Last Man in Tower

2 SEPTEMBER

Shanmugham loved, more than any other part of the city he lived in, this drive over the Bandra bridge. At night, with the water in the Mahim creek glossy black, the glowing signs of the Lilavati Hospital ahead, the square lights of the slums puncturing the darkness below him, it was like gliding over a film set.

Now, in the late afternoon, he saw the hazy blue piers of the half-built Worli SeaLink, standing in the distant water like a bridge from this world to the next. Sweat dripped from his helmet into his eyes and burned them.

He dreamed of orange juice served on crushed ice with lots of sugar and a sprinkling of red masala powder on top. He hoped he would find a fresh-juice stand close to the lawyer’s office.

Parking his bike near the train station, he removed his helmet and gave his hair a good shake, scattering sweatdrops around him like a dog that has taken a bath.

Among the ramshackle buildings by the train station he searched for the lawyer’s office. The glint of an open razor in a barber’s shop caught his eye. Famous Hair Cutting Palace. This was the landmark near the office.

He waited on the other side of the road.

Next to him, a man stood in a wooden booth surrounded by tomatoes, cucumbers, and boiled potatoes in buckets of water. With stacks of white bread and a bowl of butter on his table, he sliced the vegetables fine. A series of cardboard signs in English hung by thread from the ceiling of the little booth:

DO NOT ASK FOR CREDIT

DO NOT DISCUSS OUR COMPETITORS RATE

DO NOT ASK FOR FREE PLASTIC BAG

DO NOT ASK FOR EXTRA TOMATO SAUCE

DO NOT STAY FOR LONG TIME AFTER EATING

Shanmugham looked with envy at all those interdictions. The sandwich-maker might be a poor man, but he could lay down his own law.

But me, I have to do what the boss says. He throws the stick, I have to catch.

He wondered if he should get a quick toast sandwich.

An old man with an umbrella and a slight limp in his left leg went past the Famous Hair Cutting Palace, and turned into the building next door. Shanmugham stopped thinking about food.

A milky lunette let grey light into the stairwell of the Loyola Trust Building; a pigeon was thrashing its wings on the other side.

Masterji stopped on his way up to his lawyer’s office to kick the pain out of his left leg. He looked at the restless silhouette of the bird. He thought: Where did the rains go?

Taking out his handkerchief, he patted his moustache, which was soaking wet, and put the damp cloth back in his pocket.

The anaemic Ganesha sat in its dim niche on the landing. The small votive oil lamp added burnt fuel to the smell of meat curry. The four khaki-clad security guards were once again playing cards beneath the idol of the Ganesha. Their chappals, shoes, and socks napped together in a heap by the wall.

Within the Milky Way of the city, you can sometimes recognize an autonomous solar system: like these men playing their card games in near silence on this dim landing, breaking only to eat lunch or replace the wick of the oil lamp. Rich they would never be, but they had this eternal card-and-companionship afternoon. Masterji wondered, as he walked around the guards’ hands and feet, which looked like another set of cards placed on the ground, if they maintained a No-Argument book here.

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

The courtesy in the lawyer’s office was much improved this time. The peon with the red pencil behind his ear smiled and said: ‘I’ll on the air-conditioner, sir, you’re sweating. The worst time of the year, isn’t it? The rains stop and it’s the middle of summer again.’ He took Masterji’s black umbrella, gave it a shake, and placed it in a green plastic bucket with umbrellas of other colours.

A glass of water arrived on a brown tray; the peon bowed before Masterji.

‘I’ve brought you the coldest glass of water in Mumbai city, sir. Cold-est.’

Is he expecting a tip for this? Other petty workers, going about the office with their files, smiled at Masterji. He remembered the feeling — which he had had once at the Vakola market — of being mistaken for a millionaire. Sipping the ice-cold water, he considered the mystery of his situation, when the peon said: ‘You can go in to see Mr Parekh, sir.’

Head down, Parekh was on his mobile phone, the three silver strands over his bald head shining in the light. The gold medallion was tucked into his shirt, and bulged between the second and third button.

Parekh looked up, and stared through his thick glasses at Masterji, who had decided to sit down.

‘You phoned me, Mr Parekh. You said there was good news and I should come to see you before noon.’

Nodding, as if he remembered now, the lawyer summoned his mucus and discharged it into the spittoon.

‘You are not my only client, Masterji. I am at any given moment fighting a baker’s dozen of slum rats.’

Masterji, appropriately chastened, nodded. A peon came in with tea for the lawyer. Some minutes passed like this, with Parekh reading a typewritten letter and squinting at his mobile phone each time a text message arrived with a loud chime. Feet thumped on the low ceiling. The cracks in the wooden planks expanded.

The door to the office opened, and an assistant — or was it his son? — approached the lawyer. Parekh took a document from him, squinted, and threw it back at him.

‘This is not the right good news. Not relevant to Masterji’s case.’

The assistant left; Masterji waited; feet moved across the ceiling.

‘One thing has to be confessed, Masterji,’ Parekh said. ‘I had doubts: that night when they cut off the power, for instance. Or when your copetitioner, that Mr Pinto, was threatened. But you have stayed true. You have proved yourself sovereign of your plot of earth.’

Masterji nodded. ‘Men of our generation, we have seen much trouble. Wars, emergencies, elections. We can survive.’

‘True,’ Parekh said. ‘Men of a certain generation, you and I are.’

The assistant reappeared in a few minutes with another document; and this time, the old teacher knew it was relevant to his case. Parekh looked at Masterji; his browless eyes sparkled.

‘The good news is a sizeable one.’

Masterji smiled. ‘What is the good news?’

Still flipping through the pages of the document, Parekh said: ‘A settlement. It will be a famous settlement. Shah versus Murthy.’

‘But who has given me this settlement?’

Mr Parekh turned to his assistant or son, as if in appreciation of this joke.

‘Oh, Masterji,’ he said. ‘The builder, of course. And in fact — between us, Masterji — we have fooled Mr Shah.’ He wiped his lips. ‘Because you had a weak case to begin with. We can say it openly now.’

‘A weak case?’

