Last Man in Tower - Aravind Adiga [29]
Ram Khare, who had been fanning himself with his checked handkerchief as he recited from his holy digest, looked up at his visitor and dropped the handkerchief.
He followed the visitor all the way to the Secretary’s office, standing outside and watching as the man put his hands on either side of the Remington typewriter and said: “Mr. Secretary: I have to make a confession to you. I am not the man I said I was, when I came to see you the other day. My name is, indeed, Shanmugham: that much is true. But I come as a representative of one of Mumbai’s leading real-estate development companies, namely, the Confidence Group, and of its managing director, the esteemed Mr. Dharmen Shah. Let me tell you now why I had to deceive you the other day. First read this letter that I am placing, with all due respect and reverence, on your desk; while you read it, I will wait here with my ….”
The foundation of the thirty-two-year-old friendship between Masterji and Mr. Pinto was the “No-Argument book”—a notebook in which every financial transaction between them had been faithfully recorded. In July 1975, the first time they had had lunch together, Mr. Pinto, an accountant for the Britannia Biscuit Company, had proposed an actuarial conscience to watch over their snacks and coffees. Realizing that petty fights, mainly over money, had disrupted his other friendships, and determined that this one should be saved, Masterji had accepted.
Mr. Pinto was making his latest entry into the “No-Argument”—the sixteenth of its kind since the original notebook of ’75.
“Fill it out later. I can see the waiter.”
“Okay,” Mr. Pinto said. “But you owe me two and a half rupees.”
“Two and a half?”
“For the newspaper.”
“Which one?”
“Hindustan Times. You made me buy it last Saturday because you wanted to read a column by some former student of yours.”
“Nonsense,” Masterji said. “I have no students writing for that paper.”
Mr. Pinto knew that Masterji had not bought the Hindustan Times; a life-long accountant, he deflected a variety of worries into money talk. What he had really meant to bring up was something else: the previous night’s incident. Masterji’s behaviour in pushing the modern girl’s boyfriend, for no good reason—the girl’s screaming had brought people from around the building to the third floor—was so contrary to his usual “nature” that people in Vishram had talked all day long about the incident, retelling and embellishing it. A man deprived in quick order of both occupation and wife was in a dangerous place, some felt. Ajwani, the broker, had even asked how safe was it to leave their children in a darkened room with him any more? Mrs. Puri’s stout rebuttal (“—ashamed of yourself!”) had put an end to such talk.
Mr. Pinto knew that it was his duty to let his friend know what they were saying about him in the Society. “But it is best to raise such matters after dinner,” he decided.
Putting away the No-Argument book, he prepared himself for what the Biryani Emperor of Bombay had to offer.
A good biryani needs excitement. A touch of mystery. At Café Noorani near Haji Ali, the waiter comes out with a plate with an oval heap of steaming rice, speckled with yellow and red grains; the chicken was somewhere inside, true, but you had to dig into it with the fork—what aroma!—to find those marinated red chunks.
In contrast—Mr. Pinto stuck his fork into his plate—look at this. Two paltry brown chicken pieces, by the side of lukewarm rice. Not a vegetable in sight.
The Biryani Emperor was set in between shops selling bright silk saris, which added to the diners’ awareness of the excitement missing from the food. This was a Sunday night; and for the two friends Sunday night was always biryani night. Conservative in most other things, they were reckless on biryani night, trying out a new place each week. Mr. Pinto had found the Biryani Emperor of Bombay much written about in the papers,