Last Man in Tower - Aravind Adiga [132]
“I’ve been like a mother to you, haven’t I, Gaurav? For so many years. Now you must help me, Gaurav, you are my other son, you are my only help in this building where no one loves me and no one cares ….”
Standing by her side, Ibrahim Kudwa shook his head and sucked his teeth, before murmuring: “Oy, oy, oy.”
1 OCTOBER
When Masterji came down the stairs in the morning, he saw the Secretary hammering something into the central panel of the noticeboard. Without a word to Masterji, Kothari closed the glass door, tapped it shut, and went into his office with his hammer.
Masterji stood before the noticeboard. He read the new notice, and then closed his eyes and read it, his lips moving, a second time:
To: the Residents of Vishram Society Tower A
I, GAURAV MURTHY, SON OF Y. A. MURTHY, AM PUTTING THIS NOTICE UP TO SAY I HAVE NO FATHER. I am shamed by the actions of the present occupant of flat 3A, Vishram. After promising my wife and me that he would sign the proposal, he has not signed. This is not the first time he has lied to us. Many jewels in my mother’s possession, and also bank certificates in her name meant for me and my son Ronak, have never been transferred to us. My son Ronak, my wife, and I will perform the one-year Samskara rites of my mother on our own. We request all of you not to associate us with the actions of the present occupant of 3A, Vishram Society.
Signed, Gaurav Murthy
Joydeep Society 5A, Marine Lines
Mumbai
He sat down below the noticeboard. Through the open door of the Secretary’s office, he saw Kothari at his desk, behind his Remington, eating a sandwich. Up on the landing, he could smell the stray dog; he could hear its laboured breathing.
I am no longer fighting Mr. Shah, he thought. I am fighting my own neighbours.
Through his tears Masterji saw a mosquito alight on his forearm. He had been weak and distracted; it had seen opportunity. He watched its speckled stomach, its tingling legs, as the proboscis pierced his skin. Not a second wasted in a calculating world. Not his neighbours—he was fighting this.
He slapped his forearm: the mosquito became a blotch of someone else’s blood on his skin.
He went up the stairs to his flat and lay in bed, covering his face with his forearm. He tried to think of all the insults that bearded labourer in Crawford Market must have had to put up with.
It was evening before he came out of his room.
He walked down the stairs, trying not to think about the noticeboard. He went out of the gate and into the market: and there he received his second shock of the day.
His story was in the newspaper.
Ramesh Ajwani had his back angled to the ocean breeze to shield his copy of the Mumbai Sun. He was reading an article on page four.
Old Man in Tower Says No to Builder
Residents of Vishram Society, Vakola, have become trapped in a peculiar “situation” that has pitted one retired teacher against all the other members of his Society, and also against the might …
He closed the newspaper and folded it on his knees. Such bad news. But it was a pleasant evening, and Ramesh Ajwani was in the heart of the city of Bombay. He took a deep breath and exhaled Masterji out of his body; then he looked around.
Marine Drive. The commonwealth of Mumbai had come to sit by the water’s edge. Ajwani saw representatives of every race of the city around him: burqa-clad Sunni Muslims with their protective men; Bohra women in their Mother Hubbard bonnets chaperoning each other; petite, sari-clad Marathi women, jasmine garlands in their braided hair, nuggets of vertebrae in their fatless backs glistening at each twist of their excited bodies; two thick-shouldered sadhus, saffron robes streaming, chanting Sanskrit to the waves; shrieking clumps of college students from Elphinstone; the baseball-cap-wearing sellers of small fried things and chilled water.
Ajwani smiled.
Sunbaked and sweating, looking like a big pink baby, a foreign man in a singlet and blue shorts was jogging