Aravind Adiga - Last Man in Tower

Satish felt someone seize him by the arm.

‘This is not a thing to be doing here. You should be praying to God and remembering your mother.’

Shah straightened out his son’s arm, and pushed him into the temple. Shanmugham followed.

The temple was crowded, as it is at any hour of the day, yet the Lord Ganesha was receptive to free-market logic, and an ‘express’ line, for anyone who could pay fifty rupees a head, sped the three of them into the sanctum.

‘You’ll be seventeen in a few days. Do you know what I was doing when I was your age? Have you thought about those people whose cars you damaged? You will never again hang out with that gang. Understand?’

‘Yes, Father.’

In his fat fingers his father held a cheque. Satish, by craning his neck as he moved in the queue behind his father, could see that it was a donation of one lakh and one rupees, drawn on the Industrial Development Bank of India. A petition to God to improve his moral character? No, probably for a new building his father was starting today. A Confidence Group project could only begin after two divine interventions: a call from a Tamil astrologer in Matunga with a precise time to lay the foundation stone, and a visit here, to the shrine of Ganesha, whose image was the official emblem of the Confidence Group, embossed on to every formal communication and every building.

They were in sight of the sanctum. Within gilded columns, the red image of the deity was surrounded by four Brahmins, bare-chested, with enormous light-skinned pot bellies filmed over with downy hair: a purdah of human fat around His image. This was the final challenge to the devotees — only a faith that was 100 per cent pure would penetrate through this to reach the Lord.

Satish saw his father joining his palms over his head. Behind Mr Shah, Shanmugham did the same. ‘How cute: he thinks my father is God.’ The chanting of the devotees grew louder — they were right in front of the sanctum now — and Shah turned and glared at his son: ‘Pray.’

Satish closed his eyes, bowed his head, and tried to think of something he really wanted.

‘Please Lord Ganesha,’ he prayed, ‘make my father’s new project fail and I’ll write you a much bigger cheque when I have money.’

At six twenty, with the builder expected at any moment, the compound of Vishram Society glowed with rows of white chairs facing the black Cross.

The event had raised the metabolism of the old Society. The lamps over the entranceway had been turned so they would shine on the plastic chairs. The microphone near the black Cross, borrowed from Gold Coin Society, had been attached to a speaker, borrowed from Hibiscus Society. The members of both Vishram Societies were filling the seats. Secretary Kothari stood by the Cross along with Mr Ravi, the Secretary of Tower B.

Looking down from his window, Masterji saw Mr Pinto sitting in the middle of the array of chairs, his hand on the vacant white seat next to him, looking up.

Masterji raised his right hand — coming, coming .

The phone rang again. It was Gaurav, for the second time in an hour.

‘No, the real-estate developer hasn’t come. Of course I’m going down to listen to him. Yes, I’ll keep an open mind. Now: goodbye, and tell Ronak his grandfather will take him to the aquarium one of these days.’

Back at the window, Masterji saw the person he had been waiting for. He had guessed that a journalist wouldn’t miss an event like this. She moved through the crowd, taking care not to tread on the feet of older and slower people.

He waited with his ear to the door: listening for footsteps on the stairs. He had to do this: had to apologize to the girl. What did his neighbours call him? English gentleman.

‘Ms Meenakshi,’ he said, opening the door. ‘Would you wait a minute? Just a minute?’

His neighbour, who had already put her key into the door of 3B, did not stop.

‘I’m sorry for the other night. I shouldn’t have pushed your friend. The young man. Please tell him I’m sorry.’

Her face partly hidden behind her door, the girl looked at him.

‘ Why did you do it? He wasn’t harming you.’

‘Would you come into my room for a minute, Ms Meenakshi? It’ll be easier for you to understand in here. I was a teacher at St Catherine’s School for thirty-four years. My students have good jobs throughout the city. You may have heard of Noronha, the writer for the Times . You have nothing to fear.’

*

He showed her the glass cabinet, filled with the little silver trophies and citations in golden letters that testified to his three decades of service; the photograph of his farewell party at St Catherine’s, signed by two dozen old boys; and the small framed photo, next to it, of a pale, oval-faced woman in a blue sari.

‘My late wife.’

The girl moved towards the photograph. She wore braces, and her dark steel-rimmed glasses echoed the metal on her teeth. The frames were hexagonal. Masterji counted the number of edges a second time. An ungainly shape: why had it ever come into fashion?

Reading the date below the photograph, she said,

‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s been almost a year now. I’m used to it. She would have liked you, Ms Meenakshi. My daughter would have been your age. Your name is Meenakshi, isn’t it?’

She nodded.

‘Where is your daughter these days? In Mumbai?’ she asked.

‘She died many years before her mother did.’

‘I keep saying the wrong thing.’

‘Don’t worry, Ms Meenakshi. If you don’t ask about people, you don’t find out about people. Here,’ Masterji said, ‘this is her drawing book. I just found it yesterday inside my cupboard.’

He wiped the dust off the book — ‘SANDHYA MURTHY SKETCH & PRACTICE JOURNAL’ — and turned the pages for her.

‘That’s our local church. Isn’t it?’

‘Yes. St Antony’s. And this drawing is of the Dhobi-ghat, see the people washing. No, not the famous one in Mahalakshmi. The one right here. And this is a lovely drawing. This parrot. The best my daughter ever did. She was nineteen years old. Only nineteen.’

He could see from Ms Meenakshi’s eyes that she wanted to know how the artist’s life had ended. He closed the album.

‘I don’t wish to bore you, Ms Meenakshi. I wanted to apologize, that was all. When men grow old, contrary to what you may have heard, they do not become wiser. Are you going down to see Mr Shah?’

Her eyebrows arched.

‘Aren’t you ? He’s giving you all this money.’

‘He says he’s giving us all this money. You must know about developers. You’re a journalist, aren’t you?’

‘No. Public Relations.’

‘What does that mean, exactly? All the young people now want to be in Public Relations.’

‘I’ll come back one day and explain.’

Thanking her for her graciousness in accepting his apology, and inviting her over another day for some ginger tea, he closed the door.

Down below, the hubbub grew. The Secretary’s voice boomed over the microphone: ‘Can everyone hear me? Testing, testing. Can everyone…’

Masterji sat down. Why should he go down? Just because some rich man was coming? He hated these formal gatherings of the Society: every time they held an annual general meeting, the bickering among his neighbours, the petty accusations — ‘your son pisses on the compound wall’, ‘your husband’s gargling wakes me up in the morning’ — always embarrassed him.

He expected another bloodbath this evening, Mrs Rego and Mrs Puri shouting at each other like women at the fish market.

With his feet on the teakwood table, he turned the pages of Sandhya’s album until he reached the parrot. The sketch was incomplete; perhaps she had still been working on it when… He placed his fingers on the edges of the drawing, which felt as if they were still growing. Her living thought.