Last Man in Tower - Aravind Adiga [85]
The mucus in his chest thickened; his breathing sounded like a feral dog’s growling. Shah coughed and spat into his handkerchief. He checked the colour of the spit with a finger.
Bending down to pick up the mobile phone, he dialled Shanmugham’s number again.
Parvez, the driver, turned on the windscreen-wipers. The rain had started again.
“Wait,” Shah said. “Stop here.”
The boys inside the bus stand to their left were cheering.
Across the road, in the sheeting rain, one man in rags was bearing another on his back towards the bus stand. The fellow on top was covered in a cape of blue tarpaulin which billowed around them both. The man doing the carrying was pushed sideways by the wind and the weight on his shoulders; vehicles flashed their headlights at him through the rain; yet he came closer and closer to the cheering spectators, who, as if by will power alone, were pulling him to safety.
“Sir?” Shanmugham was on the line. “Do you want me to start taking action in Vishram? Should I do what I did last year in that project in Sion?”
Shah looked at the men in the rain. Adding his will to that of the spectators, he urged the two of them on until they staggered into the bus stand.
The builder smiled; he struck the window with a golden ring, making Parvez turn around.
21 JULY
Fine wrinkles radiated from Ram Khare’s eyes as he read from his holy digest, like minute illustrations of the net that Fate had cast over him.
When he was in his teens he had had hopes of playing cricket for Bombay in the Ranji Trophy; when he was in his twenties he dreamed of buying a home of his own; when he was in his thirties of taking his old parents on a pilgrimage to the city of Benaras.
At the age of fifty-six, he found that his life had contracted to three things: his daughter Lalitha, an alumna of St. Catherine’s School, now studying computer engineering in Pune; his rum; and his religion.
Mornings were for religion. Standing inside his guard’s booth with a string of black rudraksha beads in his left hand, he kept a finger on page 23:
“What are the marks by which a soul may be known? Listen to the words of our Lord Krishna. The soul is not born and it does not ….”
Footsteps came towards Vishram Society. He turned to the gate and said: “One minute, Masterji. One minute.”
Opening the tin door of the watchman’s booth, Khare stepped to one side, inviting Masterji to enter. The old teacher, who was returning with a bundle of fresh coriander for the Pintos, held it up: a gesture of protest.
Khare said: “One minute.”
Disarmed by the servant’s insistence, Masterji gave up, and so, for the first time in thirty-two years, entered the guard’s booth at Vishram Society.
“Now if you wait just a second, sir, I’ll show you my life’s work.”
There was a large spider’s web growing in a corner of the guard’s booth; Khare seemed to have no objection to its existence. Objects from the ground—twigs, chalks, pen-tops, snippets of metal wire—had been conveyed into this web, several feet off the ground: the whole thing looking like a project in mild black magic that Khare carried on in his spare time.
“This is my life’s work, sir. My life’s work.”
Ram Khare’s fingers rested on another magical object: the long, stiff-spined Visitors’ Log Book.
He ran his clean fingernail down the columns.
Guest Name
Occupation
Address
Mobile Number
Purpose of Visit
Person to See
Time Entry
Time Exit
Remarks (if any)/Observations (if any)
Signature of Guest
Signature of Guard
“Every single guest is noted, and his mobile number registered. For sixteen years it has been this way—” He pointed to the old registers stuffed into plastic trays. “Ask me who came into the building on the morning of 1 January 1994, I’ll tell you. What time they left, I’ll tell you. Sixteen years, seven