Last Man in Tower (3 page)

The Secretary stared at the guard. Ram Khare scraped the ledger with his long fingernails.

‘If there is no record in here,’ he said, ‘then no such men came.’

‘What did they want to know?’ the Secretary asked Mrs Puri.

‘Whether it is a good place or a bad place. Whether the people are good. They wanted to rent a flat, I think.’

The fat man with the gold rings had impressed Mrs Puri. He had red lips and teeth blackened by
gutka
, which made you think he was lower class, yet his manners were polished, as if he were of breeding, or had acquired some in the course of life. The other man, the tall dark one, wore a nice white shirt and black trousers, exactly as the Secretary had described him. No, he said nothing about being in chemicals.

‘Maybe we should tell the police about this,’ the Secretary said. ‘I don’t understand why he came again today. There have been burglaries near the train station.’

Mrs Puri dismissed the possibility of danger.

‘Both of them were good men, polite, well dressed. The fat one had so many gold rings on his fingers.’

The Secretary turned, fired – ‘Men with gold rings are the biggest thieves in the world. Where have you been living all these years?’ – and walked away.

She folded her fat forearms over her chest.

‘Mrs Pinto,’ she shouted. ‘Please don’t let the Secretary escape.’

What the residents called their
sansad
– parliament – was now in session. White plastic chairs had been arranged around the entrance of Tower A, right in front of Mrs Saldanha’s kitchen, an arrangement that allowed those seated a glimpse, through an almond-shaped tear in the green kitchen curtain, of a small TV. The first ‘parliamentarians’ were about to sit on the plastic chairs, which would remain occupied until water returned to the building.

A small, slow, white-haired man, refined by age into a humanoid sparrow, lowered himself into a chair with a direct view of the TV through Mrs Saldanha’s torn curtain (the ‘prime’ chair). A retired accountant for the Britannia Biscuit Company, Mr Pinto (2A) had a weak vascular system and kept his mouth open when walking. His wife, almost blind in her old age, walked with her hand on his shoulder, although she knew the compound well enough to navigate it without her husband’s help; most evenings they walked as a pair, she with her blind eyes, and he with his open mouth, as if sucking sight and breath from the other. She sat next to her husband, with his help.

‘You have been asked to wait,’ said Mrs Pinto, as the Secretary tried to make his way around the plastic chairs into his office. She was the oldest woman in the Society; Mr Kothari had no choice but to stop.

Mrs Puri caught up with him.

‘Is it true, Kothari, what they say the early-morning cat found in 3B’s rubbish?’

The Secretary, not for the first time during his tenure, cursed the early-morning cat. This cat prowled the waste bins that the residents left out in the morning for Mary to collect, in the process spilling beans, bones, and whisky bottles alike. So the residents of the building knew from the rubbish who was a vegetarian and who merely claimed to be one; who was a rum-man and who a gin-man; and who had bought a pornographic magazine when on holiday in Singapore. The main aim of this cat – ginger and scrawny, according to some, black and glossy according to others – indeed, was to make sure there was no privacy in the building. Of late the ginger (or black) fellow had led Mrs Puri to a vile discovery when it knocked over the waste bin of 3B (the flat Kothari had shown to the inquisitive stranger).

‘Among young people today, it is a common thing for boy and girl to live without marriage,’ he said. ‘At the end, one says to the other, you go your way, I go my way. There is no sense of shame in the modern way of life, what do you expect me to do about it?’

(Mr Pinto, distracted by a stock market report on the TV, had to be filled in on the topic of discussion by his wife. ‘… the modern girl on our floor.’)

Turning to her left, Mrs Puri called: ‘Ramu, have you fed the dog?’

Ramu – his soft, pale face hinted at the presence of Down’s syndrome – looked perplexed. His mother and he left a bowl full of channa near the black Cross to feed stray animals that wandered into the Society; he looked about for the bowl. The dog had found it.

Now Mrs Puri turned back to the Secretary to make one thing clear: the modern, shame-free way of living counted for nothing with her.

‘I have a growing son—’ She dropped her voice. ‘I don’t want him living with the wrong kind of people. You should call Import-Export Hiranandani
now
.’

