Last Man in Tower (5 page)

‘Wouldn’t it be nice if someone gave
us
81 lakh rupees?’ Mrs Puri said, after Ritika was out of earshot.

Ajwani the broker, who was punching away at his mobile phone, looked up and smiled sardonically. Then he returned to punching at his mobile.

The value of their own homes was uncertain. The last attempted sale had been seven years ago, when Mr Costello (5C) put his fifth-floor place on sale after his son had jumped from the terrace; no one had purchased the flat, and it was still under lock and key while the owner had himself moved to the Gulf.

‘The poor in this city were never poor, and now they…’ Mrs Puri moved her head to the right – Mrs Saldanha’s daughter, Radhika, had entered her mother’s kitchen in a most thoughtless manner, obstructing the parliamentarians’ view of the TV. ‘… are becoming rich. Free electricity in the slums and 24-hour cable. Only
we
are stuck.’

‘Careful,’ Mr Pinto whispered. ‘Battleship is here. Careful.’

Mrs Rego – the ‘Battleship’ for her wide grey skirts, formidable girth, and stentorian voice – was returning home with her children.

With a ‘Hello, Uncle, Hello, Aunty’, Sunil and Sarah Rego went up the stairs. Their mother, without a word to the others, sat down and watched the TV.

‘Have you heard, Mrs Rego, about the 81 lakh offer? For a one-room in the slums?’

The Battleship said nothing.

‘Even a Communist like you must be interested in this,’ Mrs Puri said with a smile.

The Battleship spoke without turning her face.

‘What is the definition of a dying city, Mrs Puri? I will tell you, as you do not know: a city that ceases to surprise you. And that is what this Bombay has become. Show people a little cash, and they’ll jump, dance, run naked in the streets. That Muslim man is never going to see his money. These developers and builders are mafia. The other day they shot a member of the city corporation dead. It was in the papers.’

Mr Pinto and his wife slipped away like doves before a thunderstorm.

But it did not start at once.

The TV presenter, as if to add to the atmosphere of gloom, mentioned that the water shortage was likely to get worse unless the monsoons arrived – for once – on time.

‘Too many people come into the city, it’s a fact,’ Mrs Puri said. ‘Everyone wants to suck on our…’ She touched her breasts.

The Battleship turned to her.

‘And did you drop to Bombay from heaven, Mrs Puri? Isn’t your family from Delhi?’

‘My parents were born in Delhi, Mrs Rego, but I was born right here. There was enough space in those days. Now it’s full. The Shiv Sena is right, outsiders should stop coming here.’

‘Without migrants, this city would be dust. We are ruled by fascists, Mrs Puri, but everything is second-rate here, even our fascists. They don’t give us trains, don’t give us roads. All they do is beat up hardworking migrants.’

‘I don’t know what a fascist does, but I know what a Communist does. You don’t like developers who make people rich, but you like the beggars who get off at Victoria Terminus every day.’

‘I am a Christian, Mrs Puri. We are meant to care for the poor.’

Mrs Puri – debating champion at KC College – was about to finish her opponent off with a riposte, but Ramu came to his mother’s ear and whispered.

‘There’s no water coming up the pipes, Ramu,’ she said. ‘No water tonight, dear. I told you, didn’t I?’

Ramu’s lower lip covered his upper, and bulged up towards his nose: his mother knew this as a sign that he was thinking. He pointed to the pipes that went up the sides of Vishram Society’s walls.

‘Quiet, Ramu. Mummy is speaking to Communist aunty.’

‘I am not a Communist, and I am not anyone’s aunty, Mrs Puri.’

Mrs Kothari, the Secretary’s wife, put her head out of the window and shouted: ‘Water!’

It was an unscheduled blessing from the Municipality, a rare kindness. The fighting adjourned; both women had to obey a higher imperative – fresh water.

Where is Masterji?
Mrs Puri wondered, as she went up the stairs. He should have returned from seeing his grandson by now. After giving Ramu his evening bath, she made sure to collect an extra bucket of water for the old man, in case the Municipality, for giving them water they were not meant to have, punished them by annulling their morning water supply. That was, after all, how the people who ran Mumbai thought.

Despite dismissing the idea that the inquisitive stranger might represent any danger, Masterji woke up realizing he had spent a part of the night dreaming of the man.

