Last Man in Tower (17 page)

Now a homeless man began moving over the debris; he must have found a hole in the fence. He squatted and spat. His spit contributed to the reclaiming thunderhead, as would his shit, soon to follow. Shah closed his eyes and prayed to the debris, and to the man defecating in it:
Let me build, one more time
.

‘Sir…’ He felt a hand on his shoulder. ‘It’s not clean here.’

Shanmugham, in his white shirt and black trousers, was standing behind him.

They returned to light and noise.

‘What is that Secretary doing?’ Shah asked, as they walked back to the street fair.

He had just heard the bad news: the four
No
s at Vishram had become three, but those three
No
s were simply not budging. And the Secretary protested on the phone that there was nothing
he
could do to make them sign the agreement.

‘I don’t know why they made him Secretary, sir,’ Shanmugham said. ‘He’s useless. But there is someone else… a broker… who might help us. He has asked for money.’

‘That’s fine. Spend another lakh, or two lakhs, if you have to. Spend even more than that, if absolutely necessary. October the 3rd is near by.’ Shah cupped his hand around his ear. ‘Every day I can hear it coming closer. Can you hear it too?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Shanmugham said. ‘I can hear it. I can hear October 3 coming closer.’

The builder stopped and turned his head. A sugarcane juice stand had been brought to the side of the road as part of the fair. His eyes rose to the top of the stand, where the canes had been piled, six foot high, the tallest of them curling down at the ends, like the claws of a crab.

The cane-crushing machine was lit up by naked electric bulbs. In a square of raw light, a boy turned a red wheel, which turned smaller green wheels, which tinkled and crushed the cane, whose juice, dribbling down a gutter full of irregular chunks of ice, passed through a dirty strainer into a stainless-steel vessel that fogged up from the cold liquid. Poured into small conical glasses, and sold to customers for five rupees each, seven for a larger glass.

‘I used to live on this juice when I came to Bombay, Shanmugham. Live on it.’

‘Sir: they use dirty water to make the ice. Jaundice, diarrhoea, worms, God knows what else.’

‘I know. I know.’

The bright, fast, musical wheels turned once again, crushing the cane – Shah imagined bricks rising, scaffolding erected, men hoisted miles into the air on such tinkling energy. If only he were new to Bombay again: if only he could drink that stuff again.

On the drive back, in his mind’s eye he continued to see them, the sugarcane-crusher’s wheels turning under the naked light bulbs, discs of speeding light punching holes into the night like spinning machines of fate, having completed their day shift, and now working overtime.

Late in the night, the first storm crashed into the city.

20 JUNE

Low rentals, five minutes to Santa Cruz train station, ten minutes to Bandra by auto. There are many advantages to life in Vakola, yes, but Ajwani, an honest broker, advises first-timers that there is also one big negative.

Not the proximity of slums (they stay in their huts, you stay in your building, who bothers whom?). Not the Boeing 747s flying overhead (cotton in your ears, arm on your wife, off to sleep).

But-one-thing-you-must-know-before-you-move-here: Ajwani taps his mobile phone on his laminated table.
This is a low-lying area
. One day each monsoon, there is a storm, and on that day life in Vakola becomes impossible.

By morning floodwater had risen to waist height near the highway signal and in parts of Kalina. Vishram Society, on higher ground, was more secure, but the alley leading up to it was a foot below water; every now and then an autorickshaw arrived, scything storm water, discharging a client near the gate, and returning gondola-like. Abandoning the guard’s booth, Ram Khare sought the protection of the Society. Not that this protection was absolute; a continuous spray came through the stars in the grille. Buckets kept under the leaky spots in the roof overflowed every fifteen minutes; tongues of fresh algae and moss grew under the stairwell. Shifting diagonals of rain lashed the rusty gate and the blue roof of the guard’s booth; the water fell thick and glowing, and though the sun was hidden the rain-light was strong enough to read a newspaper in.

In the Renaissance Real-Estate Agency, Ajwani saw that it was futile to expect clients, told Mani ‘This is the day that comes once a year’, and staggered back to his Society under an umbrella.

At four o’clock, the sky was bright again. The thunderclouds, like a single dark bandage, had been stripped away, exposing a raw sun. People ventured out of their buildings into the water, the colour of Assam tea, on which floated rubbish and blazing light.

