Last Man in Tower (30 page)

Taking out his bifocals – a gift from his master on his fiftieth birthday – Giri sat at the table with the poster of the Eiffel Tower-under-construction behind him. He turned on the desk lamp, and opened the second drawer, which stored the chequebooks. Giri’s hand, which reproduced his master’s 1978 signature with exactness, was considerably more authentic than Shah’s, which had shifted in character over the years. For this reason Shah had long entrusted the signing of monthly bills to him. Giri took them out of a blue manila folder one by one. The electricity bill. The monthly maintenance charge from the Society. A 5,000-rupee voluntary request for the installation of ‘water-harvesting’ tanks in the building.

‘Voluntary.’ Giri sniffed. That meant in English you give money if you want. He crushed the paper and threw it into the waste basket.

Next he studied his master’s credit card bill before signing a cheque for it. He went through another credit card bill and signed a second cheque for the ‘Versova person’ – whom he refused to dignify with a more precise title.

He turned off the desk lamp.

Nearly nine o’clock. He would have to take an hour-long train to Borivali, where he lived in a one-bedroom with his mother. In the kitchen Giri changed out of his blue lungi into a pair of brown polyester trousers, and put on a white shirt over his
banian
.

Satish had left his bedroom. Giri straightened the sheets.

Mr Shah was in bed, his arm around that plaster-of-Paris building which had been near the dancing Nataraja statue all these weeks. Giri tried to prise the model out of his master’s arms, and gave up.

He turned off the lights inside the flat, and opened the door to find Shanmugham, with his arms folded.

‘When is the boss going to give me an answer?’ the left-hand man asked. ‘If we’re going to break that old teacher’s arms and legs, we have to do it now.’

3 SEPTEMBER

It was not yet four o’clock.

Masterji stopped at Flora Fountain to wipe his face with a handkerchief; cool water trickled down the old stained marble, down its goddesses and trees and porpoise.

He passed the bronze statue of Dadabhai Naoroji and went through the shade of arcaded buildings towards the
Times of India
office. Half expecting to find Shanmugham behind him, he kept glancing over his shoulder, and for this reason missed it until it was right in front of him.

Victoria Terminus.

It had been years since he had seen the great train station, the city’s grandest Gothic structure. Demons, domes, gables and gargoyles grew all over the crazy mass of coloured stone. Stone mastiffs flew out from the central dome; rams, wolves, peacocks, other nameless hysterical beasts, all thrusting out of the station, screamed silently above the traffic and clutter. Multiplying the madness, a cordon of palm-trees fanned the building – frolicking, sensual, pagan trees, taunting, almost tickling, the gargoyles.

The heart of Bombay – if there is one – it is me, it is me!

The
Times of India
building was just around the corner; he still had an hour. He crossed the road. In the cool portico of the station, he saw stone wolves perched on the capitals of columns, as if about to spring down on the people below. Taped to one of the pillars of the station, he saw a poster for a boy gone missing in the city: like a real victim of the imaginary wolves of the architecture. The print, in Hindi, was smudged, and he read it with difficulty, thinking of the lonely parents looking for this boy, begging the indifferent police for information, until they went back on a train to Bhopal or Ranchi, worn out and defeated.

He had once been a migrant like these ones pouring through the door of the station into the city, men and women from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh carrying everything they owned in bundles of cloth. They stepped out of the shade of the stone wolves and blinked in the harsh light of Mumbai. But their bundles did not contain what his did, an education. How many of them would end up like the boy in the poster – beaten, kidnapped or murdered? His heart filled with pity for their lesser struggles.

‘Point! Point! Point!’

The taxi-drivers who were waiting by the station demanded to take him to Nariman Point. He shook his head: yet the yelling went on and on. He could feel their will power as something physical, a battering ram, trying to crush his own.

Entering the lobby of the
Times of India
building, he looked at a giant mural of Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi scanning a copy of the
Times
. He sat down and waited. Half an hour to go. People streamed in and streamed out of the lobby.
How many
, he wondered,
have come to see Noronha?
He felt the familiar pride at seeing a student prosper, which is like the rush of growth hormone that straightens out a sapling, and makes an old teacher eager for another round of living.

He found a chair. He began to snooze. When he opened his eyes he saw Gaurav, in a blue business shirt, pleated trousers and tie, shaking him by the shoulder.

‘Sorry, son. I was tired.’ Masterji got up from his chair. ‘Shall we go in now to see Noronha?’

The words were sitting there on Gaurav’s tongue –
I. Didn’t. Call. Noronha. I. Didn’t. Call. Him
– but when they came out, they had become: ‘Yes. But I want to eat something first, Father.’

‘What about our appointment?’

‘We have time, Father. Plenty. I’m hungry now.’

