Last Man in Tower

15 JULY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Wait,’ Shah said. ‘Stop here.’

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

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

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

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

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

21 JULY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Khare said: ‘One minute.’

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

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

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

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

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

He ran his clean fingernail down the columns.

Guest Name

Occupation

Address

Mobile Number

Purpose of Visit

Person to See

Time Entry

Time Exit

Remarks (if any)/Observations (if any)

Signature of Guest

Signature of Guard

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

Khare closed the log book and sniffed.

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

Masterji closed his eyes for a beat.

‘Are you threatening me, Ram Khare?’

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

The guard spread his arms wide.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He walked into the building with the coriander.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘What a selfish, greedy old man he has become, Ramu. He wants to take our wooden cupboards away from us. The Evil Eye must have found out about my good luck. This time too.’

Ramu had put his fingers in his ears. His face began to shake; his teeth chattered. Mrs Puri knew what was coming, but he beat her to it, ran into the toilet, and slammed the door. No: he wouldn’t open the door for Mummy.

‘Ramu, I won’t say anything bad about Masterji again. I promise.’

The door opened at last, but Ramu wouldn’t get up from the toilet bowl. Breathing as normally as she could, to show that she was not angry with him, that he had not made a stinky mess in the toilet, Mummy washed his behind clean with a mug of water, changed his trousers, and put him into bed with Spiderman and the Friendly Duck.

She struggled down to her knees and scrubbed the toilet floor clean. When he was frightened, he missed the bowl.

When she opened the door of his bedroom, Ramu was sitting up, angling the book in which his father had drawn lizards and spiders so that the Friendly Duck could see the pictures too.

Just outside the bedroom, a bird began to trill, its notes long and sharp like a needled thread, as if it were darning some torn corner of the world. Mother and son listened together.

When Mrs Puri came down the stairs, she found three women on the first landing, talking in whispers.

‘He plays with his Rubik’s Cube all day long. But does he have a solution?’ Mrs Kothari, the Secretary’s wife, asked. ‘He’s just a block of darkness.’

‘Won’t even do it for his son. Or his grandson,’ Mrs Ganguly said.

‘It’s that girl next door. She made him crazy,’ Mrs Nagpal, of the first floor, said.

They went silent as Mrs Puri passed. She knew they suspected her of sympathy with Masterji.

She took a left at the gate and walked past the slums. Soon she was at the site of the two new Confidence buildings. Under the blue tarpaulin covers, the work of laying slabs of granite and marble continued despite the rains. A drizzle began. She waited under an umbrella and hoped Ramu had not woken up.

A tall man came running up to her from one of the buildings. He got under her umbrella; she spoke to him and he listened.

‘Mrs Puri,’ Shanmugham smiled. ‘You are a person of initiative. Just last year, in a redevelopment project in Sion, we encountered a problem like this Masterji of yours. There are many things we can do, and we will try them one by one. But you must trust me and Mr Shah.’

23 JULY

The lift at Vishram Society moved like a coffin on wheels. When a button was pressed, a loud click followed: ropes, levers, and chains went into action. Through the lattice of the metal shutter guarding the open elevator shaft, you could see a dark wooden rectangle — a counterweight — sliding down the wall, and a circular light on the top of the lift rising, as the large dark box scraped past to the floor above, carrying with it a sign: ‘ITS YOUR SOCIETY. KEEP IT CLEAN’.

Masterji saw the lift pass him before slamming its dark mass into the fourth floor. A latch clicked and the door opened, but he heard no one come out.

It was one of those phantom trips that the Otis sometimes took on its own — compensating for weeks of inertia with these spectral bursts of activity.

No children yet. He went back to his room, leaving the front door open.

It was seven o’clock on a Monday. Time for the first science top-up of the week. The ceiling lights were turned off in anticipation, and the lamp light projected on to the far wall.

Ten minutes later, Masterji ran down the stairs and found the boys playing cricket in the compound. Mohammad Kudwa was bowling; Anand Ganguly held a bat high. Sunil Rego was fielding at cover point.

‘Masterji, don’t stand there,’ Mohammad called out, ‘the ball might hit you.’

‘It’s time for class, Mohammad.’

The boy turned and grinned.

‘Boycott, Masterji.’

He released the ball towards Anand Ganguly, who leaned back and smacked it high and hard; it bounced off a grille at a fourth-floor window and returned to the ground.

‘Boycott?’ Masterji asked, stepping back to avoid the bouncing ball. ‘Is this a new excuse not to come to the top-up?’

He walked towards parliament, where he found Mrs Saldanha talking to Mrs Kudwa, who was tickling Mariam on her lap.

‘Your son is refusing to attend the top-up class, Mrs Kudwa. Are you aware of this?’

The two women at once got up from their chairs, went into the building, and stood by the noticeboard. There they continued to talk.

‘They are not speaking to us either,’ Mr Pinto said.

Masterji went up the stairs to 3C. Mrs Puri opened the door with her left hand, the fingers of her right bunched together and stained with the curd and rice she had been feeding Ramu. He was seated at the table in his apron; he gave his Masterji a big smile.

‘Sangeeta, what is going on?’

‘Ramu…’ She turned to her son and said (forcing a big smile on her face so he would not suspect the content of her words), ‘… tell your Masterji that the boycott is going on.’

‘Boycott?’ Masterji said. ‘What does that mean?’

‘Ramu…’ Mrs Puri smiled again. ‘… Masterji, being a famous teacher, must know all about Gandhi and Nehru and what they did to the British. So tell him not to ask us what a boycott is.’

‘Gandhi and Nehru and… Mrs Puri, this is madness.’

‘Madness?’ Mrs Puri chuckled. Ramu, at the table, joined in the fun.

‘And refusing an offer of 250 per cent the market value of his flat is not madness, Ramu? Some people should not speak of madness, Ramu.’

‘I haven’t said no. I’m still thinking about Mr Shah’s proposal.’

Mrs Puri looked at her neighbour.

‘Still thinking? You’ve always been happy to share your deep thoughts with us, haven’t you, Masterji? Have we ever asked you to be Secretary of this Society? What does that tell you about how we felt about your deep thinking?’

‘I haven’t said no. But I won’t be forced into—’

Mrs Puri shut the door in his face. Returning to his flat, Masterji sat by the teakwood table and tapped the arms of his chair, as if he did not really believe that the boys would not come.

24 JULY

Masterji opened the door. His rubbish bin had been overturned.

Pieces of rubbish — the banana peel, for example — had been flung far from his doorstep, as if someone had kicked them there.

He got down on one knee and began gathering in the errant garbage.

A young woman’s foot scraped the banana peel towards him.

‘Leave it alone, Ms Meenakshi, I’ll clean it.’

‘I’m only trying to help.’

His neighbour’s sleek black jeans exposed inches of skin above the ankles, and she wore no socks; bunched together within the silver crisscrossing of her sandals, her plump white toes, incarnadined with lacquer, looked like bonsai cleavage. Once she got rid of the braces and bought better glasses, Masterji decided, she would make a very good marriage.

He put pressure on the wrong leg as he stood up: a sharp angular pain cut into his left knee like an accent over a French ‘e’.

Accent aigu. He sketched it in the air: pleased that he could civilize his arthritis by connecting it to a beautiful language.

Ms Meenakshi leaned on her doorway, grinning and exposing her braces.

‘That woman must hate you even more than she hates me.’ She leaned her head towards Mrs Puri’s door. ‘She just looks through my rubbish.’

‘This is the early-morning cat, Ms Meenakshi,’ Masterji said, massaging his knee-cap. ‘Mrs Puri has not done this.’

His neighbour adjusted her hexagonal glasses before closing her door. ‘Then why is your rubbish bin the only one that has been overturned?’

At one o’clock that day, Ibrahim Kudwa, uninvited, came and joined the Pintos’ table for lunch.

Perhaps because Kudwa, the only Muslim in the building, was considered a fair-minded man by the others — or perhaps because, being the owner of a not-so-busy internet café, he could leave his business in the afternoon — he had been designated a ‘neutral’ in the dispute, and sent, in this capacity, by the rest of the Society. Halfway through lunch, when Nina, the maid-servant, was serving steaming appams, he said: ‘Masterji, I don’t approve of this thing. This boycott.’

‘Thank you, Ibrahim.’

‘But Masterji… understand why people are doing this. There is so much anguish in the building over your strange actions. You say you’ll sign, then you go to see your son, and say you won’t sign.’

‘I never said yes, Ibrahim.’ Masterji wagged his finger. ‘I said maybe.’

‘Let me teach you something today, Masterji: there is no maybe in this matter. We think you should go and meet Mr Shah in his house. Have a talk with him. He holds teachers in high regard.’

Ibrahim Kudwa washed his mouth and wiped his lips and beard on the Pintos’ hand-towel. He put the towel back on its rack and stared at it.

‘Masterji, when the builder’s offer was made, I suffered, because I did not know what to do with the money — I took an Antacid to sleep. Now that there is the possibility of the money I never had being taken away from me — I need two Antacids to sleep.’

He wiped his hands again and left, apparently abandoning whatever remained of his neutrality on the wet hand-towel.

‘Boycott — it’s just a word,’ Masterji told Mr Pinto. ‘Remember the time Sangeeta’s Aquaguard machine leaked water into Ajwani’s kitchen, and from there into Abichandani’s kitchen? Remember how they stopped talking to her until she paid for the repairs? She never agreed to it. After two weeks they were talking to her again.’

After an hour, he went down the stairs, kicked aside the stray dog, and sat on the ‘prime’ chair in front of Mrs Saldanha’s window. The small TV was on in her kitchen, a ghostly quadrilateral behind the green curtain; a slice of the newsreader’s face showed through the almond-shaped tear like a kernel of truth. As he watched, Mrs Saldanha came to the window and closed its wooden shutters.

Masterji surveyed the compound of his Society as if nothing had happened.

On his way up the stairs, he saw the sick dog lying once again on the landing. At least it looked at him the same way as it had before. He let it lie there.

He was looking so intently at the dog that he almost missed the handwritten sign that had been stuck with Scotch tape to the wall above it.

Some facts about ‘a certain person’ who has received respect from us for thirty years. But why? Now we find out the truth.

1. Because he was a retired teacher, he got respect from all of us. He offered to help children with exams, true. But what kind of help? He would talk about the parts of the sun, like the corona, and the dense core of hydrogen and helium, and so on, far beyond the strict requirements of the syllabus, which meant that when the exam papers appeared, the children found nothing of use in his tutorials. So to go to him for tuition, or private lessons, was the ‘kiss of death’.

2. For DEEPAVALI, CHRISTMAS, OR EID, he has never given one rupee in baksheesh to Ram Khare. He is always saying, I have no money, I am retired, but is this true? Do we not know otherwise?

3. Even though he liked to boast loudly ‘he had no TV’, every evening he would sit in front of Mrs Saldanha’s kitchen in the exact position where he would block everyone else’s view and then he would watch TV.

4. NEVER GIVES TIPS, for large waste material left outside the door, to the Khachada-wali.

SO WHY HAVE WE RESPECTED HIM BLINDLY?

He read it twice before he could understand it. Tear it down? He withdrew his hand. A man is not what his neighbours say he is. Laugh and let it go.

When he bent to his sink a few minutes later to wash his face, the water burned his eyes and nose.

But a man is what his neighbours say he is.

In old buildings truth is a communal thing, a consensus of opinion. Vishram Society had retained mementoes, over forty-eight years, of all those who had lived in it; each resident had left a physical record of himself here, like the kerosene handprint made by Rajeev Ajwani on the front wall on the day of his great tae kwon-do victory. If you knew how to read Vishram’s walls, you would find them covered with handprints. These prints were permanent, but they could move; a person’s record was alterable. Now Masterji felt the opinion of him that was engraved into the building — in its peeling paint and 48-year-old brickwork — shift. As it moved, so did something within his body.

He could not say, looking at his wet face and dripping moustache, how much of what was written in the poster was untrue.

He went down and read it again. Nothing about the Pintos in it: they were hoping to drive a wedge between them. He ripped it down.

But that evening another appeared glued to the lift door, different in handwriting, similar in its complaints (‘never taught English to students even though he knew Shakespeare and other big writers who were part of the examinations’) — and then there was one on Ram Khare’s guard-booth (‘Put your own poster up,’ he said, when Masterji protested). Though he tore each one down, he knew another would go up: the black handprints were multiplying.

31 JULY

In the old days, you had caste, and you had religion: they taught you how to eat, marry, live, and die. But in Bombay caste and religion had faded away, and what had replaced them, as far as he could tell, was the idea of being respectable and living among similar people. All his adult life Masterji had done so; but now, in the space of just a few days, he had shattered the husk of a respectable life and tasted its bitter kernel.

It was nearly 8 a.m. He was still in bed, listening to savages screaming below him.

Down in 2C, Rajeev and Raghav Ajwani practised tae kwon-do under their father’s supervision.

He imagined he could hear similar noises from all the rooms of his Society: all of them were jabbing fists and lancing kicks to gouge him out of Vishram.

Now he heard the Secretary’s footsteps from above. He was sure they were louder than they had been for the past twenty-five years.

He did not want to get up; did not want to walk down the stairs and read the new notices they had posted about him.

