Last Man in Tower - Aravind Adiga [30]
“Biryani Emperor of Bombay. What a fraud, Masterji.”
Not hearing a response from his friend, he looked up. He saw Masterji staring at the ceiling of the restaurant.
“Is it a rat?”
Masterji nodded.
“Where?”
The roof of the Biryani Emperor was held up by rafters of wood, and a rodent had materialized on one of them.
“Boy!” Masterji shouted. “Look at that thing up there on the wood.”
The “boy”—the middle-aged waiter—looked up. Undeterred by all the attention, the sly rat kept moving along the rafter, like a leopard on a branch. The “boy” yawned.
Masterji pushed his biryani, not even half eaten, in the direction of the boy.
“I have a rule. I can’t eat this.”
It was true: he had a “one-rat rule”—never revisit a place where a single rat has been observed.
“You and your rule.” Mr. Pinto helped himself to some of his friend’s biryani.
“I don’t like competing for my food with animals. Look at him up there: like a Caesar.”
“A man has to bend his rules a little to enjoy life in Mumbai,” Mr. Pinto said, chewing. “Just a little. Now and then.”
Masterji could not take his eye off the rodent Caesar. He did not notice that his arm was tipping over a glass.
As the waiter came to pick up the pieces, Mr. Pinto took out the No-Argument book and added to Masterji’s debit list: “Fine for broken glass at (so-called) Biryani Emperor. Rs 10.”
Having paid for food and the broken glass, the two were walking back to Vishram Society.
“Rats have always fought humans in this city, Mr. Pinto. In the nineteenth century there were plagues here. Even today they outnumber us: six rats for every human in Bombay. They have so many species and we have just one. Rattus norvegicus. Rattus rattus. Bandicota bengalensis. We must not let them take over the city again.”
Mr. Pinto said nothing. He wished again that Masterji had his Bajaj scooter with him, so they wouldn’t have to walk back on a full stomach. He blamed his wife Shelley for this. After Purnima’s death, she had suggested Masterji follow the advice in a Reader’s Digest article and renounce something to remember the deceased person by.
“For example,” she had said, “you can give up eating brinjals. And each time you crave a brinjal, you’ll remember Purnima.”
Masterji thought about it. “I will give up my scooter.”
“No no,” she protested. “That’s extreme. Brinjals will do.”
Masterji relished the extreme: the scooter went.
A fifteen-minute walk later, the two old men reached their local market, a row of blue wooden stalls, lit by white tube-lights or naked yellow bulbs, in which the most disparate trades were conducted side by side: a chicken shop smelling of poultry shit and raw meat, a sugarcane-vendor’s stall haloed in raw sucrose, a Xerox machine in a stationery shop yawning flashes of blinding light, and a barber’s salon, busy even at this hour, stinking of shaving cream and gossip.
Mr. Pinto finally summoned up the courage.
“Masterji,” he said, “why don’t you have yourself checked at Mahim Hinduja hospital? They do a full-body check-up.”
“Checked? For what?”
“It begins with D, Masterji.”
“Nonsense. I have perfect control over my bowels. I have always had strong lower organs.”
Mr. Pinto looked at his shoes and said: “Diabetes.”
“Mr. Pinto. I don’t drink much, don’t eat much, I don’t even have television. How can I get diabetes?”
“You are losing your temper. The other night it happened with the modern girl’s boyfriend. Everyone in the Society has been talking. And you go to the toilet all the time. We hear it from below.”
“How dare you, Mr. Pinto. Spying on me. I’ll go to the bathroom when I want to. It is a free country.”
They walked back to Vishram in silence. Ram Khare, the guard, came running up to them: “Have you heard the news, sir?”
“What news?” Mr. Pinto asked.
“The Secretary is at Ajwani’s office now, sir—go there and hear the news for yourself,” Khare said. “There’s gold for all of you! Gold!”
“He’s drinking again,” Mr. Pinto whispered. They left the raving guard behind them and walked