train station, was often called to Vishram to knock down a wasps’ nest or a beehive; he scraped it down with his pole and sprayed white antiseptic on the wall.

‘Don’t call anyone,’ Mrs Puri said. She seized Mrs Rego by the arm to arrest her.

‘We will do it right now. You watch.’

She took out her mobile phone and punched at the buttons. Ajwani was at home. He came down wearing a banian over his trousers and scratched his forearms: he lived directly above the nest, it was true, but on the second floor …

‘It is just a crow, and we are people,’ Mrs Puri reasoned with him.

Ajwani remembered a long pole he used to clean cobwebs from the ceiling.

A few minutes later, he was leaning out of his wife’s kitchen window, aiming the long pole at the crow’s nest like a billiards-player. His sons stood on either side and guided his aim.

The Secretary came out of his office to watch. So did Mrs Saldanha.

Mrs Puri sent Ramu up the stairs; he was under orders to wait for her on the first landing.

‘Do it quickly,’ she shouted at Ajwani. ‘The mother knows.’

Ajwani pushed at the nest with the pole. The crow flew up, its claws extended. Ajwani pushed again; the nest tipped over the edge, the two chicks screeching desperately. ‘A little to the left, Father,’ Raghav said. The broker gave a final nudge: the nest dropped to the ground, scattering sticks and leaves.

One of the chicks was silent, but the other poked its beak through the overturned nest. ‘Why doesn’t it shut up?’ the Secretary said. Giving up on Ajwani, who had closed his window, the crow flew down towards her living chick. Kothari stamped on the fledgling’s head, stopping its voice. The crow flew away.

Suddenly, someone began to scream from the stairwell.

‘A simple thing, wasn’t it?’ Mrs Puri said.

All of them looked up at the roof: Masterji was up there, hands clasped behind his back, walking round and round.

A few hours earlier, he had been standing at his window: in the garden he saw Mary’s green hosepipe lying in coils around the hibiscus plants.

Things, which had seemed so simple that evening at Crawford Market, had now become so confusing.

Something rattled against the wall of the kitchen: Purnima’s old calendar.

Masterji searched among the crumpled clothes by the washing machine, picked a shirt that was still fresh-smelling and changed into it.

Out in the market, Shankar Trivedi was enjoying, in between the chicken coop and the sugarcane-crushing machine, the second of his daily shaves. His face was richly lathered around his black moustache. He held on to a glowing cigarette in his right hand, as the barber unmasked him with precise flicks of his open blade.

‘Trivedi, it’s me.’

The priest’s eye moved towards the voice.

‘I’ve been trying to find you for days. It’s tomorrow. Purnima’s anniversary.’

The priest nodded, and took a puff of his cigarette.

Masterji waited. The barber oiled, massaged, and curled the priest’s luxuriant moustache. He slapped talcum powder on the back of Trivedi’s neck — gave a final thwack of his barber’s towel — and discharged his customer from the blue chair.

‘Trivedi, didn’t you hear me? My wife’s death anniversary is tomorrow.’

‘… heard you… heard you…’

The freshly shaved priest, now a confluence of pleasing odours, took a long pull on his cigarette.

‘Don’t raise your voice now, Masterji.’

‘Will you come to my home tomorrow — in the morning?’

‘No, Masterji. I can’t.’

Trivedi drew on his cigarette three times, and threw it down.

‘But… you said you would do it… I haven’t spoken to anyone else because you…’

The priest patted fragrant talcum powder from his right shoulder.

The moral evolution of an entire neighbourhood seemed compressed into that gesture. Masterji understood. Trivedi and the others had realized their own property rates would rise — the brokers must have said 20 per cent each year if the Shanghai’s glass façade came up. Maybe even 25 per cent. And at once their thirty-year-old ties to a science teacher had meant no more to Trivedi and the others than talcum powder on their shoulders.

‘I taught your sons. Three of them.’

Trivedi reached for Masterji’s hand, but the old teacher stepped back.

‘Masterji. Don’t misunderstand. It’s easy to rush to conclusions, but…’

‘Who was the first man to say the earth went around the sun? Anaxagoras. Not in the textbook but I taught them.’

‘When your daughter died, I performed the last rites. Did I or did I not, Masterji?’

‘Just tell me if you will perform my wife’s one-year ritual, Trivedi.’

The baby-faced barber, resting his chin on the blue chair, had been watching the entertainment. Trivedi now addressed his appeal to him.

‘Tell him, everyone in Vakola knows that he is under so much mental stress. I am frightened to do anything in his place. Who knows what might happen to me in there?’

‘Mental stress?’

‘Masterji: you are losing weight, your clothes are not clean, you talk to yourself. Ask anyone.’

‘What about those who smeared excrement on my door? What about those who are paying thugs to attack me? Those who call themselves my neighbours. If I am under stress, what are they under?’

‘Masterji, Masterji.’ Trivedi turned again to the barber for some support. ‘No one has attacked you. People worry about your stability when you say things like this. Sell 3A. Get rid of it. It is killing you. It is killing all of us.’

I should have told my story better, Masterji thought, on his way back to Vishram Society. Ajwani and the others have convinced them I am losing my mind.

He saw Mary’s drunken father, silver buttons twinkling on his red shirt, lying in the gutter by Hibiscus Society like something inedible spat out by the neighbourhood.

The first honest man I have seen all day, Masterji thought, looking down at the gutter with a smile.

He took a step towards the gutter, and stopped. He remembered that there was a better place to escape to.

When he got back to Vishram, he walked on the roof, turning in circles, wanting to be as far above them all as possible.

Mani, Ajwani’s assistant, knew that his boss did not want to be disturbed. Standing outside the glass door of the Renaissance Real-Estate Agency, he had seen Mrs Puri and the broker talking to each other for over half an hour. Something big was going on in there; he had been given charge of keeping Mrs Puri’s Ramu occupied outside the office.

On the other hand, it was a girl.

He pushed open the glass door and put his head in.

‘Sir…’

‘Mani, didn’t you hear what I said?’ Ajwani winced.

Mani just stepped aside, to let the boss see what had turned up.

Ajwani’s frown became a pretty smile.

Though today she wore a black salwar kameez, it was the same woman who had come dressed in that sky-blue sari the day Shanmugham had delivered the details of Mr Shah’s proposal.