If, in the early days of the ‘boycott’, there was an apologetic smile on the Secretary’s lips when he evaded Masterji’s attempts to make small talk, now there were neither smiles nor apologies.

They treat me like they would treat an untouchable in the old days, he thought: even at the thought of his shadow falling on them, his neighbours cringed and withdrew.

Degree by degree, they were turning their faces from him, until, as he passed the parliament, he confronted a row of turned backs.

If, in defiance, he sat among them, they got up and left. The moment he went up the stairs, they would regather. Then the taunts began. Always directed at him, never at the Pintos.

‘… if only Purnima were alive, wouldn’t she be ashamed of him?’

‘… his own son. A man who does not care for his own son, what do you…’

So this is what they mean by the word: boycott. Even in his bed he felt it, their contempt, like the heat radiating from a brick wall on a summer night.

He went down to the bottom of the stairwell. Through the octagonal stars of the grille, he saw Ajwani, pacing about the compound, talking on his mobile phone — to a client, no doubt.

I could never do that, Masterji thought: negotiate. Use the ‘personal touch’. He had none of the small-bored implements of personality that other men did; no good at charm and fake smile, he never bartered or traded in the normal human way. Which is why he had only two real friends. And for the sake of those two friends he was rejecting a windfall. Not so long ago they had called him an English gentleman for doing this. These very people.

He struck the grille with his fist.

It was a ‘top-up’ day; he looked at the round water stains on the ceiling of his living room and saw asteroids and white dwarves. In the cursive mildew he read E = mc².

He straightened out the books in his cabinet (where had all the Agatha Christies vanished?), dusted the teakwood table, tried to limit his use of the Rubik’s Cube by hiding it on a shelf of his wife’s cupboard, and drew the blinds and lay in bed.

He closed his eyes.

He did not see her until too late. The old fish-seller had a leathery face, cunning with wrinkles, and she walked with a basket on her head. Closer and closer she came towards him, grinning all the time: and just as she passed him he saw that a large wet tail was poking out of her basket.

He awoke to find his face and arms smelling like fish. He swatted the pillows off his bed and got up.

I’ve slept during the day, he thought. Around him the living room trembled, like a cage from which light had just sprung out. It was thirty-five minutes past four.

To expunge the sin of afternoon indolence, his first lapse since childhood, he washed his face in cold water three times, slapped his cheeks, and decided to walk all the way to the train station and back.

Tinku Kothari, the Secretary’s son, dressed in a crumpled school uniform, stood outside his door. Masterji paused with the key in his hand.

‘They’re calling you.’

‘Who?’

The fat boy went down the stairs. Still holding the key in his palm, Masterji followed the boy through the gates of Vishram; every now and then, Tinku would turn around, like a dark finger that was summoning him. Masterji thought he smelled more and more strongly of fish’s tail. He followed the boy to Ibrahim Kudwa’s cyber-café.

Tinku ran in and shouted: ‘Uncle! He’s here!’

Arjun, the Christianized assistant, had climbed up to the glass lunette above the doorway of the café to fix a loose rivet with a screwdriver. From up there he looked down, monkey-like, on the fat boy who had run into the café. How all creatures, Masterji thought, watching Arjun, have their niche in this world. Just two weeks ago I was like him. I had somewhere to perch among the windows and grilles of Vishram.

A Mercedes was parked not far from the doorway of the internet café.

Kudwa came to the doorway. Ajwani stood by his side; he knew the two had just been talking about him. Now, Ajwani and Kudwa seemed to say with their eyes, they could — if he entered the café, if he accepted the logic of the boycott — give him back his place in the hierarchy of Vishram Society. Ajwani, a natural-born middle-man, could broker the deal: at a rate of so much rage forsaken, of so much pride swallowed, he would be readmitted into the common life of his Society.

‘Mr Shah has sent his car for you; he is waiting in his Malabar Hill home. You have nothing to fear. He admires teachers.’

Masterji could barely ask: ‘What is all this about?’

‘I’ve been asked to bring you to Mr Shah’s house. We will drop you back to Vishram, Masterji. The driver is right here.’

Tinku Kothari, standing on the threshold of the café, watched Masterji.

‘Is there a bathroom in there?’ he asked — he could still smell the dream-fish on his moustache and fingertips.

‘Arjun has a toilet in the back,’ Kudwa said. ‘It’s not very clean, but…’ Monkey-like Arjun, from the lunette, indicated with his screwdriver the way.

He was standing before the toilet bowl when the engine of the Mercedes came to life, and once that noise started, he simply could not urinate.

Everything in the moving car was sumptuous — the air-conditioned air, the soft cushions, the floral fragrance — and all of it added to Masterji’s discomfort.

He sat in the back, his arms between his knees.

Ajwani, seated by the driver, turned every few minutes, and smiled.

‘Is everything okay back there?’

‘Why would it not be?’

He was sure he reeked of fish, all the way from his moustache-tips to his fingertips, and this shamed and weakened him. He closed his eyes and settled back for the long ride into the city.

‘Why is there no traffic today?’ he heard Ajwani asking. ‘Is it a holiday?’

‘No, sir. We’re almost alone on the roads.’

‘I know that: but why?’

Some time passed, and then he heard Ajwani say: ‘There really is no traffic. I don’t understand.’

Masterji opened his eyes: as if by magic, they were already at the foot of Malabar Hill.

Resplendent in his circle of fire, his foot pressing down on the demon of ignorance, the bronze Nataraja stood on the table in the living room. The plaster-of-Paris model of the Shanghai sat at the god’s feet, in ambiguous relationship, of either deference or challenge, to his power.

In a corner of the room, far from the gaze of the bronze Nataraja statue, Shanmugham opened the glass panels of his employer’s drinks cabinet. Three rows of clean crystal glasses filled the wooden shelves above the cabinet.

All the pots and pans in the kitchen shook in a bout of metallic nervousness: Giri was hacking at something with a cleaver.

Shanmugham closed the cabinet door.

His phone rang. It was Ajwani: they had reached the building.

‘But Mr Shah has just left,’ Shanmugham said. ‘He’s gone to his boy’s school for a meeting. You’re not supposed to be here for an other hour.’

‘There was no traffic. I’ve never seen a thing like it. Should we go up and down Malabar Hill? Stop at Hanging Gardens?’

‘No. Come in, and wait here for Mr Shah. I’ll text him that you’re early.’

He waited for them in the doorway under the golden Ganesha medallion. When the old teacher stepped out of the lift, Shanmugham noticed that he had a slight limp. Arthritic in one leg. A weakness. He namasted the old man with great warmth and ushered him into the living room.

‘Can I get you something to drink, Masterji? We have Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola…’

Ajwani came in behind them.

‘Black Label for me,’ he said.

‘Only Mr Shah can open his drinks cabinet. You’ll have to wait.’ Shanmugham turned to his other guest. ‘Are you sure, nothing for you? Not even a Pepsi?’

Masterji sat hunched over on the beige sofa, looking at the floor.

‘I have to go to the toilet,’ he said, getting up.

‘The guest-room toilet is out of order. But if you have no objection’ — Shanmugham paused, and added with a significant smile, ‘you can use Mr Shah’s. That’s his bedroom there.’

Entering a dark room with a double-bed, Masterji located the toilet and closed the door behind him.

Here, at last, he could urinate.

If someone could see me now, he thought, wouldn’t they say, this is exactly what Masterji had planned from the start. To carry on a show so convincing even his son, his neighbours, would be taken in by it: and then allow himself to be driven here, in a chauffeured car, to the builder’s home, drink his water, piss in his piss-pot, and be “persuaded” by him, for a few extra lakhs?

He splashed water on his face. His eyebrows were damp and matted. He changed his pose to see his face from another angle.

Closing the toilet door behind him, he walked on tiptoe. The two of them were whispering on the sofa like old friends.

‘… I’m telling you, no traffic of any kind. What can I…’

‘And did you have to talk of drinks in the old man’s presence?’

‘He drinks. He’s quite modern. I know him, he’s my neighbour.’

‘Why is he taking so long, by the way?’

‘He pissed just before we headed out. He has that disease, which is called D-something. It weakens the lower organs.’

‘Diarrhoea?’

‘No, sir. Another D-word.’

‘Dementia?’

‘Not that.’ Ajwani tapped his forehead. ‘Listen, pour me something, won’t you? I am the man doing all the work here, remember that. And tell your boss’ — he dropped his voice — ‘one lakh is not enough as a sweetener. I want two. In cash.’

The two stopped talking. On a table in the corner of the room Masterji saw a sheaf of papers lying under a golden paperknife. What was the story about Mrs Rego’s Uncle Coelho and the builder who stole his property… didn’t it involve a knife?

‘May I recommend the view from the terrace, Masterji? It is the best view of the city you have ever seen, I guarantee it.’

‘Of course Masterji will appreciate the view,’ Ajwani giggled. ‘Such a sweetened view it is of Bombay.’

Masterji followed the men through glass doors on to a rectangular balustraded terrace, where the sea breeze blew into his hair. An agglomeration of skyscrapers, billboards, and glowing blocks spread before the old teacher’s wondering eyes. He had never seen Bombay like this.

A cloud of electric light enveloped the buildings like incense. Noise: a high keening pitch that was not traffic and not people talking but something else, something Masterji could not identify. A huge sign — ‘LG’ — stood behind the main bulk of towers; beyond it, he recognized the white glow from the Haji Ali shrine. To his left was dark ocean.

‘Breach Candy,’ Masterji reached for it with his finger. ‘This used to be the dividing line between Malabar Hill and Worli island. During high tide the water came in through there. The British called it the Great Breach of Bombay. I’ve seen it in old maps.’

‘Masterji knows everything. About the sun and moon, the history of Bombay, so much useful information.’

Ajwani turned and whispered to Shanmugham, who leaned down towards the short broker and listened.

His hands on the balustrade of the terrace, Masterji looked at the towers under construction in the dark. He thought of the shining knife on the desk. Each building seemed to be illuminated by its price in rupees per square foot, glowing like a halo around it. By its brightness he located the richest building in the vista.

‘Why have you come before us?’ the towers asked. Each glowing thing in the vista before him seemed like the secret of someone’s heart: one of them out there represented his own. An honest man? He had fooled his Society, the Pintos, even himself, but here on the open terrace he was stripped of all his lies. He had come here, frightened by the boycott, not oblivious to the possibilities of money, ready to betray the Pintos. Ready to betray the memories of his dead wife and dead daughter that were in the walls and paint and nails of Vishram Society.

‘Construction,’ Shanmugham said, coming close to Masterji. ‘Do you know how many cranes there are below us right now? The work continues all night. Dozens of buildings are coming up around us. And when all the work is finished… my God. This part of the city is going to be like New York. You must have been there, sir, to New York?’

He shook his head.

‘You can now,’ Ajwani smiled. ‘A holiday.’

‘No.’ Masterji leaned forward. ‘Oh, no, I won’t go. I won’t go anywhere. I won’t leave Vishram Society ever again.’

He saw Shanmugham turning to Ajwani, who rolled his eyes.

‘Masterji…’ the builder’s assistant came close. ‘Masterji. May I talk to you, man to man?’

Masterji smelled something bad from the man’s mouth, and thought of the green-covered cage at the zoo.

‘There’s a term we use in the business. A sweetener. Another thousand rupees per square foot? We don’t reward teachers enough in this country.’

He understood now. It was the smell of his own cowardice, blown back at him from this creature’s mouth.

‘And what was that redevelopment project you were telling me about, Ajwani… where the old couple refused to take the offer, and then one day… did they fall down the stairs? Or were they pushed, or… old people should take care. It’s a dangerous world. Terrorism. Mafia. Criminals in charge.’

‘Oh, yes. That old couple in Sion you were talking about, they were pushed. For sure.’

In the light of the towers Shanmugham’s thoughts seemed to crystallize into giant letters in front of Masterji: ‘This is how I will flatter the old man, and very subtly, bully him. I will show him the kingdoms of the earth and give him a hint of the instruments of torture.’ So they had shown him all the kingdoms of Bombay and told him: ‘Take your pick.’ And he knew now what he wanted.

Nothing.

Masterji could see black water crashing into the ocean wall that was meant to keep it out, rolling back and crashing again.

Once before, when Purnima had been threatened by her brothers, he had been weak. Not wanting trouble at his Society, he had again been weak.

‘And Masterji — the Pintos want you to agree. For their sake you must say yes.’

‘Don’t you speak about the Pintos.’

‘Your friend Mr Pinto is not the man you think he is, Masterji. Until two weeks ago he used to drink Royal Stag whisky. The other morning, a used Blenders Pride quarter-bottle carton turns up in his rubbish. He has started paying fifteen rupees more for a bottle of whisky. Why? Because he loves money more than he loves his wife’s blindness.’

So he is examining our rubbish, Masterji thought. But a man’s rubbish is not the truth about him, is it?

‘You don’t know a thing about Mr Pin… Mr Pint… Mr Pint…’

Masterji felt the floor slipping beneath his feet: ‘It’s starting again.’ He heard his blood sugar chuckling. His left knee swelled up in pain; his eyes dimmed.

‘Masterji,’ Ajwani reached for him. ‘Masterji, what’s the matter?’

