Aravind Adiga - Last Man in Tower

In a socialist economy, the small businessman has to be a thief to prosper. Before he was twenty he was smuggling goods from Dubai and Pakistan. Yes, what compunction did he have about dealing with the enemy, when he was treated as a bastard in his own country? The pirateering felt natural; on the back of trucks marked as ‘emergency wheat supplies’, he shipped in cartons of foreign-made watches and alarm clocks into Gujarat and Bombay. But then the Constitution of India was suspended; the Emergency was imposed — the police given orders to arrest all blackmarketeers, smugglers, and tax-dodgers. Even if you hated that period, you had to admire the guts: the only time when anyone showed any will power in this country. He had to get rid of his black money — Man has risen from the earth , he thought, he may as well put his money back into the earth . A construction company was formed — with an English name, of course: it was part of the new world of talent-and-nothing-else. Smuggling was for small men, he found out; the real money in this world lies on the legitimate side of things. Starting out as a contractor for another builder on Mira Road, he soon realized that much as he loved cement and steel, he loved people more. The human being was his clay to squeeze. Poorer human beings, to begin with. He entered the business of ‘redeveloping’ chawls and slums — buying out the tenants of ageing structures so that skyscrapers and shopping malls could take their place; a task requiring brutality and charm in equal measure, and which proved too subtle for most builders — but one he negotiated with skills from his smuggler years, allying himself with politicians, policemen, and thugs to bribe and bounce people out of their homes. With an instinct for fairness that taught him to prefer (unlike many others in his profession) the use of generosity over violence, he earned a reputation as a man who made other men rich, always preferring to entice a recalcitrant tenant out of a building with a cheque rather than with a knife, and waiting until there was no other option but to order Shanmugham (as he had done in his most recent redevelopment project, in Sion) to go all the way: to shove a man’s head out of a window and indicate that the rest of him would follow in three seconds — unless a signature appeared on the appropriate document. (It did.)

Rosie fed more bread into the toaster. Shah heard the click of the toaster and thought of her with gratitude, bringer of toast and floral perfume into his life, this chubby girl from the provinces — All the way from Ranchi, would you believe it? He licked his fingers and waited for more bread. How little it takes to be happy in life: soft white beds, buttered toast, and plump young girls, three pleasures that are essentially interchangeable.

In the shower the hot water flowed through gilded fittings; he stood on green onyx and felt the warmth on his scalp.

His wife had died five years ago. After a year in which he kept to himself, he had started taking women to hotel rooms. Then he built his own hotel here, in the seventh floor of this Versova building. Down pillows and cushions, pure white bedsheets of 2.8 micron pore size to repel allergens. Lights that turn themselves on as you clap your hands: so you don’t even have to move from bed. The flat in Malabar Hill was messier, subject to Giri’s crankiness; and it was home, things broke. This place with the sea view had palace-of-sin plushness.

‘How is your spit today, Uncle?’ — Rosie shouted at the bathroom. It was a role every mistress sooner or later took to playing, that of surrogate mother.

‘Clear, Rosie.’

He coughed and spat, then dipped his finger in the spit and inspected it. Last December it had been much darker, and sometimes flecked with red.

‘Don’t lie to me, Uncle. I can hear the cough. Like the thunder they use in films.’

‘If I had designed the human body, I’d have done a much better job, Rosie. The materials used are not the best. Corners have been cut. The structure collapses too soon.’ He laughed. ‘But I’m fine, Rosie. By the grace of Lord SiddhiVinayak I’m fine.’

By the grace of the Lord. Rosie knew exactly what that meant. By my own grace . Just like a film producer who says, once you’ve sucked his cock, ‘By the grace of God, you’ll get a small role in this film.’

She sighed, and cleared the greasy plates from the table.

Six months earlier: Shah had been waiting in a restaurant for an order of chow mein that his mistress of the time, Nannu, had wanted him to bring her, personally; she was in one of her hysterical moods. The pretty girl in the tank-top had smiled at him, walked up to him without an invitation, and stuck out her hand: ‘My name is Rosie. Yours?’ He had known, at once, what was on offer. This was Versova, after all. ‘Thank you,’ he had smiled and left. Nannu was lighter-skinned.

Next morning — one of those small things that add up to make life grand — opening the newspaper, he saw this in a side-column: ‘Aspiring model arrested in Oshiwara gym. Accused of stealing from women’s locker.’ He read the name of the girl: ‘Rosie.’ A challenge thrown down to his will power. He had cancelled the morning’s meetings, driven down to the Oshiwara gym; settled in cash with the gym owner; gone to the police station, freed her, and looking at her, her shoulders, hair, still, after a day in the lock-up, in good shape, had decided, ‘She’ll do.’ Nannu was given three days to clear out of this flat; after which he moved Rosie in here, telling her she could continue to do what she came to Bombay for: try and make it in the movies. No need for petty hustling as long as she lived with him; just one great hustle and humiliation to accept. One or two mornings a week she went to see a producer about an itty-bitty role in a new production; sometimes had her hopes of success renewed, at other times worried about ageing, felt she would never make it, and asked for ‘help’ in setting up a hair-dressing studio of her own, which Shah promised she would receive. At the end of their relationship. But until then, if she made eyes at anyone else, she would fly head-first into the Indian Ocean.

When he came out of the shower, she was singing songs in a foreign language.

‘Opera,’ she shouted in response to his question. There was a new craze for Italian opera in Bollywood, and she was trying out bits of songs. They were called ‘aria’.

‘Ariya,’ he said, rubbing his hair with a soft white towel. ‘Is that how it’s said?’

‘Aaa-ria, Uncle. Don’t pronounce things like a Gujarati village goat.’

‘Ha, ha. But I am a Gujarati village goat, Rosie.’

Another of her moods; and he enjoyed all of them. ‘Get a room with a sea view. One wall is always new,’ they said in real estate. Get a woman who changes and you have a dozen women. He relished the smell of Pears’ Soap on his skin; he wanted her in his arms.

‘Why don’t you introduce me to Satish, Uncle? I’m in his age group, I can talk to him if he’s in trouble,’ she asked, when he emerged, still rubbing his hair.

‘I’ll bring you a model of the Shanghai, Rosie. It’s so beautiful, you should see it. Gothic, Italian, Indian, Art Deco styles, all in one. My whole life story is in it.’

‘Why don’t you introduce me to Satish, Uncle?’

He bent down and rubbed more vigorously, so the moisture from his hair irritated her face.

‘I’m not your prostitute! I’m not your property! I don’t give a shit about your fucking money!’

With his head bent to the floor, covered in his towel, he heard feet thump on the floor, and a door going Slam! He rubbed his hair and asked the floor (dark green tiles with embedded white flakes, a favourite pattern, used in all his buildings): why, when she is worried about your interest in her, will a woman do the very things that will cause your interest to drop further?