Aravind Adiga - Last Man in Tower

One of the beggars laughed. A choir of particulate matter shrilled inside Dharmen Shah’s lungs; he coughed again and again, and spat into a corner of the Mercedes.

Half an hour later, he lay shirtless on a cold bed. In the only place on earth where personalized service depresses you.

‘We changed the size of the bed to suit your body’ — the voice of the radiologist.

Doctors display such familiarity only with the chronically ill.

Face down he lay, the fat folds of his chest and belly pressed against cold hard cushion. An X-ray machine moved above him, taking pictures of the back of his skull.

The X-ray machine stopped moving, and the radiologist went into another room, grumbling: ‘I don’t know if I’ve got the pictures, since you moved…’

Shah, shirtless on a three-legged stool, waited like a schoolboy.

‘I’m sorry. We didn’t get the X-rays. You have five minutes.’

He came out into the outpatient waiting room of Breach Candy Hospital. Rosie was waiting for him, in her shortest shortest skirt.

‘Uncle.’ She clapped. ‘My uncle.’

Her nose was still bruised, a pale strip of skin revealed where the bandage must have sat for days.

‘I thought you weren’t coming, Rosie,’ he said as he sat down by her side. ‘I really did.’

‘Of course I wouldn’t leave you alone in the hospital, Uncle.’ Dropping her voice, she asked: ‘Is the skirt short enough?’

The other patients waiting outside the radiologist’s office stared at this fat man with the well-rounded girl in skimpy clothes with her arms around him. Shah knew they were staring and he didn’t give a shit. Shameless in health, shameless he was going to stay in illness.

‘It’ll warm the whole hospital.’

‘That’s the plan, Uncle.’ She winked. ‘They keep the AC on so high.’

He whispered into her ear.

‘You can go home, Rosie. A hospital is no place for a girl like you.’

Rosie didn’t bother to whisper.

‘My father was the son of a first wife. I never told you this, did I, Uncle? His mother died of blood cancer when he was eight. This country is full of first wife’s sons who ended up as losers. I like being around a winner.’

She kissed him on the cheek.

The wetness remained on Shah’s cheek and he recognized it for what it was: ambition. The girl didn’t just want a hair salon, she wanted everything: all his money, all his buildings. All his money above and below the earth. Marriage.

He wanted to laugh — a girl he had pulled out of jail! — and then he remembered the story Rosie had told him. The actress and the Punjabi producer. ‘Her blowjobs sing across the decades.’

How there is nothing small, nothing ignoble in life. A man may not find love in the sacrament of marriage but he has found it with a woman he coupled with on his office sofa: just as a seed spat out by the gutter pipe, sucking on sewage, can grow into a great banyan.

‘Mr Shah?’ A crooked finger summoned him back into the X-ray room.

You don’t fool me , Shah thought, as the X-ray machine did its work again. You’re not going to save anyone . This was just the bureau cracy of extinction: its first round of paperwork. The cold of the metal bed penetrated multiple layers of butter-fed fat; he shivered.

‘Should I keep my eyes closed or open?’

‘Doesn’t matter. Just relax.’

‘I’ll close them, then.’

‘As you wish. Relax.’

He could feel Rosie’s fingers still warm on his own. He could smell her legs on his trousers. He thought again of the abandoned old mansion that he passed every day on his way down Malabar Hill, the green saplings breaking through the stone foliage. It was as if each green sapling were a message: Leave Mumbai with Rosie, find a city with clean air, have another son, a better one — you still have time, you still have …

Shah took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

… He saw the hawks again: circling with drawn claws, as they had been that sunlit morning in Doctor Nayak’s home above the Cooperage, locked in battle, the most beautiful creatures on a beautiful earth.

The hawks faded away, and he saw an island in the Arabian Sea — saw it as he had once, years ago, on a return flight from London which was held up by congestion at the airport and flew in circles: down there, the city in sunlight seemed like a postage stamp struck in silver, precise and shining and so easy to comprehend. He saw it all, from Juhu to Nariman Point: Bombay, the Jewel in the Jewel in the Crown. He saw south Bombay and Colaba: so closely packed with mirror-clad buildings that the land glittered. He saw Chowpatty beach; the two green ovals of the cricket stadia; the Air India building and the Express building behind, and the towers of Cuffe Parade…

The plane turned to the right. Now he saw the city dramatically walled in by green-red cliffs and plateaux. The air on one side of the cliffs was dark blue and dense; on the other, it was clear. If a man crossed those cliffs, he would find clean air — he would breathe.

The mucus in his chest rumbled. It voted for the clean side of the cliffs.

Dharmen Shah moved the plane back to the dirty side of the cliffs.

The plane was over Vakola now. He saw his Shanghai, most silver among the silver towers; and next to it another Shah tower; and next to it…

His diseased body began to move, despite the radiologist’s orders, on the cold bench, seizing more square inches for itself, dreaming, even here, of reclamation and warm space.

There had been another terrorist threat to the city, and the metal detector at the entrance to the Infiniti Mall in Andheri (West), installed months ago and left inactive ever since, was turned on at last.

It responded with such enthusiasm — beeping three times for each person — that every man and woman entering the mall became a high-risk terrorist threat. A quick frisking and opening of bags restored their name and good reputation, allowing them to ride the escalator to the Big Bazaar supermarket on the first floor, or the Landmark Book Store on the second.

‘Thirty-six rupees for a plate of bhelpuri!’

Mr Kothari, the former Secretary of Vishram Society Tower A, sat down at a table in the atrium of the food court with a heaped plate of bhelpuri. Tinku, holding his plate in one hand, pulled a chair from an adjacent table and joined his father.

‘It is a mall, Father, what do you expect?’ He began to scoop the food into him.

‘This place used to be just birds and trees.’ Kothari looked about the atrium. ‘Andheri.’

As if conjured by his nostalgia, a few sparrows flew into the food court.

His mouth full of puffed rice and diced onion, Tinku gaped.

‘Look who’s here, Father.’

‘Who? Oh, ignore them. Keep eating.’

‘Father, they’re coming here.’

‘A man can’t even enjoy his bhelpuri. Which he’s paid thirty-six…’

A piece of tomato slipped out of Kothari’s mouth as he smiled; he sucked it back in.

‘Forgotten your old neighbours already, haven’t you?’ Ibrahim Kudwa asked, as he came up to their table with little Mariam in his arms; Mumtaz, following him, was carrying two shopping bags. Kudwa dragged a metal chair over to their table.

‘I was just telling Tinku it was time to give you a call — when look who turns up.’

‘You’re looking good, son.’ Kudwa patted Tinku on the back. ‘Healthy.’

The fat boy winced: he knew what this meant.

As Kothari petted Mariam’s cheeks, her father asked: ‘Where do you live these days?’

‘Right here. Andheri West.’

‘But…’ Kudwa frowned. ‘… there are no flamingoes in Andheri West.’

‘Flamingoes were for big men like my father. Those fellows are good enough for me.’ Kothari pointed to the sparrows hopping about the food court. ‘We are in the Capriconius Society. Behind the HDFC bank on Juhu-Versova Link Road. Good place. Good people.’