‘Nothing,’ he shook off Ajwani’s hand. ‘Nothing.’

‘Just stay calm, Masterji. And breathe deeply. It will…’

Look down, a voice said. Look at me. Masterji turned to his left and saw the swirls in the ocean, the foam that was hitting the wall along the shore of Bombay. The foam thickened. The ocean rammed into the wall of Breach Candy like a bull. Look at me, Masterji. The bull came in again and rammed into the wall of the city and back he went to gather his strength. Look at me.

The oceans were full of glucose.

‘What are you saying, Masterji?’ Ajwani asked. He looked at Shanmugham with a grin.

Shanmugham remembered the sign on the mansion that he saw every morning on his drive up Malabar Hill. ‘This place is dilapidated, dangerous, and unfit for human beings to be around.’ The Municipality should hang the same sign on old men like this. He tried to touch Masterji, who took a step back and glared at him: ‘Did you bring me here to coerce me?’

Said in English, the force of that word, coerce, weakened both Ajwani and Shanmugham.

The aroma of batter-fried food blew on to the terrace. Giri was walking towards the men with a silver tray full of just-fried pakoras sitting on paper stained with fresh grease.

‘Hot, hot, hot, hot.’

‘Please offer the pakoras to Mr Murthy from Vishram Society,’ Shanmugham said. ‘He’s a teacher.’

‘Hot, hot, hot, hot…’ Giri brought the tray over to the distinguished visitor.

The old man’s left hand slapped at the tray; it slipped in and out of Giri’s hands, then crashed to the floor. Shanmugham and Ajwani moved their feet to dodge the rolling pakoras. Giri stared with an open mouth. When the three of them looked up, they realized they were alone on the terrace.

1 AUGUST

In the morning, at the dining table with the red-and-white cloth, the Pintos heard what had happened at Malabar Hill, while in the kitchen, Nina, their maid-servant, obscured by steam, took idlis out of the pressure cooker.

‘So you just left?’

‘They were threatening me,’ Masterji said. ‘Of course I left.’

‘Ten thousand appointments are missed in this city because of too much traffic, and you missed Mr Shah because of too little traffic. Fate, Masterji,’ Mr Pinto said, as the maid tipped three idlis on to his plate. ‘The very definition.’

‘You sound bitter, Mr Pinto.’ Masterji leaned back and waited for his idlis. Three for him too.

‘And what do we do now?’ Shelley asked. As usual, she received only two idlis.

‘We will wait till October 3. The deadline will expire and that Shah fellow will go away. He said so, don’t you remember?’

‘And until then the boycott will get worse.’

‘There’s something bigger than us involved here, Mr Pinto. Yesterday, when I was at the builder’s terrace I saw something in the ocean. Things are changing too fast in this city. Everyone knows this, but no one wants to take responsibility. To say: “Slow down. Stop. Let’s think about what’s happening.” Do you understand me?’

But that was not it, either. There was something more in the foaming white waters: a sense of power. Breaking an implicit rule — never to touch another man’s body while they were eating — he reached over and gripped his friend’s shoulder. Mr Pinto almost spat out his idli.

After dinner the maid poured tea into small porcelain cups.

‘This boycott,’ Mr Pinto said. ‘It is already so difficult to bear. Shelley cries every night in bed. How can they do it to us, after all these years of living together?’

‘We mustn’t think badly of our neighbours.’ Masterji sipped his tea. ‘Purnima would not like it. Remember what she used to tell us about man being like a goat tied to a pole? There is a radius of freedom, but the circumference of our actions is set. People should be judged lightly.’

Mr Pinto, who had never been sure how well Purnima’s image squared with Catholic teaching, grunted.

Masterji was cheerful. Breaking a rule not to impose on the Pintos’ generosity, he asked Nina for a second cup of tea.

The defecators have left the water’s edge at the slummy end of Versova beach; while, in an equal exchange, the posh end of the beach has rid itself of the joggers, callisthentic stretchers, and t’ai-chi practitioners. It is a quarter past ten. Down a concrete path comes a saddled white horse. This path cuts between boulders to lead to the beach; drawing the horse by its stirrups, a boy stops to whisper into its ear. No one here, Raja. In the evening they will come, children to be taken for a ride over the sand. For now we are alone, Raja.

The ambient murmur of the waves makes their privacy more exclusive; on a high rock the boy sits to bring his mouth level with Raja’s large ear.

The boy stops talking. There is someone else on the beach. A fat man is standing at the water’s edge, looking out at the blue-grey mess of towers on the distant Bandra shoreline. The boy strokes his horse’s ear, and watches the fat man.

Shah had been staring at the turrets of the hotel at Land’s End in Bandra. Somewhere beyond it, where the planes were landing, was Santa Cruz. Somewhere in there was Vishram Society Tower A. He saw the building in front of him, dirty, pink, rain-stained. Six floors. He held out his palm and closed his fingers.

Footsteps behind him. Shah turned.

Descending from the rocks behind him, the tall chastened figure of Shanmugham walked on to the beach with a small blue tin in his hands.

‘This is for you, sir,’ he said, handing it over to Shah.

Rosie, who had seen her Uncle alone down by the beach, had summoned Shanmugham and handed over the blue tin of gutka.

Shah scooped out some gutka, and chewed.

Shanmugham could see the thinking part of his employer, his jaw, struggling to make sense of things.

‘I still don’t understand. You and that broker — all you had to do was keep that teacher there till I got back.’

‘He became violent, sir. Ask Giri. He hit the tray and then he ran out.’

‘I don’t like blaming another man when it’s my fault,’ Shah said, chewing fast. ‘Going to see that headmaster — a total waste of time. What does the man do? Namastes me, says, what an honour to meet you, Developer sir, and then asks for advice on a one-bedroom he is buying in Seven Bungalows. Would the Four Bungalows area be a better investment? Will Andheri East show superior appreciation once the Metro comes up? I should have stayed home and finished off this Vishram Society teacher. My fault. My fault.’ He bit his lower lip.

‘Sorry, sir.’

‘Don’t say sorry, Shanmugham. It is a worthless word. Listen to me: every midget in Mumbai with a mobile phone and a scooter fancies himself a builder. But not one in a hundred is going to make it. Because in this world, there is a line: on one side are the men who cannot get things done, and on the other side are the men who can. And not one in a hundred will cross that line. Will you?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Shah spat on the beach.

‘We have been reasonable in every way with this old teacher. We asked him what he wanted from us, and promised to give it to him.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Now let him find out what it means to want nothing in Mumbai.’

Shanmugham held out his fist to his employer and opened it. ‘Yes, sir.’

On the way back, the builder stopped to stroke the horse. Ignoring him, the boy whispered into the large pink ear.

‘Fellow,’ Shah said. ‘Take this.’

‘What’s this for?’ The boy did not touch the banknote the stranger offered.

‘Because I feel like it.’

The boy shook his head.

‘Then take it for keeping your horse in good shape. I like looking at beautiful things.’

Now the boy took the hundred-rupee note.

‘Where are you from, son?’

‘Madhya Pradesh.’

‘How long in Mumbai?’

‘Two months. Three months.’

‘You shouldn’t spend all your time talking to the horse. You should look around you, at people. Rich people. Successful people. You should always be thinking, what does he have that I don’t have? That way you go up in life. You understand me?’

Stroking the side of the horse, Shah left.

The horse-keeper was still examining his windfall when Shanmugham swooped down on him.

‘Give that to me,’ he said. The boy shook his head and pressed his face into his horse’s neck.

‘The Sahib meant to give you a ten-rupee note. He gives money and then he changes his mind; he’ll send someone down to take you to the police.’

The boy considered this, found it believable, and surrendered the gift. Shanmugham exchanged it for a ten-rupee note; then he leapt up the rocks with the spring of a man who has just become ninety rupees richer.

What do you want?

In the continuous market that runs right through southern Mumbai, under banyan trees, on pavements, beneath the arcades of the Gothic buildings, in which food, pirated books, perfumes, wristwatches, meditation beads and software are sold, one question is repeated, to tourists and locals, in Hindi or in English: What do you want? As you walk down the blue-tarpaulin-covered souk of the Colaba Causeway, pass the pirateers at the feet of the magical beasts which form the pillars of the Zoroastrian temple in Fort, someone will demand, at every turn: What do you want? Anything can be obtained; whether it is Indian or foreign; object or human; if you have no money, perhaps you will have something else with which to trade.

Only a man must want something; for everyone who lives here knows that the islands will shake, and the mortar of the city will dissolve, and Bombay will turn again into seven small stones glistening in the Arabian Sea, if it ever forgets to ask the question: What do you want?

Lunch at the Pintos’ was served, as usual, at fifteen minutes past one o’clock. Nina went around the dining table, ladling out steaming prawn curry over plates of white rice. As Masterji settled into his chair, Mr Pinto asked: ‘Is anything wrong with your phone?’

Masterji, about to stab a prawn with his fork, looked up.

‘Why do you ask?’

‘No reason,’ Mr Pinto said, as he mixed curry into his rice.

Sometime before two o’clock, Masterji said goodbye to the Pintos. The moment he opened the door of his flat, the phone rang.

‘Yes?’

A few minutes later, it rang again.

‘Who is it?’

As soon as he put his phone down, he heard the phone ringing in the Pintos’ living room. Then his rang again, and the moment he picked it up it went dead and the Pintos’ was ringing again.

The door of the Pintos’ flat was open. They were sitting side by side on the sofa, and Nina, their maid, stood next to them, protectively.

‘It’s just the children,’ Masterji said, standing by the door with his arms folded. ‘It must be Tinku or Mohammad. At school there was a boy who stuck notes on the backs of teachers. Tall boy. Rashid. Kick Me. I Love Girls. I caught him, and he got two weeks’ suspension. The maximum penalty, short of expulsion.’

‘I wonder why God made old age at all,’ Mrs Pinto said. ‘Your eyes are cloudy, your body is weak. The world becomes a ball of fear.’

‘We’re the Vakola triumvirate, Mrs Pinto. Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus. No one can make us budge.’ Masterji refused a glass of cold water that Nina offered. ‘I’ll go down and speak to Kothari.’

‘Someone rings and hangs up the phone,’ he explained to the Secretary, who sat in his office, reading the real-estate pages of the Times of India. ‘I think it’s someone inside the building.’

The Secretary turned the page.

‘Why?’

‘Because the moment I enter my room, they start calling. And when I leave, they stop calling. So they know where I am.’

The Secretary folded his newspaper. He patted his comb-over into place and leaned back in his chair, exhaling a breath of curried potatoes and onions.

‘Masterji’ — he burped — ‘do you know, another person died in a building collapse on Tuesday?’

Kothari grinned; the lynx-whiskers spread around his slitted eyes.

‘I forget the name of the place now. Someone in that slum near the ocean… that wall near their slum collapsed when the rains… it was in the papers…’

‘Are you the one making the phone calls, Kothari?’ Masterji asked. ‘Are you the one threatening us?’

‘See?’ Kothari said, gesturing helplessly to a phantom audience in his office. ‘See? For 2,000 years we’ve played this game, this man and I, and now he asks if this is a threat. And then he hears phone calls. And soon he’ll see men with knives and hockey sticks coming after him.’

Back in the Pintos’ flat, they talked it over.

‘Maybe it is just in our minds,’ Mr Pinto said. ‘Maybe Kothari is right.’

‘When in doubt, make an experiment,’ Masterji said. ‘Let’s put the phone back on the hook.’

When no one had called for an hour, Masterji walked up to his room. As he turned the key in his door, the phone rang. The moment he picked it up, it went dead.

*

At midnight, he went down the stairs and knocked on the Pintos’ door. Mr Pinto opened it, went to the sofa, and held his wife’s hands.

‘I heard it,’ Masterji said.

The Pintos’ children in America did sometimes miscalculate the time difference and call late at night; but the phone had rung four times without being picked up. Now it began to ring again.

‘Don’t touch it,’ Mr Pinto warned. ‘They are speaking to us now.’

Masterji picked up the receiver.

‘Old man, is that you?’ It was a high-pitched, taunting voice.

‘Who is this calling?’

‘I have a lesson for you, old man: if you don’t leave the flat, there will be trouble for you.’

‘Who is this? Who told you to call? Are you Mr Shah’s man?’

‘There will be trouble for you and for your friends. So leave. Take the money and sign the paper.’

‘I won’t leave, so don’t call.’

‘If you don’t leave — we’ll play with your wife.’

‘What?’

‘We’ll take her down to the bushes behind the building and play with her.’

Masterji let out a laugh.

‘You’ll play with a handful of ashes?’

Silence.

‘It’s the other one who has a—’ A voice in the background.

The phone went dead. Within a minute it rang again.

‘Don’t pick it up, please,’ Shelley said.

He picked it up.

‘Old man: old man.’

This time it was another voice: lower, gruffer. Masterji was sure he had heard this voice somewhere.

‘Act your age, old man. Grow up. Take the money and leave before something bad happens.’

‘Who is this? I know your voice. You tell your Mr Shah…’

‘If anything bad happens, you alone are responsible. You alone.’

Masterji slammed down the phone. He walked up the stairs to Mrs Puri’s door and knocked; when there was no response, he banged. She opened the door, with bleary eyes, as if she had been sleeping.

