Last Man in Tower - Aravind Adiga [75]
When the street lamps came to life, they took another rickshaw so she could see her Bandra again—the Bandra of her college days, where even the façade of a Catholic church had the quality and excitement of sin.
Getting off at National College, the three walked towards the old neighbourhood.
Girls were shopping for handbags and sandals in the lit stalls of the Linking Road. Just as she had done, all those years ago. If her younger self, searching for a handbag, were to bump into her, would she believe that this was her destiny in life—to end up as a left-wing radical in Santa Cruz (East)?
On Waterfield Road, she stopped by a café and looked into the glass window: what were all these young people, in their black T-shirts and turtleshell-rimmed glasses, talking about? How fat and glossy they looked, like glazed chicken breasts turning on a rotisserie spit.
The touch of cold glass on the tip of Mrs. Rego’s nose was like a guard’s rebuke.
Not yet. Not till you sign that document.
“Are we moving to Bandra, Mummy?”
“Quiet. Mummy’s watching the people on the other side of the glass.”
“Mummy—”
“Anyway, we can’t move to Bandra, so don’t disturb her.”
“Why not, Sunil?”
“Because the builder is an evil man. Just like Karim Ali who robbed Grand-uncle Coelho.”
“Mummy, let’s move to Bandra. I like it here.”
Mrs. Rego looked at her son, and then at her daughter, and nodded at both of them.
BOOK FIVE
THE END OF AN OPPOSITION PARTY
3 JULY
Ajwani took the slice of lemon and pressed it with dark fingers: seeds and juice oozed out.
“That’s what she feels like. Pretends to be special, a social worker helping the poor, but every day the deadline comes nearer, this is what is happening to her brain.”
Mrs. Puri glared at him; she bent and picked up the lemon seeds from the carpet of her living room. “Don’t do that. Ramu might slip on them.”
Ramu lay under his blue aeroplane quilt, the door to his bedroom ajar; as he sipped lemon tea on the living-room sofa, Ajwani waved to the boy.
“I know Shah has seen Mrs. Rego,” he whispered. A teenager in the slum, one of his connections down there, had seen a Mercedes driving down to the Institute. The next morning wrappers from a very expensive seafood restaurant at Juhu had been discovered in her rubbish.
“How do you know what is in her rubbish?” Mrs. Puri asked.
Ajwani grinned; the gill-like lines on his cheeks deepened.
“Do you want to fight over small things, Mrs. Puri? I know I am the black sheep of this Society. I do things you good people will not do. But now you must listen to the black sheep, or all of us will lose the money.” He whispered, “Mrs. Rego was offered a small sweetener. By Mr. Shah. That is my guess.”
“A small sweetener?” Mrs. Puri turned the words upside-down as if they were a pair of suspect jeans. “You mean extra money? Why only her? Are you getting one, Ajwani?”
The broker threw up his hands in frustration.
“I won’t even ask for one. If everyone wants a small sweetener, no one will get the cake. On my own personal initiative, I am convincing the Opposition Party, one by one. Why? Because I take responsibility.”
Mrs. Puri closed Ramu’s bedroom door. She whispered, indicating to Ajwani the appropriate decibel level for a home with a growing child. “You took responsibility for Mrs. Rego? Then why hasn’t she agreed?”
Ajwani winced.
“A man can’t put pressure on a woman beyond a certain point. A man can’t.”
“So that’s why you came here,” Mrs. Puri said. “I am not going to speak to that Communist woman.”
“Mrs. Puri ….” The broker joined his hands in prayer. “… this old fighting, this old pettiness—they have to end. This is why we have never gone anywhere in this country.”
Telling Ajwani to watch over Ramu while he slept—the Friendly Duck nearby, in case he woke up—Mrs. Puri limped down the stairs, breathing stertorously as she transferred her weight from foot to foot. No one answered the bell at 1B. She pressed a second time.
“It’s open,” a voice said from within.
She found the Battleship at the dining table, staring at the wall.
“What