Aravind Adiga - Last Man in Tower

Shanmugham left the site, had lunch on the main road, returned, and waited near the sand. The children came back to watch. He practised again on them. Taking out his blue-checked handkerchief, which his wife laid folded for him every morning on the breakfast table, he wiped his face: temples, nose, and then the back of his neck, down to the first sharp knob of his spine. He folded the handkerchief back into the square his wife had made. Then, lunging forward, he showed the children his jagged tooth: Aaaargh!

They ran.

He left the site, had tea near the main road, and returned to the pile of sand. The children came back to watch. The water buffalo moved near the sand, turning its long curved horns from side to side; a crow glided to the earth in between the buffalo’s horns, and sucked a worm raw out of a hole.

Some time after five o’clock, Shanmugham reached his hand into his pocket and fumbled: his mobile phone had beeped. Mr Shah, standing on the third floor of the Excelsior, was waving at him.

The message had arrived from the astrologer in Matunga.

Leaving his group of spectators seated on their sand pile, Shanmugham sprinted from the construction site, down the mud path, past the Gold Coin and Silver Trophy Societies, past the Tamil temple in front of which boys were playing cricket (hopping to avoid the red cricket ball), and arrived, panting, at Vishram Society, where he placed his hands on the guard’s booth and said: ‘I want to see your Secretary again.’

Ram Khare, who had been fanning himself with his checked handkerchief as he recited from his holy digest, looked up at his visitor and dropped the handkerchief.

He followed the visitor all the way to the Secretary’s office, standing outside and watching as the man put his hands on either side of the Remington typewriter and said: ‘Mr Secretary: I have to make a confession to you. I am not the man I said I was, when I came to see you the other day. My name is, indeed, Shanmugham: that much is true. But I come as a representative of one of Mumbai’s leading realestate development companies, namely, the Confidence Group, and of its managing director, the esteemed Mr Dharmen Shah. Let me tell you now why I had to deceive you the other day. First read this letter that I am placing, with all due respect and reverence, on your desk; while you read it, I will wait here with my…’

The foundation of the 32-year-old friendship between Masterji and Mr Pinto was the ‘No-Argument book’ — a notebook in which every financial transaction between them had been faithfully recorded. In July 1975, the first time they had had lunch together, Mr Pinto, an accountant for the Britannia Biscuit company, had proposed an actuarial conscience to watch over their snacks and coffees. Realizing that petty fights, mainly over money, had disrupted his other friendships, and determined that this one should be saved, Masterji had accepted.

Mr Pinto was making his latest entry into the ‘No-Argument’ — the sixteenth of its kind since the original notebook of ’75.

‘Fill it out later. I can see the waiter.’

‘Okay,’ Mr Pinto said. ‘But you owe me two and a half rupees.’

‘Two and a half?’

‘For the newspaper.’

‘Which one?’

‘ Hindustan Times . You made me buy it last Saturday because you wanted to read a column by some former student of yours.’

‘Nonsense,’ Masterji said. ‘I have no students writing for that paper.’

Mr Pinto knew that Masterji had not bought the Hindustan Times ; a life-long accountant, he deflected a variety of worries into money talk. What he had really meant to bring up was something else: the previous night’s incident. Masterji’s behaviour in pushing the modern girl’s boyfriend, for no good reason — the girl’s screaming had brought people from around the building to the third floor — was so contrary to his usual ‘nature’ that people in Vishram had talked all day long about the incident, retelling and embellishing it. A man deprived in quick order of both occupation and wife was in a dangerous place, some felt. Ajwani, the broker, had even asked how safe was it to leave their children in a darkened room with him any more? Mrs Puri’s stout rebuttal (‘—ashamed of yourself!’) had put an end to such talk.

Mr Pinto knew that it was his duty to let his friend know what they were saying about him in the Society. ‘But it is best to raise such matters after dinner,’ he decided.

Putting away the No-Argument book, he prepared himself for what the Biryani Emperor of Bombay had to offer.

A good biryani needs excitement. A touch of mystery. At Café Noorani near Haji Ali, the waiter comes out with a plate with an oval heap of steaming rice, speckled with yellow and red grains; the chicken was somewhere inside, true, but you had to dig into it with the fork — what aroma! — to find those marinated red chunks.

In contrast — Mr Pinto stuck his fork into his plate — look at this. Two paltry brown chicken pieces, by the side of lukewarm rice. Not a vegetable in sight.

The ‘Biryani Emperor’ was set in between shops selling bright silk saris, which added to the diners’ awareness of the excitement missing from the food. This was a Sunday night; and for the two friends Sunday night was always biryani night. Conservative in most other things, they were reckless on biryani night, trying out a new place each week. Mr Pinto had found the ‘Biryani Emperor of Bombay’ much written about in the papers, even numbered among the ‘the ten best-kept secrets of Mumbai’ in one newspaper.

‘Biryani Emperor of Bombay. What a fraud, Masterji.’

Not hearing a response from his friend, he looked up. He saw Masterji staring at the ceiling of the restaurant.

‘Is it a rat?’

Masterji nodded.

‘Where?’

The roof of the Biryani Emperor was held up by rafters of wood, and a rodent had materialized on one of them.

‘Boy!’ Masterji shouted. ‘Look at that thing up there on the wood.’

The ‘boy’ — the middle-aged waiter — looked up. Undeterred by all the attention, the sly rat kept moving along the rafter, like a leopard on a branch. The ‘boy’ yawned.

Masterji pushed his biryani, not even half eaten, in the direction of the boy.

‘I have a rule. I can’t eat this.’

It was true: he had a ‘one-rat rule’ — never revisit a place where a single rat has been observed.

‘You and your rule.’ Mr Pinto helped himself to some of his friend’s biryani.

‘I don’t like competing for my food with animals. Look at him up there: like a Caesar.’

‘A man has to bend his rules a little to enjoy life in Mumbai,’ Mr Pinto said, chewing. ‘Just a little. Now and then.’

Masterji could not take his eye off the rodent Caesar. He did not notice that his arm was tipping over a glass.

As the waiter came to pick up the pieces, Mr Pinto took out the No-Argument book and added to Masterji’s debit list: ‘Fine for broken glass at (so-called) Biryani Emperor. Rs 10.’

Having paid for food and the broken glass, the two were walking back to Vishram Society.

‘Rats have always fought humans in this city, Mr Pinto. In the nineteenth century there were plagues here. Even today they outnumber us: six rats for every human in Bombay. They have so many species and we have just one. Rattus norvegicus. Rattus rattus. Bandicota bengalensis . We must not let them take over the city again.’

Mr Pinto said nothing. He wished again that Masterji had his Bajaj scooter with him, so they wouldn’t have to walk back on a full stomach. He blamed his wife Shelley for this. After Purnima’s death, she had suggested Masterji follow the advice in a Reader’s Digest article and renounce something to remember the deceased person by.