‘What is this about, Masterji?’

‘The phone calls. They just called us again. They’re threatening us now.’

Mrs Puri swallowed a yawn.

‘Masterji, you have been talking and talking about these phone calls but no one else can hear them.’

‘Either someone in the building is calling, or someone in here is giving a signal to the callers. Their timing is too good. I’m sure I recognized one of the voices.’

She laughed.

‘Mine? Is that what you’re saying?’

‘No… I don’t think so.’

‘I am not making the phone calls. Shall I ask Ramu if he is making the calls?’

She began to close the door: but Masterji pushed it back towards her.

‘What about your sense of shame, Sangeeta? I am your neighbour. Your neighbour of thirty years.’

‘Our sense of shame? Masterji, you say our…? After the way you behaved at Mr Shah’s house? After the way you lied to your own son about accepting the offer?’

When she closed the door on him, Masterji struck it with his fist.

‘You borrowed money from my wife, and never repaid it. Do you think I didn’t know?’

He walked down into the compound. In the darkness, distances were obscured; masses dissolved; lit window called out to lit window; he saw rhymes in light. One lamp went out in a nearby Society; another came on in Tower B.

Were they doing it?

An autorickshaw drove past the gate, heading towards the slums.

Woken up in his room at the back of the Society, Ram Khare, when the situation was explained to him, pouted his lower lip.

‘Speak to the Secretary. Phones are not the guard’s responsibility.’

He turned on his bedside lamp. His khaki shirt hung on a nail from the wall; old black-and-white photographs in which a bare-chested yoga teacher demonstrated the four stages of the Dhanush-asana were taped above his bed.

‘What does that mean, Ram Khare? We’re being threatened. It’s night-time: you’re the guard.’

A half-bottle of Old Monk rum stood on the only other piece of furniture in the room, a wicker table. Exhaling boozy breath, Ram Khare crossed his arms and scratched his back with long fingernails.

‘I warned you, sir. I warned you.’

He turned in bed, and, showing his visitor his back, bumpy with mosquito-bites, went back to sleep.

‘Why don’t you call Gaurav,’ Mr Pinto asked, when Masterji was back in their flat, the door safely locked behind him.

‘Ask him to come over and spend the night with us. In the morning we’ll go to the police.’

Masterji thought about it, and said: ‘We don’t need anyone’s help. We’re the triumvirate.’

He yanked the Pintos’ telephone cord out of the wall and threw it on the floor.

‘All three of us will sleep right here. First thing in the morning we’ll go to the police.’

Mr Pinto made up the sofa for him; Shelley came from the bedroom with a spare pillow in her blind arms.

Masterji went up to his living room and returned with a smile and a large blue book.

‘What’s that for?’ Mr Pinto asked.

‘It’s my Illustrated History of Science.’ Masterji made a motion of hitting someone on the head with the book. ‘Just in case.’

The produce stalls were now covered with gunny sacks, and the vendors were sleeping beside them. Mani, the assistant, sat outside the glass door of the Renaissance Real-Estate Agency, yawning.

The office was dark, and the broker’s laminated desk was deserted. Yet Mani knew that business was still going on; his boss might need him.

All the children at Vishram Society knew that below the Daisy Duck clock on the wall of Uncle Ajwani’s real-estate office was the door that led into an inner room. None of them had been in there, and it was variously speculated that the broker used the room to sell black-market pharmaceuticals, pornographic magazines, or national secrets.

Shanmugham had just been led through the dark office into the inner room; the broker shut the door behind him.

The inner room had a cot with no cover, and two wicker baskets, one full of coconuts, and the other full of coconut shells. Sawdust, masking tape, nails, a hammer lay on the floor. Avoiding the nails, Shanmugham sat down on the bare cot.

‘What do you use this room for?’

Ajwani pointed to the treasure hoard in the wicker basket. The coconuts were large and green; a curved black knife lay on top of them. ‘I buy them wholesale. Six rupees each. Much better than your Coke or Pepsi. Fresh and tasty.’

‘A room just for coconuts?’ Shanmugham frowned.

The broker slapped the cot. ‘Not just coconuts.’ He winked. ‘Do you want one now, by the way? Full of vitamins. Best thing for the health.’

‘The news, Ajwani. What did you call me here for? Have the old men agreed?’

Ajwani stirred the coconuts with his foot.

‘No, things have become worse. Tinku Kothari, the Secretary’s son — hungry eyes — saw them at the school today. He spoke to the old librarian and got the facts. They were looking up the numbers of Masterji’s old students and calling them from the library phone.’

‘Is this a problem?’

‘No. People respect a man like Masterji. No one loves him. No one will help him.’

‘So why did you call me here, Ajwani?’

‘Because that wasn’t the only thing the librarian told Tinku. He said: they are going to see a lawyer. Tomorrow.’

‘Where?’

‘That I don’t know. They may bring something back with them. Business card, brochure. It will end up in their rubbish.’

‘Let’s call them right now. You call them. You’re so good at it.’

Ajwani chuckled. He picked up an imaginary phone receiver and lowered his voice an octave. ‘Old man, sign the paper. Or we’ll break your head. We’ll play with your wife. They were more frightened when I spoke to them.’ Ajwani beamed. ‘Admit it.’

Shanmugham picked up a coconut and tapped it with his finger. ‘You’re a natural at this, Ajwani. You should be working for us full-time. You and your wife.’

‘Wife? She just text-messages me when Masterji enters or leaves his room. I’m the one making the calls. It’s good that you’re giving me a sweetener, but I’d do it anyway. I like this work.’

The broker’s face broadened with pleasure. Even though they were alone in the room, he moved closer to the Tamilian, and lowered his voice.

‘Tell me what you’ve done. A few things you’ve done.’

With his fingers poised above the coconut, Shanmugham looked up.

‘What do you mean, done?’

Ajwani winked. ‘You know. For Mr Shah. Things like this. Phone calls, threats, action. Tell me a few stories.’

‘You don’t do these things yourself,’ Shanmugham said. ‘Usually get someone else. Some eager fellow from the slums. No shortage.’

‘Tell me. I won’t tell anyone. I promise.’

A corner of Shanmugham’s lip rose; his tongue cleaned his angular tooth. ‘We’re partners now. Why not?’ He rotated the coconut in his hands.

Three years ago. A tough redevelopment project in Chembur. One old man had refused to sell his flat. Mr Shah said: ‘Get him out of there, Shanmugham.’ He had hired two boys to smash chairs to pieces outside his window. No implements. The old man stared out of his window and watched them break wood with their bare hands and feet all day long. When he looked out, they grinned and showed him their teeth. He sold out after a couple of days.

‘That’s clever,’ Ajwani said. ‘Very clever. The police can’t do a thing to you.’

Shanmugham dropped the coconut on to the pile; then he gave the basket a kick. ‘Always use your brains, the boss says.’

The nuts trembled together.

‘There was once a Muslim man in a chawl, a Khan. This fellow fancied himself tough. Boss made him an offer to leave. Generous offer. “I have no pity for a greedy man,” Boss said. I paid a boy to sit on the steps of a building opposite and watch this Khan. That was all. Just watch him. This Khan who would not have left if threatened by a gang of goondas signed and left the building within a week.’

Ajwani rubbed his hands together.

‘You’re a genius at this, Mr Shanmugham.’

‘It can’t always be brains, though. Sometimes, you just have to…’

Picking up the curved black knife that lay on the coconuts, Shanmugham stuck it into a green nut. Ajwani shivered.

‘Tell me. Please. What have you done? Broken a leg?’ He dropped his voice. ‘Killed a man?’

Shanmugham looked at the black knife.

‘Just a year ago. A project in Sion. One old man kept saying no, no. We kept offering money, and it was always no, no. Boss was getting angry.’

‘So?’ Ajwani came as close as he could.

So, in a bolt of rage and calculation, six-foot-two-inch-tall Shanmugham ran up the stairs of the building, kicked open a door, grabbed something that was playing backgammon with its grandson, shoved its head out of a window, saying: Sign, mother-fucker.

‘You really did that?’ Ajwani stared at the black knife.

Shanmugham nodded. He took the knife out of the coconut. ‘The old man signed on the spot. I was scared, I tell you that. I thought I might go to jail. But… the truth is, even if they say no, deep down’ — he pointed the knife at Ajwani — ‘they want money. Once you make them sign, they’re grateful to you. Never go to the police. So all I’m doing is making them aware of their own inner intentions.’

He threw the knife back into the pile of coconuts.

Ajwani gazed in admiration at Shanmugham’s hands. ‘What else have you done for Mr Shah?’

‘Anything he wants. The call can come any time, day or night. You have to be ready.’

He told Ajwani of the time a famous politician had phoned the Confidence office, and quoted a figure, in cash, that would have to be transported that evening to his election headquarters. Shah and Shanmugham had driven to a warehouse in Parel where five-hundred-rupee notes were counted by machines, tied into bricks and loaded into an SUV — the cash, filling the vehicle’s front and back seats, was covered with a white bedsheet. Shanmugham, with no more than a hundred and seventy-five rupees for food and drink, drove the SUV across the state border, to the politician’s henchmen. Safely delivered. The politician won the election.

‘I could have been like you. An action man.’ Ajwani gouged out his lower lip and shook his head. ‘If I had met a man like Mr Shah in time. Instead, I’m…

‘But tell me.’ He tapped the Tamilian’s forearm. ‘There must be girls in your business. Pretty girls. Dance bar girls?’

‘I’m a married man,’ Shanmugham said. ‘My wife would cut my throat.’

Which made them both laugh.

The broker got up from the cot. ‘Let’s finish this phone call business now.’

‘Not from your phone—’ Shanmugham produced a small red mobile phone. ‘This one has a SIM card that they can’t trace.’

He threw it to the broker.

‘Old man,’ Ajwani said into the phone. ‘Old man, are you there? Pick up the phone, old man…’ He shook his head and gave the mobile back.

Shanmugham got up from the cot, smacking dust off his trousers.

‘That’s it for phone calls.’

‘What happens next?’ the broker asked, as they left the office through a back door. ‘Are you going to send boys to break wood outside the Society?’

Shanmugham tied the straps of his helmet. ‘Some things,’ he said, ‘you don’t tell even your first cousins.’

Kicking the Hero Honda to life, he drove off into the night.

2 AUGUST

The banging noise on the door woke Masterji. Seizing the Illustrated History of Science, he got up from the sofa, and checked the safety catch. He stood by the door with the book raised in both hands.

The Pintos waited at the threshold of their dark bedroom.

‘Not here,’ Mrs Pinto whispered. ‘Upstairs. They’re banging on your door.’

Mr Pinto reached for the light switch.

‘Wait,’ Masterji said.

Now they heard footsteps coming down the stairs.

‘Let’s call the police. Someone please call the…’

‘Yes,’ Masterji said from the door. ‘Call them.’

‘But Masterji pulled the phone cord out of the wall. You have to put it back in, Mr Pinto.’

The footsteps grew louder. Mr Pinto got down on his knees and slapped at the wall. ‘I can’t find the plug…’

‘Quickly, Mr Pinto, quickly.’

‘Keep quiet, Shelley.’

‘Don’t fight!’ — Masterji from the door. ‘And both of you keep quiet.’

The banging started on the Pintos’ door.

‘Stop that at once, or I’ll call the police!’ Masterji shouted.

There was a jangling of bangles from outside, and then:

‘Ramu, tell your Masterji who it is.’

‘Oh, God. Sangeeta.’ Masterji lowered the Illustrated History of Science. He turned on the light. ‘Why are you here at this hour?’

‘Ramu, tell your Masterji we are all walking to SiddhiVinayak temple. We’ll pray for his heart to soften. Now come, Ramu,’ she said, ‘and no noise: we don’t want to wake up the good people.’

The Puris were taking that boy on foot to SiddhiVinayak? How would Ramu walk such a distance?

He almost opened the door to plead with Mrs Puri not to do this to Ramu.

It was three in the morning. Another three and a half hours before it was light and they could go to the police station. With the Illustrated History of Science lying on his ribs, he closed his eyes and stretched out on the sofa.

Six and a half hours later, he was walking with Mr Pinto down the main road.

‘I know we’re late. Don’t blame me. If you still had your scooter we could have gone to the station in five minutes.’

Masterji said nothing. Walking was good on a day like this. With each step he took, the threat of violence receded. He had lived in Vakola for thirty years, his bones had become arthritic on these very pavements. Who could threaten him here?

‘It’s the fortunate men of Vishram!’

Bare-chested Trivedi, the Gold Coin priest, came towards them with embracing arms. He had just performed a little cleansing ritual at the police station, he explained. Someone had died in the station years ago, and they called him in once a year to purge the ghost.

‘Let me buy you a coffee or tea. A coconut?’

‘Tea,’ Mr Pinto said.

‘We have to go,’ Masterji whispered. ‘We’re late already.’

‘Just a few minutes,’ Mr Pinto said.

He followed the priest to a roadside tea shop, beside which a burly man in a banian stood pressing clothes with a coal-fired iron. A metal trough full of spent coals rested by the side of his ironing board.

With a glass of chai in his hand, Pinto motioned for Masterji to join him and Trivedi at the tea shop.

