Last Man in Tower (6 page)

‘What am I, a foreigner? I’ll survive.’

‘Are you sure you want to take the train at this…’ There was a gurgling from the inner room, and Sonal turned in its direction. ‘One minute,’ she said. ‘My father needs attention again.’

‘I’m leaving,’ Masterji shouted after putting on his shoes. He stood waiting for a response from Sonal, then closed the door behind him and took the elevator down.

With his blue book in his hand he walked past the old buildings of Marine Lines, some of the oldest in the city – past porticos never penetrated by the sun, and lit up at all times of day by yellow electric bulbs, stone eaves broken by saplings, and placental mounds of sewage and dark earth piled up on wet roads. Along the side of the Marine Lines train station he walked towards Churchgate.

He tried not to think of the
Illustrated History of Science
in his hands. Was that flat so small they couldn’t keep even one book of his in it? The boy’s own grandfather – and they had to shove my gift back in my hands?

He opened the blue book, and saw an illustration of Galileo.

‘Hyena,’ he said suddenly, and closed the book. That was the word he had not been able to find for Ronak; the striped animal in the cage.

‘Hyena. My own daughter-in-law is a hyena to me.’

Don’t think badly of her
. He heard Purnima’s voice. It is your ugliest habit, she had always warned him.
The way you get angry with
people, caricature them, mock their voices, manners, ideas; the way you shrink flesh-and-blood humans into fireflies to hold in your palm.
She would cut his rage short by touching his brow (once holding a glass of ice-cold water to it) or by sending him out on an errand. Now who was there to control his anger?

He touched the
Illustrated History of Science
to his forehead and thought of her.

It was dark by the time he reached the Oval Maidan. The illuminated clock on the Rajabai Tower, its face clouded by generations of grime and neglect, looked like a second moon, more articulate, speaking directly to men. He thought of his wife in this open space; he felt her calm here. Perhaps that calm was all he had ever had; behind it he had posed as a rational creature, a wise man for his pupils at St Catherine’s and his neighbours.

He did not want to go home. He did not want to lie down on that bed again.

He looked at the clock. After his wife’s death, Mr Pinto came to him and said: ‘You will eat with us from now on.’ Three times a day he went down the stairs to sit at the Pintos’ dining table, covered with a red-and-white checkerboard oilcloth they had brought back from Chicago. They did not have to announce that food was served. He heard the rattling of cutlery, the shaking of the chairs, and, with the clairvoyance provided by hunger, he could look through his floor and see Mrs Pinto’s maid Nina placing porcelain vessels steaming with prawn curry on the table. Raised as a strict vegetarian, Masterji had learned the taste of animals and fish in Bombay; exchanging his wife’s lentil-and-vegetable regimen for the Pintos’ carnivorous diet was the only good thing, he said to himself, that had come of her death. The Pintos asked for nothing in return, but he came back every evening from the market with a fistful of coriander or ginger to deposit on their table.

They would be delaying their dinner for him; he should find a payphone at once.

A loose page of the
Times of India
lay on the pavement. A former student of his named Noronha wrote a column for the paper; for this reason he never trod on it. He took a sudden sideways step to avoid the paper. The pavement began to slide away like sand. His left knee throbbed; things darkened. Spots twinkled in the darkness, like mica in a slab of granite. ‘You’re going to faint,’ a voice seemed to shout from afar, and he reached out to it for support; his hand alighted on something solid, a lamp post. He closed his eyes and concentrated on standing still.

He leaned against the lamp post. Breathing in and out. Now he heard the sound of wood being chopped from somewhere in the Oval Maidan. The blows of the axe came with metronomic regularity, like the hour hand in a grandfather clock: underneath them, he heard the nervous ticking of his own wristwatch, like splinters flying from the log. The two sounds quickened, as if in competition.

It was nearly nine o’clock when he felt strong enough to leave the lamp post.

Churchgate train station: the shadows of the tall ceiling-fans tremulous, like water lilies, as hundreds of shoes tramped on them. It had been years since Masterji had taken the Western Line in rush hour. The train to Santa Cruz was just pulling in. He turned his face as a women’s compartment passed them. Even before the train stopped, passengers had begun jumping in, landing with thuds, nearly falling over, recovering, scrambling for seats. Not an inch of free green cushion by the time Masterji got in. Wait. In a corner, he did spot a vacant patch of green, but he was kept away by a man’s hand – ah, yes, he remembered now: the infamous evening train ‘card mafia’. They were reserving a seat for a friend who always sat there to play with them. Masterji held on to a pole for support. With one hand he opened the blue book and turned the pages to find the section on Galileo. The card mafia, their team complete, were now playing their game, which would last them the hour and a quarter to Borivali or Virar; their cards had, on their reverse side, the hands of a clock at various angles, giving the impression of time passing with great fury as they were dealt out. Marine Lines–Charni Road–Grant Road–Mumbai Central–Elphinstone Road. Middle-aged accountants, stockbrokers, insurance salesmen kept coming in at each stop. Like an abdominal muscle the human mass in the train contracted.