‘Ms Swathi. Sit down, sit down. This is my neighbour, Mrs Puri.’

The girl was almost in tears.

‘I came looking for you earlier, sir. I have to speak to you now, it’s urgent.’

‘Yes?’ The broker leaned forward, his hands folded. Mrs Puri sighed.

She had almost convinced Ajwani, and then this happens.

The girl reminded the broker. He had helped her find a place in Hibiscus Society. She was supposed to move in today. He remembered, he remembered.

There had been a lift in the Hibiscus building when she had visited with him, but when she had gone there today, the lift was not working. It would not be repaired for three months, the landlord said. ‘How will my parents go up the stairs, Mr Ajwani? Mother had a hip replacement last year.’

Ajwani retreated into his chair. He pointed a finger behind his head.

‘I told you to worship Information, Ms Swathi. You should have asked about the lift back then. The landlord is within his rights to keep the deposit if you cancel the lease.’

She began to sob.

‘But we need that money, or how will we go looking for another place?’

Ajwani made a gesture of futility.

‘I suppose you’re also going to bring up the matter of the broker’s fee that you gave me.’

She nodded.

‘Sixteen thousand rupees. Like the landlord, I have every legal right to keep it.’

Ajwani’s foot left its chappal, and opened the lowest drawer of the desk. He leaned down and brought up a bundle of cash, from which he counted off 500-rupee notes. Mrs Puri stared.

The broker counted them again, moistening his right index finger on his tongue thirty-two times; then pushed the bundle of notes across the table.

‘I’ll phone the landlord. Go home, Ms Swathi. Call me tomorrow, around four o’clock.’

The girl looked at him, through her sobs, with surprise.

‘A rare thing in this modern age, Ms Swathi. The way you take care of your parents.’

Mrs Puri waited till the girl had left, and said: ‘This is why you never became rich, Ajwani. You waste your money. You should have kept the 16,000 rupees.’

The broker rubbed his metal and plastic rings. ‘Women I did well with, in life. Money, never.’

‘Then become rich now, Ajwani. Be like Mr Shah for once in your life. What you did today with a pole, do again tomorrow on the terrace.’

This was where they had left off.

‘I’m not frightened,’ Ajwani said. ‘Don’t think I am.’

About to speak, Mrs Puri saw Mani, and stopped.

The broker looked at his assistant. ‘Go outside and play with Ramu,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t leave the boy alone out there.’

Mani sighed. He stood outside the office and pointed at passing cars and trucks; Ramu held on to the little finger of his left hand. He was still sobbing because of the way the chick’s head had been crushed under Kothari Uncle’s foot.

After half an hour, Mrs Puri left with her boy.

As he watched the fat woman leave, Mani thought: What have they been talking about?

When he pushed open the glass door, he found the office deserted; from the inner room beyond the Daisy Duck clock came the noise of a coconut being hacked open.

Lying next to Ramu’s blue aeroplane quilt, Sanjiv Puri, who had been drawing cartoons of lizards, white mice, and spiders, now began to sketch, as if by logical progression, politicians.

As he was putting the final touches to the wavy silver hair of his favourite, ex-president Abdul Kalam, he looked up.

The lights were on in the living room: his wife had come home with his son.

‘Ramu.’ He put down his sketchbook and held out his arms.

Mrs Puri said: ‘Play with your father later. He and I have to talk now.’

Closing Ramu’s bedroom door behind her, she spoke in a soft voice.

‘You can’t come to Ramu’s pageant tomorrow.’

‘Why not?’

‘Stay late in the office. Have dinner there. Use the internet. Don’t come home till after ten o’clock.’

He watched her as she went to the dining table, where she began folding Ramu’s freshly washed laundry.

‘Sangeeta…’ He stood by her. ‘What is happening that I can’t come to my own home until ten?’

She looked at him, and said nothing, and he understood.

‘Don’t be crazy. If they do it, Ajwani and the Secretary, well and good. Why should you dip your hands into it?’

‘Keep your voice down.’ Mrs Puri leaned her head in the direction of you know who. ‘Ajwani is doing it. Kothari is going to hide somewhere all day long — so if Shanmugham comes in the morning, he will not be able to tell him that the Confidence Group has withdrawn its offer. And unless their letter is not handed to the Secretary of a Society in person, they cannot say they have taken back their offer. That is the law. In the evening Ajwani will do it. I’ll phone him when Masterji goes up to the terrace. That’s all there is to it.’

‘But if anything goes wrong… it is a question of going to jail.’

She stopped, a blue towel over her forearm. ‘And living in this building for the rest of my life is better than going to jail?’ She flipped the towel over and folded it.

Her husband said nothing.

Ramu popped his head out of his room, and Mummy and Daddy smiled and told him to go back to bed.

‘My fingers still smell,’ she whispered. ‘That man made me dirty my fingers. With my own son’s… He made me do that. I can never forgive him.’

Mr Puri whispered: ‘But tomorrow is Ramu’s pageant.’

‘So it’s perfect,’ Mrs Puri said, pushing the towels to one side, to start work on Ramu’s underwear. ‘No one will suspect me on a day like tomorrow. I will have to stay back at the school hall to help dismantle the pageant. Someone will remember me. Someone will get the time confused. I’m not asking you to do anything. Just stay away from home. That’s all.’

Mr Puri went to the sofa, where he slapped magazines and newspapers on to the ground with his palm; then he walked over to the kitchen, where he stripped things off the fridge door, and then he shouted: ‘No. I won’t do it.’

His wife stood holding Ramu’s underwear against her chest. She stared.

‘No.’ He took a step towards her. ‘I’m not leaving you alone tomorrow. I’m staying here. With you.’

Letting the underwear fall, she put her fingers around her husband’s neck, and — ‘Oy, oy, oy’ — kissed the crown of his head.

Ramu, opening his bedroom door just a bit, gaped at the show of affection between Mummy and Daddy.

Mrs Puri blushed; she pushed the boy back into his room and bolted the door from the outside.

‘He isn’t in his room now,’ she said, putting her ear to the wall to check for any sound. ‘So he’s still up on the roof, then. He went up there yesterday and he went today. He will probably go tomorrow too. Ajwani will have to do it then. Up there.’

‘Kothari?’