It had been a morning full of delays, Mr Pinto at every stage misplacing something — his glasses, umbrella. Now, watching the trembling tea glass in his old friend’s hand, Masterji understood.

‘I’ll go into the station and file the complaint. You can go home alone, Mr Pinto. It’s perfectly safe in daylight.’

The police station of Vakola stands right at the traffic signal leading in from the highway, giving the impression you are coming into a suburb where the law is securely in charge.

From the chastening aromas of coal and laundry outside the station, Masterji walked into an atmosphere of burning incense and marigold flowers.

It was his first visit to the station in nearly a decade; in the mid-1990s Purnima’s handbag had been snatched just outside the school on a Saturday afternoon — such an unusual event that it had led to neighbourhood talk of a ‘crime wave’; he and Purnima had come here, and spoken to sympathetic officers; a First Information Report (FIR) with the details of the crime had been filled out by a policeman over carbon paper, and that appeared to have been the bulk of the investigative work done. The bag was never recovered; nor did the crime wave materialize.

He saw a drunk, half asleep; a foreign tourist who had clearly not slept in a long time; two vendors from the market who had probably been behind on their payments to the station; and then the men with vague, varied, and never-ending business who populate any police station.

‘Masterji,’ a pot-bellied constable saluted him. ‘Did your wife lose her handbag again?’

He remembered that he had taught this constable’s son. (Ashok? Ashwin?)

He sat down and explained his situation. The constable heard his story and made sure that the senior inspector at the station, a man named Nagarkar, heard it too.

‘These calls are hard to trace,’ the inspector said, ‘but I will send a man over — that’s usually all it takes, to frighten these builders and their goondas. This isn’t a neighbourhood where a teacher can be threatened.’

‘Thank you, sir.’ Masterji put his hand on his heart. ‘An old teacher is grateful.’

The inspector smiled. ‘We’ll help you, we’ll help you. But, Masterji. Really.’

Masterji stared.

‘Really what, sir?’

‘You’re holding out to the very end, aren’t you?’

Now he understood: the policemen thought this was about money. They were not the police force of the Indian Penal Code, but of the iron law of Necessity: of the notion that every man has his price — a generous figure, to be sure, but one he must accept. Say — I have no figure — a cell door swings open, and you find yourself in with the drunks and thugs. Above the head man’s desk, he saw a glass-framed portrait of Lord SiddhiVinayak, blood-red and pot-bellied, like the living incarnation of Necessity.

The inspector grinned. ‘Your Society’s famous man is here, by the way.’

Masterji turned in his chair; at the entrance to the station stood Ajwani.

The entire station warmed at his appearance. Any person looking to rent in a good building had to furnish, by law, a Clearance Certificate from the local police station to his prospective Society. In a less-than-pucca neighbourhood like Vakola, people were always turning up at Ajwani’s office without authentic drivers’ licences, voter ID cards, or PAN cards; men with flashy mobile phones and silk shirts who could afford any rent demanded of them yet could not prove (as the Clearance Certificate required) that they were employed by a respectable company.

The broker came here to procure the necessary certificates for these men, in exchange for the necessary sums of money. With a smile and a hundred-rupee note, he invented legitimate occupations and respectable business offices for his clients; conjured wives for un married men, and husbands and children for single women. The real-estate broker was a master of fiction.

This is the real business of this station, Masterji thought. I should get out of here at once.

It was too late. Ajwani had spotted him; he saw the broker’s eye ripening with knowledge.

*

Mr Pinto’s white hair was loose in the wind, and he kept patting it back into place. He was still sitting on the bench at the roadside stall.

The burly man who had been pressing clothes near the tea stall had finished his work, which was piled on to his ironing board; kneeling down, he opened the jaws of his enormous pressing iron. The black coals that filled it began to fume; Masterji watched an exposed part of the machinery of heat and smoke that ran his world.

Mr Pinto got up.

‘How did it go, Masterji? I was going to come, but I thought you might not want…’

Masterji held back the words of reproach. Who could blame Mr Pinto for being frightened? He was just an old man who knew he was an old man.

‘I told you not to worry, Mr Pinto.’

A group of schoolgirls wearing white Muslim headscarves over their navy-blue uniforms stood by the side of the road, waving little Indian flags, tittering and gossiping. They appeared to be rehearsing for Independence Day; their teachers, dressed in green salwar kameez, tried to impose order on them.

THEY still believe in Independence Day, Masterji thought, looking at the excited little schoolchildren.

‘We live in a Republic, Mr Pinto.’ He placed his hand on his friend’s shoulder. ‘A man has his resources here. Now watch my hand.’

Mr Pinto watched his friend’s fingers as they emerged one by one from his fists:

Police.

Media.

Law and order.

Social workers.

Family.

Students and old boys.

Masterji was doing what he did best: teaching. What is there in the world of which a man can say: ‘This is on my side?’ All of these. Mr Pinto’s resources, as a citizen of the Republic of India, were more than adequate to any and all threats at hand. The sun and the moon were in their right orbits.

They would start with the law. The police had been friendly, true, but you could not just say to them: ‘Fight evil’; the law was a code, a kind of white magic. A lawyer would bring his magic lamp, and only then would the Genie of the Law do their bidding.

Over lunch, Mr Pinto said that he knew of a lawyer. A connection had used him in a property dispute.

‘Not a rupee is charged unless there is a settlement in the matter. This is guaranteed. His address is somewhere here.’

Nina served them a speciality from her native South Canara, jackfruit seeds boiled to succulence and served in a red curry with coriander. Masterji wanted to praise Nina, but repressed the impulse lest she ask for a pay rise from the Pintos.

Raised to good spirits by the jackfruit seeds, Masterji sat down at Mr Pinto’s writing table, and took out his Sheaffer pen, a gift from his daughter-in-law two years ago.

Mr Pinto prepared the envelopes; Masterji wrote three letters to English-language newspapers and two to Hindi newspapers.

Dear Editor,

It being said that we live in a Republic, the question arises whether a man in his own home can be threatened, and that too on the eve of Independence Day…

Nina made them ginger tea; Mr Pinto stuck stamps on the envelopes and sealed them, and Masterji, after drinking the tea, began another letter, this one to his most famous ex-pupil.

My dear Avinash Noronha,

Remembering well your fine character in your schooling days, I know you cannot have forgotten your alma mater, St Catherine’s High School in Vakola, nor your old teacher of physics, Yogesh A. Murthy. It is with such pride that I read your weekly columns in the Times of India, and your timely warnings against the spread of corruption and apathy. Little will it surprise you, hence, to know that this tide of decay has now reached your old neighbourhood and threatens your old…

‘Nina will post them on her way home,’ Mr Pinto said.

‘And this is just the start,’ Masterji added. They had not been able to find any of his ex-students at home when they had telephoned, but he planned to write letters of appeal to all those old boys who had signed the photograph of his farewell party.

Mr Pinto approved of this plan; he would go to the school library and get their mailing addresses from old Vittal. But he wanted Masterji to go and see the lawyer first.

‘What do we have to lose? It’s a free consultation. And his office is right here, near Bandra train station.’

Masterji agreed. ‘You stay with Shelley,’ he said. ‘I’ll go on my own.’

‘Don’t take the train to Bandra, take an auto,’ Mr Pinto said.

He put a hundred-rupee note into Masterji’s shirt pocket.

‘Okay,’ Masterji said, patting his pocket, ‘we’ll enter it in the No-Argument when I get back. Fifty rupees: what I owe you.’

‘No.’ Mr Pinto looked at the thing in his friend’s pocket. ‘We won’t enter that in the book. You owe me nothing.’

Masterji understood: this must be Mr Pinto’s way of apologizing.

As his rickshaw fought its way to Bandra through the Khar subway, Masterji thought: I wonder how Ramu is doing, poor boy.

For maximum chance of winning favour from the red elephant-god, the temple of SiddhiVinayak must be visited, the devout believe, on foot: the farther from the temple you live, the longer your journey, the greater the accumulation of virtue.

The Puris had so often talked about walking to SiddhiVinayak in the past eighteen years that some of their neighbours believed they had done so, and Mr Ganguly had even asked Mrs Puri for advice on how to make the trip.

These things catch up with you, for the gods are not blind.

Mrs Puri calculated the trip from Vakola to Prabhadevi would take them about four hours. Everything depended on Ramu. If things became really bad they would have to make him pee or shit on the road, like some street urchin. But he had to come along: that was the sacrifice she was going to make to Lord Ganesha. Not enough that she and her husband should ache from the walk. God would see that she was even prepared to make her son suffer: the thing she had fought for eighteen years to prevent.

They walked down the highway into the city. The sky brightened. Streaks of red ran through an orange dawn, as if the skin had been peeled from heaven. A man inside a tea stall struck a match; a blue flame ignited above his portable gas cylinder.

Every few minutes, Ramu whispered into his mother’s ear.

‘Be brave, my boy. The temple is just around the corner.’

If he stopped, she pinched him. If he stopped again, she let him rest a minute or two, and — ‘Oy, oy, oy!’ — they were off.

Two hours later, somewhere beyond Mahim, they sat down at a roadside tea stall. Mrs Puri poured tea into a saucer for the boy. Ramu, high on caffeine, lost in his delirium of fatigue and pain, began to rave until his mother patted his head and soothed him with her voice.

Two municipal workers began sweeping the pavement behind the Puris. Their faces filled with dust; they were too tired to sneeze.

Mrs Puri closed her eyes. She thought of the Lord Ganesha at the temple in SiddhiVinayak and prayed: We said we were going to temples but we went to see new homes. We were afraid of the Evil Eye but we forgot about you. And you punished us by placing a stone in everyone’s path. Now move the stone, which only you, God, with your elephant’s strength, can do.

‘Ramu, Ramu,’ she said, shaking her son awake. ‘It’s only an other hour from here. Get up.’

When the clock struck five, Shelley Pinto was in bed, her purblind eyes staring at the ceiling.

She heard her husband at the dinner table, scribbling away with paper and pencil, as he used to when he was an accountant.

‘Is something worrying you, Mr Pinto?’ she asked.

‘After I said goodbye to Masterji, I saw a fight in the market, Shelley. Mary’s father was drunk, and he had said something. One of the vendors hit him, Shelley. In the face. You could hear the sound of bone crushing into bone.’

‘Poor Mary.’

‘It’s a horrible thing to be hit, isn’t it, Shelley. A horrible thing.’ He spoke to himself in a low voice, until his wife said:

‘What are you whispering there, Mr Pinto?’

He said: ‘How many square feet is our place, Shelley? Have you ever calculated?’

‘Mr Pinto. Why do you ask?’

‘I have to calculate, Shelley. I was an accountant. It gets into the blood.’

‘I’ll be blind in another building, Mr Pinto. I have eyes all around Vishram Society.’

‘I know, Shelley. I know. I’m just calculating. Is that a sin? I just want to turn into US dollars. Just to see how much it would be.’

‘But Mr Shah is paying us in rupees. We can’t send it in dollars.’

When they had gone to America in 1989, Mr Pinto had acquired, on the black market, a small stash of US dollars from a man in Nariman Point. The government in those days did not allow Indians to convert rupees into dollars without its permission, so Mr Pinto had made her swear not to tell anyone. The dollars proved to be redundant, for the children took care of them in Michigan and Buffalo. On the return stopover in Dubai, they exchanged their original dollar stash, plus the gifts of American money Deepa and Tony had forced on them, for two 24-carat gold biscuits, one of which Mr Pinto smuggled into India in his coat pocket while a trembling Shelley Pinto carried the other in her purse past a customs officer.

That was her abiding memory of the word ‘dollar’. Something that turned into gold.

‘Oh, all that’s changed, Shelley. All that has changed.’

Mr Pinto sat by her bedside and explained. It was all there on the Reserve Bank of India’s website. He had been to Ibrahim Kudwa’s cyber-café a few days ago and had navigated the site with Ibrahim’s kind help.

‘If it is a gift, we can only send out 10,000 dollars per annum. But if it is investment, we can send 100,000 dollars. And soon they may increase the limit to 200,000 dollars each year. It’s perfectly legal.’

The darkness that enveloped Mrs Pinto grew larger. They, from India, would now have to send the children, in America, money?

‘Will Tony have to come back?’

‘He has a Green Card. Don’t be stupid, Shelley. Their children are citizens.’

‘But he has no money?’

‘Things are difficult over there. Deepa may lose her job. I didn’t want to frighten you.’

‘Everything is so expensive in the States. Don’t you remember how much the sandwiches cost? Why did they leave Bombay?’

‘Just tell me how many square feet this place is, woman. Let me worry about things.’

‘812 square feet,’ she said. ‘We had it measured once.’

Mr Pinto sat at the dinner table again and rubbed his pale hands together: ‘I feel young again, Shelley.’ She wondered if he was asking for a resumption in their relations, which had ceased some twenty-seven years ago, but no, of course not, all he meant was this: he was being an accountant again.

‘It would be so simple, Shelley. Two-thirds of the money we send in dollars to the children, and with the rest we buy a small flat right here in Vakola. Nina could come and cook there too.’

‘How can you talk like this, Mr Pinto?’ she said. ‘If Masterji says no, we must say no.’

‘I’m just cal-cu-la-ting, Shelley. He is my friend. Of thirty-two years. I will never betray him for US dollars.’