Now for the worst. The lights turned on in the train as it came to a halt. Dadar station. Footfalls and pushing: in the dim first-class compartment men multiplied like isotopes. A pot belly pressed against Masterji – how rock-like a pot belly can feel! The smell of another’s shirt became the smell of his shirt. He remembered a line from his college
Hamlet
. The
thousand
natural shocks that flesh is heir to? Shakespeare underestimated the trauma of life in Mumbai by a big margin.

The pressure on him lessened. Through the barred windows of the moving train, he saw firecrackers exploding in the sky. Bodies relaxed; faces glowed with the light from outside. Rockets shot out of begrimed buildings. Was it a religious festival? Hindu, or Muslim, or Parsi, or Jain, or Roman Catholic? Or something more mysterious: an un planned confluence of private euphoria – weddings, engagements, birthdays, other incendiary celebrations, all occurring in tandem.

At Bandra, he realized he had only one stop left, and began pushing his way to the door – I’m getting out too, old man. You should be patient. When the train stopped he was three feet away from the door; he was pushed from behind and pushed those ahead of him. But now a reverse tide hit them all: men barged in from the platform. Those who wanted to get out at Santa Cruz wriggled, pressed, cursed, refused to give up, but the superior desperation of those wanting to get in won the day. The train moved; Masterji had missed his stop. ‘Uncle, I’ll make room for you,’ one young man who had seen his plight moved back. ‘Get out at Vile Parle and take the next train back.’ When the train slowed, the mass of departing commuters shouted, in one voice: ‘Move!’ And nothing stopped them this time; they swept Masterji along with them on to the platform. Catching the Churchgate-bound train, he went back to Santa Cruz, where the station was so packed he had to climb the stairs leading out one step at a time.

He was released by the crowd into harsh light and strong fragrance. On the bridge that led out from the station, under bare electric bulbs, men sold orange and green perfumes in large bottles next to spreads of lemons, tennis shoes, keychains, wallets,
chikoos
. A boy handed him a cyclostyled advertisement on yellow paper as he left the bridge.

He dropped the advertisement and walked down the stairs, avoiding the one-armed beggar, into a welcome-carpet of fructose. In the market by the station, mango-sellers waited for the returning commuters: ripe and bursting, each mango was like a heartfelt apology from the city for the state of its trains. Masterji smelled the mangoes and accepted the apology.

Near the mango-sellers, a man who had his head and arms sticking through the holes of a cardboard sign that said: ‘Fight seven kinds of vermin’, with appropriate illustrations below (cockroaches, honey bees, mongoose, ants, termites, lice, mosquitoes), saluted Masterji. This pest control man often came to Vishram to knock down, with a long bamboo pole, an impromptu beehive or a wasps’ nest on the roofing. Extending his hand through the illustrated cardboard sign he wore, he seized the old teacher’s arm.

‘Masterji. Someone was asking about Vishram Society in the market.’

‘Asking what?’

‘What kind of people lived in it, what their reputation was, did they fight with each other and with others, lots and lots of questions. He was a tall fellow, Masterji.’

‘Did he wear a white shirt and black trousers?’

‘Yes, I think so. I told him that any Society with a man like Masterji in it is a good Society.’

‘Thank you, my friend,’ Masterji said, having forgotten the pest control man’s name.

So the Secretary was right, something is going on
, Masterji thought. He had a vision of the green cage in the zoo again; he smelled something animal and insolent. Maybe they should go to the police in the morning.

When he reached Vishram, the gate was padlocked. Walking with care over the recently filled-up construction hole, he slapped the heavy chains and lock against the gate. ‘Ram Khare!’ he shouted. ‘Ram Khare, it’s me!’

The guard came from his room in the back of the building and unlocked the chain. ‘It’s past ten o’clock, Masterji. Be a little patient.’

The stairwell smelled. He found the stray dog lying on the first landing of the stairs, its body shivering, foam at the mouth. Did no one care that this dog could be sick? The animal had lost a layer of subcutaneous fat, and its ribcage was monstrously articulated, like the maw of another beast that was consuming it.

