Aravind Adiga - Last Man in Tower

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.