Mr Pinto walked around the living room, and said: ‘Let us go for our evening walk, Shelley. Exercise is good for the lower organs.’

‘Masterji warned us not to leave the building while he was gone.’

‘I am here to protect you. Don’t you trust your own husband? Masterji is not God. We are going down.’

With her husband behind her, Mrs Pinto descended the steps. Just before she reached the ground floor, something bumped into her side — she knew, from the smell of Johnson’s Baby Powder, who it was.

‘Rajeev!’ Mr Pinto called after Ajwani’s son. ‘This is not a zoo, run slowly.’

‘Don’t fight with anyone today, Mr Pinto,’ she said. ‘Let’s be quiet and stay out of trouble.’

Holding on to each other, they walked out of the darkened entranceway into the sunlight. Mrs Kudwa, seated on the prime chair in parliament, talking to Mrs Saldanha at her kitchen window, was silent as they passed.

The guard was in his booth, keeping a watch on the compound.

Mr Pinto coughed. Smoke billowed in from over the compound wall; gathering the stray leaves from the Society, Mary had set fire to them in the gutter outside. Suspended in a dark cloud, the hibiscus flowers had turned a more passionate red.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Fine, Shelley. Just a cough.’

Mr Pinto heard singing in the distance: children rehearsing patriotic songs for Independence Day:

‘Saarey jahan se accha

Yeh Hindustan hamara

Hum bulbule hain iski

Yeh gulistan hamara.’

‘Better than all the world

Is this India of ours;

We are its nightingales,

It is our garden.’

A few steps down, he turned to his wife and said: ‘Wait.’

They were in the ‘blood stretch’, and he held his breath. Leaning over the wall, he saw a pack of stray black dogs, down in the gutter, running after a small white-and-brown puppy. It squealed as if this were no game. The four dogs chased it down the length of the gutter. Then all of them vanished.

‘What is happening there, Mr Pinto?’

‘They’re going to kill that little thing, Shelley.’ He paused. ‘It looks like Sylvester.’

The Pintos had once had a dog, Sylvester, for the sake of their son Tony. When Sylvester died, the Society had allowed them to bury him in the backyard so they could be near him as they walked around Vishram.

The squealing noise broke out again from inside the gutter.

The old accountant put his hand on his wife’s back. ‘You walk on along the wall, Shelley; you know the way, don’t you? I have to see what they are doing to that puppy.’

‘But Masterji said not to leave the building till he came back with a lawyer.’

‘I’m going right outside, Shelley. We have to save that little fellow.’

Shelley waited by the wall, holding her breath against the stench from the beef-shop. The squealing from the gutter grew louder, and then died out. She heard footsteps from the other side of the wall. She recognized them as Mr Pinto’s. She heard him lower himself into the gutter.

‘Don’t walk in the gutter, Mr Pinto. Do you hear me?’

Now she heard a second set of footsteps. Younger, faster footsteps.

‘Mr Pinto,’ she called. ‘Who is that coming close to you?’

She waited.

‘Mr Pinto… where are you? And who is that who has come in to the gutter? Say something.’

She put her hand on the wall; from a bruise in the brick, she knew that the guard’s booth was to her left, about thirty-four small steps away.

She walked with her hand on the wall.

The guard’s booth was still twenty-nine steps away when Shelley Pinto heard her husband cry out.

Masterji, on his way to the lawyer’s office, stopped and sniffed. Balls of batter-coated starch were sizzling inside a snack store.

Quick dark arms emerged from a white banian to grate potatoes into a vat of boiling oil. Another pair of arms waited with a scoop; now and then the scoop dipped into the vat to come up with sizzling wafers. Big bins full of snacks surrounded the two men: fried potatoes (red and spicy, or yellow and unspiced), fried plantains (cut into round slices, or sliced longitudinally into strips, or coated in spices, or dusted in brown sugar), and batter-fried greens. Next door, in a rival establishment, a rival vat of raucous oil hissed with potatoes. Between them, the two shops produced the continuous competitive buzzing of boiling oil that is as much a dialect of the Bombay street as Hindi, Marathi, or Bhojpuri.

The competition of painted signs came next.

FERROUS NONFERROUS METALS. IQBAL ROZA PROPRIETOR. D’SOUZA BRAND WEDDING CARDS. BULK SALES

The old buildings began to ooze out fresh juice; ensconced in arched niches in the rotting façades, vendors sat before pyramids of oranges and lemons, operating electric mixers that rumbled apoplectically.

The sound of metallic snipping warned Masterji to slow down.

FAMOUS HAIR CUTTING PALACE

— this was the landmark mentioned in the advertisement. The next doorway must lead into the Loyola Trust Building.

The pigeons landing on the metal grilles of the windows made a constant cooing as he walked in; a sapling had cracked the cornice above the doorway. No reception area, no signboard in the lobby. A metal cage went up the airshaft, as if protecting the lift, which seemed, in any case, to be broken. Masterji knew at once the story of this building. The landlord could not — because of tenant protection laws — force his tenants out; they were probably paying the same rent they were in 1950, and he was retaliating by refusing to provide even the basics — light, safety, hygiene. You could almost hear him praying every night to God: make my tenants fall down the stairs, break their bones, burn in fire.

It grew darker as Masterji climbed the steps. A plaque of dense black wires criss-crossed the wall like a living encrustation growing over old plaster and brick. He could even smell the acridity of cockroach on the wall. He heard talking from above him:

‘There are three great dangers in this city.’

‘Three?’

‘Three: children, goats, and a third thing I forget.’

‘Children — a danger?’

‘The greatest. Responsible for half the traffic accidents in this city. Half.’

He climbed more steps to see a pale pot-bellied idol of Ganesha in a dim niche, like a soft white rat living on the staircase. There appeared to be no electricity up here, and uniformed men sat beneath a paraffin light. He walked unchallenged past the men, just as one cried: ‘I remember the third danger now. I remember it. Shall I tell you?’

Along a dim corridor, a bright metal sign on an open door announced:

PAREKH AND SONS ADVOCATE ‘LEGAL HAWK WITH SOUL & CONSCIENCE’

A small man in a grey uniform sat on a wooden stool between the metal sign and a glass door. A red pencil behind his ear.

‘You are here to see…’ he asked, taking out the pencil.

‘I am a man in need of legal help. A connection of mine told me about Mr Parekh.’

The man wrote in the air with the pencil. ‘What is the name of your connection?’

‘Actually, it was a connection of a connection. He had used Mr Parekh’s services.’

‘So you want to see…’

‘Mr Parekh.’

‘Which Parekh?’

‘Legal hawk with a conscience. How many of them are here?’

The peon held up four fingers.

With the red pencil behind his ear, he went into the office; Masterji sat on his chair, raising his feet as an old servant woman mopped the floor with a wet rag.

Having apparently figured out which Parekh he was after, the peon opened the glass door and beckoned with the red pencil.

Masterji stepped into fluorescent light and air-conditioning breeze.

With its low dark wooden ceiling, the office had the look of a ship’s cabin; a man wearing thick glasses sat beneath a giant framed photograph of Angkor Wat with the legend: ‘World’s Biggest Hindu Temple’.

The air smelled of disinfectant.

Mr Parekh (so Masterji assumed) was drinking tea. He stopped to blow his nose into a handkerchief and turned to use a spittoon before returning to his tea; he was like some non-stop hydrostatic system able to function only while accepting and discharging liquids. As with liquids, so with information; he was simultaneously talking on a mobile phone propped on his shoulder, and signing documents that an assistant held out for him, while somehow finding himself able to whisper to Masterji: ‘Tea? Any tea for you, sir? Sit. Sit.’

Putting down his mobile phone, he sipped the last of his tea, turned to one side to spit, and said: ‘State the problem in your own words.’

The lawyer had a bald, baby-pink scalp, but three immortal silver strands went from his forehead to the base of his neck. An ailment, possibly related to the pinkness of scalp, had eaten away his eyebrows, so that his eyes looked at Masterji with startling directness. A neck-chain with a gold medallion dangled over his white shirt. The size of the gold medallion, contrasting with the palsied state of eyebrows and scalp, suggested that though Mr Parekh had endured much in life, he had survived and prospered.

Sipping tea, he listened to Masterji’s story with fast-blinking eyes (Masterji wondered if the lack of eyebrows affected the beating of the eyelashes), and then turned to a younger man, who was quietly sitting in a corner chair.

‘I know of Vishram Society. It is a famous building in Vakola.’

The younger man said: ‘It used to be a jungle there. Now it’s an up-and-coming area.’

‘These builders — all criminals. Engaged in nothing but number two activities. Who is this Confidence Shah? Must be some slum rat.’

The younger man said: ‘I think I’ve heard of him. Did redevelopment work in Mira Road. Or maybe Chembur.’

Old Parekh ran his hand over his three long silver hairs.

‘A slum rat.’ He smiled at Masterji. ‘You’ve come to the right place, sir. You’re looking at a man who deals with a baker’s dozen of slum rats every single day. But first, we must know, what is your position in the eyes of the law. And the law has very specific eyes: Are you the sovereign of the place, or a representative of the said sovereign?’

‘I’ve lived there for over thirty years. Since I came to Vakola to teach at the school.’

‘A teacher?’ Mr Parekh’s jaw dropped. He blew into his hand-kerchief. ‘It is against Hindu Dharma to threaten a teacher. I have studied Western law and Indian Dharma alike, sir. I have even been to see the world’s biggest temple—’ He tapped the glass-faced photograph behind him. ‘Name of Angkor Wat. Let us see your share certificate in the Society,’ he said, with inquiring fingers. ‘At once, at once.’ Masterji felt as if he were being asked to undress at the doctor’s office. He had brought the document in a manila folder, and produced it now.

‘It is in your wife’s name.’

‘In her will I am named as the inheritor.’

‘It should have been transferred to your name. We can manage. As long as you have her will in your secure possession.’

He gave the document to the younger man, who almost ran from the office.

Masterji’s entire legal claim to 3A, Vishram Society, was now out of his hands; he followed its progress — via footfalls, and then creaking in the wooden planks of the ceiling — into the body of a machine; a photocopier, presumably; levers moved and cameras clicked. His certificate — his claim to a piece of Vishram Society — was being multiplied. His case felt strengthened already. The thumps and footfalls repeated in reverse — the young man re-entered the office with the original certificate and three photocopies. He pulled his chair up next to Parekh’s; almost cheek to cheek, the two men looked over the certificate together. Father and son, Masterji decided.

‘There is also another petitioner in the matter,’ he said. ‘Mr Pinto. My neighbour.’

The senior Parekh spoke first.

‘Excellent. That doubles the sovereignty in the matter. Now, as per Mofa Act—’

A whisper from the young man: ‘He may not know…’

‘Do you know of Mofa?’

Masterji smiled meekly.

‘Maharashtra Ownership of Flats Act 1963. Mofa.’

‘Mofa,’ Masterji agreed. ‘Mofa Act.’

‘As per Mofa Act, 1963…’ The old lawyer paused; breathed. ‘… and also the MCSA Act 1960, which is to say, Maharashtra Co-operative Societies Act 1960, you are the sole sovereign authority of said flat. Now the Society cannot force you to sell said flat, even by majority vote. This is confirmed by Bombay High Court decision 1988, in Bombay Cases Reporter 1988, Volume 1, page 443.’

‘443?’ said the other man. ‘Not 443, Mr Parekh. 444.’

(Mr Parekh? Not his son, then, Masterji thought.)

The old man closed his eyes.

‘444. Correction acknowledged. Bombay Cases Reporter 1988, Volume 1, page 444. Dinoo F. Bandookwala versus Dolly Q. C. Mehta. The Honourable Judge has frankly stated as per the authentic interpretation of the Mofa Act and the MCSA Act, neither BMC nor MHADA nor the Building Society is the sovereign and supreme trustee of the flat but the said owner. In this case, your good self, acting as the legal inheritor of your deceased spouse. So there is every reasonable confidence and expectation of victory. As per authentic interpretation of Mofa Act 1963 and MCSA Act 1960.’

Masterji nodded. ‘I cannot pay you. It is a case you must take in the public interest. The security of senior citizens in this city is at stake.’

‘I understand, I understand,’ Parekh said. He swiped his hand through the air, like an experienced slayer of slum rats.

‘You can settle your bill when there is a settlement,’ his younger partner explained with a smile.

‘My share certificate, please’ — Masterji gestured. The lawyer did nothing, so he reached over and almost pulled it out of his hands. Now he felt strong enough to say: ‘There will be no settlement in this matter.’

‘Eventually there will be a settlement,’ Parekh corrected him. ‘How long do you and your Mr Pinto plan on resisting this slum rat?’

‘For ever.’

For a moment everything in the office seemed to come to a stop: the fluids in Parekh’s head ceased to circulate, the rats in the wall and the termites in the old wooden ceiling stopped burrowing; even the particles of disinfectant spreading through the air stopped their dispersion.

Parekh smiled. ‘As you wish. We’ll fight him…’ He turned towards the spittoon: ‘… for ever.’

With a papaya wrapped in newspaper under his arm, Masterji returned to Vishram Society. Waiting for him at the gate were Ajwani, the Secretary, Mr Ganguly from the fifth floor, Ibrahim Kudwa, and the guard.