Masterji prodded at the dog’s ribs with his foot; when it did not move, he kicked. It yelped and rocketed down the stairs.

Waiting for a few seconds to make sure the dog did not return, he continued up to the third floor, where, as he was turning the key to his room, he heard a click behind him. The door of 3B opened wide – light, laughter, music – a young man stepped out.

Ms Meenakshi, the journalist, loose-haired and wearing her nightie, had her hand on the young man’s shoulder as he took a big step into the hallway, which caused him to bump into the old school-teacher. ‘Sorry,’ the boy said. ‘I’m sorry, sir.’

He had bathed a few minutes ago, and Masterji smelled fresh soap.

‘Can’t you watch yourself?’ he shouted.

The boy grinned.

Before he knew what he was doing, Masterji had pushed the grinning thing. The boy fell back, banged his head into the door of 3B, and slid to the floor.

As Masterji watched, the young man rose to his feet, his fist clenched. Before either man could do anything, the girl began to scream.

13 MAY

What is Bombay?

From the thirteenth floor, a window answers: banyan, maidan, stone, tile, tower, dome, sea, hawk,
amaltas
in bloom, smog on the horizon, gothic phantasmagoria (Victoria Terminus and the Municipal Building) emerging from the smog.

Dharmen Shah watches the hawk. It has been hovering outside the window, held aloft by a mysterious current – a thrashing of sunlit wings – and it is on the sill. In its claws a mouse, or a large part of one. Entrails wink out of grey fur: a ruby inside ore. A second later, another hawk is also on the sill.

Opening the window, Shah leaned out as far as he could: the two birds were flying in a vindictive whirl around each other. The dead mouse, left behind on the sill, was oozing blood and grease.

Shah’s mouth filled with saliva. He had eaten a packet of milk biscuits in the past twelve hours.

Consoling his belly with a massage, Shah moved to the next window. He ate the view from here: the football field that occupied most of the Cooperage, the green Oval Maidan beside it, the gable and deep-arched entranceway of the University, the Rajabai Tower, and the High Court of Bombay. Amidst the coconut palms and mango trees, the red blossoms of a
gulmohar
burned like love bites on the summer’s day.

A stubby, gold-ringed index finger sketched round the Rajabai Tower and dragged it all the way to the other end of the Oval Maidan.
There:
it would fit much better there.

Shah looked down. On the road directly below the window, a woman was talking on a mobile phone. He craned his neck to see what she was wearing below her waist.

‘It’s a girl, isn’t it, Dharmen?’

Doctor Nayak came into the room with an X-ray photograph in his hand.

‘That’s the only thing that would get your neck out of the window.’

The doctor flipped the photograph, and held it up against the view of the city.

Dharmen Shah’s skull glowed. The X-ray had been taken less than an hour ago at the hospital. Shah saw something milky-white chuckling inside his cranium, a ghost grinning through his wide-open jaw. The doctor slid the X-ray back into its folder. He indicated for his guest and patient to use the sofa.

‘Why do you think I called you here to my home after the tests? I have cancelled three morning appointments for this.’

Shah, with hands massaging his belly, grinned. ‘Real estate.’ He stayed by the window.

‘Not this time, Dharmen. I wanted to say things that are better said in the house than at the hospital. In the hope that you might listen this time.’

‘
So
grateful.’

‘It is a bit worse each time I see you, Dharmen. That thing that is growing in your chest and head. Chronic bronchitis. Worse and worse each time. You have infected mucus in your lungs and in your sinuses. The next stage is that you have trouble breathing. We may have to put you in a hospital bed. Do you want things to come to that?’

‘And why
would
things come to that?’ Shah knocked on the window. ‘Despite the fact that I take every blood test, X-ray, and medical pill that you recommend. After starving myself the previous night.’

Youthful and square-jawed, Doctor Nayak sported a black moustache above a tuft of goatee: when he grinned he looked like the Jack of Spades.

‘You’re a big, spoilt child, Dharmen. You don’t do what your doctor tells you to do, and you think he won’t find out as long as you turn up for blood tests and X-rays. I’ve been warning you for months. It’s the construction business that is doing this to you. All the dust you inhale. The stress and strain.’

‘I’ve been at construction sites for
twenty-five years
, Nayak. The problem began only a year or two ago.’

‘It’s all those old buildings you’re around. The ones you break up. Materials were used then that are banned now. Asbestos, cheap paint. They get into your lungs. Then these places you like going to, these slums.’

‘The place is called Vakola.’

