Last Man in Tower - Aravind Adiga [103]
The Puris had so often talked about walking to SiddhiVinayak in the past eighteen years that some of their neighbours believed they had done so, and Mr. Ganguly had even asked Mrs. Puri for advice on how to make the trip.
These things catch up with you, for the gods are not blind.
Mrs. Puri calculated the trip from Vakola to Prabhadevi would take them about four hours. Everything depended on Ramu. If things became really bad they would have to make him pee or shit on the road, like some street urchin. But he had to come along: that was the sacrifice she was going to make to Lord Ganesha. Not enough that she and her husband should ache from the walk. God would see that she was even prepared to make her son suffer: the thing she had fought for eighteen years to prevent.
They walked down the highway into the city. The sky brightened. Streaks of red ran through an orange dawn, as if the skin had been peeled from heaven. A man inside a tea stall struck a match; a blue flame ignited above his portable gas cylinder.
Every few minutes, Ramu whispered into his mother’s ear.
“Be brave, my boy. The temple is just around the corner.”
If he stopped, she pinched him. If he stopped again, she let him rest a minute or two, and—“Oy, oy, oy!”—they were off.
Two hours later, somewhere beyond Mahim, they sat down at a roadside tea stall. Mrs. Puri poured tea into a saucer for the boy. Ramu, high on caffeine, lost in his delirium of fatigue and pain, began to rave until his mother patted his head and soothed him with her voice.
Two municipal workers began sweeping the pavement behind the Puris. Their faces filled with dust; they were too tired to sneeze.
Mrs. Puri closed her eyes. She thought of the Lord Ganesha at the temple in SiddhiVinayak and prayed: We said we were going to temples but we went to see new homes. We were afraid of the Evil Eye but we forgot about you. And you punished us by placing a stone in everyone’s path. Now move the stone, which only you, God, with your elephant’s strength, can do.
“Ramu, Ramu,” she said, shaking her son awake. “It’s only another hour from here. Get up.”
When the clock struck five, Shelley Pinto was in bed, her purblind eyes staring at the ceiling.
She heard her husband at the dinner table, scribbling away with paper and pencil, as he used to when he was an accountant.
“Is something worrying you, Mr. Pinto?” she asked.
“After I said goodbye to Masterji, I saw a fight in the market, Shelley. Mary’s father was drunk, and he had said something. One of the vendors hit him, Shelley. In the face. You could hear the sound of bone crushing into bone.”
“Poor Mary.”
“It’s a horrible thing to be hit, isn’t it, Shelley. A horrible thing.” He spoke to himself in a low voice, until his wife said:
“What are you whispering there, Mr. Pinto?”
He said: “How many square feet is our place, Shelley? Have you ever calculated?”
“Mr. Pinto. Why do you ask?”
“I have to calculate, Shelley. I was an accountant. It gets into the blood.”
“I’ll be blind in another building, Mr. Pinto. I have eyes all around Vishram Society.”
“I know, Shelley. I know. I’m just calculating. Is that a sin? I just want to turn into U.S. dollars. Just to see how much it would be.”
“But Mr. Shah is paying us in rupees. We can’t send it in dollars.”
When they had gone to America in 1989, Mr. Pinto had acquired, on the black market, a small stash of U.S. dollars from a man in Nariman Point. The government in those days did not allow Indians to convert rupees into dollars without its permission, so Mr. Pinto had made her swear not to tell anyone. The dollars proved to be redundant, for the children took care of them in Michigan and Buffalo. On the return stopover in Dubai, they exchanged their original dollar stash, plus the gifts of American money Deepa and Tony had forced on them, for two 24-carat gold biscuits, one of which Mr. Pinto smuggled into India in his coat pocket while a trembling Shelley Pinto carried