They did not make way for him. Ajwani’s hand was clamped down on the latch.

‘Gentleman,’ he said. ‘English gentleman.’

Thinking they had heard about his visit to the lawyer, Masterji said: ‘It is my right: it is my right as a citizen to see a lawyer.’

‘He doesn’t know yet,’ Ram Khare shouted. ‘Let him go in and see. Please. It is a difficult hour for the Society.’

Ajwani removed his hand from the latch. As Masterji walked in, the guard said: ‘I told you, Masterji, that this would happen. God has seen that I have done my duty.’

He saw people standing around the plastic chairs: the two Pintos were the only ones sitting down. Mr Pinto’s foot was bandaged, and it was propped up on a cushion. Mrs Puri was dabbing Mrs Pinto’s forehead with a wet end of her sari.

When she saw Masterji, she let out a sharp cry: ‘Here comes the madman!’

Ajwani and the Secretary, along with Ibrahim Kudwa, walked behind Masterji.

‘What happened to you, Mr Pinto?’

‘Look at him, asking!’ Mrs Puri said. ‘Does this thing and pretends not to know about it. Tell him, Mr Pinto. Tell.’

On her command, the old man spoke: ‘He said he was going to hurt… my wife — at her age — old enough to be his grandmother. He… said he was going to come with a knife next time… he… and then I got frightened and fell into the gutter.’

‘Who told you this?’ Masterji knelt to be at eye level with his oldest friend. ‘When did this happen?’

‘Just outside the gate… Shelley and I were walking… it must have been four o’clock, and then I heard this puppy whimpering, and I went outside, and got down into the gutter to save the puppy. Then this boy, he had a gold chain on his neck, eighteen-nineteen years old, and a hockey stick with him, he stood over me and said, are you the man from Vishram who wants nothing? And I said, who are you? And then… he put the stick on top of my head and he said, next time, it will be a knife…’ Mr Pinto swallowed. ‘… And then he said, “Do you understand now, what it means, to want nothing?” And then I turned and tried to run but I fell into the gutter and my foot…’

‘We had to take him to Doctor Gerard D’Souza’s clinic on the main road,’ Mrs Puri said. ‘Thank God, it’s just a sprain. Doctor D’Souza said at his age he could have broken his foot. Or something else.’

Mrs Pinto, unable to hear more, sank her face into Mrs Puri’s blouse.

Masterji stood up.

‘Don’t worry, Mr Pinto. I’ll go to the police at once. I’ll tell them to arrest Mr Shah. I taught the sons of some of the constables. You don’t worry.’

‘No,’ said Mr Pinto. ‘Don’t go again.’

‘No?’

The old accountant shook his head. ‘It’s all over, Masterji.’

‘What is all over?’

‘We can’t go on like this. Today my foot is hurt, tomorrow…’

Leaving the papaya on the ground, Masterji stood up.

‘You must be brave, Mr Pinto. This Shah cannot threaten us in daylight.’

Mrs Pinto pleaded with her face and fingers. ‘Please, Masterji, let’s forget about this. Let’s just sign Mr Shah’s document and leave this building. I began all this by saying I didn’t want to go. Now I tell you, it’s over. Let’s go. You come and have dinner with us this evening. We’ll eat together.’

‘I won’t eat with cowards.’

Masterji kicked the papaya; shedding its newspaper wrapping, it scudded along and smacked the wall of Mrs Saldanha’s kitchen.

‘I’m going to the police station, with or without you,’ he said. ‘This builder thinks he can frighten me? In my own home?’

Mrs Puri got up.

‘The police? You want to make things even worse?’ She put a finger on Masterji’s chest and pressed. ‘Why don’t we take you to the police?’

From another side, another finger poked him: Ajwani.

‘You have turned this Society into a house of violence. In forty-eight years nothing like this has happened in Vishram.’

Mrs Puri said: ‘A man who fights with his own son — and such a lovely son at that — what kind of a man is he?’

Ibrahim Kudwa stood behind her: ‘Sign Mr Shah’s agreement now, Masterji. Sign it now.’

‘I will not be made to change my mind like this,’ Masterji said. ‘So shut up, Ibrahim.’ Kudwa tried to respond, then sagged, and stepped back.

Moving him aside, Ajwani stepped forward. The Secretary came from the other direction. Shouts — people poked Masterji — someone pushed. ‘Sign it now!’

Ajwani turned and cursed. Mrs Saldanha’s waste water pipe was discharging right on to his foot. ‘Turn the tap off, Sal-dan-ha!’ he shouted.

‘Have!’ she shouted back, but the water still flowed, like a statement on the violence in parliament. The dirty water separated the crowd; from the stairwell, there came a barking — the old stray dog rushed out — the Secretary had to move, and Masterji ran up the stairs.

As he bolted the door behind him, he could hear Mrs Pinto’s voice: ‘No, please don’t go up. Please, be civilized!’

*

He barricaded the door with the teakwood table. When he went to the window, he saw them all gathered below, looking up at him. He stepped back at once.

So I’m the last man in the building now, he thought.

He sniffed the air, grateful for the tannic smell that lingered from the brewing of ginger tea.

Pouring out what was left in the porcelain pot, he drank bitter cold tea.

He called the number on the business card he had brought with him.

‘Just lock yourself in,’ Mr Parekh said. ‘Tomorrow, come see me again: if I am not here, my son will see you.’

‘Thank you. I am all alone here.’

‘You are not alone. Parekh is with you. All four Parekhs are with you. If they threaten you I will send a legal notice: they’ll know they’re dealing with an armed man. Remember Dolly Q. C. Mehta versus Bandookwala. The Mofa Act is with you.’

‘How can they threaten good people in daylight? When did things change so much in this city, Mr Parekh?’

‘They have not changed, Masterji. It is still a good city. Say to yourself, Mofa, Mofa, and close your eyes. You sleep with the law by your side.’

But Ram Khare’s black snake was in his room now. Right in his bed, moving up his thigh. The snake’s tongue of violence flickered before him. You’re next, Masterji. A young man with a gold necklace and thick, veined arms comes to him one evening and says: I just want to have a word with you, old man. Just a quick…

He had been too scared to protect Purnima from her brothers: he would not be scared this time.

‘Go away,’ he said.

Slithering down his legs, the black snake left.

As the lawyer’s card rose and fell on his chest, Masterji looked at the sagging, scaly skin that covered his hands. Mofa, he recited as instructed. Mofa, Mofa. He gave his fingers a shake, and old age flew away: he saw young strong hands now.

3 AUGUST

To,

All Whom It May Concern

Within my Society and outside it

From,

Yogesh A. Murthy

3A, Vishram Society

Vakola, Mumbai 55

This is to state that intimidation in a free country will not be tolerated. I have been to the police station and received every assurance from the Senior Inspector that this is not a neighbourhood where a teacher can be threatened. I am not alone. The famous legal team of Bandra, Parekh and Sons, with whom I am in constant touch, will initiate action against any person or persons threatening me via phone or mail. In addition, I have students in high places such as the Times of India office. Vishram Society Tower A is my home, and it

Will not be sold

Will not be leased or rented

Will not be redeveloped

Signed (And this is the real signature of the man)

Yogesh Murthy.

*

The inspector at the Vakola police station meant what he said about his neighbourhood being safe for senior citizens.

A fat constable named Karlekar came to Vishram Society within half an hour of Masterji’s phone call in the morning.

After taking a statement from Masterji (who, it turned out, had not actually seen a thing, as he had been away in Bandra consulting a famous lawyer) Karlekar sat down at the Pintos’ dining table, wiping his sweaty forehead and looking at Mr Pinto’s bandaged right foot.

Mr Pinto said: ‘No one threatened me. I slipped outside the compound and twisted my foot. Serves me right, walking so fast at my age, doesn’t it, Shelley?’

Mrs Pinto, being all but blind, had nothing to say on the matter.

The constable jotted things in his notepad. The Secretary came up to the Pintos’ flat to say that the so-called ‘disturbance’ was, essentially, an exaggeration.

‘We are an argumentative people, no doubt about it,’ the con stable agreed, with a smile. ‘The station receives imaginary complaints all the time. Burglars, fires, arson. Pakistani terrorists.’

‘A melodramatic people,’ the Secretary said. ‘It is all the films we watch. Thank you for not making a sensation of this matter.’

Constable Karlekar’s mouth had opened. ‘Look at that… oh, no… no…’ He pointed at a moth circling about the rotating ceiling fan in the Pintos’ living room; sucked in by the whirlpool of air, it drew closer and closer to the blades until two dark wings fluttered down to the floor. The constable picked up each wing.

‘I don’t like it when a moth is hurt in my neighbourhood,’ he said, handing over the severed wings to the Secretary. ‘Imagine what I feel like when an old man is threatened.’

The wings slipped through the Secretary’s fingers.

An hour later, the constable had dropped by Vishram Society again. He lit a cigarette by the gate and chatted to Ram Khare. The Secretary saw him getting down on his knees and peering at the dedicatory marble block outside Vishram, as if examining the 48-year-old certificate of good character issued to the building.

*

‘People will soon be talking all over Vakola. A policeman came to Vishram Society? The famous, respectable, honourable Vishram?’

‘Quiet, Shelley.’

Mr Pinto was at the window. A Burmese mahogany walking stick, a family heirloom, leaned on the wall next to him.

He and his wife were now in a new relationship to their Society. Neither of one camp nor of the other. Masterji no longer came to their table for food, nor did they go down to parliament, in which there was usually only one topic of discussion: the character of the resident of 3A.

This evening, the parliamentarians had begun by talking about Masterji and ended up fighting.

‘You got a secret deal. A small sweetener’ — Mrs Puri to Ajwani.

‘Don’t talk about things you don’t understand, Mrs Puri.’

‘A-ha!’ she shouted. ‘You confess. You did get one.’

‘Of course not.’

‘I’ve heard things,’ Mrs Puri said. ‘One thing I tell all of you here — even you, Mrs Saldanha in your kitchen: even you listen. No one is getting a secret deal unless my Ramu and I get one too.’

‘No secret deal has been given to anyone,’ the Secretary protested.

‘You must have been offered the very first one, Kothari.’

‘What an accusation. Didn’t you vote for me at the Annual General Meeting? I kept maintenance fees fixed at 1.55 rupees per square foot per unit, payable in two instalments. Don’t accuse me now of dishonesty.’

‘Why was the building never repaired all these years, Kothari? Is that how you kept the costs flat?’

‘I have often wondered the same thing.’

‘You’re every bit as bad as Masterji, Mrs Puri. And you too, Ajwani. No wonder Masterji turned evil, living among people like you.’

Using the Burmese walking stick, Mr Pinto limped to the bedroom, and lay down next to his wife.

‘Did Masterji have breakfast, Mr Pinto? He must be hungry.’

‘A man won’t die if he eats less for a few days, Shelley. When he gets hungry he’ll come back.’

‘I don’t think so. He is such a proud man.’

‘Whether I’ll let him back here is another thing, Shelley. Don’t you remember he called me a coward? He borrowed one hundred rupees from me to take an auto to Bandra West to see that lawyer. I’ve entered that in the No-Argument book. He’ll have to apologize, and pay my hundred rupees back, before he can eat at my dinner table again.’

‘Oh, Mr Pinto, really… not you, too. They abuse him so much in parliament these days.’

‘Quiet, Shelley. Listen,’ Mr Pinto whispered. ‘He’s walking to the window. He always does that when they start up about him, Shelley. Why? Have you thought about it?’

‘No. And I don’t want to.’

‘He wants to listen when they say bad things about him. That’s the only explanation.’

‘That can’t be right. Why would any man want to listen when such things are said about him? The other day Sangeeta said he used to beat Purnima. What a lie.’

Mr Pinto did not understand why the man did it, but each time parliament met down there to gossip about him, Masterji stood by the window, and sent down aerial roots to suck up slander and abuse. That must be his new diet, Mr Pinto thought. He is chewing their thorns for lunch and nails for supper. From mockery he is making his protein.

As he looked at the chandelier, it seemed to be mutating into something stranger and brighter.

6 AUGUST

In the wild, rain-wet grass outside the Speed-Tek Cyber Café, a white cat, rearing up, slashed at a russet butterfly just beyond its reach.

There was only one customer inside the café: hunched over terminal number six, emitting chuckles. Ibrahim Kudwa, sitting with little Mariam at the proprietor’s desk, wondered if it was time to make a surprise inspection of the chuckling customer’s terminal.

‘Ibby. Pay attention.’

Ajwani and Mrs Puri had been in the café for several minutes now.

Mrs Puri put her forearms on the table and pushed the piece of paper towards him.

‘All the others have agreed, except for you.’

To free Ibrahim’s arms, she asked for Mariam, who was wearing her usual striped green nightie.

‘My wife says I have a high ratio of nerves to flesh,’ Kudwa said, as he handed Mariam over to Mrs Puri. ‘I should never be asked to make decisions.’

‘A simple thing, this is,’ Ajwani said. ‘In extreme cases, a Housing Society may expel a member and purchase his share certificate in the Society. It’s perfectly legal.’

Ibrahim Kudwa’s arms were free: yet he would not touch the piece of paper lying before him.