‘Of course.’

Masterji turned from Parekh to the other, and back to Parekh.

‘How can you make a settlement without speaking to me? I have the share certificate: I own my flat.’

Parekh smiled sadly. ‘No, sir. You don’t. Fundamentally speaking, sir, neither you nor any member of any registered co-operative housing society anywhere in this state is the proprietor, strictly speaking, of his or her flat. Your Society is the sovereign of your flat. You own a share certificate in that Society. If the Society decides to sell your flat, you have no right to dissent. Regarding which…’ He turned to clear his throat. The son or assistant recited: ‘Dhiraj T. Kantaria and others versus Municipal Corporation and Co., 2001 (3) Bom. C.R. 664; 2002 (5) Mh. L.J. 779; 2004 (6) LJSOFT 42.’

The lawyer wiped his lips and said: ‘Exactly.’

‘But Mofa…’ Masterji mumbled. ‘Mofa, Mofa?’

The lawyer ran his hand over his three silver strands. ‘The name of Mofa Act is not to be taken lightly.’ He shook his head. ‘For thirty years you have taught your students in accordance with Dharma. Now let us be two teachers to you, Masterji. Even some lawyers who have been twenty, thirty years in this honourable profession don’t understand what Mofa Act is, frankly speaking. Common man cannot understand subtleties of Mofa Act. Because you have to think of how Mofa behaves with MMRDA and BMC.’

‘MHADA,’ the other reminded him. ‘MHADA.’

‘Very true. In this city, MHADA is always there. Somewhere in background. Sometimes in foreground. We must not forget that the government is about to repeal ULCRA any day. Urban Land Ceiling Regulation Act? All this we have to think before we bring up the name of Mofa Act. Understand? Don’t worry. We understand on your behalf.’

Masterji saw before him not just two bullying lawyers, but the primal presence of authority. Is this how my students saw me all those years? Beneath that low ceiling, an old teacher sat crushed under understanding.

This lawyer with the hidden gold medallion, and this young man, son or assistant, were crooks changing coins in the temple of the law. That was why Parekh had asked for the phone number of the Secretary; all this time the two of them had been in contact.

Masterji looked at the photograph of Angkor Wat, and asked: ‘You spoke to Mr Shah? Behind my back?’

‘Mr Shah contacted me. His man came here — nice Tamilian fellow, what was his name? Shatpati? Shodaraja?’ The lawyer tapped a tooth. ‘No business card, but he gave his number. I can renegotiate. Squeeze an even better settlement for you.’

‘I don’t want a better settlement.’

‘We’ll get you the best settlement.’

‘I want no settlement. I will find another lawyer.’

‘Now, Masterji.’ Mr Parekh leaned in to him. ‘The others will ask for a retainer and waste your time and tell you the same. Frankly, sir: I don’t understand what it is you want.’

‘I keep telling you: nothing.’

At once the A/C seemed to stop working: Mr Parekh wiped the back of his neck with a handkerchief.

‘Sir: these real-estate men pick on us senior citizens. Politicians and police are in their pay, you must know that. They shot an elected member of the city corporation dead the other day. In broad daylight. Didn’t you see it in the papers? Old men must stick together in this new world.’

‘You are threatening me now?’ Masterji asked.

‘My own lawyer?’ Mr Parekh sneezed into a handkerchief, and then said,

‘I am threatening you, sir, with the facts of human nature.’

Instead of an Angkor Wat behind the lawyer’s head, Masterji now saw an image of the High Court of Bombay: a Gothic structure with a soaring roof, ancient and massive, sitting like a paperweight on the city, and symbolizing, for its residents, the authority of law. Now this High Court and its high roof shuddered and its solid Gothic arches became shredded paper fluttering down on Masterji’s shoulders. Mofa. MHADA. ULCRA. MSCA. ULFA. Mohamaulfacramrdama-ma-ma-abracadabra, soft, soft, it fell on him, the futile law of India.

Just then he heard Mr Parekh’s young colleague say, ‘You didn’t even charge him for your basic expenses, Father. All the photocopying we had to do. You have a conscience, that is why. All senior citizens are your family.’

So he is the son, Masterji thought. The possession of this fact — trivial, and irrelevant to his troubles — mysteriously filled him with strength. He put his hands on the arms of his chair and stood up.

‘Now wait here,’ the younger Parekh said, realizing that the bird was about to fly. ‘If you’re going to leave like this, what about our dues? What about all the photocopying we did for you?’

From behind him, Masterji heard the young man’s voice protesting: ‘Let’s stop him, Father — at once. Father, let’s run after him.’

The green bucket fell over as Masterji pulled his umbrella from it, and splattered his ankles with water.

Past the guards and their blind deity he walked, down the old stairs — past the pigeon, thrashing behind the blind lunette.

Purnima, he prayed, swoop down and lift me from the land of the living.

His wife answered him, as he ran out of the Loyola Trust Building, in an aroma of freshly fried potatoes.

He stopped at a fried-snacks shop.

In seconds a ball of batter-fried vada pav, bought for four rupees, was dissolving in Masterji’s gut. Oil, potato, cholesterol, trans-fats slowed the whirlpool in his stomach.

Wiping away the humiliating slick of grease on his lips, he found a grocery store where he could make calls from a yellow payphone wrapped in plastic. Gaurav would be at work now. The one place where that boy might be free of his wife’s influence. Umbrella under his arm, he called Vittal, in the school library, and asked for the phone number of Gaurav’s bank, the Canara Cooperative Society. With a second rupee, he called the bank and asked for Mr G. Murthy, junior branch manager.

‘It’s me. Your father. I’m calling from Bandra. Something very bad has just happened.’

There was silence.

‘What is it, Father? I’m at work.’

‘Can you speak now? It’s urgent, Gaurav. No, it’s a payphone. I’ll call back from this same number. Ten minutes.’

Telling the grocery store owner to keep the phone free for him, he ran over to the fried-snacks store, and bought another vada pav.

Munching on the batter-fried potatoes, he walked back to Parekh’s office: at the barber’s shop, he saw a familiar dark face reflected in one of the mirrors.

