Last Man in Tower - Aravind Adiga [47]
“Our place is 812 square feet. At twenty thousand rupees a square foot, that is ….”
Ajwani sketched the number of zeros in the air.
“And mine is bigger than yours, Ajwani,” Mrs. Puri said. “Twenty-two square feet bigger. That means I get ….”
With a thick finger she superimposed her figure on Ajwani’s figure. Now Ibrahim Kudwa added his on top of hers.
“But mine is slightly bigger than yours, Mrs. Puri ….”
Mr. Pinto shook his head.
“Aren’t they going to work tomorrow?” he whispered to his wife. “Don’t their children have to go to school? They’ve forgotten everything because of this money.”
“They’re very excited, Mr. Pinto. They’re going to agree to the proposal and throw us out of the building.”
“What a thing to say, Shelley! This is a Registered Co-operative Society. Not a jungle. If even one person says no that means that the Society cannot be demolished. Let’s have dinner now.”
His wife got up from the bed.
“Don’t be angry. Please go upstairs and wake Masterji. We should all have some soup and bread.”
“All right,” Mr. Pinto said, and put on his shoes.
The black Mercedes had been stuck in traffic near the Vakola highway for half an hour. “Something’s bothering you, Shanmugham.”
He turned from the front seat to face his employer.
“No, Mr. Shah.”
“Don’t lie. I watched you while I was talking to those people in Vishram. You kept rubbing your hands.”
“Nineteen thousand rupees a square foot, sir. Tower A was built in 1959 or 1960, sir. Ten thousand is a very good rate for a place like that.”
His employer chuckled.
“Shanmugham. Six years you’ve worked for me and still you are an idiot. I’ve underpaid by a thousand rupees a square foot.”
The traffic jam began to clear; Shah looked at his assistant’s eyes in the driver’s mirror.
“Those people would be thrilled at an offer of 10,000 a square foot. So 20,000 is unbelievable. Correct? And 19,000 is the same as 20,000 in a man’s mind.” He hummed an old Hindi film song.
“Turn left,” Shanmugham told the driver, when they got onto the highway to Bandra. “Quickly. Turn left. Down the service road, until I tell you to stop.”
“It’s still two hundred per cent of the market rate, sir. We’ll have to sell the Shanghai at 25,000 a square foot—more—to make any profit. This is the east, sir. Who will pay that much money to live here?”
“You can’t insult these people, Shanmugham. You can’t offer them ten per cent or fifteen per cent above market value. You’re asking them to give up their homes, the only homes some of them have ever had. You have to respect human greed.”
The driver now pulled onto the wasteland by the side of the highway.
“The Secretary said he’d join us here, sir. He’ll give us a call when he reaches the highway.”
“Let’s get out of the car, Shanmugham. I hate sitting still.”
A tall building stood at the end of the wasteland, bearing the letters “YATT” in white, and a red arc below, like the finishing touch to a signature. Beyond it was the weak glow of Vakola. A few curious faces. Men crossing the wilderness to a row of huts in the distance.
“See where they’ve set up a few tents—” Shah pointed to a spot near the bushes. “In five days that will become an entire slum. No property deeds, no titles, legal rights. What a hunger for land.” He rubbed his palms together, scraping his rings against one another. “I’ve got it too. Your boss—as you know—is a villager. He has no college degree, Shanmugham: he chews gutka, like a villager. But hunger is an excellence. Look”—he pointed to the hotel—“they’ve lost the ‘H.’ How careless posh people are. If it were my hotel I would have had the manager shot.”
Shah now pointed his finger northward, two or three times, to emphasize some place far, far away in that direction.
“In 1978, when I was still learning this business, a friend, a broker, offered me a whole floor in a new project in Cuffe Parade. Name of Maker Towers. Three fifty