‘He will say what we want him to say. When it’s all over. He promised me that much.’

Mr Puri nodded. ‘It could work,’ he said. ‘Could work.’

The sketchbook on which he had been doodling lizards and politicians lay on the table; he tore out a page.

‘Here. We should write it down here. What time he goes up to the terrace and what time he comes down. This will help us tomorrow.’

‘Ramu! Stop pushing the door!’ Mrs Puri raised her voice; the bedroom door stopped rattling.

‘Write it down?’ she asked her husband.

‘Why not? It’s how they do it in the movies. In the English movies. They always plan the previous day. Let’s take this seriously,’ Mr Puri said, as if he had been the one to come up with the whole idea.

He put his ear to the wall.

‘His door has opened.’ He turned to his wife and whispered: ‘What time is it?’

So I have failed you again, Purnima. Masterji removed his shoes, went to his bed and lay down, his arm over his face.

He controlled his tears.

His shirt was wet from walking round and round the terrace; when he turned in the bed, it stuck to his back and made him shiver. A husband who survives his wife must perform her memorial rites. But all of them had got together to strip away even this final satisfaction from him.

He bit his forearm.

How obvious now that Mr Pinto had wanted someone to threaten him outside the compound wall that evening. How obvious now that he and Shelley wanted the money. How obvious that the Secretary had been lying all this time about responsibility and flamingoes; he wanted money. He had been cheating them for years; he had been stealing from the funds. How obvious that Mrs Puri wanted money for herself, not for Ramu.

He covered his face in his blanket and breathed in. The game he played as a child: if you cannot see them, they cannot see you. You are safe in this darkness with your own breathing.

Look down — he heard a whisper.

What is down there? he whispered back.

Look at me.

Under his blanket, Masterji felt himself sliding: trapdoors had opened beneath his bed.

Now he was again on the builder’s terrace on Malabar Hill, watching the darkening ocean. He heard blows like the blows of an axe. The water was ramming into Breach Candy — into the original wall that held the tides out of the great breach of Bombay.

He saw its horns rising out of the dark water: the bull in the ocean, the white bull of the ocean charging into the wall.

Now he could see the original breach in the sea wall reopen: and the waters flooding in — waves rising over prime real estate, wiping out buildings and skyscrapers. Now the white angry bull, emerging horns-first from the waves, charges. The waves have come to the edge of the towers, and flooded into them. Muscles of water smash into the Brabourne Stadium and into the Cricket Club of India; a hoof of tide has brought down the Bombay University…

A finger snapped in the darkness, and a voice said: ‘Get up.’

He opened his eyes; he was too weak to move. Again the finger snapped: ‘Up.’

I cannot go back to bed. If I lie down, I will curse my neighbours and my city again.

He opened the door and went down the stairs. The moonlight pierced the octahedronal stars of the grille; it seemed as bright as the moon he had seen that night, so many years ago, in Simla.

Pinned by a moonbeam, he leaned against the wall.

The Republic, the High Court, and the Registered Co-operative Society might be fraudulent, but the hallways of his building were not without law; something he had obeyed for sixty-one years still governed him here.

He returned to his home; he closed the door behind him.

Opening his wife’s green almirah, Masterji knelt before the shelf with the wedding sari, and thought of Purnima.

Low, white, and nearly full, the moon moved over Vakola.

Ajwani could not stay at home on a night like this. He had walked along the highway, sat under a lamp post, then walked again, before taking an autorickshaw to Andheri, where he had dinner.

It was past eleven o’clock. After a beer at a cheap bar, he was returning along the highway in an autorickshaw. The night air lashed his face. He passed packed, box-like slum houses along the highway. Dozens of lives revealed themselves to him in seconds: a woman combing her long hair, a boy wearing a white skullcap reading a book by a powerful table lamp, a couple watching a serial on television. The autorickshaw sped over a concrete bridge. Below him, homeless men slept, bathed, played cards, fed children, stared into the distance. They were the prisoners of Necessity; he flew.

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 of 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 holes-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.

The bylane, like the others around the red-light district, was busy with the hammering of iron and the hiss of white-blue oxyacetylene flame. In an economy typical of the city, the metal-working district is packed into the mazy lanes around Falkland Road — the pounding of steel and sex combined in the same postcode. Ajwani had seen the metal-cutting shops in passing many times before.

Now he walked about the glaring and hissing workshops like a man who had stumbled into a new country. Outside one shop, the metal worker lifted up his rusty visor and stared at him.

Ajwani turned away from his gaze. He walked further down the lane. Strings of glossy ribbons led down to a bulbous green mosque at the end. An acrid industrial stench. Behind a chink in a blue door, a man in a visor squatted on the floor and seared a rod with a flame. Metal grilles for windows were stacked outside another shop. A worker stood tapping on the grilles; a customer in a grey suit was listening to him.

‘… a flower pattern in the iron rods is normal, it’s free. But this thing you want, two flowers joining together… I’ll add two rupees per kilogram…’

‘Oh, that’s too much,’ the customer said. ‘Too much, too much.’

Suddenly both the worker and the customer turned and faced Ajwani.

He walked to the end of the lane. Right in front of the green mosque, he saw a buffalo tied to a tree; the restless head and horns of the animal emerged from the deep shade and then drew back into it.

A door opened in what he had thought was the mosque wall. A piece of corrugated iron roofing emerged from it. Two bare-chested men carried it in front of Ajwani, and he saw his own shadow ripple over the folds of iron.

He stared at the disappearing shadow; he shivered.

‘It is not just a push,’ he said aloud, and turned, to make sure the buffalo had not overheard him.

Ajwani sneaked past the workshops to the main road. Leaning on the horseless silver carriages, the prostitutes sucked their teeth for him as he left Falkland Road. His eyes full of oxyacetylene, his sinuses full of fumes, the broker staggered back towards Marine Drive.

He still heard hammer blows from the workshops that were far behind him; his nose still burned, as if reality had been brought red-hot right up to it. He stopped for breath. Ahead, foreshortened by the perspective, the massed buildings skidded like a single lightning bolt of stone and masonry towards Chowpatty beach. The plunge in the city’s topography worked a corresponding effect in Ajwani’s mind; all other thoughts fell away, isolating a lone enormous truth.

… it is not ‘just a push’. It is killing a man.