He turned and found a man in a crisp white shirt standing right outside the Loyola Trust Building.

He stared at Mr Shah’s left-hand man. The metal grilles of the building groaned as pigeons landed on them.

‘Mr Masterji…’ Shanmugham held out his hand. ‘Don’t do this to yourself. This is the last chance.’

Masterji shivered at the sight of that hand. Without a word he walked away from his ex-lawyer’s office.

‘Hire another lawyer,’ Gaurav said, when his father, calling him from the pay telephone, had explained everything. ‘There are thousands in the city.’

Masterji found his son’s voice changed, ready to listen.

‘No,’ he told Gaurav. ‘It won’t work. The law won’t work.’

He could hear the builder’s tongue vibrating within Parekh’s mucus. Just like the tuning fork he had used in class for an acoustics experiment. Corruption had become Physics; its precise frequency had been discovered by Mr Shah. If he engaged another lawyer, that thick tongue would fine tune him too.

‘My last hope is Noronha. At the Times. I’ve written letter after letter, and he won’t write back. If there’s some way to reach him, son…’

More silence. Then Gaurav said: ‘I have a connection at the Times. I’ll see if we can reach Noronha. In the meantime you go home and lock the door, Father. When my connection gets back to me, I’ll phone you.’

‘Gaurav,’ he said, his voice thickening with gratitude. ‘I’ll do that, Gaurav. I’ll go home and wait for your call.’

A cow had been tied up by the side of the fried-snacks store, a healthy animal with a black comet mark on its forehead. It had just been milked, and a bare-chested man in a dhoti was taking away a mildewed bucket inside which fresh milk looked like radioactive liquid. Squatting by the cow a woman in a saffron sari was squeezing gruel into balls. Next to her two children were being bathed by another woman. Half a village crammed into a crack in the pavement. The cow chewed on grass and jackfruit rinds. Round-bellied and big-eyed, aglow with health: it sucked in diesel and exhaust fumes, particulate matter and sulphur dioxide, and churned them in its four stomachs, creaming good milk out of bad air and bacterial water. Drawn by the magnetism of so much ruddy health, the old man put his finger to its shit-caked belly. The living organs of the animal vibrated into him, saying: all this power in me is power in you too.

I have done good to others. I was a teacher for thirty-four years.

The cow lifted her tail. Shit piled on the road. When they saw Masterji talking to the cow and telling her his woes, those who had been born in the city perhaps thought that he was a mad old man, but those who had come from the villages knew better: recognizing the piety in his act, the woman in the saffron sari got up. The two children followed her. Soon the cow’s forehead was covered with human palms.

Giri laid out dinner on the table. White rice, spinach curry, curried beans, and pappad, around a hilsa fish, grilled and chopped, mixed with salt and pepper, and served in a porcelain bowl. The fish’s head sat on top, its lips open, as if pleading for breath among its own body parts.

The hilsa made Shah’s mouth water. He walked around the dinner table in his Malabar Hill home with a piece of silk in his hand — a handkerchief that Rosie had bought him, one of those tiny portions of his own money that she returned to him, perfumed and gift-wrapped in damask. He rubbed it between his fingers.

He had been walking about the flat ever since Shanmugham had come back from the lawyer’s office, sweating with bad news.

Fresh breeze: he went up to the window. Down below, in the gutter outside his building, a man in rags scavenged for empty bottles.

Even down there, Shah saw wanting. That beggar with the gunny sack, if the story so far were told to him, would be appalled by this old teacher. A man who does not want: who has no secret spaces in his heart into which a little more cash can be stuffed, what kind of man is that?

‘I have seen every kind of negotiation tactic, Giri. I can classify them. Saying you’re ill. Blind. You miss your beloved dead dog Timmy or Tommy that lived in that flat. But I have never seen this tactic of simply saying “No”, permanently.’

‘Yes, Boss.’ Giri said. ‘Will you eat now?’

‘We are dealing with the most dangerous thing on earth, Giri. A weak man. A weak man who has found a place where he feels strong. He won’t leave Vishram. I understand now.’

Giri touched his master.

‘Sit. Or the hilsa will get cold, and what did Giri go to all this trouble for?’

Shah looked at the fish: and he had a vision of the old teacher, sliced and chopped the same way, salted and peppered, sitting on the dinner table. He shivered, and rubbed the silk again.

All Shanmugham had done so far was to send a boy with a hockey stick to speak to that old man — Mr Pinto. Nothing criminal in that. He had just been sending Vishram Society a gift from reality. He had assumed that would be enough, for a building full of older people. Social animals.

Now Shanmugham was waiting in the basement for instructions. He could see him standing by a car’s rear-view mirror or in the lift, practising his threats: ‘Old man, we have given you every chance, and now we are left with no…’

The silk grew warm in Shah’s fingers.

A dirty business, construction, and he had come up through its dirtiest part. Redevelopment. If you enjoy fish, you have to swallow a few bones. He made no apology for what he had had to do to get here. But this was not how the Shanghai was meant to happen: not after he had offered 19,000 rupees a square foot for an old, old building.

The hot silk handkerchief fell to the floor.

Hanging above the writing desk in his study was Rosie’s gift, the framed three-part black-and-white poster of the Eiffel Tower being raised into place. Placing all his fingers on the polished mahogany table Shah saw, as if through a periscope, the rabbit-warren of cash networks that ran beneath it: he spied into the deepest, most secret paths through which the Confidence Group moved its money and followed the flipping serial numbers of accounts in the Channel Islands and in the Maldives. He was master of things seen and things unseen. Buildings rising above the earth and concourses of money running below it.

And why had he built these things above and below the earth?

Now everyone believed India was going to be a rich country. He had known it ten years ago. Had planned for the future. Skip out of slum redevelopment. Start building glossy skyscrapers, shopping malls, maybe one day an entire suburb, like the Hiranandanis in Powai. Leave something behind, a new name, the Confidence Group, founder Dharmen Vrijesh Shah, a first-wife’s son from Krishnapur.