That Mr Hiranandani, the owner and original resident of 3B, a shrewd importer-exporter of obscure goods, known for his guile in slipping phosphates and peroxides through customs, had moved to a better neighbourhood (Khar West) was understandable; all of them dreamed of doing the same thing. Differences of wealth among the members did not go unnoticed – Mr Kudwa (4C) had taken his family last summer to Ladakh, rather than nearby Mahabaleshwar, as everyone else did, and Mr Ajwani the broker owned a Toyota Qualis – yet these were spikes and dips within the equalizing dinginess of Vishram. The real distinction was leaving the Society. They had come to their windows and cheered Mr Hiranandani when he departed with his family for Khar West; yet his behaviour since had been scandalous. Not checking the identity of this girl tenant, he had taken her deposit and handed her the keys to 3B, without asking the Secretary or his neighbours if they wanted an unmarried woman – a journalist, at that – on their floor. Mrs Puri was not one to pry – not one to ask what was happening within the privacy of a neighbour’s four walls – but when the condoms come
tumbling
on to your doorstep, well, then!

As they were talking, a trickle of waste water moved towards them.

A pipe from Mrs Saldanha’s ground-floor kitchen discharged into the open compound; although she had been chided often, she had never connected her kitchen sink into the main sewage – so the moment she began her cooking, it burped right at their feet. In every other way, Mrs Saldanha was a quiet, retreating woman – her husband, who was ‘working in Vizag’, had not been seen in Vishram for years – but in matters of water, brazen. Because she lived on the ground floor, she seemed to have it longer than anyone else did, and used it shamelessly when they could not. The emission of waste water into the compound only underlined her water-arrogance.

A glistening eel of water, its dark body now tinted with reddish earth, nosed its way towards the parliament. Mr Pinto lifted the front feet of the ‘prime’ chair and moved out of the sewage-eel’s path; and it was forgotten.

‘Have you seen anyone going into her room?’ the Secretary asked.

‘Of course not,’ Mrs Puri said. ‘I am not one to pry into my neighbours’ lives, am I?’

‘Ram Khare hasn’t told me he has seen any boy come into the building at night.’

‘What does that mean, Ram Khare has seen nothing?’ Mrs Puri protested. ‘A whole army could come in, and he would see nothing.’

The stray dog, having done crunching its channa, ran towards the parliament, trotted throught the water, slid under the chairs, and headed up the stairwell, as if pointing out to them the solution to their crisis.

The Secretary followed the dog.

Breathing heavily, one hand on the banister and one hand on her hip, Mrs Puri went up the stairs. Through the star-shaped holes in the wall she could see Mr Pinto standing by the black Cross to keep watch on Ramu until she returned.

She smelled the dog on the second landing of the stairs. Amber eyes shone in the dim stairwell; pale legs, impastoed with dry dung, shivered. Mrs Puri stepped over the sickly legs and walked to the third floor.

The Secretary was standing by Masterji’s door, with a finger on his lips. From inside the open door, they could hear voices.

‘… and my hand represents…?’

‘Yes, Masterji.’

‘Answer the question, boys: my hand represents…?’

‘The earth.’

‘Correct. For once.’

The bi-weekly science ‘top-up’ was in session. Mrs Puri joined the Secretary by the door, the only one in Vishram Society unmarked by religious icons.

‘This is the earth in infinite space. Home of Man. Follow me?’

Reverence for science and learning made the Secretary stand with folded hands. Mrs Puri pushed past him to the door. She closed an eye and spied in.

The living room was dark, the curtains were drawn; a table lamp was the only source of light.

A silhouette of a huge fist, looking like a dictator’s gesture, appeared on the wall.

A man stood next to the table lamp, making shadows on the wall. Four children sitting on a sofa watched the shadows he conjured; another sat on the floor.

‘And my second fist, which is going around the earth, is what?’

‘The sun, Masterji’ – one of the boys.

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘No, no, no. The sun is this. See—’ A click, and the room went entirely dark. ‘Earth without sun.’ Click. ‘Earth with sun. Understand? Lamp: sun.’

‘Yes, Masterji.’

‘All of you say it together.’

‘Yes, Masterji’ – three voices.

‘All of you.’

‘Yes, Masterji’ – four.

‘So my second, that is to say, my moving fist is –? Big white object seen at night if you look up.’

‘Moon.’

‘Correct. MOON. Earth’s satellite. How many satellites does the Earth have?’

‘Can we go now, Masterji?’