A rubber ball struck the demon’s face painted on the wall of the Tamil temple.

Masterji opened his eyes, and stood up in the shade of the fruit tree. He realized he had gone to sleep. As he rubbed his eyes, he heard a woman’s voice booming: ‘Rakesh: is that how to bowl? Don’t you watch TV?’

Masterji hid behind the tree; he had recognized the voice.

‘Yes, Aunty. Sorry.’

‘I am not your aunty.’

Half a dozen boys converged around Mrs Rego. Sunil and Sarah were with her, and also Ramu, who was dressed in a red shirt, with make-up on his face and a golden sword in his hand. The pageant day must have ended. Why was Mrs Puri not around? Why had she left Ramu with Mrs Rego, of all people? But he no longer had any right to ask about their lives.

‘… boys, a promise is a promise, I know, but I just can’t go today. I will take you to the beach, and all of us will have sugarcane juice there. In the meantime I hope all of you have been staying out of trouble and…’

‘Aunty, no trip to the beach and a lecture? That’s not fair, is it?’

‘I am sorry, Vikram. I will take all of you one day.’

The cricket game continued after Mrs Rego left. One of the boys chased the ball into the temple courtyard.

‘Masterji,’ he said. ‘I’m Mary’s son. Timothy.’

Taking the old teacher by the hand he brought him out to show the other boys. At once, two of them ran away.

‘What happened?’ Masterji asked.

‘Oh, that Kumar, he’s a strange boy. Dharmendar too.’

Timothy smiled.

‘Will you take us to the beach, Masterji? Mrs Rego Aunty was supposed to take us.’

‘Why do you want to go to the beach?’

‘Why do you think? To play cricket there.’

‘So go on your own.’

‘Well, someone has to pay for bus fare. And sugarcane juice afterwards, Masterji.’

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Maybe I’ll take you there one of these days. If you can answer this question: why are there tides at the beach?’

‘No reason.’

‘There is a reason for everything.’ Masterji pointed to the boy who had been bowling at Timothy. ‘What is your name?’

‘Vijay.’

‘Do you know the reason, Vijay?’

He picked up a red stone, went to the wall of the Tamil temple, and drew a circle above the demon’s wide-open mouth.

‘This is the earth. Our planet. In infinite space.’

Masterji saw shadows on the wall — he felt sweat and heat nearby — he realized that they had all gathered behind him.

‘Our earth is that small?’ someone asked.

About to reply, Masterji stopped and said: ‘I can start a school here. An evening school.’

‘Evening school?’ Timothy asked. ‘For who?’

The boys looked at one another; Masterji looked at them and smiled, as if the answer were obvious.

The sun had slipped in between two skyscrapers on Malabar Hill; the nearer of the buildings had become a flickering silhouette, a thing alternately of dark and light, like the lowest visible slab of a ghat descending into a river.

Ajwani sat on the sea wall of Marine Drive, looking at the tetrapod rocks below him and the waves washing around them.

He had been thinking for over an hour, ever since he had come down here from Falkland Road. It all made sense to him now. So this was why Shah paid Tower B ahead of time. To get everyone at Vishram desperate. This was why he did nothing when the story ran in the newspaper. He wanted them to do it.

‘And making Shanmugham tell me his life’s story,’ Ajwani said, aloud, surprising a young Japanese man who had sat down by his side to take photographs of the city.

Ajwani thought about the details of Mr Shah’s story. Now it seemed to him that something was wrong with the information. If Shah had come to Mumbai with only twelve rupees and eighty paise, and no shoes on his feet, how did he manage to open a grocery store in Kalbadevi? There was a father in the village — he must have sent him money. Men do have a sense of responsibility to their first wife’s sons. Ajwani struck his forehead with his palm. These self-made millionaires always hide a part of the story. The truth was as obvious as the ocean.

‘It’s been cat and mouse. From the start.’

And the cat had always been Dharmen Shah.

I’m trapped, Ajwani thought, as he walked on the ocean wall towards Churchgate station. Mrs Puri and the Secretary were waiting for him. He, more than anyone else, had moved his nothing Society to this point. He could not fail them now. He looked down and thought if only he could live there, by the crabs, among the rocks by the breaking water.

Inside the station, Ajwani paid five rupees for a white plastic cup of instant coffee. His stomach needed help. All that industrial smoke from the metallurgical shops. Sipping the coffee, he walked to his platform; the Borivali local was about to depart.

Now he had industrial smoke and instant coffee in his stomach. He felt worse with each shake and jerk of the train.

He cursed his luck. Of all the things to pick up from Falkland Road — all the horrible names he had worried about for all these years — gonorrhoea, syphilis, prostatitis, Aids — he had to pick this up: a conscience.

‘You are at the Kala Paani,’ he told himself. ‘You have to cross it. Have to be one of those who get things done in life.’

A fellow passenger was staring at him. Lizard-like, stout, thick-browed, massively lipped, the man clutched a small leather bag in his powerful forearms: his eyes bulged as they focused on Ajwani.

The lizard-man yawned.

When he shut his mouth, he had taken on the face of the man aging director of the Confidence Group. In a moment the train compartment was full of Shahs.

‘Fresh air, please. Fresh…’ Ajwani moved through the crowd to the open door of the moving train. ‘Please please let me breathe.’

Migrants had squatted on the wasteland at the edge of the tracks; they had turned it into a vegetable patch, seeding and watering it. Ajwani held on to the rod in the open door of the train. Behind the little green fields he could see the blue tents they lived in. The sight was chastening; his stomach wanted to call out to them.

He began to vomit on to the tracks.

The lights were coming on in the market as the Secretary scraped his shoes on the coir mat outside the Renaissance Real-Estate office.

‘Come in, sir,’ Mani had said. Ajwani had told him what to do when Kothari arrived.

He showed the Secretary past the Daisy Duck clock into the inner room and told him to sit on the bed.

‘Your boss isn’t here?’ the Secretary said, looking at the empty cot. ‘I was hiding in my mother-in-law’s house all day long. In Goregaon. Near the Topi-wala building. I just got back to Vakola. Where is he?’

Mani shrugged.

‘He isn’t even picking up the phone. Maybe I should wait outside for him.’

‘It’s better that you wait here, sir, isn’t it?’ Mani’s eyes shone with their usual half-knowledge of his master’s dealings.