And some stupid old teacher was going to get in the way? One of the neighbours had told Shanmugham that Masterji’s son had contacted her. He had told her that his father planned on going to the Times of India the next day. To say that the Confidence Group was threatening him.

The builder slapped both palms against his skull. Of all the good housing societies in Vakola, of all the societies dying to receive such an offer, why had he picked this one?

Fate, chance, destiny, luck, horoscopes. A man had his will power, but there were dark powers operating all around him. So he sought protection in astrology. His mother had died when he was a boy. Wasn’t he marked out for bad luck from the start? The first wife’s son. Krishnapur, he smelled its cow shit in his nostrils. He had rebelled against it, but it was still there, the village mud, village fatalism.

He could not leave Vishram now. He would lose face in Vakola. J. J. Chacko would take out advertisements up and down the highway mocking him.

And that meant there was only one thing to do with this old man. Only one thing could make the Shanghai happen.

Shah thought of the chopped hilsa.

In the old days, if a builder had a problem, that problem would end up in pieces in the wet concrete: it became part of the building it had tried to obstruct. A bit of calcium was good for the foundations. But those days were gone: the lawless days of the 1980s and ’90s. Vishram was a middle-class building. The man was a teacher. If he died suddenly, there would be an immediate suspect. The police would come to Malabar Hill and press his doorbell the next morning.

On the other hand, the palms of the policemen had been well greased. He might get away with it if the job were done well: scientifically, no fingerprints left behind. His reputation in Vakola would certainly improve: deep down, everyone admires violence. It was a risk, a big risk, but he might get away with it. He bent down and picked up the silk cloth.

As it became warm again between his fingers, he heard snoring.

The door to his son’s room was ajar. Satish’s thick legs were curled together on the bed. Shah closed the door behind him and sat down by his son’s side.

Seeing his son like this, a breathing thing amidst warm dishevelled sheets, Shah thought of the woman with whom he had made this new life.

Rukmini. He had never seen her before the wedding day; she had been sent by bus from Krishnapur after he refused to return for the marriage. They had been wed right here in the city. He admired her courage: she had adapted to the big city in a matter of hours. The evening of the wedding, she was fighting with the grocery store man over the price of white sugar. After all these years, Shah smiled at the memory. For thirteen years she had kept his house, raised his son, and supervised his kitchen while he shouted at his colleagues and left-hand men in the living room or on the phone. She seemed to have no more of an opinion about construction than he did about cooking. Then one evening — he could not remember what she had overheard — she came to the bedroom, turned off his Kishore Kumar music, and said: ‘If you keep threatening other people and their children, one day something might happen to your own child.’ Then she turned the music on and left the room. The only time she had ever commented on his work.

Shah touched the dark body on the dishevelled bed. He felt the boy’s future like a fever. Drugs, alcohol. Jail time. A spiral of trouble. All because of his karma.

He felt he had tripped over something ancestral and half buried, like a pot of gold in the backyard: a sense of shame.

‘Master’ — it was Giri, silhouetted in the blinding light through the open door. ‘The hilsa.’

‘Throw it out. And close the door, Giri, Satish is sleeping.’

‘Master. Shanmugham… has come upstairs. He asks if you have anything to say to him.’

His wife’s almirah was open, the fragrance of her wedding sari and the old balls of camphor filled the bedroom air.

Masterji sat like a yogi on the floor.

Mrs Puri was shouting at her husband next door; the Secretary was pounding his heavy feet above his head. Then he heard feet from all around the building heading for the door below him. They were speaking to the Pintos. He heard voices rising, and then Mr Pinto saying, ‘All right. All right. But leave us alone then.’

A few minutes later, the doorbell rang.

When he opened the door, a small thin woman stood outside with a red notebook. A blue rubber band had been tied twice around it.

‘Mr Pinto gave this to his maid to give you, Masterji.’

‘So why are you giving it to me, Mary?’

Mary looked at her feet. ‘Because she didn’t want to give it to you herself.’

Masterji took the red book and removed the rubber band. The No-Argument book had been returned to him, with a yellow Post-it note on its cover, All debts settled and accounts closed.

‘Don’t be angry with Mr Pinto,’ Mary whispered. ‘They forced him to do it. Mrs Puri and the others.’

Masterji nodded. ‘I don’t blame him. He is frightened.’

He did not know whether to look at Mary. In all these years, he had not exchanged, except on matters directly related to her work, even a dozen words with the cleaning woman of his Society.

She smiled. ‘But you don’t worry, Masterji. God will protect us. They’re trying to throw me out of my home too. I live by the nullah.’

Masterji looked at Mary’s hands, which were covered in welts. He remembered a boy in school whose mother was a scavenger. Her hands were scored with rat-bites and long scratches.

How could they throw a poor woman like this out of her hut? How many were being forced out of their homes — what was being done to this city in the name of progress?

Closing the door behind Mary, he leaned forward and pressed his forehead against the cool wood: ‘Must not get angry. Purnima would not want it.’

The phone began ringing. Though he was waiting for Gaurav’s call, he approached the phone as he had recently learned to, with trepidation.

He picked up the receiver and brought it to his ear. He breathed out in relief.

Gaurav.

‘Good news, Father. I got through to Noronha. My connection put me through. I explained the situation: the threats, the phone calls, the attack on Mr Pinto—’

Masterji was so excited he passed the receiver from one ear to the other.

‘And today’s deceit by the lawyer? You didn’t leave that out?’

‘—that too, Father. Noronha is going to meet us.’

‘Wonderful, wonderful.’

‘Father, Noronha is just going to hear us. He can’t promise anything.’

‘I understand,’ Masterji said. ‘I understand fully. I just want a chance to hit back at this Mr Shah. Right now the score is one hundred to zero in his favour. I just want one good hit at his fat stomach. That’s all I ask from Noronha.’

‘He’ll meet us tomorrow in the Times of India office at five o’clock. Can you meet him in the lobby? Yes, I’ll come from work straight to VT.’

‘Thank you, son. In the end there is family, or what else is there? I knew I could count on you. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

Masterji lay in bed and thrashed his feet like a boy.