Father and son went to the McDonald’s across from Victoria Terminus station. Masterji sat at an outdoor table and waited for Gaurav to come out with his food. He wished he had his Rubik’s Cube with him. Someone had left an advertising pamphlet on the table:

I
MPATIENCE IS NOW A VIRTUE
H
IGH-SPEED
B
ROADBAND INTERNET 512 KBPS @ 390 RUPEES A MONTH ONWARDS

Turning it over, he doodled on the back with a blue ballpoint pen, and superimposed words on the doodles:

Police

Media

Law and order

Social workers

Family

Students and old boys

Then he struck out ‘law and order’, and ‘social workers’, and ‘police’.

Gaurav came out of the restaurant carrying a chocolate-covered sundae. He gobbled it down with a plastic spoon.

At his son’s house, Masterji spoke in Hindi so Sonal would understand; now he mixed English with Kannada, their ancestral language: ‘What time did Noronha say he would meet us, son?’

Gaurav swallowed his ice cream in an almost simultaneous contraction of tongue and oesophagus.

‘He’s not seeing us, Father. Your Noronha.’

‘What do you mean?’

Closing an eye, Gaurav dug into the chocolate mud that sat at the bottom of the disappearing vanilla.

‘It’s not a story for his newspaper.’

‘Why not? One retired man fights a big builder. “Last Man in Tower Fights Builder.” That sounds like a story to me.’

Gaurav shrugged; he ate his ice cream.

Masterji stared at his son, his mouth open. ‘Did your connection really speak to Noronha? Do you
have
a connection at the
Times
?’

Gaurav’s spoon scraped the last of the chocolate mud from the bottom of the cup.

‘I was waiting for you to call me, Father. For so many days. I said to Sonal, there is trouble at Vishram. Sangeeta Aunty keeps phoning me. My own father does not phone. But when you do call, what do you say?’

Gaurav crushed his cup.

‘Contact Noronha for me. Set up an appointment. I do have a connection at the
Times
, Father. I wouldn’t lie to you. I got Noronha’s number, and I picked up the phone to call him, and I thought, my father is treating me like a servant. Not like his only living child.’

A small red moth flitted about Masterji’s hand, like a particle of air trying to warn him about something.

‘Gaurav, I called you because I have nowhere else… You are the last place.’

‘Father, what is it you want from the Confidence Group?’

Masterji had never seen Gaurav sound and look so decisive. He felt the strength draining from him.

‘Nothing.’

The boy raised his upper lip in a sneer. Purnima used to do that.

‘You’re lying, Father.’

‘Lying?’

‘Don’t you see what’s behind this nothing?
You
. You think you are a great man because you’re fighting this Shah. Another Galileo or Gandhi. You’re not thinking of your own grandson.’

‘I
am
thinking of Ronak. This man Mr Shah threatened the Pintos. In daylight. Would you want Ronak to grow up in a city where he can be bullied or threatened in daylight? Gaurav: listen. Dhirubhai Ambani said he would
salaam
anyone to become the richest man in India. I’ve never
salaamed
anyone. This has been a city where a free man could keep his dignity.’

Gaurav glared. His sharp features and oval face, except for the fat that had accumulated on them, resembled his father’s: but when he frowned, a dark slant furrow cut into his brow, like a bookmark left there by his mother.

‘Maybe you
should
have saluted more people, Father.’

For months now he had imagined himself speaking to Purnima, and hearing soft distant replies: but now it was as if his wife were talking from right in front of him.

‘Maybe Sandhya would not have had to take the train if you had made more money. Maybe she would have been in a taxi, safe, that day she was pushed out. She was my sister, I think of her too.’

‘Son. Son.’ Masterji pressed down on the piece of paper he had been writing on. ‘Son.’

‘Every other parent in Vishram Society has thought of their children. But not you. It’s always been this way. When I was in your physics class in school you punished me more than the others.’

‘I had to show the other boys there was no favouritism.’

‘All my life I’ve been frightened of you. You and that steel foot-ruler with which you hit my knuckles.
For sleeping in the afternoon
. Is that a crime? You made my mother’s life a living hell. Fighting with her over every five rupees she spent. Don’t you remember what she said, on her deathbed, when I asked if she had had a good life? She said, I had a happy childhood, Gaurav.
A happy childhood
, Father – and nothing after that.’

‘Don’t bring your mother’s name into this.’

‘Your students always came first for you. Always. Not that they had any love for you.’ He grinned. ‘They used to give you nicknames in class. Dirty nicknames.’

‘That’s enough.’ Masterji got up. ‘I’m going to see Noronha myself.’

‘Go. Go. You think your darling
Noronha
will see you? Has he responded to your letters or phone calls? He was the one who gave you all those nicknames in class. Go. But before you go, let me give you some advice. Just once let me be a teacher to you, Father.’

(
Why does
everyone
say that?
Masterji wondered.)