In this dream, which he powerfully recollected several minutes after waking up, the stranger (whose face appeared as a black playing-card) had smelled of sulphur; posed riddles to the members of the Society (including Masterji); grown wings, laughed, and flown out of a window, while all of them ran after him, shouting, trying to knock him down with a long stick. Masterji puzzled over his dream, until he realized that some of its images had been borrowed from the book he had been reading late into the night; he picked it up and continued reading:

The Soul’s Passageway after Death
(Vikas Publications, Benaras)

In its first year out of the body, the soul travels slowly and at a low altitude, burdened by the sins of its worldly existence. It flies over green fields, ploughed fields, and small dams and dykes. It has wings like an eagle’s at this stage of its voyage. In the second year it begins to ascend over the oceans. This flight will take it all of the second year, and a part of the third year too. It will see the ocean change colour, from blue to dark blue, until it is almost a kind of black. The darkening of the colour of the ocean will alert the soul to its entry into the third year of its long flight…

With eyes closed, imagine a human soul with your wife’s face – and with wings like an eagle… yes, eyes, nose, cheeks like your wife’s, wing-span like an eagle’s, suspended in mid-flight over the ocean…

In all, the flight of the soul after death lasts seven hundred and seventy-seven years. The prayers and pious thoughts offered by relatives and loved ones from the world of the living will greatly affect the course, length, and comfort of this journey…

Yogesh Murthy, called ‘Masterji’, sixty-one years old, distinguished emeritus teacher of St Catherine’s High School, yawned, and stretched his legs:
The Soul’s Passageway after Death
landed on the teakwood table.

He went back to bed. In the old days, his wife’s tea and talk and the perfume from the fresh flowers in her hair would wake him up. He sniffed the air for scents of jasmine.

Hai-ya! Hai-ya!

The screams came from somewhere below, and to his right. The two sons of Ajwani, the broker, began the morning by practising tae kwon-do in full uniform in their living room. Ajwani’s boys were the athletic champions of the Society; the elder, Rajeev, had won a great victory in the martial arts competition last year. As a gesture of the Society’s gratitude, he was allowed to dip his hand in kerosene and leave a memento of his victorious body on the front wall, where it could still be seen (or so everyone was sure), just above Mrs Saldanha’s kitchen window.

Now to the left, a loud voice, flipping diphthongs up and down. ‘Oy, oy, oyoyoyoy, my Ramu – come here… Turn that way, my prince, ayay…’ What was Ramu going to take to school for lunch, Masterji wondered, yawning, and turning to the side.

A noise from the kitchen. The very noise Purnima used to make when chopping onions. He tiptoed into the kitchen to catch a ghost, if one was there. An old calendar was tapping on the wall. It was Purnima’s private calendar, illustrated with an image of the goddess Lakshmi tipping over a pot full of gold coins, and with key dates circled and marked in her private shorthand; she had consulted it to the day she had been admitted to the hospital (12 October; circled), so he had not replaced it with a new calendar at the start of the year.

He would have to walk a bit today with his grandson; in anticipation, he wrapped a pink orthopaedic cloth tightly around his arthritic left knee before putting his trousers on. Back at his teakwood table, he picked up
The Soul’s Passageway after Death
.

The bell rang: bushy-haired and bearded, Ibrahim Kudwa, the cyber-café owner from 4C, with dandruff sprinkled like spots of wisdom on the shoulders of his green kurta.

‘Did you see the sign, Masterji?’ Kudwa pointed to the window. ‘In the hole they made outside. I changed the sign from “inconvenience is in progress, work is regretted”, to the other way.’ Kudwa slapped his forehead. ‘Sorry, I changed it from “work is in progress, inconvenience is regretted”, to the other way round. I thought you would like to know.’

‘Very impressive,’ Masterji said, and patted his beaming neighbour. In the kitchen, the old calendar began tapping on the wall, and Masterji forgot to offer his visitor even a cup of tea.

By midday, he was at the Byculla Zoo, leading his grandson hand in hand, from cage to cage. The two of them had seen a lioness, two black bears covered in fresh grass, an alligator in emerald water, elephants, hippos, cobras and pythons.

The boy had questions: what is the name of that in the water? – who is the tiger yawning at? – why are the birds yellow? Masterji enjoyed giving names to the animals, and added a humorous story to explain why each one left his native land and came to Mumbai. ‘Do you think of your grandmother?’ he asked from time to time.

