Last Man in Tower - Aravind Adiga [171]
The cricket game had degenerated. On the promise of merely burying Timothy in sand, Dharmendar and Vijay had proceeded to carve breasts and genitals in the sand over him, and had written in English: “FUK ME.”
“You could at least spell it right!” Mrs. Rego tried to look stern for as long as possible before helping the others to rescue the trapped boy.
The ocean was a brimming violet: twilight glowed over Juhu.
“All right, boys, collect the bat and ball and come here,” Mrs. Rego shouted. “It’s time for a speech.”
“Speech? Why does there always have to be a speech, Mrs. Rego?”
“We have to make a speech about Masterji. Do you think his son is going to remember him? We have to do it. In fact, you are going to start, Timothy.”
The other boys gathered in a semi-circle around Timothy. Ajwani sat next to Mary.
Timothy grinned. “I once saw Masterji sitting under a tree near the temple. He was eating all the fruit ….”
“Timothy!” Mrs. Rego said.
The boys clapped and whistled: “Great speech!”
“Sit down, Timothy.” Mrs. Rego pointed to Ajwani.
“You speak now.”
“Me?” The broker wanted to laugh, but he understood that she was serious. Everyone sitting here—in fact, everyone in this beach—had had some involvement in the affair. His share was larger than that of most others.
Wiping the sand off his trousers, he stood up. He faced the semi-circle of four boys and two women.
“Friends, our late Masterji—”
“The late Mr. Yogesh Murthy,” Mrs. Rego corrected.
“… late Mr. Yogesh Murthy was my neighbour, but I don’t have much information about his life. He was born I think in the south and came here I think after his marriage. Wherever he came from, he came, and became a typical man of this city. What do I mean by that?” Ajwani looked at the ocean. “I mean he became a new kind of man. I think about him more now than I did when he was my neighbour.”
He hoped that they would understand.
Mrs. Rego stood up, and everyone turned to her.
“Boys: I would like to say hip-hip-hooray for Mr. Ajwani—for his fine speech. Now I want everyone to clap for him. Will you clap, boys?”
“Hip-hip-hooray! Aj-waaa-ni!”
“Boys, I have a few more words for you.”
“Don’t you always?”—laughter.
The semi-circle shifted and moved so that Mrs. Rego was now in its centre.
“Boys, where Masterji was born, where he studied—these things don’t matter now. What matters is this. He did what he believed to be right. He had a conscience. No matter what people said to him or did to him he never changed his mind, and never betrayed his conscience. He was free to the end.”
“Enough, Aunty.”
“Shut up, and don’t call me Aunty. Now: all of you keep quiet.”
And some of them did.
“Boys, some years ago I went to Delhi and met a man who had never seen the ocean in his life, and thought, what’s a life like that worth? We will always have the ocean and that is why we live in the true capital of this country. All we need are a few more good men like Masterji and this island, this Mumbai of ours, it will be paradise on earth. As it used to be, when I was a girl in Bandra. When I see you boys sitting here before me, I know that there are future Masterjis among you, and this city will again be what it was, the greatest on earth. And so, gentlemen of the cricket team, so as not to keep this speech going on any longer, let us all stand up, and put our hands together, and give a hip-hip-hooray in memory of our late Masterji, whom we promise to remember and honour.”
“Hip-hip-hooray!” they shouted together.
The cricketers had been good boys and now they wanted their reward. A sugarcane stand had been spotted nearby.
“You too,” Mrs. Rego said. Ajwani accepted. They walked in a group towards the sugarcane juice stand at the end of the beach. Mrs. Rego, overriding the broker