Aravind Adiga - Last Man in Tower

Looking at the long waxed limbs that showed through the flutter of red cloth, Shanmugham sat, precariously, on two rocks.

He turned around to look at the Mirchandani Manor, which stood on a rocky embankment behind him: sleek, beige-coloured, with a pointed gable. The curtain was still drawn at the seventh-floor window. He had received a text message from the boss at 6.30 a.m.: he assumed that they would be leaving for Vishram by nine.

Good.

Mr Shah should have been there when the offer was made yesterday, shown his teeth, gained their trust, seduced them with smiles and handshakes, done the politician’s number with their babies, and left with a bow and a quotation from a holy book. That was how it had always been done until now. Delay, and lawyers and NGOs smell you out; the vultures swoop lower.

But look at the boss, locked up here in Versova, his other home, all of last evening and night. Just because that astrologer in Matunga had told him that yesterday evening, while auspicious for the offer to be presented, was inauspicious for a personal visit. The boss was growing more and more superstitious: no question of that. A year or two ago he would have insisted that the stars give him better times. Or perhaps it was not those stars, but the fading one on the seventh floor of the Mirchandani Manor that was keeping Mr Shah here — the Versova property inside the Versova property. Shanmugham, a married man, smirked.

Ah, Versova. The ultimate ‘number two’ suburb of the city. Succeed in Bollywood, and you are probably living in Juhu or in Bandra: fail, and you leave; but if you have neither succeeded nor failed, just survived in that grey, ambiguous, ‘number two’ way, you end up here.

Mr Shah was human. He had his physical needs. That Shanmugham understood.

He just wished the boss would not keep him in the dark about his astrological appointments — he had no idea if the astrologer had nominated morning, or evening, or night, as the time for them to go to Vishram. Until the time came, he was expected to stay close to the Manor.

One of the silver foils reflecting sunlight on the model had been sponsored by a bank; on the back, bold red lettering announced:

8.75 % COMPOUNDED CANARA CO-OPERATIVE BANK 365 DAYS FIXED DEPOSIT NO PENALTY WITHDRAWAL APPLY NOW!

Shanmugham went closer, was shooed away by the model’s minders, smiled, and hurried back to the rocks.

On his way up in life, he had discovered petty finance like other men discover cocaine. He subscribed to the Economic Times ; watched CNBC TV; and played with stocks. But he was a married man, with children, and the bulk of his money was locked away in the safety of a bank deposit. 2.8 lakh rupees, in the Rajamani Co-operative Bank, at 8.65 per cent for 400 days. He had been proud of that rate — he had forced his manager to add 0.15 per cent on top of the bank’s normal lending rate.

A helicopter striped the beach with its noisy shadow. Shanmugham, on his knees, did mathematics on hot sand (8.65 per cent as against 8.75 per cent; 400 days as against 365), while the waves creamed on the shore like the extra compound interest he could be making on his principal at the Canara Co-operative Bank.

The ocean breaking below your window; a lizard on the ceiling staring at you with fat envious eyes; and in the next room, a woman, twenty-six years younger, brushing her freshly washed hair and sending waves of strawberry and aloe towards your nostrils.

Dharmen Shah yawned. He saw no reason to get out of his bed.

‘Woke up?’ Rosie called from her room. ‘Come and see what I’ve bought for you, Uncle. A surprise.’

‘Let me sleep, Rosie.’

‘Come.’

She took him by the hand and led him into the living room; there it lay propped against the sofa; a framed three-part poster that showed the Eiffel Tower being erected in stages.

‘For you, Mr Builder. To put up in your office.’

‘Very sweet of you, Rosie,’ Shah said, and put his hand on his heart. He was truly touched, even though the money was his.

‘Eiffel,’ he said, seated at the laminated dining table outside the kitchen, ‘was the same fellow who built the Statue of Liberty. What would we do with him in India? Ask: what is your caste, what is your family, what is your background? Sorry, go away .’

The fat man stretched his hands and flexed his toes. Rosie turned from the kitchen to see him yawning indulgently.

‘Rosie,’ he said. ‘Did I ever tell you that I was my father’s first wife’s son?’

‘No, Uncle. You never tell me about yourself.’

‘They pulled my mother out of a well one day. That is the very first memory I have.’

She came out of the kitchen and wiped her hands.

‘I was four years old. She jumped into the well in our house in Krishnapur.’

‘Why did she do it?’

He shrugged.

‘A year later I had a stepmother. She had four sons. They got all my father’s love. He would not even look at me with kindness. The worst part was this: he made me feel ashamed, Rosie. It was as if my mother’s suicide were my fault. He would glare at me if anyone ever mentioned it.’

‘And then?’

Then came the day he went to his father’s grocery store and asked: ‘May I have a bicycle, Father? It’s my sixteenth birthday’, to be told, ‘No’, even though a younger half-brother had received one. Understanding then that being second-best was what was expected of the sons of a first wife, he left home the next morning with twelve rupees and eighty paise that he had saved up. He walked, took the bus, took the train, ran out of money and walked again, till the sandals had fallen off his feet and he had to tie plantain leaves around them. Reached Bombay. He had never once returned to Krishnapur.

‘Not once?’

‘Why go back? In the village, a man lives as a social animal, Rosie: pleasing his father, grandfather, brothers, cousins. His caste. His community. A man is free here. In the city.’

Rosie waited for more, but he had gone silent; she got up from the table.

‘I’ll bring you the toast in a second, Uncle.’

‘Butter. Lots of it.’

‘Don’t I know? That’s the only thing on earth you love: fresh butter.’

In a little while he was licking butter off triangular pieces of toast at the table. Wiping her hands down the sides of her blue jeans, she watched from the kitchen.

‘Did something happen today, Uncle? You’re very talkative.’

‘Satish is in trouble. The second time this year.’

‘What kind of trouble, Uncle?’

‘Go get me more toast.’

Rosie returned with fresh bread, which she flicked with the back of her fingers on to his plate.

‘The Shanghai, Rosie. Did I tell you that’s the name of my new project?’

‘What happened to Satish, Uncle?’

‘I want to forget about him. I want to talk about my Shanghai.’

‘Bo-ring, Uncle. You know I don’t like construction talk. Some marmalade?’

‘Every man wants to be remembered, Rosie. I’m no different. Once you fall ill, you think about these things. I began as a contractor, then did slum redevelopments because the big developers did not want to get their hands dirty. If I had to kiss this politician’s arse, I did it; if I had to give that one bags of money for his elections, so be it. I climbed. Like a lizard I went up walls that were not mine to go up. I bought a home in Malabar Hill. I taught myself to build in style, Rosie. The Art Deco style of Marine Lines. The Gothic style of VT station. And I will put all the styles into this new one: the Shanghai. When it is done, when they see it, shining and modern, people will understand my life’s story.’

When he got to the city, knowing no one here, he had stood in line outside a Jain temple in Kalbadevi and been fed there twice a day; a store owner pitied his feet and threw him his own chappals; he began working as a delivery boy for that store owner, and within a year he was managing a store himself.