Last Man in Tower - Aravind Adiga [63]
Late in the night, the first storm crashed into the city.
20 JUNE
Low rentals, five minutes to Santa Cruz train station, ten minutes to Bandra by auto. There are many advantages to life in Vakola, yes, but Ajwani, an honest broker, advises first-timers that there is also one big negative.
Not the proximity of slums (they stay in their huts, you stay in your building, who bothers whom?). Not the Boeing 747s flying overhead (cotton in your ears, arm on your wife, off to sleep).
But-one-thing-you-must-know-before-you-move-here: Ajwani taps his mobile phone on his laminated table. This is a low-lying area. One day each monsoon, there is a storm, and on that day life in Vakola becomes impossible.
By morning floodwater had risen to waist height near the highway signal and in parts of Kalina. Vishram Society, on higher ground, was more secure, but the alley leading up to it was a foot below water; every now and then an autorickshaw arrived, scything storm water, discharging a client near the gate, and returning gondola-like. Abandoning the guard’s booth, Ram Khare sought the protection of the Society. Not that this protection was absolute; a continuous spray came through the stars in the grille. Buckets kept under the leaky spots in the roof overflowed every fifteen minutes; tongues of fresh algae and moss grew under the stairwell. Shifting diagonals of rain lashed the rusty gate and the blue roof of the guard’s booth; the water fell thick and glowing, and though the sun was hidden the rain-light was strong enough to read a newspaper in.
In the Renaissance Real-Estate Agency, Ajwani saw that it was futile to expect clients, told Mani “This is the day that comes once a year,” and staggered back to his Society under an umbrella.
At four o’clock, the sky was bright again. The thunderclouds, like a single dark bandage, had been stripped away, exposing a raw sun. People ventured out of their buildings into the water, the colour of Assam tea, on which floated rubbish and blazing light.
21 JUNE
The morning after the storm, Masterji paced about his living room. The compound was full of storm water and slush. He had just washed his brown trousers in the semi-automatic washing machine, and they would be flecked with red and black if he took even a few steps outside.
He knocked on Mrs. Puri’s door, hoping for a cup of tea and some conversation.
“You’ve become a stranger to us, Masterji,” Mrs. Puri said, when she opened the door. “But we have to go to SiddhiVinayak Temple soon, Ramu and I. Let us talk tomorrow.”
It was true that his neighbours had not seen much of Masterji lately.
Parliament no longer met because of the rains; and, in any case, all the talking now took place behind closed doors. A hush of covert business had fallen over a garrulous Society. Amidst the silent germination of schemes and ambitions all around him, Masterji sat like a cyst, looking at the rain and his daughter’s drawings of Vakola, or playing with his Rubik’s Cube, until there was a knock on the door and Mr. Pinto shouted, “Masterji, we are waiting, it’s time for dinner.”
A man’s past keeps growing, even when his future has come to a full stop.
Though the men and women around him dreamed of bigger homes and cars, his joys were those of the expanding square footage of his inner life. The more he looked at his daughter’s sketches, the more certain places within Vishram—the stairwell where she ran up, the garden that she walked around, the gate that she liked to swing on—became more beautiful and intimate. Sounds were richer. A scraping of feet somewhere in the building reminded him of his daughter wiping her tennis shoes on the coir mat before coming in. Sometimes he felt as if Sandhya and Purnima were watching the rain with him, and there was a sense of feminine fullness inside the dim flat.
When the sky cleared, he would notice it was evening, and walk along the garden wall. When the breeze scattered the dew from