Last Man in Tower - Aravind Adiga [133]
Ajwani saw four young men in polyester shirts gaping at the foreigner. They had been chatting and cackling a moment ago, commenting on every passing car and young girl. Now they watched in silence.
He understood.
Having dreamed all their lives of better food and better clothes, the young men were looking at this rich foreigner’s appalling sweat, his appalling nudity. Is this the end point, they were wondering: a lifetime of hard work, undertaken involuntarily, to end in this—another lifetime of hard work, undertaken voluntarily?
The city of wealth was playing its usual cat-and-mouse games with migrants: gives them a sniff of success and money in one breath, and makes them wonder about the value of success and the point of money in the next.
The broker turned his neck from side to side to relieve a strain.
A man wearing black and white came through the crowd and sat on the ocean wall next to the broker.
“Nice to see you here,” Ajwani said. “First time we’ve met in the city.”
“I was in Malabar Hill when your call came. What are you doing here?” Shanmugham asked, looking at the newspaper on Ajwani’s lap.
The broker grinned. “I come to the city every now and then. Business, you know.” He winked. “On Falkland Road. Fun business. Girls.”
Shanmugham pointed at the newspaper. “You saw the story?”
The broker turned the pages. “I opened the paper on the train, and I closed it at once from shame. A man wants to read about other people’s Societies in the Sun, not his own.”
He glanced through the article again, and closed the newspaper.
“The Confidence Group is being mocked in public. If I were in your position ….” Ajwani cracked his knuckles. “.… kept hoping something would have happened by now to Masterji. Not a thing. Even the phone calls have stopped. What is wrong with your boss?”
Shanmugham twisted round to look at the ocean. Marine Drive is buffered from the waves of the Indian Ocean by a row of dark tetrapodal rocks, which look like petrified starfish and run for miles along the shore. A man in rags was hopping from tetrapod to tetrapod, like an egret on a hippo’s teeth. From between them he pulled out discarded bottles of water, which he tossed into a sack.
He spoke as if addressing the scavenger.
“I asked the boss, the deadline is here, what should the people in Vishram do? And he said, they must help themselves. The way I helped myself. Do you know his life’s story?”
Ajwani did not. So Shanmugham, as the breeze blew in from the ocean, told the story of how Mr. Shah came to Bombay on bare feet.
Ajwani closed one eye and looked towards Malabar Hill.
“So that’s how men become rich. It’s a good story. Have you paid attention to it, Shanmugham?”
The Tamilian turned to face the broker. “What does that mean?”
Ajwani drew near. “I know that in many redevelopment projects, the left-hand man is smarter than his boss. He skims ten, fifteen per cent off each project. And he gives some of the money to those within the redevelopment project who have been his friends.” Ajwani placed his hand, covered with iron and plastic rings, on top of Shanmugham’s.
“Why don’t you get rid of the problem in Vishram? Show some initiative, do it on your own—do it tonight. I can help you in return: I can show you how to skim a bit off the Shanghai. Men like you and me are not going to become rich off mutual funds or fixed deposits in the bank, my friend.”
Shanmugham shook the broker’s hand off his. He stood up; he brushed the dust from his trouser bottoms. “Whatever has to happen now to your Masterji, you have to do yourself. Before midnight on 3 October. Don’t call me after this.”
Ajwani cursed. Crushing the newspaper, he threw it at the tetrapods; the startled scavenger looked up.
Masterji realized he had become one of those things, like good cabbage, ripe chikoos, or rosy apples from the United States, that people came to the market looking for.
As he went about his rounds for milk and bread, strangers followed him and waved; three young men introduced