Aravind Adiga - Last Man in Tower

‘They want Papa to be the Secretary there too,’ Tinku said, as his father blushed.

‘Some bhelpuri for you, Ibrahim? Or you, Mumtaz? A bite for Mariam.’

‘Oh, no,’ Kudwa said. ‘I take three Antacids a day just to go to sleep. The wife has forbidden all outside food.’ He looked at her with a smile. ‘We have good people in our new Society too. In fact’ — he pointed to one of the shopping bags his wife was carrying — ‘I’m taking a gift for my neighbour’s son. A surprise.’

He beamed with pleasure. He noted that Kothari was wearing a new gold necklace — he tried to remember if the man had ever worn gold in his Vishram Society days.

‘But where do you live, Ibrahim?’

‘Bandra East. We have a family shop in hardware. I became a partner with my brother. There’s no future in technology, I tell you. Hammers. Nails. Screws. If you ever need any of these in bulk, please come to Kalanagar. Let me write down my address.’ He turned to Mumtaz; putting her bags down, she took out a ballpoint pen and wrote on a paper napkin.

When she had done as her husband told her, Mumtaz put the pen down and looked at Kothari.

‘Any news from the builder? The second instalment is already three weeks late.’

‘I phoned his office and left a message.’ Kothari folded the napkin with the Kudwas’ phone number. ‘If he doesn’t pay this instalment and the next one on time, we’ll go to court.’

‘What a fraud that man proved to be. Mr Shah. We trusted him.’

‘All builders are the same, Ibrahim, old-fashioned or new-fashioned. But the first instalment did come, and he did give us eight weeks’ rent while we looked for a new place. He will pay. Just likes to delay.’

‘Where is Mrs Puri these days, Ibrahim? Any idea?’

‘Goregaon. Gokuldam. In that new tower there. Nice place, new woodwork. They’ve hired a full-time nurse for the boy.’

‘That’s the future. Goregaon. So much empty space.’

Kudwa shook his head. ‘Between us, the boy’s health has suddenly become much worse. I don’t know what she will do if he… Gaurav comes to see her all the time, she says. He’s become like a son to her.’

Kothari dug his plastic spoon into his food.

‘And Mrs Rego?’ he asked. ‘Any word?’

‘We were never close,’ Kudwa said. ‘The Pintos of course are living with their son. He came back from America. Lost his business there.’

‘Everyone is coming back from America.’

Shifting Mariam to his left arm, Ibrahim Kudwa touched the table for attention.

‘Ajwani refused to take any of the money, did you hear? Not one rupee.’

Kothari sighed.

‘That man — all his life he was obsessed with money. Sat in his realestate office with a bundle of cash in his drawer to feel rich. And then when he actually gets a windfall, he says no. A nothing man. Pucca nothing.’

Kothari ate more bhelpuri.

Mumtaz Kudwa picked up her shopping bags; her husband stood up with Mariam.

‘Life is good,’ he said. ‘It is not perfect, but it is better with money.’

‘You have said it exactly right, Ibrahim. Goodbye, Mumtaz. Byebye, Mariam.’

On the escalator down, Kothari went over the bill for the food he and his son had just eaten; his lips worked.

‘… the bhelpuri was only twenty-six rupees, Tinku. They charged ten rupees for water. But we didn’t have bottled water.’

‘No,’ the boy agreed. ‘We didn’t have any water.’

Stepping down from the escalator, he said: ‘Let’s go and get the ten rupees back, Tinku.’

‘For ten rupees? All the way up?’

The two got on the other escalator and went back up to the food court.

‘It’s the principle . A man must stand up for his rights in this world. Your grandfather taught me that.’

Tinku, who was starting to yawn, turned in surprise: his unmusical father was humming a famous Beatles song and slapping the escalator with the back of his hand.

On any evening Juhu beach is overwhelmed with cricket matches of poor style and great vigour; on a Sunday, perhaps a hundred matches are in progress along the length of the sand. All face a fatal constraint: the ocean. Anyone who hits the ball directly into the water is declared out — a uniform rule across the beach. A good, honest pull-shot to a bad ball, and a batsman has just dismissed himself. To survive, you must abandon classical form. What is squirming, quicksilver, heterodox thrives.

‘A million people are batting along this beach. Play with some style. Stand out,’ Mrs Rego shouted.

She stood in her grey coat at the wicket, an umpire-commentator-coach of the match in progress.

Timothy, Mary’s son, was batting at the stick-wicket; Kumar, tallest of the regulars at the Tamil temple, ran in to bowl.

Mary, sitting on the sand, the game’s only spectator and cheerleader, turned for a moment to look at the water’s edge.

It was low tide, and the sea had receded far from the normal shoreline, leaving a glassy, marshy in-between zone. Reflected in the wet sand, two nearly naked boys ran about the marsh; they jumped into the waves and splashed each other. The sunlight made their dark bodies shine blackly, as if coated in a slick of oil; in some private ecstasy, they began rolling in and out of the water, barely in this world at all.

Mary now saw a familiar figure walking along the surf. The bottoms of his trousers were rolled up, and he carried his shoes over his shoulder, where they stained his shirt.

She waved.

‘Mr Ajwani.’

‘Mary! How nice to see you.’

He sat by her side.

‘Did you come to watch your son playing cricket?’

‘Yes, sir. I don’t like to see him wasting time on cricket, but Madam — I mean Mrs Rego — insisted he be here.’

Ajwani nodded.

‘How is your place by the nullah ? More threats of demolition?’

‘No, sir. My home stands. I found work in one of the buildings by the train station. An Ultimex building. The pay is better than at Vishram, sir. And they give me a nice blue uniform to wear.’

The two of them ducked. The red ball had shot two inches past Ajwani’s nose — it soared over the glassy sand and detonated in the ocean.

‘Timothy is out!’ Mrs Rego cried.

She saw Ajwani sitting alongside Mary.

He saw the hostility in her eyes — they had not spoken once since that night — and he knew at once, ‘she too was in it.’

‘Let me stay, Mrs Rego,’ he said. ‘It is one of the rules of Juhu beach: you can’t say no to any stranger who wants to watch you play.’

Mrs Rego sighed, and looked for the ball.

The two boys who had been rolling about in the water now rushed towards the ball; it came back, in a high red arc, as the cricketers cheered. Up in the sky, a plane cut across the ball’s trajectory — and the cricketers let out a second cheer, a sustained one.

The plane had caught the angle of the setting light, and looked radiant and intimate before it went over the ocean.

The game continued. Mrs Rego kept offering the boys ‘tips’ on batting ‘with style’. Ajwani and Mary cheered impartially for all the batsmen.

The setting sun brought more people. The smell of humans overwhelmed the smell of the sea. Vendors waved green and yellow fluorescent wires in the darkening air to catch the attention of children. Particoloured fans were arranged on long wooden frames to whirl in the sea breeze, green plastic soldiers crawled over the sand, and mechanical frogs moved with a croaking noise. Small men stood with black trays of skinned peanuts warmed by live coals suspended around their necks; tables of coconuts and pickles were set up under umbrellas; boys bathed in their underwear and Muslim women took dips in sodden black burqas. Glowing machines talked to you about your weight and destiny for a couple of rupees.