‘I’ve seen it. Very polluted. Diesel in the air, dust. The system is weakened by pollution over time.’

‘What is this, then?’ Dharmen Shah drummed on his stomach. He pinched his thick forearms. ‘What is this, then? Isn’t this good health?’

‘Listen to me. I gave up three paying appointments for this. You’re picking up fevers, coughs, stomach illnesses. Your immune system is weakening. Leave Bombay,’ said the doctor. ‘At least for a part of each year. Go to the Himalayas. Simla. Abroad. The one thing money can’t buy here is clean air.’

The fat man reached into his shirt pocket. Straightening out a cheaply printed brochure, he handed it to Doctor Nayak.

The ‘King’ of the Suburban Builders, J. J. Chacko, MD of the Ultimex Group, has astounded all his observers, friends, and peers, by acquiring a prime construction plot in Vakola, Santa Cruz (East) at an audacious rate that constitutes the HIGHEST PRICE ever paid for a redevelopment project in this suburb, despite the vigilant and audacious efforts of various competitors to bag the prize instead.

Mr Chacko exclusively discloses to ‘Mumbai Real Estate News’ that an architect from Hong Kong, the noted land of modernism, will be called in to design the world-class apartments; Mr Chacko also believes he will add a park and shopping mall to the area in a few months’ time. Hotels, plazas, gardens, happy families will follow.

Ultimex Group’s motto is ‘The Very Best’ and it has been progressing all over the city of Mumbai. On the personal front, Mr Chacko, visionary, Ultimex Group, is not a known figure, preferring to keep away from the glamour scene of So-Bo (south Bombay) social life. He is ‘mischievous’, ‘shy’, and ‘a family man with simple pleasures’, says one private friend. He is nimble in his thoughts, and sly, like the man of the future; he is a great philanthropist, winner of thirteen gold medals, plaques, dedicatory poems, and paper-based awards for his humanitarian achievement in the field of social work.

He is also passionate about chess and carom.

The doctor read the brochure, and turned it over, and read it again.

‘So?’

‘So that’s J. J. Chacko, head of the Ultimex Group. The area around the Vakola train station is in his pocket. Has three buildings on that side already. He’s coming over to my side now. Know what he did the other day? Paid eighty-one lakhs for a one-room in a slum. Just so everyone would talk about him. In my own territory. Even sends me this brochure in the mail.’

‘So?’

Shah took back the piece of paper, folded it, and replaced it in his pocket. He patted it.

‘How can I take a holiday when J. J. Chacko doesn’t? Does his doctor tell him to slow down?’

Doctor Nayak’s forehead filled with lines.

‘I don’t care if
he
kills himself. But you can’t go straight into another project. Are you doing this for Satish? What could he want more than for his father to live a long life?’

Dharmen Shah drew a line on the window with his finger.

‘There is a golden line in this city: a line that makes men rich.’

Now he dotted three points on it.

‘You have Santa Cruz airport there, you have the Bandra-Kurla Complex there and you have the Dharavi slums there. Why is this line golden? Air travel is booming. More planes, more visitors. Then’ – he moved his finger – ‘the financial centre at Bandra-Kurla is expanding by the hour. Then the government is starting redevelopment in Dharavi. Asia’s biggest slum will become Asia’s richest slum. This area is boiling with money. People arrive daily and have nowhere to live. Except’ – he dotted his golden line in the centre – ‘here. Vakola. The Fountainhead and Excelsior will be ready by November this year. I’ve sold most of the units in them already. But the main show is next year. The Shanghai.’

Doctor Nayak, who had been yawning, closed his mouth shut. He grinned.

‘
That
again. That city is going to kill you, Dharmen.’

‘You should have come with me, Nayak. Roads as far as the eye can see, skyscrapers, everything clean, beautiful.’ Shah hit the window; it trembled. ‘Those Chinese have all the will power in the world. And here we haven’t had ten minutes of will power since Independence.’

The doctor, with a chuckle, got up from his sofa and went to the window. He stretched.

‘The experience of Shanghai being to a middle-aged Indian businessman what the experience of sex is to a teenager. You can’t keep comparing us to the Chinese, Dharmen.’

Shah turned to look at him.

‘How else will we improve? Look at the trains in this city. Look at the roads. The law courts. Nothing works, nothing moves; it takes ten years to build a bridge.’

‘Enough. Enough. Have some breakfast with us, Dharmen. Vishala wants to thank you. You arranged that deal for her friend in Prabha Devi.’ Nayak placed his hand on the fat man’s shoulder. ‘You’re starting to grow on her. Stay. I’ll cancel a fourth appointment for you.’

