Aravind Adiga - Last Man in Tower

The cricket game had degenerated. On the promise of merely burying Timothy in sand, Dharmendar and Vijay had proceeded to carve breasts and genitals in the sand over him, and had written in English: ‘FUK ME’.

‘You could at least spell it right!’ Mrs Rego tried to look stern for as long as possible before helping the others to rescue the trapped boy.

The ocean was a brimming violet: twilight glowed over Juhu.

‘All right, boys, collect the bat and ball and come here,’ Mrs Rego shouted. ‘It’s time for a speech.’

‘Speech? Why does there always have to be a speech, Mrs Rego?’

‘We have to make a speech about Masterji. Do you think his son is going to remember him? We have to do it. In fact, you are going to start, Timothy.’

The other boys gathered in a semi-circle around Timothy. Ajwani sat next to Mary.

Timothy grinned. ‘I once saw Masterji sitting under a tree near the temple. He was eating all the fruit…’

‘Timothy!’ Mrs Rego said.

The boys clapped and whistled: ‘Great speech!’

‘Sit down, Timothy.’ Mrs Rego pointed to Ajwani.

‘ You speak now.’

‘Me?’ The broker wanted to laugh, but he understood that she was serious. Everyone sitting here — in fact, everyone in this beach — had had some involvement in the affair. His share was larger than that of most others.

Wiping the sand off his trousers, he stood up. He faced the semi-circle of four boys and two women.

‘Friends, our late Masterji—’

‘The late Mr Yogesh Murthy,’ Mrs Rego corrected.

‘… late Mr Yogesh Murthy, was my neighbour, but I don’t have much information about his life. He was born I think in the south and came here I think after his marriage. Wherever he came from, he came, and became a typical man of this city. What do I mean by that?’ Ajwani looked at the ocean. ‘I mean he became a new kind of man. I think about him more now than I did when he was my neighbour.’

He hoped that they would understand.

Mrs Rego stood up, and everyone turned to her.

‘Boys: I would like to say hip-hip-hooray for Mr Ajwani — for his fine speech. Now I want everyone to clap for him. Will you clap, boys?’

‘Hip-hip-hooray! Aj-waaa-ni!’

‘Boys, I have a few more words for you.’

‘Don’t you always?’ — laughter.

The semi-circle shifted and moved so that Mrs Rego was now in its centre.

‘Boys, where Masterji was born, where he studied — these things don’t matter now. What matters is this. He did what he believed to be right. He had a conscience. No matter what people said to him or did to him he never changed his mind, and never betrayed his conscience. He was free to the end.’

‘Enough, Aunty.’

‘Shut up, and don’t call me Aunty. Now: all of you keep quiet.’

And some of them did.

‘Boys, some years ago I went to Delhi and met a man who had never seen the ocean in his life, and thought, what’s a life like that worth? We will always have the ocean and that is why we live in the true capital of this country. All we need are a few more good men like Masterji and this island, this Mumbai of ours, it will be paradise on earth. As it used to be, when I was a girl in Bandra. When I see you boys sitting here before me, I know that there are future Masterjis among you, and this city will again be what it was, the greatest on earth. And so, gentlemen of the cricket team, so as not to keep this speech going on any longer, let us all stand up, and put our hands together, and give a hip-hip-hooray in memory of our late Masterji, whom we promise to remember and honour.’

‘Hip-hip-hooray!’ they shouted together.

The cricketers had been good boys and now they wanted their reward. A sugarcane stand had been spotted nearby.

‘You too,’ Mrs Rego said. Ajwani accepted. They walked in a group towards the sugarcane juice stand at the end of the beach. Mrs Rego, overriding the broker’s protests, was paying for all the drinks. She counted heads so that she could order the right number of glasses. Suddenly she let out a shriek.

A lizard was running down her skirt.

‘ Who did that?’

Timothy and Dharmendar looked at each other, and everyone else giggled. Ajwani dispatched the plastic lizard towards the beach with a kick. Mrs Rego resumed counting heads.

‘What will you do now, Mr Ajwani?’ she asked, as she drank her juice.

‘At first, I thought of leaving real estate entirely,’ he said. ‘But then I thought, there are honest men in this business too. Let me add to their number.’

With one eye closed, she looked into her glass, and then put it back on the stall.

‘Is it true, what they say: that you refused to take the builder’s money?’

He licked his lips and set his glass down by hers.

‘At first. But I have a family. Two sons. A wife.’

A bearded man came up to the sugarcane juice stall; he peered at Mrs Rego and then smiled.

‘You’re the social worker who does good things in the slums, aren’t you?’

Mrs Rego hesitated, then nodded.

‘I’ve seen you in your office, madam,’ the bearded man said. ‘I too used to be from Vakola. I lived in a slum: it’s where the Ultimex Group are now building their tower. Ultimex Milano.’

Ajwani and Mrs Rego peered at the bearded man. He was wearing a white Muslim skullcap.

‘Are you… the fortunate man? The eighty-one-lakhs man?’

‘By the grace of Allah, sir, you could say that was me. I don’t have any money on me, now. Bought a two-bedroom in Kurla in a pucca building. A small Maruti-Suzuki too.’

‘You don’t look unhappy at all,’ Mrs Rego said.

‘Why should I be unhappy?’ The fortunate man laughed. ‘My children have never had a real home. Four daughters I have. Fate is good to many people these days. There’s a man here in Juhu, living in a slum, who has been offered sixty-three lakhs by a real-estate developer to move out. He’s a connection of a connection of mine, and I came to talk to him. About how to deal with these builders.’

The workers at the sugarcane stand had overheard, and now they asked the fortunate man for details; a nearby newspaper-vendor came to listen in. A fellow in a slum? Sixty-three lakhs? Nearby? Which slum? Which fellow? Are you sure it was sixty -three?

Mrs Rego and Ajwani watched the bearded man, who had freckles on his large nose, perhaps from measles, wondering if those were the marks by which fortunate humans were identified.

Done with their sugarcane juice, the boys walked from the beach to the main road. Vijay, revitalized by the juice, had caught Dharmendar in a head-lock.

Mrs Rego wished she hadn’t had the juice: the sudden sugar, as it always did, made her feel depressed. She licked her lips and spat away what remained of the sweet juice — the finest compensation the city could offer these boys for the dreams it wouldn’t make real.

‘What will become of them, Mr Ajwani? Such fine boys, all of them… ’

‘What do you mean, what will become of them?’

‘I mean, Mr Ajwani, all this talent, all this energy: do these boys have any idea of what lies ahead for them? Disappointment. That’s all.’

The broker stopped. ‘How can you say this, Mrs Rego? You have always helped others.’

She stopped by his side. Her face contracted into something smaller and darker with grief.

Ajwani smiled; the parallel lines on his cheeks deepened.

‘I have learned something about life, Mrs Rego. You and I were trapped: but we wanted to be trapped. These boys will live in a better world. Look over there.’

‘Where?’ She asked.

A bus passed by with an advertisement for a film called Dance, Dance ; autorickshaws and scooters followed it. When they had passed, Mrs Rego saw a group of white-uniformed dabba -wallahs with their pointed caps, seated in a ring, playing cards on the pavement.