Last Man in Tower - Aravind Adiga [123]
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Turning it over, he doodled on the back with a blue ballpoint pen, and superimposed words on the doodles:
Police
Media
Law and order
Social workers
Family
Students and old boys
Then he struck out “law and order,” and “social workers,” and “police.”
Gaurav came out of the restaurant carrying a chocolate-covered sundae. He gobbled it down with a plastic spoon.
At his son’s house, Masterji spoke in Hindi so Sonal would understand; now he mixed English with Kannada, their ancestral language: “What time did Noronha say he would meet us, son?”
Gaurav swallowed his ice cream in an almost simultaneous contraction of tongue and oesophagus.
“He’s not seeing us, Father. Your Noronha.”
“What do you mean?”
Closing an eye, Gaurav dug into the chocolate mud that sat at the bottom of the disappearing vanilla.
“It’s not a story for his newspaper.”
“Why not? One retired man fights a big builder. ‘Last Man in Tower Fights Builder.’ That sounds like a story to me.”
Gaurav shrugged; he ate his ice cream.
Masterji stared at his son, his mouth open. “Did your connection really speak to Noronha? Do you have a connection at the Times?”
Gaurav’s spoon scraped the last of the chocolate mud from the bottom of the cup.
“I was waiting for you to call me, Father. For so many days. I said to Sonal, there is trouble at Vishram. Sangeeta Aunty keeps phoning me. My own father does not phone. But when you do call, what do you say?”
Gaurav crushed his cup.
“Contact Noronha for me. Set up an appointment. I do have a connection at the Times, Father. I wouldn’t lie to you. I got Noronha’s number, and I picked up the phone to call him, and I thought, my father is treating me like a servant. Not like his only living child.”
A small red moth flitted about Masterji’s hand, like a particle of air trying to warn him about something.
“Gaurav, I called you because I have nowhere else … You are the last place.”
“Father, what is it you want from the Confidence Group?”
Masterji had never seen Gaurav sound and look so decisive. He felt the strength draining from him.
“Nothing.”
The boy raised his upper lip in a sneer. Purnima used to do that.
“You’re lying, Father.”
“Lying?”
“Don’t you see what’s behind this nothing? You. You think you are a great man because you’re fighting this Shah. Another Galileo or Gandhi. You’re not thinking of your own grandson.”
“I am thinking of Ronak. This man Mr. Shah threatened the Pintos. In daylight. Would you want Ronak to grow up in a city where he can be bullied or threatened in daylight? Gaurav: listen. Dhirubhai Ambani said he would salaam anyone to become the richest man in India. I’ve never salaamed anyone. This has been a city where a free man could keep his dignity.”
Gaurav glared. His sharp features and oval face, except for the fat that had accumulated on them, resembled his father’s: but when he frowned, a dark slant furrow cut into his brow, like a bookmark left there by his mother.
“Maybe you should have saluted more people, Father.”
For months now he had imagined himself speaking to Purnima, and hearing soft distant replies: but now it was as if his wife were talking from right in front of him.
“Maybe Sandhya would not have had to take the train if you had made more money. Maybe she would have been in a taxi, safe, that day she was pushed out. She was my sister, I think of her too.”
“Son. Son.” Masterji pressed down on the piece of paper he had been writing on. “Son.”
“Every other parent in Vishram Society has thought of their children. But not you. It’s always been this way. When I was in your physics class in school you punished me more than the others.”
“I had to show the other boys there was no favouritism.”
“All my life I’ve been frightened of you. You and that steel foot-ruler with which you hit my knuckles. For sleeping in the afternoon. Is that a crime? You made my mother’s life a living hell. Fighting with