Aravind Adiga - Last Man in Tower

‘Ajwani, Ajwani.’ The Secretary put his fists on the desk. His voice trembled. ‘All your dreams are about to come true, Ajwani.’

The man who looked like an insurance salesman sat down, and slid a piece of paper over the laminated table towards the broker.

Ajwani put on his half-moon glasses; then he picked up the paper and began reading.

A small Hindu temple stood at an intersection just beyond the fruit and vegetable market. Beggars crouched about it; dappled brown goats wandered around it; Mrs Puri prayed.

Move it, God. The stone that blocks Ramu’s mind. That was how she had always pictured it: a boulder had locked her Ramu’s mind inside a cave. At least stop it from rolling backwards and pushing him deeper into the cave. Who will take care of him when he grows old?

When it came to places of worship in Mumbai Mrs Puri was an expert; Muslim, Christian and Hindu, she had been to each of them for her Ramu. Haji Ali, Mount Mary, SiddhiVinayak, Mahalakshmi, you name it, she had prayed there.

She gave a rupee each to the supplicants squatting by the temple, making sure they earned their money — ‘Ramesh Puri. We call him Ramu. Pray for him with all your strength’ — and went to the market to buy fresh vegetables for dinner.

Curved green stems bearing yellow bananas were suspended from the ceilings of the grocery shops; glitzy plastic satchels of instant Chinese noodles and malt powder twinkled beside the bananas like nouveau-riche cousins. Two Catholic priests, head to toe in white cassocks, stood at the counter of a grocery store, learning about the Reliance Company’s prepaid mobile phone plans from the owner. Mrs Puri overheard. Reliance? Oh, no. Vodafone had much better reception here. She was about to save the two holy men from being swindled, when:

‘Good evening, Sangeeta-ji.’

Ibrahim Kudwa (4C) passed her on his Honda Activa scooter with a wave. His wife had her arms around his waist, and his ten-year-old son Mohammad sat in front of him in his martial-arts outfit (GOJURU TAE KWON-DO); inside his bulky, billowing white kurta, Kudwa had the look of a bleached kangaroo carrying its entire family in its pouches.

Mrs Puri felt lighter. She envied Kudwa his happy family life — just as she knew he in secret envied Ajwani for owning a Toyota Qualis; just as Ajwani probably envied someone else; and this chain of envy linked them, showing each what was lacking in life, but offering also the consolation that happiness was present right next door, in the life of a neighbour, an element of the same Society.

She returned to Vishram with brinjals and beetroots.

The Secretary and Mr Ajwani were standing by the black Cross with folded palms. A man in a white shirt and black trousers — she recognized him as one of the two who had come the other day asking all the questions — was punching a mobile phone behind them.

‘Mrs Puri,’ the Secretary’s voice trembled. ‘Quickly. Up to your room. Your husband wants to tell you himself.’

Her heart contracted. God, what have you done to my family this time? What new horror?

Mrs Rego stood athwart the entrance of the Society.

‘This is an illusion, Mrs Puri. You must understand that. The money will never come.’

‘Let me go,’ Mrs Puri almost pushed the Battleship aside. She ran up the stairs to her Ramu. The door to her flat was open. Her husband and her boy were sitting together in the dark.

‘All of us… all of us… all of us in this building…’ Mr Puri said, when she turned on the light.

‘Yes?’ she whispered. She soothed Ramu’s brow with her palm. ‘Yes?’

‘We’ve paid our taxes, and we’ve helped each other, and we’ve gone to SiddhiVinayak and Mount Mary church and Mahim church…’

‘Yes?’

‘… and now all of us in this building, all of us good people, have been blessed by the Hand of God.’

And then her husband told her why the Secretary, Ajwani, and the strange man were standing by the black Cross, and why the Battleship was attempting to block the entrance.

Rum-pum-pum. Ramu, catching the excitement, walked round his parents. Rum-pum-pum-pum-pum-pum-pum.

Mr Puri watched his wife. ‘Well? What do you think?’

‘If this is really true,’ she said, ‘it will be the first miracle of my life.’

For the past three decades, the residents of Vishram Society 3A (Murthy) and 2A (Pinto) had been four people with one set of sleeping habits. If one couple went to bed early the other couple turned off their television and went to bed. If one couple chose to sing along to Lata Mangeshkar late into the night the other couple also sang along to Lata Mangeshkar late into the night.

Tonight Mr Pinto was enjoying a bout of insomnia. He stared at his ceiling. For thirty years that ceiling — with the chandelier hanging from the centre like a glowing fountain of intelligence — had been an image of his neighbour and friend’s mind.

‘Why is he walking about so much, Shelley? It’s past ten o’clock.’

Mrs Pinto lay next to him. Because of her near blindness, she did not accompany her husband and Masterji on their biryani outings.

‘Nothing to worry,’ she said.

‘Are you sure he has diabetes? He hasn’t seen a doctor yet.’

Mrs Pinto, who could not see the chandelier, concentrated on the footsteps, which went from one end of the room to the other, then stopped (a moment’s pause at the window) before turning around.

‘It’s not diabetes, Mr Pinto.’

‘Then what?’

Mrs Pinto was wiser about men. At her age, the body has become an automatic machine that moves in predictable tics, short repeated motions; but the mind is still capable of all its eccentric leaps. She guessed, from the pattern of the footsteps, the truth about the man up there.

‘The evenings, they must be terrible.’

So many months on his own, without a hand to touch in the dark.

Mrs Pinto turned around in bed so she wouldn’t have to listen.

‘He’s not the only one moving about,’ her husband said. ‘Can you hear? Something’s happening in the building.’

A glow-in-the-dark portrait of the Lord Balaji at Tirupati, his late wife’s favourite deity, hung from a hook on the wall of Masterji’s bedroom. A semi-automatic washing machine sat near the god’s portrait, while a cotton mattress for visitors, rolled up like a striped pink earthworm, was stacked on a small chair next to the machine. A square window with iron bars looked out on to the black Cross in the garden.

The wall was lined with built-in cupboard doors: but this was false cupboarding, meant to imitate the home of a man with more money — behind the doors were six green metal Godrej almirahs , where Purnima had stored everything from her wedding jewellery to the ledgers in which she did the household accounting. Masterji had only been allowed to watch as she went through a thick set of keys, found the right one, opened an almirah , and took out what she wanted. He knew that one shelf in an almirah was for her saris; one was for saris in which bundles of coins and notes were hidden; one was for saris in which chequebooks were wrapped; one was for documents relating to their children’s education; one for their finances. A month after her death, Gaurav had called to ask for her diamond necklace, the one she had bought at the Vummidi store in Chennai; Sonal was eager that her mother-in-law’s jewels shouldn’t be lost. Masterji said he did not remember any such necklace, but promised to look in the cupboards. His son’s coldness, he was sure, had started from this time.

Masterji opened one cupboard, and stared at the Godrej almirah inside, on which he saw himself reflected. A narrow full-length mirror had been set into the body of the almirah. Hundreds of red dots (brick red, mud red, and blood red) covered the mirror’s upper half; his wife used to stick one of these bindis on her forehead each time she left the house. Masterji thought the mirror made him look like a man with diseased skin, or a flowering tree.