Aravind Adiga - Last Man in Tower

In the lift, she asked her husband: ‘You didn’t tell anyone you were coming here, did you?’

He shook his head.

The Evil Eye had blighted Mrs Puri’s life once. Back when she was pregnant, she had bragged to her friends that it was going to be a boy for sure. The Evil Eye heard her and punished her son. She was not going to make that mistake again.

She had kept up the same charade for weeks now, announcing to Ram Khare that she and the boy were off ‘to the temple’ — before catching an autorickshaw to the latest building she was inspecting. Her husband arrived directly. Everything was hush-hush. The Evil Eye would not hear of her good fortune this time.

Mr Puri placed his hand on his son’s head, tapping along the close-cropped hair to the whorl at the centre.

‘How many times have I told you not to do that?’ Mrs Puri pulled Ramu away from his father. ‘His skull is sensitive. It’s still growing.’

When the door opened, Ritika, her friend from Tower B, and her husband, the doctor, were waiting outside.

They stared at each other, and then burst out laughing.

‘What a surprise, if we ended up neighbours again,’ Mrs Puri said, half an hour later. ‘A lovely surprise, of course.’

The two families were at a South Indian restaurant just below the Rathore Towers, in an air-conditioned room with framed photographs of furry foreign dogs and milkmaids.

‘Yes,’ Ritika smiled. ‘Wouldn’t it be?’

Mrs Puri and Ritika had been at the same school in Matunga, then together at KC College in Churchgate. Mrs Puri had had her nose ahead. Debating. Studies. Prize competitions. Even when they were looking at boys to marry. Her groom had been taller. Two inches.

Now Ritika’s two children by her short husband were short, ugly, and normal.

‘How much are you getting for your place?’ Ritika asked. ‘We have 820 square feet.’

‘Ours is 834 square feet. They were going to put common toilets in Tower A, then added that little bit of floor space to the C flat. There are advantages to being in an old building.’

‘So that means you’re getting…’ Ritika looked around for pen and paper, before sketching into the air.

‘1.67 crores,’ Mrs Puri said. ‘And you?’

Ritika withdrew her finger from the air, smiled with dignity, and asked: ‘Did you see one of those three-bedroom places on the top floor? That’s what we were thinking of buying.’

‘We can’t spend more than sixty-five lakhs.’ Mrs Puri mouthed the next sentence: ‘The rest is for Ramu’s future. Only problem is, this gentleman…’ She leaned her head towards her husband. ‘… wants to leave the city.’

Fighting, like love-making, should be hidden from the child: the eighteen-year rule in the Puri household. But this was open provocation.

‘Why would anyone want to live in Mumbai today?’ Mr Puri snapped at his wife. ‘Let’s go to a civilized place like Pune. Some place where ten thousand beggars don’t come every morning by train. I’m sick of this city, I’m sick of its rat race.’

‘The thing to do in a rat race is to win it. Not run away.’

‘A civilized place. Pune is civilized. So is Nagpur.’

Mrs Puri tied a knot into her sari to remind herself. This would be settled after Ramu went to sleep with his Friendly Duck.

‘We have checked this Confidence man,’ Ritika’s short husband said in a low voice. ‘I know someone who knows someone in the construction business. He delays with the money: always delays. But he does pay. We may have to fight him in court to get the money, but we will get it. I don’t worry about him. Not about him.’

‘Then who?’

‘Sangeeta…’ Ritika smiled. ‘… we have heard that some people in Tower A are opposing the deal?’

‘Absolutely no one in our Society opposes it. One person is saying “Maybe”. She’s a Communist. We’ll make her change her mind.’

‘But she’s not the only one, Sangeeta. That old teacher in your Society too.’

‘Masterji?’ Mrs Puri laughed. ‘He’s just a big jackfruit. Prickly outside, soft and sweet inside. He’s a born quarreller, not a born fighter. Always complaining about this, about that. But the moment the Pintos say yes, he’ll say yes. I know my Masterji.’

The waiter approached with plates of crispy dosas.

‘Just you wait and see, Ritika, we’ll beat you to it. Tower A will have our special general meeting and hand in our forms first.’

When the waiter put down their dosas, everyone noticed that the biggest one had been placed in front of Mrs Puri.

They sat on a bench in the small open square outside the restaurant, in the shade of a small Ashoka tree. Mrs Puri had not forgotten the knot in her sari, but it had to be established that there was no fighting between Mummy and Daddy, so they sat close to each other. Ramu, swinging his legs in between them, played alternately with her fingers and his.

A couple came up to them. The woman asked: ‘We’re looking for Rathore Towers.’

‘Right behind us.’ Mrs Puri pointed.

The woman wore a svelte black salwar kameez. Her man was in a nice business shirt. Smart young couple.

Mrs Puri put her arm around Ramu and told the young woman: ‘This is my son. His name is Ramesh. We may be your neighbours.’

Mr Puri raised his eyebrows: a thing like this had never been done before. Introducing Ramu to a stranger.

All these years his wife had lived a leper’s length away from people. Her normal response when strangers came by was to tuck Ramu behind her body; that may have been why she let it grow so fat after his birth. He was still thinking about her extraordinary behaviour, when:

‘This Sunday we are all going to the Taj. Did you hear me?’

‘The Taj?’ Mr Puri asked. ‘Have you gone mad now, Sangeeta?’

Of course not. Since she was a child, she had seen its pale conical lampshades behind the dark windows: the Sea Lounge at the Taj Hotel. This Sunday they would walk in, hand in hand, and ask the waiter: ‘A table in Sea Lounge, please.’ (‘ The Sea Lounge,’ Mr Puri corrected her.) Then they would sit down and say: ‘We want coffee, please.’ Good behaviour would be observed by all, especially by Ramu, who would not rub his gums, drool, or kick legs about. Maybe a film star would come in. After settling the bill (hundreds and hundreds of rupees), they would keep it as a memento.

Mr Puri, who was going to protest, kept quiet. Why not? he thought. Other human beings did it.

Two sharp fingers scraped his leg: a beggar child. Feeling guilty for his Taj fantasy, he gave the child a two-rupee coin.

‘Don’t criticize me for doing that,’ he said, expecting the worst from his wife.

‘Why would I?’

‘For twenty-five years I’ve always wanted to give to beggars. Even one rupee, and you became angry.’

This was a slander on her; but she let it stand — if it made Mr Puri happy, let him say it. He too had suffered enough in life.

It began to rain. They scampered for a rickshaw; Mr Puri got in first with the boy, and his wife, after undoing the knot in her sari, joined them.

The end of the earth. As the sun dies out, it cools and turns into a red giant, and then expands and expands, until it has consumed all the inner planets, including the earth.

At this point, the ceiling lights go off — to add drama. Shadows are cast on the wall in the glow of the lamp light.

The preparations for the day’s ‘top-up’ were all in place. With two hours to kill, Masterji picked up The Soul’s Passageway after Death and made another attempt to finish it.

He followed the atma ’s flight of enlightenment over the seventh and final ocean of the afterlife, beyond which glittered the peaks of snowy mountains. Another 10,000 years of purgation awaited it here.