21 JUNE

The morning after the storm, Masterji paced about his living room. The compound was full of storm water and slush. He had just washed his brown trousers in the semi-automatic washing machine, and they would be flecked with red and black if he took even a few steps outside.

He knocked on Mrs Puri’s door, hoping for a cup of tea and some conversation.

‘You’ve become a stranger to us, Masterji,’ Mrs Puri said, when she opened the door. ‘But we have to go to SiddhiVinayak temple soon, Ramu and I. Let us talk tomorrow.’

It was true that his neighbours had not seen much of Masterji lately.

Parliament no longer met because of the rains; and, in any case, all the talking now took place behind closed doors. A hush of covert business had fallen over a garrulous Society. Amidst the silent germination of schemes and ambitions all around him, Masterji sat like a cyst, looking at the rain and his daughter’s drawings of Vakola, or playing with his Rubik’s Cube, until there was a knock on the door and Mr Pinto shouted, ‘Masterji, we are waiting, it’s time for dinner.’

A man’s past keeps growing, even when his future has come to a full stop.

Though the men and women around him dreamed of bigger homes and cars, his joys were those of the expanding square footage of his inner life. The more he looked at his daughter’s sketches, the more certain places within Vishram – the stairwell where she ran up, the garden that she walked around, the gate that she liked to swing on – became more beautiful and intimate. Sounds were richer. A scraping of feet somewhere in the building reminded him of his daughter wiping her tennis shoes on the coir mat before coming in. Sometimes he felt as if Sandhya and Purnima were watching the rain with him, and there was a sense of feminine fullness inside the dim flat.

When the sky cleared, he would notice it was evening, and walk along the garden wall. When the breeze scattered the dew from the begonia leaves on to his hand, she was at his side again, his little Sandhya, tickling his palm as in the old days. He superimposed her features on the women walking about the garden. Nearly thirty she would have been. Her mother was slim, she would have stayed slim.

At dinner the Pintos would say, ‘Masterji, you’ve become so quiet these days’, and he would only shrug.

They asked him once or twice if he had had his diabetes test done yet.

Though he was spending more time by himself, he would not say he had been bored; he was conscious, indeed, of a strange contentment. But now, when he wanted to talk to someone, he found himself all alone.

He opened the door and went into the stairwell. Instead of going down the steps, he walked up. He walked up to the fifth floor, and paused in front of a steep single-file staircase, which led to the rooftop terrace.

After the suicide of the Costello boy in 1999, the Society had discouraged the use of the terrace, and children were forbidden from going up there.

Masterji went up the staircase to the terrace. The small wooden door at the end of the stairs had not been opened in a long time, and he had to push with his shoulder.

And then, for the first time in over a decade, he was on the roof of Vishram Society.

Fifteen years ago, Sandhya had come up here in the evenings to play on a rocking-horse, which was still rotting in a corner. Planting a foot on it, he gave it a little kick. It creaked and rocked.

Years of uncleaned guano had calcified on the floor of the terrace, and rainwater had collected over it.

Masterji walked slowly through water to the wall of the terrace. From here, he could see Mary picking up leaves and twigs that littered the compound, and Ram Khare walking back into his booth.

Mrs Puri came out into the compound with Ramu; they went towards the black Cross with a bowl full of channa. As if she had a sixth sense, Mrs Puri looked up and saw her neighbour up on the terrace.

‘Masterji, what are you doing up there?’ she shouted. ‘It’s dangerous on the roof.’

Blushing with embarrassment, like a schoolboy who had been caught, Masterji came down the stairs at once.

To make up for his indiscreet walk around the terrace, he read from
The Soul’s Passageway after Death
for a while; then tried playing with his Rubik’s Cube. Eventually he yawned, shook himself awake, and walked down to the Secretary’s office.

Ajwani was in a corner of the office, reading the front page of the
Times of India
through his half-moon glasses. Secretary Kothari had another section of the paper; he was examining the real-estate advertisements. The two men were about to sip tea from little plastic cups; Kothari found a third cup into which he poured Masterji some of his tea. Ajwani came to the table to do the same.

‘Wonderful isn’t it, the rain,’ Kothari said, moving the little cup towards Masterji. ‘The whole world has become green. Everything grows.’