‘Only after we get to the eclipse. And what are you wriggling about for, Mohammad?’

‘Anand is pinching me, Masterji.’

‘Stop pinching him, Anand. This is physics, not fun. Now: how many satellites does…’

The boy on the floor said: ‘Question, Masterji.’

‘Yes?’

‘Masterji, what happened when the dinosaurs died out? Show us again how the meteor hit the earth.’

‘And tell us about global warming again, Masterji.’

‘You’re trying to avoid my question by asking your own. Do you think I taught in school for thirty-four years not to see through tricks like this?’

‘It’s not a trick, Masterji, it’s a—’

‘Enough for today. Class is over,’ Masterji said and clapped his hands.

‘We can go in now,’ the Secretary whispered. Mrs Puri pushed open the door and turned the lights on in the room.

The four boys who had been sitting on the sofa – Sunil Rego (1B), Anand Ganguly (5B), Raghav Ajwani (2C) and Mohammad Kudwa (4C) – got up. Tinku Kothari (4A), the fat son of the Secretary, struggled to his feet from the floor.

‘Enough, boys, go home!’ Mrs Puri clapped. ‘Masterji has to have dinner soon. Class is over. Go, go, go.’

It was not a ‘class’, though conducted with such dignity, but an after-class science ‘top-up’ – meant to do to a normal schoolchild what a steroidal injection does to a merely healthy athlete.

Anand Ganguly picked up his cricket bat, which was propped up against the old fridge; Mohammad Kudwa took his blue cricket cap, emblazoned with the star of India, from above the glass cabinet full of silver trophies, medals, and certificates attesting to Masterji’s excellence as a teacher.

‘What a surprise to see you here,’ Masterji said. ‘I hardly have visitors these days. Adult visitors, that is.’

Mrs Puri checked to see if the lights were off in 3B – of course they were, young people of that lifestyle are never home before ten – and closed the door. She explained, in low tones, the problem caused by Masterji’s neighbour and what had been found in her rubbish by the early-morning cat.

‘There is a boy who goes into and comes out of that room with her,’ Masterji conceded. He turned to the Secretary. ‘But she works, doesn’t she?’

‘Journalist.’

‘Those people are known for their
number two
activities,’ Mrs Puri said.

‘She seems to me, though I have only seen her from a distance, a decent girl.’

Masterji continued, his voice gaining authority from the echoes of ‘sun, moon, eclipse, physics’ that still seemed to ring through it: ‘When this building first came up, there were no Hindus allowed here, it is a fact. Then there were meant to be no Muslims, it is a fact. All proved to be good people when given a chance. Now, young people, unmarried girls, they should also be given a chance. We don’t want to become a building full of retirees and blind people. If this girl and her boyfriend have done something inappropriate, we should speak to them. However…’ He looked at Mrs Puri. ‘… we have no business with her rubbish.’

Mrs Puri winced. She wouldn’t tolerate this kind of talk from anyone else.

She looked around the flat, which she had not visited in a while, still expecting to see Purnima, Masterji’s quiet, efficient wife, and one of her best friends in Vishram. Now that Purnima was gone – dead for more than six months – Mrs Puri observed signs of austerity, even disrepair. One of the two wall-clocks was broken. A pale rectangle on the wall above the empty TV stand commemorated the ancient Sanyo that Masterji had sold after her death, rejecting it as an indulgence. (
What an error
, Mrs Puri thought.
A widower without a TV will go mad
.) Water stains blossomed on the ceiling; the pipes on the fourth floor leaked. Each year in September Purnima had paid for a man from the slums to scrub and whitewash them. This year, unscrubbed, the stains were spreading like ghostly evidence of her absence.

Now that Mrs Puri’s issue was dismissed, the Secretary raised his own, more valid, concern. He told Masterji about the inquisitive stranger who had come twice to the Society. Should they make a report to the police?

Masterji stared at the Secretary. ‘What can this man steal from us, Kothari?’

He went to the sink that stood in a corner of the room – a mirror above it, a framed picture of Galileo (‘Founder of Modern Physics’) above the mirror – and turned the tap; there was a thin flow of water.

‘Is
this
what he is going to steal from us? Our plumbing?’

Each year, the contractor who cleaned the overhead tank did his work sloppily – and the silt from the tank blocked the pipes in all the rooms directly below it.