Last Man in Tower - Aravind Adiga [154]
“What are they going to do to Masterji this time?” Kudwa asked his wife.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I thought they would have told you.”
“They always leave me out. They didn’t tell me when they got the duplicate key done … what do you think I should do—should I go to Sangeeta-ji and ask her what is going on?”
Mumtaz started to say something but stopped, and settled on the old formula: “It’s up to you. You’re the man of the house.”
Typical, he thought, stroking Mariam’s hair as he sat in his cyber-café, typical. A man has a right to expect his wife to make a decision for him now and then, but not Ibrahim Kudwa. As alone after marriage as he was before marriage.
On a corner of his table was the black helmet of his new Bajaj Pulsar. He wished he had listened to Mumtaz and waited until the deadline before buying the bike: if they didn’t get the money now, how would he pay its monthly instalments?
If only you were older, he thought, bouncing Mariam on his knee. If only you could tell your father what to do.
He looked at the helmet.
Now he saw it creeping over his table again: the black swamp. He heard his neighbours standing behind him, and yelling for him to reach into it.
Little Mariam cried. Her father had banged his fist on his desk and shouted: “No.”
Giving instructions to Arjun, his assistant, to double-lock the door, he shut his internet café and went home with his daughter.
Something very bad was going to happen to his Society this evening: unless he stopped it from happening.
After eating lunch in his office at two o’clock, Ajwani had taken the train into the city; he had brought along his copy of the Times of India real-estate classifieds to read on the journey.
He got off at Charni Road. Grant Road would have been closer, but he wanted to see the ocean before seeing the girls.
He crossed Marine Drive to the ocean wall and stood on it. Except for a rag-picker down among the tetrapod rocks, he was alone.
All his life he had dreamed of something grand—going across the Kala Paani to a new country. Like Vasco da Gama. Like Columbus.
“Just a push,” he said aloud. He practised pushing a phantom body off the ocean wall into the rocks, and then did it again.
At Chowpatty Beach he crossed the road to stop at Café Ideal for an ice-cold mug of draught beer. Done with his drink, he was startled to find a phrase written all over the Times of India real-estate page: “Just a push.” Ripping the paper to shreds, he asked the waiter to make sure it went into the waste bin.
Outside, he hailed a taxi and said: “Falkland Road.”
Marine Drive is flooded with light from ocean and open sky; but a simple change of gear, three turns on the road, and the ocean breeze is gone, the sky contracts, and old buildings darken the vista. When you have gone deep enough into this other Bombay, you will come to Falkland Road.
Ajwani stopped the taxi, and paid his fare with three ten-rupee notes from a wad in his pocket.
“I don’t have any change,” the driver said.
Ajwani told him not to worry. One and two rupee coins wouldn’t matter after today.
He put the wad of notes back in his pocket, patted it, and felt better. Having money made things so much simpler, as one grew older.
There were friendly hotels by the Santa Cruz station and all along the highway, but it would do a man no good to look for pleasure where he might be recognized. In the old days—oh, five, six years ago—Ajwani went to Juhu and visited a pretty young actress there once or twice a month. Then real-estate prices went up in Juhu. Even those holes-in-the-wall became too costly for that actress and the other nice girls like her. They packed up and went north: to Versova, Oshiwara, Lokhandwala. Ajwani’s trips grew longer. Then real-estate prices went up in the north too. The girls moved to Malad, too far for him. And that wouldn’t be the end of it. Sooner or later a man would have to drive all the way to Pune for a blowjob. Real-estate speculation was destroying Bombay.