At Mr Shah’s Malabar Hill home, Giri had wiped the kitchen clean, turned off the gas, opened the day’s mail, and sorted the letters. The last thing he had to do before leaving was to forge his employer’s signature.

Taking out his bifocals — a gift from his master on his fiftieth birthday — Giri sat at the table with the poster of the Eiffel Tower-under-construction behind him. He turned on the desk lamp, and opened the second drawer, which stored the chequebooks. Giri’s hand, which reproduced his master’s 1978 signature with exactness, was considerably more authentic than Shah’s, which had shifted in character over the years. For this reason Shah had long entrusted the signing of monthly bills to him. Giri took them out of a blue manila folder one by one. The electricity bill. The monthly maintenance charge from the Society. A 5,000-rupee voluntary request for the installation of ‘water-harvesting’ tanks in the building.

‘Voluntary.’ Giri sniffed. That meant in English you give money if you want. He crushed the paper and threw it into the waste basket.

Next he studied his master’s credit card bill before signing a cheque for it. He went through another credit card bill and signed a second cheque for the ‘Versova person’ — whom he refused to dignify with a more precise title.

He turned off the desk lamp.

Nearly nine o’clock. He would have to take an hour-long train to Borivali, where he lived in a one-bedroom with his mother. In the kitchen Giri changed out of his blue lungi into a pair of brown polyester trousers, and put on a white shirt over his banian.

Satish had left his bedroom. Giri straightened the sheets.

Mr Shah was in bed, his arm around that plaster-of-Paris building which had been near the dancing Nataraja statue all these weeks. Giri tried to prise the model out of his master’s arms, and gave up.

He turned off the lights inside the flat, and opened the door to find Shanmugham, with his arms folded.

‘When is the boss going to give me an answer?’ the left-hand man asked. ‘If we’re going to break that old teacher’s arms and legs, we have to do it now.’

3 SEPTEMBER

It was not yet four o’clock.

Masterji stopped at Flora Fountain to wipe his face with a handkerchief; cool water trickled down the old stained marble, down its goddesses and trees and porpoise.

He passed the bronze statue of Dadabhai Naoroji and went through the shade of arcaded buildings towards the Times of India office. Half expecting to find Shanmugham behind him, he kept glancing over his shoulder, and for this reason missed it until it was right in front of him.

Victoria Terminus.

It had been years since he had seen the great train station, the city’s grandest Gothic structure. Demons, domes, gables and gargoyles grew all over the crazy mass of coloured stone. Stone mastiffs flew out from the central dome; rams, wolves, peacocks, other nameless hysterical beasts, all thrusting out of the station, screamed silently above the traffic and clutter. Multiplying the madness, a cordon of palm-trees fanned the building — frolicking, sensual, pagan trees, taunting, almost tickling, the gargoyles.

The heart of Bombay — if there is one — it is me, it is me!

The Times of India building was just around the corner; he still had an hour. He crossed the road. In the cool portico of the station, he saw stone wolves perched on the capitals of columns, as if about to spring down on the people below. Taped to one of the pillars of the station, he saw a poster for a boy gone missing in the city: like a real victim of the imaginary wolves of the architecture. The print, in Hindi, was smudged, and he read it with difficulty, thinking of the lonely parents looking for this boy, begging the indifferent police for information, until they went back on a train to Bhopal or Ranchi, worn out and defeated.

He had once been a migrant like these ones pouring through the door of the station into the city, men and women from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh carrying everything they owned in bundles of cloth. They stepped out of the shade of the stone wolves and blinked in the harsh light of Mumbai. But their bundles did not contain what his did, an education. How many of them would end up like the boy in the poster — beaten, kidnapped or murdered? His heart filled with pity for their lesser struggles.

‘Point! Point! Point!’

The taxi-drivers who were waiting by the station demanded to take him to Nariman Point. He shook his head: yet the yelling went on and on. He could feel their will power as something physical, a battering ram, trying to crush his own.

Entering the lobby of the Times of India building, he looked at a giant mural of Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi scanning a copy of the Times. He sat down and waited. Half an hour to go. People streamed in and streamed out of the lobby. How many, he wondered, have come to see Noronha? He felt the familiar pride at seeing a student prosper, which is like the rush of growth hormone that straightens out a sapling, and makes an old teacher eager for another round of living.

He found a chair. He began to snooze. When he opened his eyes he saw Gaurav, in a blue business shirt, pleated trousers and tie, shaking him by the shoulder.

‘Sorry, son. I was tired.’ Masterji got up from his chair. ‘Shall we go in now to see Noronha?’

The words were sitting there on Gaurav’s tongue — I. Didn’t. Call. Noronha. I. Didn’t. Call. Him — but when they came out, they had become: ‘Yes. But I want to eat something first, Father.’

‘What about our appointment?’

‘We have time, Father. Plenty. I’m hungry now.’

Father and son went to the McDonald’s across from Victoria Terminus station. Masterji sat at an outdoor table and waited for Gaurav to come out with his food. He wished he had his Rubik’s Cube with him. Someone had left an advertising pamphlet on the table:

IMPATIENCE IS NOW A VIRTUE HIGH-SPEED BROADBAND INTERNET 512 KBPS @ 390 RUPEES A MONTH ONWARDS

Turning it over, he doodled on the back with a blue ballpoint pen, and superimposed words on the doodles:

Police

Media

Law and order

Social workers

Family

Students and old boys

Then he struck out ‘law and order’, and ‘social workers’, and ‘police’.

Gaurav came out of the restaurant carrying a chocolate-covered sundae. He gobbled it down with a plastic spoon.

At his son’s house, Masterji spoke in Hindi so Sonal would understand; now he mixed English with Kannada, their ancestral language: ‘What time did Noronha say he would meet us, son?’

Gaurav swallowed his ice cream in an almost simultaneous contraction of tongue and oesophagus.

‘He’s not seeing us, Father. Your Noronha.’

‘What do you mean?’

Closing an eye, Gaurav dug into the chocolate mud that sat at the bottom of the disappearing vanilla.

‘It’s not a story for his newspaper.’

‘Why not? One retired man fights a big builder. “Last Man in Tower Fights Builder.” That sounds like a story to me.’

