Last Man in Tower - Aravind Adiga [15]
“This is my son,” she pointed to the cricketer. “Timothy. Spends too much time here, playing.”
Inside the Society, relations between Mary and Mrs. Puri were frosty (“yes, it is part of your job to catch that early-morning cat”), but the distance from Vishram and the presence of Mary’s boy permitted a relaxation in mistress–servant tensions.
“Nice-looking boy. Growing tall and strong.” Mrs. Puri smiled. “Mary, that plumber who lives here, I need to find him for some work in Masterji’s flat.”
“Madam—”
“There are problems with his pipe. Also his ceiling needs to be scrubbed. I’ll go from flat to flat and make a collection for the plumber’s fee.”
“Madam, you won’t find anyone today. Because of the big news. They’ve all gone to see the Muslim man’s hut.”
“What big news is this, Mary?”
“Haven’t you heard, madam?” She smiled. “God has visited the slums today.”
In the evening, the “big news” was confirmed by Ritika, an old college mate of Mrs. Puri and a resident of Tower B, who came over to parliament.
Their higher average income, lower average age, and a sense of being “somehow more modern” meant that Tower B residents kept to themselves, used their own gate, and celebrated their religious festivals separately.
Only Ritika, a show-off even in college, ever came over to Tower A, usually to brag about something. Her husband, a doctor who had a clinic near the highway, had just spoken to the Muslim man in the slums, who was a patient of his.
Mrs. Puri did not like Ritika getting such attention—who had beaten whom in the debating competition in college?—but she sat on a plastic chair in between Ajwani the broker and Kothari the Secretary and listened.
Mr. J. J. Chacko, the boss of the Ultimex Group, had made an offer of 81 lakh rupees (8,100,000) to that Muslim man for his one-room hut. It was just down the road from Vishram. Had they seen where the two new buildings were coming up? That was the Confidence Group. J. J. Chacko was their big rival. So he was buying all the land right opposite the two new buildings. He already owned everything around the one-room hut; this one stubborn old Muslim kept saying No, No, No, so Mr. Chacko bludgeoned him with this astronomical offer, calculated on God alone knows what basis.
“Everyone, please wait a minute. I’ll find out if this is true.”
Amiable and dark, Ramesh Ajwani was known within Vishram to be a typical member of his tribe of real-estate brokers. Ethics not to be trusted, information not to be doubted. He was a small man in a blue safari suit. He punched at his mobile phone; they waited; after a minute, it beeped.
Ajwani looked at the text message and said: “True.”
They sighed.
The residents of Vishram Society, even if they kept away from the slums, were aware of changes happening there ever since the Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC), the new financial hub of the city, had opened right next to it. Bombay, like a practitioner of yoga, was folding in on itself, as its centre moved from the south, where there was no room to grow, to this swamp land near the airport. New financial buildings were opening every month in the BKC—American Express, ICICI Bank, HSBC, Citibank, you name it—and the lucre in their vaults, like butter on a hotplate, was melting and trickling into the slums, enriching some and scorching others among the slum-dwellers. A few lucky hut-owners were becoming millionaires, as a bank or a developer made an extraordinary offer for their little plot of land; others were being crushed—bulldozers were on the move, shanties were being levelled, slum clearance projects were going ahead. As wealth came to some, and misery to others, stories of gold and tears reached Vishram Society like echoes from a distant battlefield. Here, among the plastic chairs of their parliament, the lives of the residents were slow and regular. They had the security of titles and legal deeds that could not be revoked, and their aspirations were limited to a patient rise in life earned through universities and interviews in grey suit and tie. It was not in their