The two of them stopped in front of a rectangular cage with bars, and a low tin roof; an animal moved from one end to the other. The idlers who had turned up to the zoo, even the lovers, stopped at the cage. A green tarpaulin on the roofing made a phosphorescent glow through which the dark animal came, jauntily, as if chuckling, its tongue hanging out, until it stood up on a red guano-stained stone bench and reared its head; then it got down, turned, went to the other end of the cage and reared its head before turning back. It was filthy – it was majestic: the grey fleece, the dark dog-like grinning face, the powerful striped lower limbs. Men and women watched it. Perhaps this mongrel beast looked like one of those, half politician and half criminal, who ruled the city, vile and necessary.

‘What is its name?’

Masterji could not say. The syllables were there, on the tip of his tongue. But when he tried to speak they moved the other way, as if magnetically repulsed. He shrugged.

At once the boy seemed frightened, as if his grandfather’s power, which lay in naming these animals, had ended.

To cheer him up, Masterji bought him some peanuts (though his daughter-in-law had told him not to feed the boy), and they ate on the grass; Masterji thought he was in a happy time of his life. The battles were over, the heat and light were dimmed.

Before it is too late
, he thought, running his fingers through his grandson’s curly hair,
I must tell this boy all that we have been through. His grandmother and I. Life in Bombay in the old days. War in 1965 with Pakistan. War in 1971. The day they killed Indira Gandhi. So much more.

‘More peanuts?’ he asked.

The boy shook his head, and looked at his grandfather hopefully.

Sonal, his daughter-in-law, was waiting at the gate. She smiled as he talked, on their drive into the city. Half an hour later, in his son’s flat in Marine Lines, Sonal served Masterji tea and bad news: Gaurav, his son, had just sent her a text message. He would not be coming home until midnight. Busy day at the office. ‘Why don’t you wait?’ she suggested. ‘You can stay overnight. It’s your home, after all…’

‘I’ll wait,’ he said. He tapped his fingers on the arms of his chair. ‘I’ll wait.’

‘Do you think of her a lot, Masterji?’ Sonal asked.

His fingers tapped faster on the chair, and he said: ‘All the time.’ The words just burst out after that.

‘Gaurav will remember when his grandfather died, in 1991, and she went to Suratkal to perform the last rites with her brothers. When she came back to Mumbai, she said nothing for days. Then she confessed. “They locked me up in a room and made me sign a paper.” Her own brothers! They threatened her until she signed over her father’s property and gold to them.’

Even now the memory stopped his breath. He had gone to see a lawyer at once. Four hundred rupees as a retainer, paid in cash upfront. He had come home and talked it over with Purnima.

‘We’ll never put them behind bars, I told her. The law in this country takes for ever to do anything. Is it worth wasting all that money? She thought about it and said, “All right, let it drop.” Sometimes I would look back on the incident and ask myself, should I have paid for that lawyer? But whenever I brought it up with her, she just did this’ – he shrugged – ‘and said that thing. Her favourite saying. “Man is like a goat tied to a pole.” Meaning, all of us have some free will but not too much. One shouldn’t judge oneself harshly.’

‘That is so beautiful. She was a wonderful woman, wasn’t she?’ Sonal got up. ‘I am sorry – I have to check on my father for a minute.’

Her father, once a respected banker, now suffered from advanced Alzheimer’s; he lived with his daughter, and was fed, bathed, and clothed by her. As Sonal slipped into an inner room, Masterji silently commended her filial devotion. So rare in an age like this. He tapped his knee and tried to remember the name of that striped animal in the cage. Ronak was taking a nap in his bedroom. He wanted to remember before the boy woke up.

Sonal came out of her father’s room with a large blue book which she placed on the table in front of Masterji.

‘The boy doesn’t read much; he plays cricket.’ She smiled. ‘It is better that you keep this yourself, since you are fond of books.’

Masterji opened the blue book.
The Illustrated History of Science
. Purchased a decade ago at the Strand Book Shop in the city, maintained impeccably, until two weeks ago given to his grandson as a gift.

He got up from his chair with the book. ‘I’ll go back now.’

‘At this hour?’ Sonal frowned. ‘The train will be packed. Wait an hour here. It’s your home, after all.’