Gaurav shrugged; he ate his ice cream.

Masterji stared at his son, his mouth open. ‘Did your connection really speak to Noronha? Do you have a connection at the Times?’

Gaurav’s spoon scraped the last of the chocolate mud from the bottom of the cup.

‘I was waiting for you to call me, Father. For so many days. I said to Sonal, there is trouble at Vishram. Sangeeta Aunty keeps phoning me. My own father does not phone. But when you do call, what do you say?’

Gaurav crushed his cup.

‘Contact Noronha for me. Set up an appointment. I do have a connection at the Times, Father. I wouldn’t lie to you. I got Noronha’s number, and I picked up the phone to call him, and I thought, my father is treating me like a servant. Not like his only living child.’

A small red moth flitted about Masterji’s hand, like a particle of air trying to warn him about something.

‘Gaurav, I called you because I have nowhere else… You are the last place.’

‘Father, what is it you want from the Confidence Group?’

Masterji had never seen Gaurav sound and look so decisive. He felt the strength draining from him.

‘Nothing.’

The boy raised his upper lip in a sneer. Purnima used to do that.

‘You’re lying, Father.’

‘Lying?’

‘Don’t you see what’s behind this nothing? You. You think you are a great man because you’re fighting this Shah. Another Galileo or Gandhi. You’re not thinking of your own grandson.’

‘I am thinking of Ronak. This man Mr Shah threatened the Pintos. In daylight. Would you want Ronak to grow up in a city where he can be bullied or threatened in daylight? Gaurav: listen. Dhirubhai Ambani said he would salaam anyone to become the richest man in India. I’ve never salaamed anyone. This has been a city where a free man could keep his dignity.’

Gaurav glared. His sharp features and oval face, except for the fat that had accumulated on them, resembled his father’s: but when he frowned, a dark slant furrow cut into his brow, like a bookmark left there by his mother.

‘Maybe you should have saluted more people, Father.’

For months now he had imagined himself speaking to Purnima, and hearing soft distant replies: but now it was as if his wife were talking from right in front of him.

‘Maybe Sandhya would not have had to take the train if you had made more money. Maybe she would have been in a taxi, safe, that day she was pushed out. She was my sister, I think of her too.’

‘Son. Son.’ Masterji pressed down on the piece of paper he had been writing on. ‘Son.’

‘Every other parent in Vishram Society has thought of their children. But not you. It’s always been this way. When I was in your physics class in school you punished me more than the others.’

‘I had to show the other boys there was no favouritism.’

‘All my life I’ve been frightened of you. You and that steel foot-ruler with which you hit my knuckles. For sleeping in the afternoon. Is that a crime? You made my mother’s life a living hell. Fighting with her over every five rupees she spent. Don’t you remember what she said, on her deathbed, when I asked if she had had a good life? She said, I had a happy childhood, Gaurav. A happy childhood, Father — and nothing after that.’

‘Don’t bring your mother’s name into this.’

‘Your students always came first for you. Always. Not that they had any love for you.’ He grinned. ‘They used to give you nicknames in class. Dirty nicknames.’

‘That’s enough.’ Masterji got up. ‘I’m going to see Noronha myself.’

‘Go. Go. You think your darling Noronha will see you? Has he responded to your letters or phone calls? He was the one who gave you all those nicknames in class. Go. But before you go, let me give you some advice. Just once let me be a teacher to you, Father.’

(Why does everyone say that? Masterji wondered.)

‘Do you know what it is you’re dealing with, Father? Construction. They’re mafia. Sangeeta Aunty tells me you love to talk about tidal waves and meteors in your science class. Worry about knives, Father: not the ocean. Haven’t you seen those big posters near the construction sites? “Your own swimming pool, gym, TV, wedding hall, air-conditioning.” When you sell dreams like that you can murder anyone you want. The deadline is just a few days away. Keep saying no to Mr Shah and we’ll find you one morning in a gutter. You. Are. All. Alone.’ Gaurav stood up. ‘I have to go back to work now. We can’t take long breaks from the bank, or it goes into our next performance report.’

Masterji read the words he had written on the piece of paper:

Media

Law and order

Social workers

The paper flew into the busy road.

Walking out of the McDonald’s, he stood in front of Victoria Terminus.

High up on the building a gargoyle was watching him. Sticking its tongue out it said: I have students in high places. He turned his eyes away. Another gargoyle grinned: I claim no credit for Noronha. And a third smirked: A teacher is not without his connections.

Then all the stony mass of the Terminus was blown away: a horn had sounded just inches from Masterji’s ears. Members of an off-duty band were coming down the pavement; a man with the tuba was giving an occasional short blast to warn people to give way. They wore red shirts with golden epaulettes and white trousers with a black stripe down them, tucked into bedraggled black boots. Suddenly they were all around Masterji, with their silvery instruments; drawn by the blasts of the tuba, he followed. The musicians’ shirts were sweat-stained and their bodies slumped. He walked behind the man with the tuba; staring into its wide mouth, he began counting the nicks and dents on its skin.

Perhaps observing his presence in their midst, the musicians got rid of him as they came close to Crawford Market by taking a sudden right turn together. Masterji kept on walking in a straight line, like an animal dragged by its collar. His body was in the possession of inertia, but he had full control of his neck and eyes as he observed that the clock on the Crawford Market tower was broken. The pavement became dim. Now he was on Mohammad Ali Road. The dark canyon of concrete and old stone amplified the noise of the traffic. On either side, thick buildings blocked the light, while the JJ flyover, raised on columns, its grooved body winding and twisting like an alligator on the hunt, secreted its shadow on to the road below.

Something touched him from his left.

Three goats had come out from an alley, and one of them rubbed against his left leg.

Day-labourers slept on the pavement, oblivious to the moving feet around them. The wooden carts that they had been pulling all day long lay beside them; from beneath one, a dog’s claws jutted out, as if the cart were relaxing its animal digits in the cool of the evening. An old man sat beside stacks of newspapers held down by rocks: each rock looking like a crystallization of some hard truth in the newsprint. Masterji stopped to watch the newspapers.