The Secretary sat on the cot in the inner room, looking at the wicker basket full of coconuts and wondering if the broker had counted them. A few minutes later the door creaked open.

‘You?’ Mrs Puri asked, as she came into the inner room. ‘You’re not supposed to be here.’

‘I kept worrying about you, Mrs Puri. I came to check that you were all right,’ the Secretary said.

‘Better you leave us alone here, Kothari. All we want from you is an alibi.’

The Secretary of Vishram Society shook his head. ‘And what of my responsibility to you, Mrs Puri? My father said, a man who lives for himself is an animal. I’m going to make sure you’re all right. Now tell me, where is Ajwani?’

‘In the city,’ Mrs Puri said. ‘Falkland Road.’

‘On a day like this?’

‘Especially on a day like this. That’s the kind of man he is.’

‘Let me wait until he comes back. It’s my responsibility to do so. Don’t tell me to go away.’

‘You’re not such a bad Secretary after all,’ Mrs Puri said, as she sat on the cot.

Kothari kicked the wicker basket in the direction of Mrs Puri, who kicked it back, and this became a game between them. Someone knocked on the door of the inner room.

When the Secretary opened it, he saw Sanjiv Puri.

‘What are you doing here?’ Mrs Puri hissed. Her husband walked in, and along with him came Ibrahim Kudwa.

‘He rang the bell and asked for you.’

‘I know what is going on,’ Kudwa said. ‘No one told me, but I’m not as stupid as you think. And I know you didn’t tell me because you thought a Muslim wouldn’t want to help you.’

‘Nothing is going on, Ibby.’

Kudwa sat beside her on the cot. ‘Don’t treat me like a child. Ajwani is going to do something. Tonight.’

The Secretary looked at the Puris.

‘What’s the point of hiding it from Ibrahim?’

‘We know it’s dangerous, Ibby. That is why we kept you out of it.’ Mrs Puri reached for his forearm and stroked it. ‘The only reason. We know you have Mumtaz and the children to take care of.’

Her husband moved protectively in front of her. ‘Will you tell the police about us now?’

‘No!’ Ibrahim Kudwa winced. He slapped his breast pocket, brimming with heart-shaped antacid tablets. ‘You’re my friends. Don’t you know me by now? I want to save you. How can Ajwani get away with this?’ he pleaded with folded palms. ‘Ram Khare will be watching from his booth. Someone passing on the road might see. Masterji might cry out. It’s a trap — can’t you see? The builder has trapped all of you. From the day he paid the money to Tower B ahead of schedule: this is what he wanted you to do.’

‘And he’s right, Ibby,’ Mrs Puri said. ‘That man walked into Mumbai with nothing on his feet, and look at him now. And look at us. We should have done this a long time now.’

‘Don’t raise your voice,’ the Secretary said. ‘Speak to Ajwani when he gets here, Ibrahim. Me, I don’t want the money. I just want to make sure that no one goes to jail. That is my sacred responsibility here.’

The lynx-lines spread wide around his eyes; he grinned.

He picked up the big crescent knife from the basket and scraped it against the nuts.

‘Ajwani is an expert at this. I’m not quite sure how it’s done.’ Selecting a large coconut, which was still attached to the brown connective tissue of the tree it had been hacked from, Kothari held it out at arm’s length: then he stuck the knife into it. Three hesitant strokes, then it came to him. Thwack thwack thwack. The white flesh of the coconut exposed; fresh water spilling out.

‘Not for me,’ Kudwa said, pointing to the antacid tablets in his translucent shirt pocket. ‘Bad stomach.’

‘Have it, Ibrahim. All of us are going to. It will cure a weak stomach.’

Kudwa had a sip, and then offered the coconut to Mrs Puri, who sipped and passed it to her husband. When he was done, the Secretary reached in with his knife, and carved out the white flesh of the coconut, which he offered to Mrs Puri.

‘It’s there, why waste it?’

‘All right.’

Mrs Puri scooped the coconut flesh with her fingers, and passed it to Kudwa, who did the same, and licked the white slop off his fingers.

The Secretary pitched the coconut into the corner. Kudwa pointed at the knife that he had just placed over the coconuts.

‘Is Ajwani going to do it with that…?’

The Secretary pushed the basket away with his foot.

‘We don’t know anything about it, Ibby. We’re just here to give Ajwani some support.’

‘That’s right,’ the Secretary said. ‘We’ll say we were here with him when it happened.’

They sat there, in the inner room: the chiming of the Daisy Duck clock from outside told them it was a quarter past seven.

Kudwa stretched his legs.

‘What is that you’re humming, Ibrahim?’

With sly fingers the Secretary pinched the strip of heart-shaped antacid tablets from the shirt pocket and examined them.

‘“Hey Jude”.’

The Secretary put the antacid tablets back into Kudwa’s shirt pocket. ‘What is that?’

‘You don’t know? How is it possible?’

‘I’m a Mohammad Rafi man, Ibrahim.’

‘Here,’ Kudwa said. ‘It’s an easy song. Here, I’ll show you.’ Clapping his hands together, he began to sing.

‘Voice is so beautiful, Ibby,’ Mrs Puri said.

He blushed.

‘Oh, no, no. It’s terrible now, Sangeeta-ji. I don’t practise. But you should have heard it in college…’ Kudwa moved his hand over his head, to indicate past glories.

‘Should I go on with “Hey Jude”, or do you want something in Hindi?’

He waited for an answer from Mrs Puri. Standing at the door of the inner room, she was telling Mani: ‘Close the outer door. And don’t answer the phone for any reason. Do you understand?’

Returning after dark, Masterji stopped in the stairwell of Vishram Society; his red fingers reached for the wall.

By the banister on which his daughter used to slide down on her way to school (her father upstairs shouting: ‘Don’t do that, you’ll fall’), he said aloud: ‘I am starting an evening school. For the boys who play cricket by the temple.’

At once he felt something he had almost forgotten: a sensation of fear. ‘Have to get checked for diabetes tomorrow,’ he reminded himself. ‘It’s just a question of taking tablets and watching the sweets. You’ll be fine.’

He kept going up the stairs to the fifth floor, where he opened the door that led to the roof terrace.

