Aravind Adiga - Last Man in Tower

Through his tears Masterji saw a mosquito alight on his forearm. He had been weak and distracted; it had seen opportunity. He watched its speckled stomach, its tingling legs, as the proboscis pierced his skin. Not a second wasted in a calculating world. Not his neighbours — he was fighting this .

He slapped his forearm: the mosquito became a blotch of someone else’s blood on his skin.

He went up the stairs to his flat and lay in bed, covering his face with his forearm. He tried to think of all the insults that bearded labourer in Crawford Market must have had to put up with.

It was evening before he came out of his room.

He walked down the stairs, trying not to think about the notice-board. He went out of the gate and into the market: and there he received his second shock of the day.

His story was in the newspaper.

Ramesh Ajwani had his back angled to the ocean breeze to shield his copy of the Mumbai Sun . He was reading an article on page four.

OLD MAN IN TOWER SAYS NO TO BUILDER

Residents of Vishram Society, Vakola, have become trapped in a peculiar ‘situation’ that has pitted one retired teacher against all the other members of his Society, and also against the might…

He closed the newspaper and folded it on his knees. Such bad news. But it was a pleasant evening, and Ramesh Ajwani was in the heart of the city of Bombay. He took a deep breath and exhaled Masterji out of his body; then he looked around.

Marine Drive. The commonwealth of Mumbai had come to sit by the water’s edge. Ajwani saw representatives of every race of the city around him: burqa -clad Sunni Muslims with their protective men; Bohra women in their Mother Hubbard bonnets chaperoning each other; petite, sari-clad Marathi women, jasmine garlands in their braided hair, nuggets of vertebrae in their fatless backs glistening at each twist of their excited bodies; two thick-shouldered sadhus, saffron robes streaming, chanting Sanskrit to the waves; shrieking clumps of college students from Elphinstone; the baseball-cap-wearing sellers of small fried things and chilled water.

Ajwani smiled.

Sunbaked and sweating, looking like a big pink baby, a foreign man in a singlet and blue shorts was jogging down the pavement, slowly enough for his Indian minder to follow him on foot.

Ajwani saw four young men in polyester shirts gaping at the foreigner. They had been chatting and cackling a moment ago, commenting on every passing car and young girl. Now they watched in silence.

He understood.

Having dreamed all their lives of better food and better clothes, the young men were looking at this rich foreigner’s appalling sweat, his appalling nudity. Is this the end point, they were wondering: a lifetime of hard work, undertaken involuntarily, to end in this — another lifetime of hard work, undertaken voluntarily?

The city of wealth was playing its usual cat-and-mouse games with migrants: gives them a sniff of success and money in one breath, and makes them wonder about the value of success and the point of money in the next.

The broker turned his neck from side to side to relieve a strain.

A man wearing black and white came through the crowd and sat on the ocean wall next to the broker.

‘Nice to see you here,’ Ajwani said. ‘First time we’ve met in the city.’

‘I was in Malabar Hill when your call came. What are you doing here?’ Shanmugham asked, looking at the newspaper on Ajwani’s lap.

The broker grinned. ‘I come to the city every now and then. Business, you know.’ He winked. ‘On Falkland Road. Fun business. Girls .’

Shanmugham pointed at the newspaper. ‘You saw the story?’

The broker turned the pages. ‘I opened the paper on the train, and I closed it at once from shame. A man wants to read about other people’s Societies in the Sun , not his own.’

He glanced through the article again, and closed the newspaper.

‘The Confidence Group is being mocked in public. If I were in your position…’ Ajwani cracked his knuckles. ‘… I kept hoping something would have happened by now to Masterji. Not a thing. Even the phone calls have stopped. What is wrong with your boss?’

Shanmugham twisted round to look at the ocean. Marine Drive is buffered from the waves of the Indian ocean by a row of dark tetrapodal rocks, which look like petrified starfish and run for miles along the shore. A man in rags was hopping from tetrapod to tetrapod, like an egret on a hippo’s teeth. From between them he pulled out discarded bottles of water, which he tossed into a sack.

He spoke as if addressing the scavenger.

‘I asked the boss, the deadline is here, what should the people in Vishram do? And he said, they must help themselves. The way I helped myself. Do you know his life’s story?’

Ajwani did not. So Shanmugham, as the breeze blew in from the ocean, told the story of how Mr Shah came to Bombay on bare feet.

Ajwani closed one eye and looked towards Malabar Hill.

‘So that’s how men become rich. It’s a good story. Have you paid attention to it, Shanmugham?’

The Tamilian turned to face the broker. ‘What does that mean?’

Ajwani drew near. ‘I know that in many redevelopment projects, the left-hand man is smarter than his boss. He skims ten, fifteen per cent off each project. And he gives some of the money to those within the redevelopment project who have been his friends.’ Ajwani placed his hand, covered with iron and plastic rings, on top of Shanmugham’s.

‘Why don’t you get rid of the problem in Vishram? Show some initiative, do it on your own — do it tonight . I can help you in return: I can show you how to skim a bit off the Shanghai. Men like you and me are not going to become rich off mutual funds or fixed deposits in the bank, my friend.’

Shanmugham shook the broker’s hand off his. He stood up; he brushed the dust from his trouser bottoms. ‘Whatever has to happen now to your Masterji, you have to do yourself. Before midnight on 3 October. Don’t call me after this.’

Ajwani cursed. Crushing the newspaper, he threw it at the tetrapods; the startled scavenger looked up.

Masterji realized he had become one of those things, like good cabbage, ripe chikoos, or rosy apples from the United States, that people came to the market looking for.

As he went about his rounds for milk and bread, strangers followed him and waved; three young men introduced themselves. They said they were his old students. Da Costa, Ranade, Savarkar.

‘Yes, of course, I remember you. Good boys, all three of you.’

‘We saw you in the newspapers, Masterji. There was a big article on you this morning.’

‘I have not yet read the article, boys. He didn’t speak to me, that reporter. I don’t know what he’s written. I gather it’s a small article, just three or four inches.’

Yet those three or four inches of newsprint, like a bugle call, had instantly summoned these students whom he had failed to locate for all these months.

‘We are proud you’re not letting that builder push you around, sir. He must give you good money if he wants you to leave.’

‘But I don’t want the money, boys. I’ll explain again. India is a republic. If a man wants to stay in his home, then it is his freedom to do so. If he wants to go, then…’

The three listened; at the end, one of them said: ‘You used to quote Romans in class, sir. The one who knew about the sun.’

‘Anaxagoras. A Greek.’

‘You’re as tough as any Roman, sir. You’re like that fellow in the movie… Maximus the Gladiator.’

‘Which movie is this?’

That made them laugh.

‘Maximus Masterji!’ said one, and all three left in a good mood.