They shot an elected member of the city corporation dead. It was in the papers.

He remembered that Bhendi bazaar, one of the recruiting grounds of the mafia, was just around the corner. Any of these unshaven men by the side of the road, with nothing to do but suck tea, would do it for Mr Shah. A knife would be stuck into his neck. Worse: his knees would be smashed. He might be turned into a cripple. Blinded.

Beads of sweat fell from his neck all the way down to the tip of his spine.

Wasn’t Gaurav right — wasn’t it just pride that kept him from running to Mr Shah and saying: ‘I accept your offer. Now leave me alone!’

Smoke blew at him from the charcoal kebab grills outside the continuous cheap restaurants that line Mohammad Ali Road. Masterji turned into one restaurant, which was so filthy he knew he had broken his one-rat rule even before going in. A small figure crouching by the door folded its legs to let him in.

He sat down on one of the communal benches, where labourers waited for tea and bread and biscuits on wet dirty plates.

‘What?’ the waiter asked, swatting a dirty red rag on the table, in simulation of an act of cleaning.

‘Tea. And — put all the sugar in the world in it. Understand?’

‘All the sugar in the world,’ the waiter said. He grinned.

He came back with a glass of tea and a packet of milk biscuits. Standing at the end of table he ripped open the packet, letting the biscuits spill tunktunktunk into a stainless-steel plate.

The other customer at the table — Masterji noticed him now — a gaunt, middle-aged man in a dirty blue shirt, looked Muslim because of his beard. Masterji guessed he was one of those who had been pulling carts on the road — he thought he could even identify the man’s wooden cart resting against the door of the café. The labourer picked a biscuit from the stainless-steel plate and chewed. Done with it, he breathed, picked a second biscuit, and chewed. Each movement of his bony jaws spoke of fatigue; the permanent fatigue of men who have no one to care about them when they work and no one to care about them after they work. The thin body broadcast a raw animal silence. Middle-aged? No. His hair was greying at the edges, but youth had only recently been exorcised from his face. Twenty-seven or twenty-eight at the most. Masterji watched this young man with sunken, shocked eyes and barely enough strength to lift one milk biscuit at a time. This is his daily life. Pulling that cart and coming here for these biscuits, he thought.

The tired Muslim man returned Masterji’s gaze. Their eyes met like foreign languages, and the labourer, without moving his lips, spoke at last.

Have you never before noticed how many are all alone?

Leaving the restaurant, Masterji held out a five-rupee note to the waiter, and pointed to the plate of biscuits, still being consumed, one at a time.

Outside, a car with a huge plastic Red Bull on top of it was cruising down the road. The bull glowed in neon, and its snout blared a popular Hindi song, as the car stopped to hand out free cans of Red Bull to onlookers. The beat of the song tuned Masterji’s blood. Until now he had only been conscious of fighting against someone: that builder. Now he sensed he was fighting for someone. In the dark dirty valley under the concrete overpass half-naked labourers pushed and slogged, with such little hope that things might improve for them. Yet they pushed: they fought. As Mary was fighting to keep her hut by the nullah. And maid-servants like her across Vakola were fighting to keep their huts.

Strips of incandescence from behind the buildings fell on the road, and people crowded into them as if they were the only points of fording the traffic. Illuminated in these strips, the straining coolies looked like symbols: hieroglyphs of a future, a future that was colossal. Masterji gazed at the light behind the dirty buildings. It looked like another Bombay waiting to be born.

He knew that Ronak had a place in this new Bombay. Mary and all the other maid-servants had a place in it. Each one of the solitary, lost, broken men around him had a place in it.

But for now their common duty was to fight.

He heard the tuba again: the marching band, as if it had lost its way, had doubled back on its steps, and was heading again towards Victoria Terminus, greeting the hordes of new migrants with its blasts.

Masterji walked behind the marching band towards VT, and felt — for the first time since his wife had died — that he was not alone in the world.

4 SEPTEMBER

Oval Maidan at sunset.

Dust everywhere, and the sun doing wonderful things to the dust: electrolysing it into a golden cloud in which the stone of the Gothic towers, the singed green of the palm fronds, and the living brown of humans were blended into one.

Driving past the maidan, the bars of the fence broke the cricket matches into large rectangular panels, like frames from a film put up on a wall for analysis.

‘Feeling better, Uncle?’

‘You’re a good girl, Rosie. A good girl to come to the hospital.’

Resting his head on Rosie, Shah watched as the driver, who had collected the two of them from Breach Candy Hospital (Rosie, in the waiting room, had flicked through a copy of Filmfare magazine while they took his X-rays), now drove in slow circles around the heart of the city.

‘I know what you’re thinking about, Mr Confidence.’

‘What?’

‘Money. The only thing on your mind.’

Her fingers moved into his pocket.

‘Your phone is ringing, Uncle.’

‘Let it.’

‘There are fifteen missed calls.’

‘Let there be a sixteenth. I don’t care about my work. I don’t care about anything.’

‘Why are you talking like this, Mr Confidence?’ She smiled at him.

My Shanghai, Shah thought. Gone. Because of one old teacher.

He felt as if a hand had entered his abdomen and surgically removed the breath.

In the driver’s mirror he saw his blackened teeth and thought: Not nearly enough. Neither the damaged teeth, nor the disease in his chest, nor the blood he spat out, were nearly enough punishment. For the sin of being a mediocrity. The only real sin on this earth. He should have stayed in Krishnapur and cleared cow shit from the family shed.

Fingers ran through his hair; he felt a breath on his face.

‘To-re-a-dor. To-re-a-dor.’

‘Leave me alone, Rosie.’

Prising the blue X-ray folder away from him, she slid out the grinning phosphorescent skull.

‘So this is who you really are, Uncle.’

He took it back from her and held it up against the light. Taking out a pen he began to sketch over the skull.

‘Don’t!’

He slapped Rosie’s fingers away. He drew more lines up and down the glowing skull and showed her.

