Aravind Adiga - Last Man in Tower

He spoke so all would hear:

‘… have not said yes, have not said no.’

‘… you said it was over , Shanmugham. A week ago.’

Driving through Juhu in the morning, sunk into the black leather cushions of his Mercedes, chewing gutka from his blue tin, Mr Shah watched the only thing there was to watch.

All night long rain had pounded Mumbai; now the ocean retorted.

Storm-swollen, its foam hissing thick like acid reflux, dissolving gravity and rock and charging up the ramps that separated beach from road, breaking at the land’s edge in burst after burst of droplets that made the spectactors, huddled under black umbrellas, scream.

Shah told his driver to take slow circles around Juhu; as the car made a U-turn, he moved to the other window, so he could keep watching the ocean. ‘I don’t care about that old teacher and his mood swings. Now you tell that Secretary, he won’t see one rupee of his sweetener — what did we promise him, an extra one lakh? — unless he earns it. Didn’t I tell you from the start, that teacher was going to make trouble? And you, Shanmugham, don’t ever again tell me something is done, until it is done, until the signature is there, until—’

Mr Shah threw the mobile phone into a corner of the car.

He had hoped there would be no fighting this time. With an offer this generous. But there would always be a fight. The nature of this stupid, stupid city. What he wouldn’t have built by now if he were in Shanghai — hospitals, airports, thirteen-storey shopping malls! And here, all this trouble, just to get started on a simple luxury housing…

The mucus in his chest thickened; his breathing sounded like a feral dog’s growling. Shah coughed and spat into his handkerchief. He checked the colour of the spit with a finger.

Bending down to pick up the mobile phone, he dialled Shanmugham’s number again.

Parvez, the driver, turned on the windscreen-wipers. The rain had started again.

‘Wait,’ Shah said. ‘Stop here.’

The boys inside the bus stand to their left were cheering.

Across the road, in the sheeting rain, one man in rags was bearing another on his back towards the bus stand. The fellow on top was covered in a cape of blue tarpaulin which billowed around them both. The man doing the carrying was pushed sideways by the wind and the weight on his shoulders; vehicles flashed their headlights at him through the rain; yet he came closer and closer to the cheering spectators, who, as if by will power alone, were pulling him to safety.

‘Sir?’ Shanmugham was on the line. ‘Do you want me to start taking action in Vishram? Should I do what I did last year in that project in Sion?’

Shah looked at the men in the rain. Adding his will to that of the spectators, he urged the two of them on until they staggered into the bus stand.

The builder smiled; he struck the window with a golden ring, making Parvez turn around.

Fine wrinkles radiated from Ram Khare’s eyes as he read from his holy digest, like minute illustrations of the net that Fate had cast over him.

When he was in his teens he had had hopes of playing cricket for Bombay in the Ranji Trophy; when he was in his twenties he dreamed of buying a home of his own; when he was in his thirties of taking his old parents on a pilgrimage to the city of Benaras.

At the age of fifty-six, he found that his life had contracted to three things: his daughter Lalitha, an alumna of St Catherine’s School, now studying computer engineering in Pune; his rum; and his religion.

Mornings were for religion. Standing inside his guard’s booth with a string of black rudraksha beads in his left hand, he kept a finger on page 23:

‘What are the marks by which a soul may be known? Listen to the words of our Lord Krishna. The soul is not born and it does not…’

Footsteps came towards Vishram Society. He turned to the gate and said: ‘One minute, Masterji. One minute.’

Opening the tin door of the watchman’s booth, Khare stepped to one side, inviting Masterji to enter. The old teacher, who was returning with a bundle of fresh coriander for the Pintos, held it up: a gesture of protest.

Khare said: ‘ One minute.’

Disarmed by the servant’s insistence, Masterji gave up, and so, for the first time in thirty-two years, entered the guard’s booth at Vishram Society.

‘Now if you wait just a second, sir, I’ll show you my life’s work.’

There was a large spider’s web growing in a corner of the guard’s booth; Khare seemed to have no objection to its existence. Objects from the ground — twigs, chalks, pen-tops, snippets of metal wire — had been conveyed into this web, several feet off the ground: the whole thing looking like a project in mild black magic that Khare carried on in his spare time.

‘This is my life’s work, sir. My life’s work.’

Ram Khare’s fingers rested on another magical object: the long, stiffspined Visitors’ Log Book.

He ran his clean fingernail down the columns.

Guest Name

Occupation

Address

Mobile Number

Purpose of Visit

Person to See

Time Entry

Time Exit

Remarks (if any)/Observations (if any)

Signature of Guest

Signature of Guard

‘Every single guest is noted, and his mobile number registered. For sixteen years it has been this way—’ he pointed to the old registers stuffed into plastic trays. ‘Ask me who came into the building on the morning of 1 January 1994, I’ll tell you. What time they left, I’ll tell you. Sixteen years, seven months and twenty-one days.’

Khare closed the log book and sniffed.

‘Before that I was the guard at the Raj Kiran Housing Society in Kalina. A good Society. There too they had an offer of redevelopment from a builder. One man refused to sign the offer — a healthy young fellow, not like you — and one morning he tripped down the stairs and broke his knees. He signed in his hospital bed.’

Masterji closed his eyes for a beat.

‘Are you threatening me, Ram Khare?’

‘No, sir. I am informing you that there is a snake in my mind. It is long and black.’

The guard spread his arms wide.

‘And I wanted you to see this black snake too. Every day Mrs Puri or Mrs Saldanha or someone else comes to your door and knocks, and asks: “Have you made up your mind? Will you sign?” And everyday you say: “I’m thinking about it.” How long can this go on, Masterji? Now it makes no difference to me whether you say yes or no. If this building stands, I have this job. If it falls, I have a job somewhere else. But…’

Ram Khare opened the door for his guest: ‘… there is the question of my duty to you. And whatever happens now, I’ve discharged it. The Lord Krishna has taken note of that.’

And with that, he went back to his holy digest: ‘… it does not die. It cannot hurt and cannot be hurt. It is invincible, immortal, and…’

What cheek , Masterji thought, walking to the entranceway of his Society. Talking of a ‘black snake’ in Vishram .

He should complain to the Secretary. Mrs Rego was right; Ram Khare was drinking too much. He had smelled molasses in that booth.

Mrs Puri was at her window, watching him from behind her grille.

‘Mrs Puri,’ he shouted, ‘will you listen to what Ram Khare just said? He said I should be worried about what you and my other neighbours will do to me.’

As he watched, she shut the window and pulled down the blind. Must not have seen me , he thought. He did it all the time himself, ignored people right in front of him. Can’t be helped after a certain age.