Dharmen Shah was gazing out of the window.

The hawks rematerialized. Still in combat, blown towards the building by a sudden gust, they came straight at the window and slammed into it, before another current lifted them, as if at a cliff face, vertically up.

‘Bloody nuisance,’ Doctor Nayak said. ‘Leave shit on the windows, fight all day long. Someone should…’ He pulled an imaginary trigger. ‘… and knock them off. One by one.’

*

Punching the buttons on his mobile phone, Shah walked through the basement car park until a spectral voice began echoing under the low ceiling.

‘Mr Secretary, members of Vishram Society…’

Shah slipped the mobile phone into his pocket and walked with stealth.

A tall dark man in a white shirt and black trousers stood at the open door of the basement lift. Facing its half-mirror, he raised his left hand towards it.

‘Mr Secretary, members of Vishram Society, Towers A and B, all your
dreams
are about to come true.’

The man shifted the angle of his jaw: a broken upper tooth now showed prominently in the mirror.

‘Mr Secretary, members of…’

A boy in dirty khaki, a tea tray in his hand, poked the man from behind, asking to be allowed into the lift.

The man spun around with a raised hand. ‘Sister-fucker,
don’t
touch me.’

The tea boy stepped back, shifting the tray with its leaping glasses to his left hand.

Shah cleared his throat.

‘Shanmugham,’ he said, ‘let the boy use the lift.’

With a ‘yes, sir’, the tall man hurried to a grey Mercedes-Benz, whose door he opened for his coughing employer.

On Marine Drive.

Coconut palms bent by the ocean breeze and pigeons in sudden flight added to the sensation of speed on the long straight dash down the avenue. A satin patch of sun gleamed on Back Bay.

‘Has everything but the deadline in it,’ Shanmugham said, turning from the front passenger seat of the Mercedes-Benz to show his boss a printed page. The driver changed gears as a red light finally snared them.

‘I went over it word for word last night, sir. Made sure every comma was right.’

Ignoring the letter, Mr Shah opened a little blue metal box, and flicked what was inside with a plastic spoonlet into his bright red mouth. Small black teeth chewed the
gutka
: he had lost a few.

‘Don’t worry about words, Shanmugham. Tell me about the people.’

‘You saw them, sir.’

‘Only once.’

‘Solid people. Tower B is modern. Finance, high-tech, computers. Tower A is old. Teachers, accountants, brokers. Both are solid.’

‘Teachers?’ The fat man winced. ‘What else about this Society? Has anything bad happened there?’

‘One suicide, sir. Many years ago. A boy jumped from the roof. They didn’t tell me, but I found out from the neighbours.’

‘Just
one
suicide?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I’ll manage.’

At the traffic lights before Malabar Hill, a headless cat lay on the road; from the neck up, it was just a smear of pink pulp imprinted with a tyre tread, an exclamation mark of blood. The builder’s heart went out to it. In a world of trucks and heavy traffic, the little cat had not been given a fair chance.
But what about you, Dharmen
, the pulverized animal asked.
You’re next, aren’t you?

He lowered the window and spat at the corpse.

He dreamed of breakfast. Eight pieces of toast, sliced diagonally, piled into a porcelain dish; a jar of Kissan’s Mixed-Fruit Jam; a jar of Kissan’s Marmalade; a bottle of Heinz Tomato Ketchup; and, suspended in a lobed bowl of water to keep it soft, an iceberg of homemade butter.

The Mercedes drove up Malabar Hill; the ocean glinted to Shanmugham’s left.

As the driver adjusted his gears, they stalled outside an old ruined mansion. Fresh saplings had broken through the exquisitely carved stone leaves and flowers on the nineteenth-century cornice, and a sign hammered into the front wall said:

M
UMBAI
M
UNICIPAL
C
ORPORATION
T
HIS BUILDING IS DANGEROUS, DILAPIDATED, AND UNFIT FOR HUMANS TO BE AROUND
. N
O ONE SHOULD ENTER IT
.

As the car accelerated past, light from the ocean echoed through the ruined mansion.

Shanmugham saw four massive banyan trees growing in the compound of one grand building, their aerial roots clinging as if glued to the boundary wall: four escutcheons of the House of Shah.

The lift took them to the eighth floor.

‘We’ll go to the construction site right after breakfast,’ Shah told his assistant, as they walked towards his flat. ‘The contractor told me this morning that everything was all right and there was no need for me to be there. You know what
that
means.’

A medallion of a golden Lord Ganesha sat on the lintel above the builder’s home.