‘That’s my Shanghai, Rosie. Gothic style, Rajput touch, Art Deco fountain. My life’s story in one building. Why does that old teacher keep saying no to it? In China, you know what they would have done to a man like him by now?’

She snatched at the X-ray; he raised his hand high to dodge her.

‘Teachers are the worst kind of people, Rosie. All that time they spend beating children, it makes them cruel. Twisted on the inside.’

‘Unlike builders, of course.’

And though he wished she wouldn’t make jokes like this, he had to chuckle.

She laughed at her own joke as she slid his X-ray back into its manila folder. A husky cackle: it made Shah shiver. One of the things he loved about Rosie — her voice always had its knickers down.

‘Come here,’ he said, though the girl was already beside him. ‘Come here.’ He kissed her on the neck.

It was first time he had done something like this in the car; Parvez, his driver, pretended not to notice.

Shah did what he had not done for days. He forgot about the Shanghai.

At the next traffic signal, they stopped by a bus painted with advertisements for a new Bollywood film — Dance, Dance.

‘What’s the inside scoop, Rosie?’ Shah asked, tapping the glass with his fingers. ‘Why is that Punjabi man wasting so much money on this flop?’

It was a film that had excited much speculation in the papers. The case was an unusual one: the film was a ‘comeback’ vehicle for the 1980s film star Praveena Kumari. Ms Kumari, at the height of her fame, had quit Bollywood to settle in America; now, visibly ageing and heavy, she had been cast in a big-budget film — a certain flop. The film’s producer was a walnut-headed Punjabi, noted for cunning and parsimony. That he would waste such money (for the production was lavish, and the marketing too) was the subject for discussion in Bombay that month, trumping such other questions as a possible change in the government in Delhi, the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, or new national figures on child malnutrition.

Oh, yes. Rosie had the inside ‘scoop’. Leaning forward, she whispered into the builder’s ear: ‘Her blowjobs sing across the decades.’

Shah grinned. It made sense. Old walnut-head, who had cast Kumari in her first film, had never forgotten her, and the moment she phoned him long-distance — ‘I want to be big in films again, Uncle’ — he had laid a project worth millions at her thick feet.

He laughed so much he had to cough.

‘Here’s your Shanghai,’ Rosie said, handing him the folder with the X-ray.

She had just entertained him; he was vulnerable.

‘I want to be taken into your home,’ she said. ‘I want to see where you eat and sleep.’

At once Parvez turned the car towards Malabar Hill.

A quarter of an hour later, a blue cleaning-rag on his shoulder, Giri stood at the dining table, his hand on the breadknife, and watched the girl in the short skirt.

Shah was out on the open terrace; Rosie, in the living room, was looking over the model of the Shanghai that was sitting near the dancing Nataraja.

Next she peeked into the bedrooms. Giri followed, making sure she did not steal anything. He knew about the theft at the Oshiwara gym. When she went into the kitchen, he stood in the doorway and folded his arms.

To-re-a-dor — emitting little contralto bursts the girl opened the wooden cupboards in the kitchen wall. To-re-a-dor. Giri watched with his mouth open.

He made way; the boss had come into the kitchen. From the look on his face Giri knew he had been talking to Shanmugham about the mess in Vakola.

Shah exhaled, and said: ‘All right, Rosie. You’ve seen the house. Now let’s go.’

She turned around with twinkling eyes.

‘Why? What’s the hurry?’

‘My son will be home soon. Isn’t it time for Satish, Giri?’

‘So why should I leave? I want to meet him. Heard so much about him.’

‘We’re going to the Versova flat, Rosie. Right away.’

‘Oh, you want to fuck me, but you don’t want your son to meet me, is that it?’

She opened and shut another kitchen cupboard.

He pulled her hands back from the shelves; they wriggled out of his and opened another panel.

‘Enough of this, Rosie. I’ve just been to the hospital and I’m tired.’

To-re-a-dor — she put her hands inside, and tapped on the pots and pans. To-re-a-dor!

Shah watched her sniffing inside his wife’s cabinets, playing with his wife’s utensils and vessels.

Louder and louder she sang in the foreign language, until Shah reached over her head with his thick arms and — as if he were closing a trap on an animal — slammed the panel doors shut on her nose.

She was too surprised even to cry; bending over, she began sobbing and spitting. A drop of blood fell from her nose.

‘Spit into the sink,’ Shah said. ‘The car is leaving for Versova in five minutes.’

As she washed her nose, Giri handed her the blue rag from his shoulder: ‘Take this, Miss. Take it. And don’t cry, please. It makes Giri want to cry too.’

Rosie winced; Shah had taken her white arm in his right hand. With his other, he dialled Shanmugham’s number.

‘I’ve made up my mind,’ he said when the phone was answered.

His fingers pressed up and down Rosie’s arm; he heard his left-hand man’s voice quiver with excitement.

‘I’ve got the man from Andheri, Boss. He’s the one who helped me deliver the Sion project for you. The boy we used to scare that other old man — Mr Pinto — won’t be good for anything more than threatening words. But this Andheri fellow will be perfect. No police record.’

‘Shanmugham: shut up and listen to me.’

And then, still holding on to Rosie’s arm, he told his left-hand man what he wanted done at Vishram Society.

A pause. Then the voice on the phone said: ‘Boss: are you sure? We’re paying them? Why?’

‘Shanmugham,’ Shah said, ‘I found you in a slum in Chembur. Correct?’

‘Yes, Boss.’

‘And if you ask one more question like that, I’ll send you back there.’

He hung up and turned to Rosie. A pink plaster sat on her nose: Giri had brought out the Band-Aids kept for Satish’s football wounds. She was looking at the kitchen floor.

‘See what you made me do to your pretty face, Rosie? Come, let’s go to Versova. I’m hungry. Come.’

She turned: her eyes were livid, and the fingers of her right hand trembled. Shah braced himself. Was it coming — the slap? But a need greater than retribution — the promised hair salon, her future in dependence — relaxed her fingers.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘Let’s go.’

Shah grinned. Texting his driver to get the car ready, he led Rosie out of the flat: towards toast, beach, and bed.

Giri stayed in the kitchen and wiped away the stains of water and blood.