Aravind Adiga - Last Man in Tower

He saw a drunk, half asleep; a foreign tourist who had clearly not slept in a long time; two vendors from the market who had probably been behind on their payments to the station; and then the men with vague, varied, and never-ending business who populate any police station.

‘Masterji,’ a pot-bellied constable saluted him. ‘Did your wife lose her handbag again?’

He remembered that he had taught this constable’s son. (Ashok? Ashwin?)

He sat down and explained his situation. The constable heard his story and made sure that the senior inspector at the station, a man named Nagarkar, heard it too.

‘These calls are hard to trace,’ the inspector said, ‘but I will send a man over — that’s usually all it takes, to frighten these builders and their goondas. This isn’t a neighbourhood where a teacher can be threatened.’

‘Thank you, sir.’ Masterji put his hand on his heart. ‘An old teacher is grateful.’

The inspector smiled. ‘We’ll help you, we’ll help you. But, Masterji. Really.’

Masterji stared.

‘Really what, sir?’

‘You’re holding out to the very end, aren’t you?’

Now he understood: the policemen thought this was about money. They were not the police force of the Indian Penal Code, but of the iron law of Necessity: of the notion that every man has his price — a generous figure, to be sure, but one he must accept. Say — I have no figure — a cell door swings open, and you find yourself in with the drunks and thugs. Above the head man’s desk, he saw a glass-framed portrait of Lord SiddhiVinayak, blood-red and pot-bellied, like the living incarnation of Necessity.

The inspector grinned. ‘Your Society’s famous man is here, by the way.’

Masterji turned in his chair; at the entrance to the station stood Ajwani.

The entire station warmed at his appearance. Any person looking to rent in a good building had to furnish, by law, a Clearance Certificate from the local police station to his prospective Society. In a less-than- pucca neighbourhood like Vakola, people were always turning up at Ajwani’s office without authentic drivers’ licences, voter ID cards, or PAN cards; men with flashy mobile phones and silk shirts who could afford any rent demanded of them yet could not prove (as the Clearance Certificate required) that they were employed by a respectable company.

The broker came here to procure the necessary certificates for these men, in exchange for the necessary sums of money. With a smile and a hundred-rupee note, he invented legitimate occupations and respectable business offices for his clients; conjured wives for un married men, and husbands and children for single women. The real-estate broker was a master of fiction.

This is the real business of this station , Masterji thought. I should get out of here at once .

It was too late. Ajwani had spotted him; he saw the broker’s eye ripening with knowledge.

*

Mr Pinto’s white hair was loose in the wind, and he kept patting it back into place. He was still sitting on the bench at the roadside stall.

The burly man who had been pressing clothes near the tea stall had finished his work, which was piled on to his ironing board; kneeling down, he opened the jaws of his enormous pressing iron. The black coals that filled it began to fume; Masterji watched an exposed part of the machinery of heat and smoke that ran his world.

Mr Pinto got up.

‘How did it go, Masterji? I was going to come, but I thought you might not want…’

Masterji held back the words of reproach. Who could blame Mr Pinto for being frightened? He was just an old man who knew he was an old man.

‘I told you not to worry, Mr Pinto.’

A group of schoolgirls wearing white Muslim headscarves over their navy-blue uniforms stood by the side of the road, waving little Indian flags, tittering and gossiping. They appeared to be rehearsing for Independence Day; their teachers, dressed in green salwar kameez, tried to impose order on them.

THEY still believe in Independence Day , Masterji thought, looking at the excited little schoolchildren.

‘We live in a Republic, Mr Pinto.’ He placed his hand on his friend’s shoulder. ‘A man has his resources here. Now watch my hand.’

Mr Pinto watched his friend’s fingers as they emerged one by one from his fists:

Police.

Media.

Law and order.

Social workers.

Family.

Students and old boys.

Masterji was doing what he did best: teaching. What is there in the world of which a man can say: ‘This is on my side?’ All of these. Mr Pinto’s resources, as a citizen of the Republic of India, were more than adequate to any and all threats at hand. The sun and the moon were in their right orbits.

They would start with the law. The police had been friendly, true, but you could not just say to them: ‘Fight evil’; the law was a code, a kind of white magic. A lawyer would bring his magic lamp, and only then would the Genie of the Law do their bidding.

Over lunch, Mr Pinto said that he knew of a lawyer. A connection had used him in a property dispute.

‘Not a rupee is charged unless there is a settlement in the matter. This is guaranteed. His address is somewhere here.’

Nina served them a speciality from her native South Canara, jackfruit seeds boiled to succulence and served in a red curry with coriander. Masterji wanted to praise Nina, but repressed the impulse lest she ask for a pay rise from the Pintos.

Raised to good spirits by the jackfruit seeds, Masterji sat down at Mr Pinto’s writing table, and took out his Sheaffer pen, a gift from his daughter-in-law two years ago.

Mr Pinto prepared the envelopes; Masterji wrote three letters to English-language newspapers and two to Hindi newspapers.

Dear Editor,

It being said that we live in a Republic, the question arises whether a man in his own home can be threatened, and that too on the eve of Independence Day…

Nina made them ginger tea; Mr Pinto stuck stamps on the envelopes and sealed them, and Masterji, after drinking the tea, began another letter, this one to his most famous ex-pupil.

My dear Avinash Noronha,

Remembering well your fine character in your schooling days, I know you cannot have forgotten your alma mater, St Catherine’s High School in Vakola, nor your old teacher of physics, Yogesh A. Murthy. It is with such pride that I read your weekly columns in the Times of India, and your timely warnings against the spread of corruption and apathy. Little will it surprise you, hence, to know that this tide of decay has now reached your old neighbourhood and threatens your old…

‘Nina will post them on her way home,’ Mr Pinto said.

‘And this is just the start,’ Masterji added. They had not been able to find any of his ex-students at home when they had telephoned, but he planned to write letters of appeal to all those old boys who had signed the photograph of his farewell party.

Mr Pinto approved of this plan; he would go to the school library and get their mailing addresses from old Vittal. But he wanted Masterji to go and see the lawyer first.

‘What do we have to lose? It’s a free consultation. And his office is right here, near Bandra train station.’

Masterji agreed. ‘You stay with Shelley,’ he said. ‘I’ll go on my own.’

‘Don’t take the train to Bandra, take an auto,’ Mr Pinto said.

He put a hundred-rupee note into Masterji’s shirt pocket.

‘Okay,’ Masterji said, patting his pocket, ‘we’ll enter it in the No-Argument when I get back. Fifty rupees: what I owe you.’

‘No.’ Mr Pinto looked at the thing in his friend’s pocket. ‘We won’t enter that in the book. You owe me nothing.’