‘Do you know what it is you’re dealing with, Father? Construction. They’re mafia. Sangeeta Aunty tells me you love to talk about tidal waves and meteors in your science class. Worry about knives, Father: not the ocean. Haven’t you seen those big posters near the construction sites? “Your own swimming pool, gym, TV, wedding hall, air-conditioning.” When you sell dreams like that you can murder anyone you want. The deadline is just a few days away. Keep saying no to Mr Shah and we’ll find you one morning in a gutter. You. Are. All. Alone.’ Gaurav stood up. ‘I have to go back to work now. We can’t take long breaks from the bank, or it goes into our next performance report.’

Masterji read the words he had written on the piece of paper:

Media

Law and order

Social workers

The paper flew into the busy road.

Walking out of the McDonald’s, he stood in front of Victoria Terminus.

High up on the building a gargoyle was watching him. Sticking its tongue out it said:
I have students in high places
. He turned his eyes away. Another gargoyle grinned:
I claim no credit for Noronha
. And a third smirked:
A teacher is not without his connections
.

Then all the stony mass of the Terminus was blown away: a horn had sounded just inches from Masterji’s ears. Members of an off-duty band were coming down the pavement; a man with the tuba was giving an occasional short blast to warn people to give way. They wore red shirts with golden epaulettes and white trousers with a black stripe down them, tucked into bedraggled black boots. Suddenly they were all around Masterji, with their silvery instruments; drawn by the blasts of the tuba, he followed. The musicians’ shirts were sweat-stained and their bodies slumped. He walked behind the man with the tuba; staring into its wide mouth, he began counting the nicks and dents on its skin.

Perhaps observing his presence in their midst, the musicians got rid of him as they came close to Crawford Market by taking a sudden right turn together. Masterji kept on walking in a straight line, like an animal dragged by its collar. His body was in the possession of inertia, but he had full control of his neck and eyes as he observed that the clock on the Crawford Market tower was broken. The pavement became dim. Now he was on Mohammad Ali Road. The dark canyon of concrete and old stone amplified the noise of the traffic. On either side, thick buildings blocked the light, while the JJ flyover, raised on columns, its grooved body winding and twisting like an alligator on the hunt, secreted its shadow on to the road below.

Something touched him from his left.

Three goats had come out from an alley, and one of them rubbed against his left leg.

Day-labourers slept on the pavement, oblivious to the moving feet around them. The wooden carts that they had been pulling all day long lay beside them; from beneath one, a dog’s claws jutted out, as if the cart were relaxing its animal digits in the cool of the evening. An old man sat beside stacks of newspapers held down by rocks: each rock looking like a crystallization of some hard truth in the newsprint. Masterji stopped to watch the newspapers.

They shot an elected member of the city corporation dead. It was in the papers.

He remembered that Bhendi bazaar, one of the recruiting grounds of the mafia, was just around the corner. Any of these unshaven men by the side of the road, with nothing to do but suck tea, would do it for Mr Shah. A knife would be stuck into his neck. Worse: his knees would be smashed. He might be turned into a cripple. Blinded.

Beads of sweat fell from his neck all the way down to the tip of his spine.

Wasn’t Gaurav right – wasn’t it just pride that kept him from running to Mr Shah and saying: ‘I accept your offer. Now leave me alone!’

Smoke blew at him from the charcoal kebab grills outside the continuous cheap restaurants that line Mohammad Ali Road. Masterji turned into one restaurant, which was so filthy he knew he had broken his one-rat rule even before going in. A small figure crouching by the door folded its legs to let him in.

He sat down on one of the communal benches, where labourers waited for tea and bread and biscuits on wet dirty plates.

‘What?’ the waiter asked, swatting a dirty red rag on the table, in simulation of an act of cleaning.

‘Tea. And – put all the sugar in the world in it. Understand?’

‘All the sugar in the world,’ the waiter said. He grinned.

He came back with a glass of tea and a packet of milk biscuits. Standing at the end of table he ripped open the packet, letting the biscuits spill
tunktunktunk
into a stainless-steel plate.

The other customer at the table – Masterji noticed him now – a gaunt, middle-aged man in a dirty blue shirt, looked Muslim because of his beard. Masterji guessed he was one of those who had been pulling carts on the road – he thought he could even identify the man’s wooden cart resting against the door of the café. The labourer picked a biscuit from the stainless-steel plate and chewed. Done with it, he breathed, picked a second biscuit, and chewed. Each movement of his bony jaws spoke of fatigue; the permanent fatigue of men who have no one to care about them when they work and no one to care about them after they work. The thin body broadcast a raw animal silence. Middle-aged? No. His hair was greying at the edges, but youth had only recently been exorcised from his face. Twenty-seven or twenty-eight at the most. Masterji watched this young man with sunken, shocked eyes and barely enough strength to lift one milk biscuit at a time.
This is his daily life. Pulling that cart and coming here for these biscuits
, he thought.