Last Man in Tower - Aravind Adiga [36]
He had forgotten about Versova in the mornings.
Here, in this beach in this posh northern suburb of Mumbai, half the sand was reserved for the rich, who defecated in their towers, the other half for slum dwellers, who did so near the waves. Residents of the slum that had encroached upon the beach were squatting by the water, defecating.
An invisible line went down the middle of the beach like an electrified fence; beyond this line, the bankers, models, and film producers of Versova were engaged in tai-chi, yoga, or spot-jogging. Behind the exercising crowd, a woman in a billowing red dress posed against rocks as a photographer snapped. Large silver-foiled boards held up around the model reflected light on to her body; and she forced her rouged face into another smile for the cameras. Homeless men stood in a semi-circle round the photo-shoot, from where they passed loud and accurate judgement on the model’s physique and posing skills.
Looking at the long waxed limbs that showed through the flutter of red cloth, Shanmugham sat, precariously, on two rocks.
He turned around to look at the Mirchandani Manor, which stood on a rocky embankment behind him: sleek, beige-coloured, with a pointed gable. The curtain was still drawn at the seventh-floor window. He had received a text message from the boss at 6:30 a.m.: he assumed that they would be leaving for Vishram by nine.
Good.
Mr. Shah should have been there when the offer was made yesterday, shown his teeth, gained their trust, seduced them with smiles and handshakes, done the politician’s number with their babies, and left with a bow and a quotation from a holy book. That was how it had always been done until now. Delay, and lawyers and NGOs smell you out; the vultures swoop lower.
But look at the boss, locked up here in Versova, his other home, all of last evening and night. Just because that astrologer in Matunga had told him that yesterday evening, while auspicious for the offer to be presented, was inauspicious for a personal visit. The boss was growing more and more superstitious: no question of that. A year or two ago he would have insisted that the stars give him better times. Or perhaps it was not those stars, but the fading one on the seventh floor of the Mirchandani Manor that was keeping Mr. Shah here—the Versova property inside the Versova property. Shanmugham, a married man, smirked.
Ah, Versova. The ultimate “number two” suburb of the city. Succeed in Bollywood, and you are probably living in Juhu or in Bandra: fail, and you leave; but if you have neither succeeded nor failed, just survived in that grey, ambiguous, “number two” way, you end up here.
Mr. Shah was human. He had his physical needs. That Shanmugham understood.
He just wished the boss would not keep him in the dark about his astrological appointments—he had no idea if the astrologer had nominated morning, or evening, or night, as the time for them to go to Vishram. Until the time came, he was expected to stay close to the Manor.
One of the silver foils reflecting sunlight on the model had been sponsored by a bank; on the back, bold red lettering announced:
8.75% COMPOUNDED CANARA CO-OPERATIVE BANK
365 DAYS FIXED DEPOSIT
NO PENALTY WITHDRAWAL
APPLY NOW!
Shanmugham went closer, was shooed away by the model’s minders, smiled, and hurried back to the rocks.
On his way up in life, he had discovered petty finance like other men discover cocaine. He subscribed to the Economic Times; watched CNBC TV; and played with stocks. But he was a married man, with children, and the bulk of his money was locked away in the safety of a bank deposit. 2.8 lakh rupees, in the Rajamani Co-operative Bank, at 8.65 per cent for 400 days. He had been proud of that rate—he had forced his manager to add 0.15 per cent on top of the bank’s normal lending rate.
A helicopter striped the beach