Firecrackers were exploding in the distance. The wedding of a rich man, Masterji thought. Or perhaps it was an obscure festival. Incandescent rockets and whirligigs and corkscrews shot through the night sky: Masterji put both hands on the short wall of the terrace. He heard a snatch of what he thought was band music.

‘We beat Mr Shah,’ he wanted to shout, so loudly that the people celebrating could hear, and celebrate louder.

He wished he could go to where the rockets were bursting: and soar over the fireworks, over Santa Cruz, over the churches and beaches of Bandra, over the temple at SiddhiVinayak and the darkened race course at Mahalakshmi, until he alighted at Crawford Market. There he would look for that bearded day-labourer and fall asleep by his side, adding to the numbers of those who were not alone tonight.

Mr Pinto did not hear the phone, but its ringing pierced through the cotton wool to reach his wife’s more sensitive ears. She shook his shoulder until he unplugged his ears and reached for the receiver: it might be the children calling from America.

For an instant he thought the threatening calls were starting again. It was the same voice.

‘Pinto? Don’t you know me? It’s Ajwani.’

Mr Pinto breathed out. ‘You frightened me.’ He looked at the clock. ‘It’s eight fifteen.’

(‘Is it Tony?’ Mrs Pinto whispered. ‘Deepa?’)

The thin voice on the phone said: ‘No one else is picking up, Pinto. It’s all up to you.’

‘What are you talking about, Ajwani? You’re frightening me.’

‘Do you know where I am? In Dadar. I can’t leave the station. The hand shakes. It took me an hour to pick up the phone.’

‘The Secretary told us to stay in bed and wear ear-cotton tonight, Ajwani. We are watching television. Good night.’

‘… Pinto… tell them it’s a mistake, Pinto. You must tell them it’s a mistake.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Tell them not to do it. We can all live together in the building like before. Tell Mrs Puri. Tell the Secretary.’

Mr Pinto put the phone down.

‘Who was that?’ his wife asked.

‘Do not,’ he said, ‘make me pick up the phone again tonight. Do not.’

He took the phone off the hook.

He and Shelley watched their favourite Hindi TV serial, in which the acting was so exaggerated, and the zoom-in camera so frequently used, that an absence of sound only mildly inhibited one’s understanding of the plot.

Mr Pinto folded his arms in front of the TV and watched. On a piece of paper by the side of his sofa, he had written:

$100,000 × 2

and

$200,000 × 1

*

The Daisy Duck clock outside chimed nine o’clock. In the inner room of the Renaissance Real-Estate Agency, Kudwa was singing ‘A Hard Day’s Night’, while the Secretary was slapping his thighs in time.

‘Ajwani is not coming.’ Mrs Puri stood up from the cot and straightened her sari. ‘Something has happened to him.’

‘So?’ Kudwa stopped singing. ‘It’s over, isn’t it?’

Without looking at each other, Mrs Puri and her husband held hands.

‘We can’t waste this chance, Ibby. It’s for Ramu.’

‘I can’t let you two do it on your own.’ The Secretary got up. ‘I’ll make sure no one’s watching. That’s my responsibility. And you, Ibrahim. Will you go to the police?’

Ibrahim Kudwa blinked, as if he couldn’t understand the Secretary’s words. ‘You are my neighbours of nine years,’ he said.

The Secretary embraced him. ‘You were always one of us, Ibrahim. From the first day. Now go home and sleep.’

Kudwa shook his head.

‘Nine years together. If you’re going to jail, I’m going to jail too.’

It was decided that the Puris would leave first. The back door that led from the inner room to a side alley closed behind them.

Kothari’s mobile phone rang a few minutes later.

‘Masterji is on the terrace. Ram Khare is not in his booth. Come.’

They went out through the back door. They crossed the market. On the way to the Society, Kudwa said: ‘Maybe we should ask him. If he’ll sign.’

Both stopped. To their left, a paper kite had floated down and collapsed on the road.

The Secretary moved, but not Ibrahim Kudwa; the Hindu holy man was sleeping by the whitewashed banyan outside his cyber-café. A cyclostyled advertisement had been pasted over his head:

STRONGLY SCENTED PHENYL. DISINFECTS. FRESHENS YOUR HOUSE. BUY DIRECT. 170 RS FOR FIVE LITRES.

If only, Kudwa thought, I could inhale the cleansing scent of disinfectant right now. He looked up and saw the dark star from last Christmas over his café.

‘Do you think… they expect me to come all the way to the Society?’

‘What are you talking about, Ibrahim?’

‘I mean, do Mrs Puri and Mr Puri expect me to come all the way? Or would they know I was being supportive if I came this far and went back?’

‘Ibrahim, I expect you to come with me all the way. We have to make sure Mr and Mrs Puri are safe. We’re not doing anything.’

The door of the cyber-café trembled. Kudwa realized that it had not been doubled-bolted from the inside. How many times had he told Arjun, someone could pick the lock from the outside and steal the computers unless he…

‘Ibrahim. I need you.’

‘Coming.’

With Vishram Society in sight, the two men were spotted.

‘It’s Trivedi. He’s coming this way. We should go back.’

‘He won’t say a thing tomorrow. I know this man.’

Trivedi, bare-chested except for his shawl, smiled at the men, and passed them.

When they got to the gate, the Secretary looked up and said: ‘He’s not on the terrace.’

They unlatched the gate and tiptoed through the compound, the Secretary darting into his office for a few seconds, leaving Ibrahim Kudwa rubbing his hands by the noticeboard.

‘What do you want that for?’ he asked, when Kothari emerged with a roll of Scotch tape.

‘Go into the office,’ the Secretary whispered, ‘and bring the hammer with you. It’s sitting next to the typewriter.’

Mrs Puri was waiting for them at the top of the stairs. Her husband stood behind her.

‘He just returned from the terrace and closed his door. You men took too long.’

‘Do we call it off?’ Kudwa asked. ‘Another day?’

‘No. Do you have the key, Kothari?’

The Scotch tape was not the only thing the Secretary had brought from the office. He inserted the spare key to 3A into the hole and struggled with it. They heard the sound of a television serial from the Pintos’ room.

‘Should we ask him, one more time, if he will sign?’

‘Shut up, Ibrahim. Just stay there and watch the door.’

The door opened. Masterji had gone to sleep in his living room, his feet on the teakwood table, the Rubik’s Cube by his chair.