‘And buildings fall,’ Masterji said. Taking the
Times of India
from Ajwani, he read aloud the big story on the front page: ‘A three-storey building in Crawford Market fell during yesterday’s storm, killing the watchman and two others. Since the building was home to over twenty people, the people say it is a miracle only three died.’

Masterji kept reading. The desire for self-improvement had been the cause of destruction. Against the advice of the municipal engineer, the residents had installed overhead water tanks, and these, too heavy for the old building, had bent the ancient roof, which broke in the storm. Death, because they had wanted a better life.

‘There was also a collapse in Wadala. That’s in the inside pages.’

Ajwani crumpled his teacup and aimed it at the wastebasket.

‘Still, that makes it only six deaths this year. What was it last year? Twenty? Thirty? A light year, Masterji. A light year.’

A macabre competition that the men in Vishram had played for at least a decade. If it was a ‘heavy’ year for monsoon-related deaths, it accrued somehow to the advantage of one side (Masterji and Kudwa); a ‘light’ year was a point scored by the other (Mr Puri and the Secretary).

‘A light year,’ Masterji conceded. ‘But I’m hopeful. There’s a long way to go yet before this monsoon is over.’

‘I don’t like this competition,’ Ajwani said. ‘The roof that’s collapsing could one day be our own.’

‘Vishram? Never. This building would have lasted a thousand years.’

‘
Will
last,’ Masterji corrected the Secretary, with a smile.

‘
Would
have lasted.’

Masterji looked at the ceiling with a stylish wave of his hand: sardonic forbearance, as a character in a play might express it.

‘One point to your party,’ he said.

‘How is the girl in 3B? The journalist. Still troubling you?’

‘Oh, not at all. We’re friends now. She had tea with me the other day.’

‘Import-Export gave her notice. She has to leave by 3 October.’

Masterji turned to his left to face the broker. ‘Is Hiranandani finding a new tenant?’

‘Yes,’ Ajwani smiled. ‘Mr Shah, of the Confidence Group.’

Masterji looked at the ceiling and raised his voice. ‘Another point for that party. We’re losing here, my fellow Opposition members.’

Removing his glasses, Ajwani smiled. ‘I’ll give you the point, Masterji. I’ll give you one hundred debating points. But in return, will you do something for me? Both my boys are in your science top-up. Your two biggest fans in the world. Tell me
everything
you say. We must always make experiments before we believe things. Correct? Just for today, Masterji, let this Ajwani be a teacher to you. Make an experiment for him? Will you walk down the road, and take a look at what Mr Shah is building beyond the slums? And then will you honestly say that you are
not
impressed by this Mr Shah?’

Ramu, in T-shirt and jeans, had come down the stairs with his mother’s NO NOISE sign in his hands.

‘We’re going to SiddhiVinayak temple – we’ll pray for everyone,’ Mrs Puri said, telling the boy to wave at his three uncles, who waved back.

Ajwani, drawing his chair up to the Secretary’s table, summoned the other two with his fingers.

‘She comes back every day with brochures for new buildings, which turn up in her rubbish next day. Yet she says she goes to the temple.’

Masterji whispered back: ‘Your competition has just increased, Ajwani. God must have joined the real-estate business.’

Three men burst out laughing, and one of them thought:
Exactly like old times
. Nothing
has changed
.

When Masterji went outside, he found Ram Khare by the compound wall, examining a gleaming red object, a brand-new Bajaj Pulsar motorbike.

‘It’s Ibrahim Kudwa’s,’ Ram Khare said. ‘Bought it yesterday.’

‘He shouldn’t be spending money he doesn’t have.’

The guard smiled. ‘The mouth waters before it has food. It’s the human way, Masterji.’

The Pulsar’s metal skin gleamed like red chocolate. The segments of its body were taut, swollen, crab-like; the owner’s black helmet was impaled on the rear-view mirror. Masterji remembered the scooter he had once owned, and his hand reached out.

A rooster, one of those that wandered about Vakola and sometimes slipped into the compound of a Housing Society, flew on to the driver’s seat and clucked like a warning spirit.

This is what a woman wants. Not gold, not big cars, not easy cash.

This
.

Rich dark fine-grained wood, with a fresh coat of varnish and golden handles.

