Aravind Adiga - Last Man in Tower

‘When are you signing the acceptance form, Father, and taking the money?’

Sonal, from the other room, supplied the lines he had forgotten:

‘Father-in-law, there are questions of… income tax, estate tax. Life insurance. We have to plan. Sooner you say “yes”, the better for all of us.’

Masterji glared at the chikki as he spoke.

‘Son, there are the things we know about Vishram. Physically it has fallen behind but the memories of my late wife…’

‘You mean my mother.’

‘Yes, your mother, and your sister. It is not such an easy thing, to pack up and leave.’

As his father watched, Gaurav ripped open another packet of chikki ; his wife spoke for him.

‘Have you seen the new buildings in Parel, Father-in-law?’

Leaning back, so that he could see her with her feeding spoon, dripping with yoghurt, Sonal smiled.

‘They’re duplexes. Not yet built and each is sold already. NRIs from England. You know how much they cost?’ She fed her father yogurt. ‘Twenty-seven crores each. All sold.’

Twenty-seven crores each. Trying to make sense of how much money that was, Masterji thought of the ocean.

‘Twenty-seven crores,’ Gaurav said. ‘Twenty-seven.’

Look at the boy, bleating his wife’s words. Masterji glared once again at the chikki in his son’s hand.

The maid brought in a piece of barfi and six or seven fried banana chips and put them on the table in front of him. The portions were small. This was always the case when he came here; food merely tiptoed across his plate.

‘We have your mother’s one-year anniversary coming up in October, son. I spoke to Trivedi, he’s eager to perform the ceremony. The three of us will go to Bandra like last time. I hope you’ll join us this year, Sonal. And bring Ronak too.’

He ate the banana chips one by one.

Gaurav picked up the Radium packet and sniffed. ‘Father, this is a cheap thing, not good for the boy.’ He let it fall.

Masterji got up and went to the balcony. Spotting Ronak playing down in the compound, he clapped. Without turning to his son, he said: ‘Not one of my gifts for Ronak is liked in this household. I give him a book, a wonderful blue book. The Illustrated History of Science . It was returned to me by his mother.’

He clapped again.

Sonal leaned back from the inner room to look at her husband. Answer, answer , his eyes urged her.

Moving towards her father with another spoonful of yoghurt, she disappeared from sight.

‘Father, you always expected me to read books, even when I was a boy. You made me learn French. I am no good at these things. Mother told you this: I am not intellectual like you.’ Gaurav opened a new bar of peanut- chikki . ‘And, Father, the practice among Sindhis is to give gold when a child is born. Sonal once told you this, thinking that a south Indian like you might not know it. But you never gave Ronak any gold. One of Mother’s necklaces is still in the old place. A Vummidi necklace. In her almirah . It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.’

After clapping once more — ‘Ronak, it’s me, come up!’ — Masterji returned to the room. He sat down in front of his son.

‘You’re too lazy to read, but it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t encourage Ronak. It is life’s greatest joy and power: the ability to learn. Remember what I used to tell you. Lord Elphinstone refused the governor-generalship so he could write his history of India.’

Gaurav ate more chikki .

Sonal, Sonal, please come out — he licked his thumbnail, thumb, index finger nail, index finger, and the webbing in between thumb and index finger. Come out before I get up and shout at the old man .

But then the smell of sweat and sun entered the room; a wooden cricket bat dropped to the ground; and a boy was hoisted up into the air in his grandfather’s arms.

In the kitchen Sonal did mathematics. ‘It’s 810 square feet, you say, Father-in-law? That would be… 1.62 crores. Let me double-check. 810 times 20,000. Yes, I think that’s right… 1,62,00,000.’

She came out with a glass of pineapple juice on a tray.

‘Not for me, Sonal, too much sugar.’

He offered the glass to Ronak, who sat next to him on the sofa, but the well-mannered child refused.

‘This Mr Shah had better pay on time, Father-in-law. If not, Gaurav has a connection at work who knows a good property lawyer. Once you sign the agreement, you can move in here,’ Sonal said. ‘Both our fathers will be with us.’

‘It might be a good idea,’ Masterji said. ‘To be close to Ronak.’

His son reached for the bar of chikki , broke off a chunk, and began chewing again.

Sonal smiled at her husband. ‘Of course, if Father-in-law doesn’t want to stay with us, he can always buy a one-bedroom flat in Vakola.’ She said it out loud: ‘One-six-two-zero-zero-zero-zero-zero!’

Masterji, stroking his grandson’s wet hair, heard a gurgling noise from the inside room — as if even that brain-dead old man was excited. Senility for a banker , Masterji thought, must consist of lots of zeroes going round and round in his head .

‘Are you sure you won’t drink that pineapple juice before you leave?’ Sonal said. ‘Just a sip? Share it with your grandson?’

The lift was broken, so he walked down the stairs.

When he raised his leg, the stair dissolved, and he put it down into soft, wet black air. He held on to the solid banister to stop himself sliding. His arthritic left knee throbbed. O, Purnima, he prayed, Purnima. His blood sugar was sputtering like the engine of an old autorickshaw. O, Purnima.

Explosions of glucose — comets and supernovae — lit up his private darkness; a bacchanalia had begun in his hyper-metabolizing cells.

Holding on to the banister he lowered himself down on to the steps. He could hear Purnima yelling at him from the oceans of the other world. Why hadn’t he taken that diabetes test yet?

Is it possible , he wondered, that Sonal gave me that pineapple juice precisely to make this happen? She kept insisting .

Down below on the landing, a man in rags, one of the servants of Gaurav’s Society, slept with his arm over his face.

Masterji touched the wall of his son’s Society. It did not remember Purnima or Sandhya. Soon he would be living within four walls like this.

Striding over the sleeping servant, he walked on down, still wondering about Sonal and the pineapple juice.

‘Why is it taking him so long to come back?’ Mrs Puri asked.

Half a dozen residents had gathered in the Secretary’s room to celebrate Masterji’s return. The moment he would walk in with a smile and say, ‘Yes.’ A microphone had been placed near the black Cross; the plan was to hold an impromptu general meeting and have the whole thing done with in ten minutes.

The Secretary patted his comb-over into place. ‘He is stuck in the train, maybe.’

Ajwani had been standing in a corner of the office punching away on his mobile phone: now he turned the phone around and tapped it against a filing cabinet.

‘I’m getting worried. Look here…’ He smiled at the Secretary. ‘… why don’t you type out our Acceptance form now? Just type a form saying, All Members of Tower A have agreed and signed . As soon as he comes, get him to sign it. He may change his mind any minute. A man like that, he’s unpredictable. Remember what he did to the modern girl’s boyfriend?’

Ajwani gave the air a push.

Kothari put two fingers over the keys of the Remington, and then retracted them one by one.

‘I think it’s against the rules to type a form like that until everyone has actually said yes.’