Kudwa came in behind the others and closed the door. The Secretary, moving to the chair, cut a piece of Scotch tape and pressed it over Masterji’s mouth.

That awoke the sleeping man. He ripped the Scotch tape off his mouth.

‘Kothari? How did you get in?’

‘You have to agree now, Masterji. Right now.’

‘Think of Gaurav,’ Mrs Puri asked. ‘Think of Ronak. Say “Yes.” Now.’

‘Get out,’ the old man said. ‘All of you get out of my—’

The Secretary moved before he could finish the sentence: he cut another slice of Scotch tape and tried to stick it over the old man’s mouth. Masterji pushed the Secretary back. Mr Puri stood stiff near the door.

‘Kothari, don’t touch him,’ Ibrahim Kudwa warned.

Masterji, recognizing the voice of his protector, got up and began to turn in his direction.

‘Ibby,’ Mrs Kudwa said. ‘Ibby.’

At once, Ibrahim Kudwa lifted the hammer he had brought from the Secretary’s office, lunged forward, and hit Masterji on the crown of his head. Who, more from surprise than anything else, fell back into his chair with such force that it toppled over and his head landed hard on the floor. Masterji lay there like that, unable to move, though he saw things with clarity. Ibrahim Kudwa stared with an open mouth; the hammer dropped from his hand. I should reach for the hammer, Masterji thought, but the Secretary lunged and picked it up. Now he felt a weight on his chest: Kothari, pressing a knee on his torso, turned the hammer upside down and stubbed it on his forehead using both his hands. It hurt. He tried to shout, but he heard only a groan from his mouth. Now something, or someone, sat on his legs, and he lost control of them; he was aware that Kothari was pounding his forehead with the hammer again and again. The blows were landing somewhere far away, like stones falling on the surface of a lake he was deep inside. He thought of a line from the Mahabharata: ‘… King Dhritharashtra’s heart was like a forest lake, warm on the surface but icy at the bottom.’ Kothari stopped and took a breath. Poor man’s arms must be aching by now, Masterji thought. He was sure he had never seen anyone move as fast as Kothari was moving with the hammer, except for the boy at the McDonald’s on Linking Road when he lifted French fries from the hot oil, slammed them into the metal trough, and put the empty container back in the oil. Then the hammer hit his forehead again. ‘Kothari. Wait.’ Now Sanjiv Puri came from the bedroom with a large dark thing, which he lowered on to Masterji’s face. When the dark thing touched his nose, Masterji understood. Yes. The pillow from his bed. It pressed down on his nose and crushed his moustache: he understood that Sanjiv Puri was sitting on it. His legs thrashed: not to free themselves, but to take him down to the bottom of the lake faster. He was in very cool and black water now.

‘He’s unconscious. Sanjiv, enough. Get up.’

Sanjiv Puri looked at his wife, who was sitting on Masterji’s legs, and then at Ibrahim Kudwa, who was watching things with an open mouth.

‘Quickly. You take the feet, Kothari will take the head,’ Mrs Puri told her husband. ‘Ibby, pick up that hammer. Don’t leave it here.’

Kudwa, rubbing his forearms, stood still. ‘Oy, oy, oy,’ he said.

‘Wait,’ Sanjiv Puri said. ‘First put some more tape on his mouth. In case he wakes up.’

Kothari did so. Then the two men lifted Masterji’s body, and moved towards the door. Mr Puri winced: ‘I stepped on something.’ His wife kicked the Rubik’s Cube out of their path.

She opened the door for the men, and checked the corridor.

‘Wait for the lift. I’ve hit the button.’

‘It never works, let’s take the stairs, there’s two strong men here. He has lost a lot of weight.’

‘It was working in the morning. Wait.’

Mrs Puri jabbed the ‘call’ button again and again.

Sanjiv Puri had given up on the lift, and had begun moving with Masterji’s feet (his end of the dazed body) towards the stairs, when the machine clicked — the whirls and wheezes began — and a circle of light moved up towards them.

His wife held the door open from the outside until the three bodies were in. The Secretary managed to reach the button for the fifth floor. The two men saw, in the round white light on the roof of the lift, three tiny dark shapes. Wasps, which must have flown into the light a long time ago: six undecomposed wings.

When they reached the fifth floor, Sanjiv Puri prepared to press against the lift door; but it swung open of its own accord. His wife, despite her bulk, had come up the stairs faster than they had.

While they brought the body out of the lift, she pushed open the door leading to the roof terrace.

‘We’ll never take him up that way,’ the Secretary said, looking at the steep narrow staircase.

‘One step at a time. You can do it,’ Mrs Puri said, from above them. ‘One step at a time.’

The two men put the body down and changed positions. Sanjiv Puri, the stronger of the two, took the head this time. The Secretary followed with the feet. One step at a time. Pigeons scattered on the terrace as they came out.

‘Mrs Puri…’ the Secretary panted, ‘make sure no one is sitting down there in parliament…’

The wall of the terrace was three feet high. Mrs Puri looked down.

‘He’s opened his eyes. Do you have the hammer here?’

‘No, I left it in the room.’

‘Why didn’t you bring it up with you?’

‘You never told me to…’

‘Oh, stop it,’ Mrs Puri said. ‘Get the work done.’

The two men staggered with the body, which had begun to squirm, to the edge of the terrace; on a count of three, they heaved it up and pushed.

‘Why isn’t it going over?’

‘He’s awake again. He’s holding on to the terrace with his hand. Push harder. Push.’

Watching the struggle, Mrs Puri joined in, and pressed her back and buttocks against the stone that had blocked her happiness for so long.

Now, when he opened his eyes, he could not tell if he were dead or alive; these men seemed to be demons, though kindly, who were forcing his body to budge from some place between life and death where it was stuck.

And this was because he was neither good nor bad enough; and neither strong nor weak enough. He had lost his hands; he had lost his legs; he could not speak. Yet everything he had to do was right here, in his head. He thought of Gaurav, his son, his living flesh. ‘Help me,’ he said.

And then he realized that the thing that was blocking his passage was cleared, and he was falling; his body had begun its short earthly flight — which it completed almost instantaneously — before Yogesh Murthy’s soul was released for its much longer flight over the oceans of the other world.