Mrs Puri moved her hands over the face of the built-in cupboard, pulled the doors open, and inhaled the fresh-wood smell.

‘Madam can open the drawers too, if she wants.’

But Madam was already doing that.

The family Puri were in a sample flat on the sixth floor of the Rathore Towers – beige, brand-new, double-bedroomed, approximately 1,200-square-foot built-up area. Mr Puri stood by the window with Ramu, showing his son the common swimming pool, the gym with weight-loss guarantee, and the common table-tennis room down below.

The guide, who was holding a brochure in her hands, turned on a light.

‘And here is the second bedroom. If Madam would come this way?’

Madam was too busy opening the drawers. She was imagining the sunlight glowing on this beautiful piece of dark wood every morning for the rest of her life. Stocked chock-a-block with Ramu’s fragrant clothes. His towels in this drawer. His T-shirts here. T-shirts
and
shorts here. Polo shirts here. Fluffy trousers here.

‘Come this way, sir. And the child. And you too, madam. I’m sorry, I have another appointment after this.’

‘He’s not a child. He’s eighteen years old.’

‘Yes, of course,’ their guide said. ‘Observe the fittings and finishings. The Rathore Group is all about fittings and finishings…’

‘Why are there no curtain rods in the rooms?’

‘Madam is correct. But the Rathore Group would be happy to add curtain rods for someone like Madam.’

Red curtains would be perfect here. The place would look like a lighthouse at night. Neighbours would notice; people on the road would look up and say, ‘Who lives there?’

Mrs Puri pressed the soft hand that was in hers.
Who else?

What an enormous, high-ceilinged, light-welcoming apartment. And look at the floor: a mosaic of black and white squares. A precise, geometrical delineation of space, not the colourless borderless floors on which she had fought and eaten and slept all her married life.

In the lift, she asked her husband: ‘You didn’t tell anyone you were coming here, did you?’

He shook his head.

The Evil Eye had blighted Mrs Puri’s life once. Back when she was pregnant, she had bragged to her friends that it was going to be a boy for sure. The Evil Eye heard her and punished her son. She was not going to make that mistake again.

She had kept up the same charade for weeks now, announcing to Ram Khare that she and the boy were off ‘to the temple’ – before catching an autorickshaw to the latest building she was inspecting. Her husband arrived directly. Everything was hush-hush. The Evil Eye would not hear of her good fortune this time.

Mr Puri placed his hand on his son’s head, tapping along the close-cropped hair to the whorl at the centre.

‘How many times have I told you not to do that?’ Mrs Puri pulled Ramu away from his father. ‘His skull is sensitive. It’s still growing.’

When the door opened, Ritika, her friend from Tower B, and her husband, the doctor, were waiting outside.

They stared at each other, and then burst out laughing.

‘What a surprise, if we ended up neighbours again,’ Mrs Puri said, half an hour later. ‘A lovely surprise, of course.’

The two families were at a South Indian restaurant just below the Rathore Towers, in an air-conditioned room with framed photographs of furry foreign dogs and milkmaids.

‘Yes,’ Ritika smiled. ‘Wouldn’t it be?’

Mrs Puri and Ritika had been at the same school in Matunga, then together at KC College in Churchgate. Mrs Puri had had her nose ahead. Debating. Studies. Prize competitions. Even when they were looking at boys to marry. Her groom had been taller. Two inches.

Now Ritika’s two children by her short husband were short, ugly, and normal.

‘How much are you getting for your place?’ Ritika asked. ‘We have 820 square feet.’

‘Ours is 834 square feet. They were going to put common toilets in Tower A, then added that little bit of floor space to the C flat. There are advantages to being in an old building.’

‘So that means you’re getting…’ Ritika looked around for pen and paper, before sketching into the air.

‘1.67 crores,’ Mrs Puri said. ‘And you?’

Ritika withdrew her finger from the air, smiled with dignity, and asked: ‘Did you see one of those three-bedroom places on the top floor? That’s what we were thinking of buying.’

‘We can’t spend more than sixty-five lakhs.’ Mrs Puri mouthed the next sentence: ‘The rest is for Ramu’s future. Only problem is, this gentleman…’ She leaned her head towards her husband. ‘… wants to leave the city.’