Aravind Adiga - Last Man in Tower

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.’

‘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.