Aravind Adiga - Last Man in Tower

Ajwani looked at the text message and said: ‘True.’

They sighed.

The residents of Vishram Society, even if they kept away from the slums, were aware of changes happening there ever since the Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC), the new financial hub of the city, had opened right next to it. Bombay, like a practitioner of yoga, was folding in on itself, as its centre moved from the south, where there was no room to grow, to this swamp land near the airport. New financial buildings were opening every month in the BKC — American Express, ICICI Bank, HSBC, Citibank, you name it — and the lucre in their vaults, like butter on a hotplate, was melting and trickling into the slums, enriching some and scorching others among the slum-dwellers. A few lucky hut-owners were becoming millionaires, as a bank or a developer made an extraordinary offer for their little plot of land; others were being crushed — bulldozers were on the move, shanties were being levelled, slum clearance projects were going ahead. As wealth came to some, and misery to others, stories of gold and tears reached Vishram Society like echoes from a distant battlefield. Here, among the plastic chairs of their parliament, the lives of the residents were slow and regular. They had the security of titles and legal deeds that could not be revoked, and their aspirations were limited to a patient rise in life earned through universities and interviews in grey suit and tie. It was not in their karma to know either gold or tears; they were respectable.

‘Wouldn’t it be nice if someone gave us 81 lakh rupees?’ Mrs Puri said, after Ritika was out of earshot.

Ajwani the broker, who was punching away at his mobile phone, looked up and smiled sardonically. Then he returned to punching at his mobile.

The value of their own homes was uncertain. The last attempted sale had been seven years ago, when Mr Costello (5C) put his fifth-floor place on sale after his son had jumped from the terrace; no one had purchased the flat, and it was still under lock and key while the owner had himself moved to the Gulf.

‘The poor in this city were never poor, and now they…’ Mrs Puri moved her head to the right — Mrs Saldanha’s daughter, Radhika, had entered her mother’s kitchen in a most thoughtless manner, obstructing the parliamentarians’ view of the TV. ‘… are becoming rich. Free electricity in the slums and 24-hour cable. Only we are stuck.’

‘Careful,’ Mr Pinto whispered. ‘Battleship is here. Careful.’

Mrs Rego — the ‘Battleship’ for her wide grey skirts, formidable girth, and stentorian voice — was returning home with her children.

With a ‘Hello, Uncle, Hello, Aunty’, Sunil and Sarah Rego went up the stairs. Their mother, without a word to the others, sat down and watched the TV.

‘Have you heard, Mrs Rego, about the 81 lakh offer? For a one-room in the slums?’

The Battleship said nothing.

‘Even a Communist like you must be interested in this,’ Mrs Puri said with a smile.

The Battleship spoke without turning her face.

‘What is the definition of a dying city, Mrs Puri? I will tell you, as you do not know: a city that ceases to surprise you. And that is what this Bombay has become. Show people a little cash, and they’ll jump, dance, run naked in the streets. That Muslim man is never going to see his money. These developers and builders are mafia. The other day they shot a member of the city corporation dead. It was in the papers.’

Mr Pinto and his wife slipped away like doves before a thunderstorm.

But it did not start at once.

The TV presenter, as if to add to the atmosphere of gloom, mentioned that the water shortage was likely to get worse unless the monsoons arrived — for once — on time.

‘Too many people come into the city, it’s a fact,’ Mrs Puri said. ‘Everyone wants to suck on our…’ She touched her breasts.

The Battleship turned to her.

‘And did you drop to Bombay from heaven, Mrs Puri? Isn’t your family from Delhi?’

‘My parents were born in Delhi, Mrs Rego, but I was born right here. There was enough space in those days. Now it’s full. The Shiv Sena is right, outsiders should stop coming here.’

‘Without migrants, this city would be dust. We are ruled by fascists, Mrs Puri, but everything is second-rate here, even our fascists. They don’t give us trains, don’t give us roads. All they do is beat up hardworking migrants.’

‘I don’t know what a fascist does, but I know what a Communist does. You don’t like developers who make people rich, but you like the beggars who get off at Victoria Terminus every day.’

‘I am a Christian, Mrs Puri. We are meant to care for the poor.’

Mrs Puri — debating champion at KC College — was about to finish her opponent off with a riposte, but Ramu came to his mother’s ear and whispered.

‘There’s no water coming up the pipes, Ramu,’ she said. ‘No water tonight, dear. I told you, didn’t I?’

Ramu’s lower lip covered his upper, and bulged up towards his nose: his mother knew this as a sign that he was thinking. He pointed to the pipes that went up the sides of Vishram Society’s walls.

‘Quiet, Ramu. Mummy is speaking to Communist aunty.’

‘I am not a Communist, and I am not anyone’s aunty, Mrs Puri.’

Mrs Kothari, the Secretary’s wife, put her head out of the window and shouted: ‘Water!’

It was an unscheduled blessing from the Municipality, a rare kindness. The fighting adjourned; both women had to obey a higher imperative — fresh water.

Where is Masterji? Mrs Puri wondered, as she went up the stairs. He should have returned from seeing his grandson by now. After giving Ramu his evening bath, she made sure to collect an extra bucket of water for the old man, in case the Municipality, for giving them water they were not meant to have, punished them by annulling their morning water supply. That was, after all, how the people who ran Mumbai thought.

Despite dismissing the idea that the inquisitive stranger might represent any danger, Masterji woke up realizing he had spent a part of the night dreaming of the man.

In this dream, which he powerfully recollected several minutes after waking up, the stranger (whose face appeared as a black playing-card) had smelled of sulphur; posed riddles to the members of the Society (including Masterji); grown wings, laughed, and flown out of a window, while all of them ran after him, shouting, trying to knock him down with a long stick. Masterji puzzled over his dream, until he realized that some of its images had been borrowed from the book he had been reading late into the night; he picked it up and continued reading:

The Soul’s Passageway after Death

(Vikas Publications, Benaras)

In its first year out of the body, the soul travels slowly and at a low altitude, burdened by the sins of its worldly existence. It flies over green fields, ploughed fields, and small dams and dykes. It has wings like an eagle’s at this stage of its voyage. In the second year it begins to ascend over the oceans. This flight will take it all of the second year, and a part of the third year too. It will see the ocean change colour, from blue to dark blue, until it is almost a kind of black. The darkening of the colour of the ocean will alert the soul to its entry into the third year of its long flight…

With eyes closed, imagine a human soul with your wife’s face — and with wings like an eagle… yes, eyes, nose, cheeks like your wife’s, wing-span like an eagle’s, suspended in mid-flight over the ocean…

In all, the flight of the soul after death lasts seven hundred and seventy-seven years. The prayers and pious thoughts offered by relatives and loved ones from the world of the living will greatly affect the course, length, and comfort of this journey…