‘How do you know? Are you a lawyer?’

Ajwani moved his neck from side to side and then he said: ‘Shanmugham told me.’

With Mariam in her hands, Mrs Puri glared at Ajwani. But it was too late.

‘And he’s an expert?’ Kudwa’s upper lip twitched. ‘I don’t like that man, I don’t like his face. I wish we had never been picked by that builder. We are not good enough to say no to his money, and not bad enough to say yes to what he wants us to do for it.’

‘Money is not the issue here, Ibby. It is the principle. We cannot let one man bully us.’

‘True, Sangeeta-ji, true,’ Kudwa said, looking at the ventilator of the cyber-café. ‘I teach both my sons that. Hold your head up high in life.’

Putting a finger to his lips, he got up from his chair, and tiptoed over to his customer at terminal six.

Pulling the customer from his seat, Kudwa dragged him to the door of the café, and shoved him out; the white cat meowed.

‘I don’t want your money, fine. Get out!’ he shouted. ‘This is not a dirty shop.’

‘Typical.’ He wiped his forehead and sat down. ‘Leave them alone for five minutes, and there’s no saying what they download. And if the police come here, who will they arrest for pornography? Not him.’

‘Listen, Ibrahim,’ the broker said. ‘I have always fought oppression. In 1965, when Prime Minister Shastri asked us to sacrifice a meal a day to defeat the Pakistanis — I did so. I was eight years old and gave up my food for my country.’

Kudwa said: ‘I was only seven years old. I gave up dinner when my father asked. All of us sacrificed that meal in 1965, Ramesh, not just you.’ He ran his fingers through his beard while shaking his head: ‘You want to throw an old man out of his home.’

Ajwani took Mariam from Mrs Puri; he gave the girl a good shake.

‘Ibrahim.’

‘Yes?’

‘You have seen how a cow turns its eyes to the side when it shits, and pretends not to know what it’s doing? Masterji knows exactly what he’s doing to us, and he’s enjoying it. Repressed, depressed, and dangerous: that’s your beloved Masterji in a nutshell.’

Mrs Puri slid the paper across the table, closer to Kudwa.

‘Ibby. Please listen to me. Masterji knows the builder can’t touch him now. The police are watching Vishram. This is the only way out.’

Kudwa put on his reading glasses. He picked up the paper and read:

… as per the Maharashtra Co-operative Societies Act, 1960, Section 35, Expulsion of Members, and also points 51 through 56 of the Model Bye-laws, a member may be expelled from his Society if he:

1. Has persistently failed in payment of his dues to the Society

2. Has wilfully deceived his Society by giving false information

3. Has used his flat for immoral purposes or misused it for illegal purposes habitually

4. Has been in habit of committing breaches of any of the provisions of the bye-laws of his Society, which in the opinion of the fellow members of his Society are serious breaches

Kudwa removed his glasses. ‘He hasn’t done any of these things.’

Mrs Puri, her mouth open, turned to Ajwani.

‘Hasn’t? Didn’t he say he would sign the form and change his mind? Isn’t that deceiving his Society? Hasn’t he invited the police into our gates? And the things that Mary has seen in his rubbish, tell him, Ajwani, tell him…’

The broker tickled little Mariam’s belly rather than describe those things.

Kudwa took his daughter back.

‘I want to please you by saying yes to this. This is my weakness. I wanted to please my friends in college, so I joined the rock-and-roll band. I send my boy to tae kwon-do because you wanted someone your boys could practise with. I want to please my neighbours who think of me as a fair-minded man, so I pretend to be one.’

Ibrahim Kudwa closed his eyes. He held Mariam close to him.

He wanted to tell her how different his early life had been from what hers would be.

His father had set up and closed hardware shops in city after city, in the north and south of India alike, before settling in Mumbai when his son was fourteen. The boy had never been anywhere long enough to make friends. From his mother he learned something better than having friends — how to sit in a darkened room and consume the hours. When she closed the door to her bedroom she slipped into another world; he did the same in his. Then the doorbell would ring, and they came out running into the real world together. Visitors, relatives, neighbours: he saw his mother bribe these people with smiles and sweet words, so they would let her return, for a few hours each day, into her private kingdom.

Only when he grew up did he understand what his upbringing had done to him. Instead of a man’s soul, he had developed a cockroach’s antennae inside him. What did this man think of the way he dressed? What did that man think of his politics? The way he pronounced English? Wherever he went, the opinions of the five or six people living near him became a picket fence around Ibrahim Kudwa. One day when he was fifteen or sixteen years old, playing cricket with his neighbours, he had chased the ball until it fell into a gutter. Black, fibrous, stinking, that swampy gutter was the worst thing he had ever seen in his life. But he knew his neighbours wanted him to get that ball; pressed down by their expectations, he had dipped his hands into the muck, up to the elbow, to find the ball. When it came out, his arm was green and black and smelled like rotten eggs. Ibrahim showed the dirty ball to the other boys, then turned around and tossed it back into the gutter; he never played cricket with them again.

Each time he detected the ingratiating impulse within him, he became rude, and from this he earned a reputation in his university years for being woman-like in his mood swings. When he married Mumtaz, he thought: I have found my centre, this girl will make me strong. But the shy dentist’s assistant had not been that kind of wife: she cried by herself when she was unhappy. She refused to steady his hand. Sometimes Ibrahim Kudwa wanted to abandon everything — even Mariam — and run away to Ladakh and live with those Tibetan monks he had seen on his recent holiday.

He looked at the document that Mrs Puri and Ajwani had brought for him, but he would not touch it.

‘Just three, four months ago you were calling him an English gentleman. Yes, you, Sangeeta-ji. And now…’

‘Ibrahim, do you know what the Kala Paani is?’ Ajwani asked. ‘That’s what they called the ocean in the old days. Black water. Hindus weren’t allowed to sail on the Kala Paani. That is what kept us backward. Fear. All of us are now at the Kala Paani. We have to cross it, or we’ll be stuck in Vishram Society for the rest of our lives.’

‘Theft,’ Kudwa whispered. ‘You’re asking me to approve of theft.’

‘It is not theft. I’m telling you, Ibrahim, because I know what it is to steal. I am not a good man like you are. I tell you: this is not theft.’

Kudwa slapped the table, startling Mariam, who began crying.

His visitors got up; Kudwa consoled his child. When they had reached the door, he thought he heard Ajwani whisper: ‘… so typical of his community.’

He could hear Mrs Puri whisper back: ‘… do you mean?’

He saw Ajwani at the door, playing with the white cat, and speaking to Mrs Puri, who was hidden behind the banyan tree.

‘Do they join the army? The police? Zero national spirit. Zero.’

Kudwa could barely breathe.

‘Why bring in religion, Ajwani?’ Mrs Puri asked from behind the tree. ‘He has been in Vishram for ten years… well, nine…’

The broker pressed the white cat with his shoe; it curled itself helplessly around his foot.

‘It is time to say it, Mrs Puri. If he were a Christian, a Parsi, a Sikh, even a Jain — he would have agreed to this.’

And then the two voices faded away.

Kudwa closed his eyes; he patted his daughter.

Did Ajwani think he could not see through his plan? Mrs Puri was in it, too. They had probably rehearsed that speech before coming into his café. Next they would be teasing him for his dandruff. But it would not work. Would not. With his left hand he brushed at his shoulders.

He tried to break into his neighbours’ minds. Did Ajwani not see that expulsion would boomerang on them? This new tactic would only harden Masterji.

But maybe Ajwani wanted things to go wrong.

Kudwa had heard the rumour that the broker had been promised a ‘sweetener’ by Mr Shah. Maybe the worse things became at Vishram, the higher Ajwani’s price would climb. The web was so complex now. Kudwa saw intentions buried in intentions within Vishram Society, and was so absorbed in his thoughts that he did not notice when the white cat came into the office, climbed up on his table, and almost scratched Mariam’s face.

17 AUGUST

A man in danger must follow a routine.

Masterji now went out only twice a day. Morning for milk, evening for bread. In public he kept close to the crowd; every ten steps or so he turned around and checked behind him.

He gave in to an afternoon nap. In the evenings, in the dark, he could summon the memory of Purnima if he stood in front of the almirah breathing in the camphor and her old sari. But the afternoons were bright and difficult; the world outside beckoned to him. A regular nap helped him pass the time.

This afternoon, however, he had had a nightmare. He had been dreaming of Purnima’s brothers.

Waking in the dim evening, he limped to the basin in the living room. He struck the tap with the heel of his palm.

He stared at the dry tap, and felt there was nothing strong inside him at that moment.

Closing his eyes he thought of a full moon he had seen many years ago, during a week-long holiday in Simla, up in the Himalayas, just a few months before his marriage. He had stayed in a cheap hotel; one night the moonlight was so powerful it had woken him up. When he went outside, the cold sky above the mountains was filled with a bigger and brighter moon than he had ever seen before. A voice had whispered, as if from the heavens: ‘Your future will be an important one.’

He drew a circle in the dry basin.

He walked to the threshold of the toilet and stopped: black ants were crawling over the tiled floor. Placing his hands on the doorframe, he leaned in. At the base of the toilet bowl, the black things had lined up like animals at a trough.

Could there be any question now? They had come for the sugar in his urine. He could hear Purnima’s voice pleading with him: ‘You have to get yourself checked. Tomorrow.’

He went to the kitchen, and counted off on her calendar. Forty-seven days to go. With his finger on the circled date, he said, aloud, so it would reach her clearly: ‘If I go for a check-up and they say I have diabetes, it will weaken me, Purnima. I won’t go until 3 October.’

He went back to the toilet to flush the ants away. But no water flowed from the tap here, either.

He flicked the light switch: the lamp above the toilet basin did not respond.

Opening his door, he found that the doorbell to 3B rang clearly; below him, he could hear Nina, the Pintos’ maid, running water from their taps.

The mystery was solved when he went down the stairs to the noticeboard.

NOTICE

Vishram Co-operative Hsg Society Ltd, ‘A’ Building Minutes of the general body meeting of ‘a’ building held on 16 august

Theme: Expulsion of a member from Society

As the quorum was sufficient, the meeting commenced as per schedule at approximately 7.30 p.m.

Mr Ramesh Ajwani (2C) took the chair and brought the members’ concerns to the fore.

ITEM NO. 1 OF THE AGENDA:

As noted in Section 35 Expulsion of Members, Maharashtra Co-operative Societies Act, 1960, and in conjunction with Byelaws 51 through 56 of the Model Bye-laws, it being noted that a society may, by resolution passed by a majority of not less than three-fourths of the members entitled to vote…

… or has used his flat for immoral purposes or misused it for illegal purposes habitually.

On these grounds, it was proposed by Mr Ajwani that Yogesh Murthy, of 3A (formerly known as ‘Masterji’) be expelled from the Society; as he has not paid his dues with regularity, and has engaged on questionable, and immoral, activities within his premises.

Ibrahim Kudwa (4C) seconded the proposal.

Despite repeated requests — and his door being knocked on, several times — Mr Murthy did not agree to defend himself in front of the Society.

It was unanimously agreed to approve of the resolution, expelling Mr Murthy from the Society, and asking him to vacate his premises within thirty days…

… the meeting concluded at about 8.30 p.m. with a vote of thanks to the chair.

The full list of members’ signatures is attached. Fourteen of the sixteen shareholders in the Society have signed the form.

Copy (1) To Members of ‘A’ Building, Vishram Co-op Hsg Society Ltd

Copy (2) To Mr Ashvin Kothari, the Secretary, Vishram Co-op Hsg Society Ltd

Copy (3) To the Registrar of Housing Societies, Mumbai

*

He lay in the dark; feeling the weight of two floors of people above and three below who had expelled him from his home of thirty-two years; who do not even consider him a human any longer — one that needs light and water.

He had called Parekh at once.

‘This is utterly number two,’ the lawyer said. ‘Point one. Expulsion from a Society is a grave matter — the taking away of a fundamental right to housing — and enforceable only on criminals and pornographers. The Registrar of Housing will not permit it in the case of a distinguished teacher. Point two.’ The lawyer cleared his throat. ‘Point two. Under Essential Commodities Act 1955, cutting off water or electricity without court order is a criminal offence. The Secretary of your building can be sent to jail. I will dictate a note, which you should give to the said Secretary.’

‘Let me find a pen, Mr Parekh.’

‘Give me this number two Secretary’s number,’ the lawyer said, ‘and I will call him myself. I deal with a baker’s dozen of corrupt Secretaries every day.’

At the start of summer, there had been talk of power cuts in Mumbai, and in anticipation, he had bought candles. One of them sat burning on the teakwood table. The wax dripped; the blackened wick was exposed. He thought of Purnima’s body blackening on her funeral pyre. He thought of Galileo’s framed picture over his mirror.

He held up his fist; in the weak light of the candle it cast a shadow on the wall. The earth, in infinite space. A point on it was the city of Mumbai. A point on that was Vishram Society. And that point was his.

His arm began to tremble, but he did not unclench his fist.

Suddenly the lights came back on. The water was running in the basin. He flushed the toilet clean of the black ants and washed his hands, saying, as he did so, the magic mantra, Mofa, Mofa.

Mr Parekh had done it again.