Down on the ground it lay, sprawled, in perfect imitation of a suicide’s corpse.

Loose strands of hair fell down the sides of Kothari’s bald head; he rearranged them into a comb-over.

‘We have to go back and find that hammer, Mrs Puri. And where is Ibrahim? Is he still in the room? What is he doing there? Mrs Puri, are you listening to me?’

‘He’s still alive,’ she said. ‘He’s moving down there.’

The Secretary was out of breath. So Sanjiv Puri ran down the stairs to the fifth floor, took the lift, and burst out of the entranceway. He stood by the body, turned his head upwards and shook it. The movement had stopped. It was just a death spasm.

A corona of dark liquid surrounded the head; Mrs Puri thought she saw things coming out of the skull. It was done.

‘Scotch tape…’ she hissed at her husband from the terrace. ‘The Scotch tape on his mouth. Quick-ly. Ram Khare is coming back.’

A special night. He usually had a quarter of Old Monk rum in his room, but tonight he had gone into a bar and said: ‘Whisky. Royal Stag.’

Why not? It was the evening of 5 October. The fight in his Society had to be over now. Even if you thought that the builder had delayed by one day, that was yesterday. Any man who gave his word that he would not extend the deadline would lose face if he did so after today.

The TV screen in the bar was playing a movie featuring Praveena Kumari, a famous ‘sex bomb’ of the 1980s, now making a come-back in a film called Dance, Dance. Ram Khare had never been a fan. Not curvy enough.

He had his whisky and asked for another.

The truth be told, he thought, I was always hoping that Masterji would defeat the builder. Where would I find work at another building at my age?

Now he was hungry.

A fine meal of chow mein, fried in a large black wok, at a street-side stand run by Gurkhas. Ram Khare sat on a bench next to the wok, and ate with a plastic fork, splashing a vivid green sauce and ketchup on the chow mein.

Done with his dinner, he washed his mouth and headed back to Vishram.

He had unlatched the gate and was walking to his booth, when he saw a human being lying near the entranceway of the Society.

Catherine D’Mello-Myer’s flat in the Bandra Reclamation was a warm anarchy of left-wing academic journals and foreign toys.

Her three children and their two cousins had rampaged through the kitchen and the bathroom before she ordered them into the TV room, where they had turned on the Sony PlayStation.

Now she sat at the dinner table with her sister and the sweet imbecile boy holding his green sign saying ‘NO NOISE’. His sword had become a piece of crushed cardboard on the floor.

Catherine had never seen her sister like this.

Mrs Rego sat at the table with her right hand lying on a black mobile phone.

Frank, Catherine’s American husband, looked out from their bedroom. He gestured with his head towards the children screaming at their PlayStation.

She glared at him.

Some things men could not understand. Her sister had never done this before — come here at such short notice, bringing along her children and this neighbour’s son.

Catherine knew she had never done enough for poor Georgina.

She understood that an important call was going to be made from that mobile phone. Her job was to take care of the children until the call was made, and Frank could go to hell.

‘Come, Ramu,’ she said, drawing the imbecile boy away from her sister. She touched him and withdrew her hand almost at once.

‘Georgina,’ she whispered. ‘I think he’s soiled his trousers.’

The boy parted his lips, and began to emit a soft, high-pitched whine.

Mrs Rego picked up her mobile phone and dialled.

‘Is that you, Mrs Puri?’ she asked, when the call was answered.

Catherine came closer to listen.

‘No, it’s Mr Puri,’ a man’s voice said. ‘My wife will call you in half an hour. The police are asking her some questions — there has been an unfortunate incident at the building. Is Ramu safe?’

Frank, opening the door of the bedroom to send another message, saw Mrs Rego break down and sob, while her sister stood over her, patting her back and whispering: ‘Georgina, now, now…’

*

Bowing to the golden Ganesha on the lintel, Shanmugham walked through the open door of his employer’s home in Malabar Hill.

He heard Kishore Kumar’s “Ek Aise Gagan Ke Tale” on a tape recorder.

The living room was deserted. A plate full of chewed crusts lay on the dining table; he recognized the marks of his employer’s teeth on the toast.

The fragrance of gutka guided him to the bedroom.

Dharmen Shah lay in a nest of printed papers, scratching on a pad with a pencil. The plaster-of-Paris model of the Confidence Shanghai sat beside him near the bedside lamp.

‘What?’

Shanmugham did not know how to say it. He felt a strange fear of incriminating himself with any word he might use.

Looking up from his calculations, Shah saw his assistant’s hand rising up in a fist.

The fist opened.

‘How?’

‘He fell, sir. From the terrace. About one hour ago. They say it’s suicide.’

Shah opened his red mouth. Eyes closed, he pressed his head back against the white pillow. ‘I thought it would be a push down the stairs, or a beating at night. That’s all.’

He caressed the soft pillow.

‘I forgot we were dealing with good people, Shanmugham.’

Scattering papers, the fat man climbed off the bed.

‘You drive back to Vakola. Find out from your connection in the police station what is happening with their investigation. I’ll call the astrologer in Matunga and get an auspicious date to start the demolition.’

7 OCTOBER

MUMBAI SUN

SUICIDE IN SANTA CRUZ (EAST)?

By a staff reporter

Mr Yogesh Murthy, a retired teacher at the famous St Catherine’s School in the neighbourhood, allegedly committed suicide last night from the rooftop of ‘Vishram’ Society in Vakola, Santa Cruz (E).

While there is no suspicion of foul play in the matter, the Santa Cruz police said they are not ruling out any possibility at this stage. An investigation is underway.

It is believed, however, that the deceased had slipped into a state of extreme depression following the death of his wife almost exactly a year ago. Residents of the neighbourhood say that he had been progressively losing his mind under the pressure of diabetes and old age, withdrawing into his room, talking to himself, engaging in anti-social behaviour and fighting with his entire Society over a proposed offer of redevelopment, which he alone opposed. Dr C. K. Panickar, a clinical psychiatrist at Bandra’s Lilavati Hospital, says he had shown classic symptoms of mental deterioration. ‘Paranoia, passive-aggressive developments, and even schizophrenia cannot be ruled out given the subject’s behaviour in his final days,’ he suggests.

The deceased is survived by a son, Gaurav, who lives in Marine Lines, and a grandson, Ronak.