Last Man in Tower - Aravind Adiga [81]
His father was a rationalist, of course. Something stinging would be on its way soon. Gaurav bit into the chikki.
“When are you signing the acceptance form, Father, and taking the money?”
Sonal, from the other room, supplied the lines he had forgotten:
“Father-in-law, there are questions of … income tax, estate tax. Life insurance. We have to plan. Sooner you say ‘yes,’ the better for all of us.”
Masterji glared at the chikki as he spoke.
“Son, there are the things we know about Vishram. Physically it has fallen behind but the memories of my late wife ….”
“You mean my mother.”
“Yes, your mother, and your sister. It is not such an easy thing, to pack up and leave.”
As his father watched, Gaurav ripped open another packet of chikki; his wife spoke for him.
“Have you seen the new buildings in Parel, Father-in-law?”
Leaning back, so that he could see her with her feeding spoon, dripping with yoghurt, Sonal smiled.
“They’re duplexes. Not yet built and each is sold already. NRIs from England. You know how much they cost?” She fed her father yoghurt. “Twenty-seven crores each. All sold.”
Twenty-seven crores each. Trying to make sense of how much money that was, Masterji thought of the ocean.
“Twenty-seven crores,” Gaurav said. “Twenty-seven.”
Look at the boy, bleating his wife’s words. Masterji glared once again at the chikki in his son’s hand.
The maid brought in a piece of barfi and six or seven fried banana chips and put them on the table in front of him. The portions were small. This was always the case when he came here; food merely tiptoed across his plate.
“We have your mother’s one-year anniversary coming up in October, son. I spoke to Trivedi, he’s eager to perform the ceremony. The three of us will go to Bandra like last time. I hope you’ll join us this year, Sonal. And bring Ronak too.”
He ate the banana chips one by one.
Gaurav picked up the Radium packet and sniffed. “Father, this is a cheap thing, not good for the boy.” He let it fall.
Masterji got up and went to the balcony. Spotting Ronak playing down in the compound, he clapped. Without turning to his son, he said: “Not one of my gifts for Ronak is liked in this household. I give him a book, a wonderful blue book. The Illustrated History of Science. It was returned to me by his mother.”
He clapped again.
Sonal leaned back from the inner room to look at her husband. Answer, answer, his eyes urged her.
Moving towards her father with another spoonful of yoghurt, she disappeared from sight.
“Father, you always expected me to read books, even when I was a boy. You made me learn French. I am no good at these things. Mother told you this: I am not intellectual like you.” Gaurav opened a new bar of peanut-chikki. “And, Father, the practice among Sindhis is to give gold when a child is born. Sonal once told you this, thinking that a South Indian like you might not know it. But you never gave Ronak any gold. One of Mother’s necklaces is still in the old place. A Vummidi necklace. In her almirah. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.”
After clapping once more—“Ronak, it’s me, come up!”—Masterji returned to the room. He sat down in front of his son.
“You’re too lazy to read, but it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t encourage Ronak. It is life’s greatest joy and power: the ability to learn. Remember what I used to tell you. Lord Elphinstone refused the governor-generalship so he could write his history of India.”
Gaurav ate more chikki.
Sonal, Sonal, please come out—he licked his thumbnail, thumb, index finger nail, index finger, and the webbing in between thumb and index finger. Come out before I get up and shout at the old man.
But then the smell of sweat and sun entered the room; a wooden cricket bat dropped to the ground; and a boy was hoisted up into the air in his grandfather’s arms.
In the kitchen Sonal did mathematics. “It’s 810 square feet, you say, Father-in-law? That would be … 1.62 crores. Let me double-check: 810 times 20,000. Yes, I think that