Last Man in Tower E-Book

Adiga Aravind

• Herausgeber: Atlantic Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

The magnificent new novel from the Booker Prize-winning author of The White Tiger: LONGLISTED FOR THE 2013 IMPAC AWARD. Ask any Bombaywallah about Vishram Society - Tower A of the Vishram Co-operative Housing Society - and you will be told that it is unimpeachably pucca. Despite its location close to the airport, under the flight path of 747s and bordered by slums, it has been pucca for some fifty years. But Bombay has changed in half a century - not least its name - and the world in which Tower A was first built is giving way to a new city; a Mumbai of development and new money; of wealthy Indians returning with fortunes made abroad. When real estate developer Dharmen Shah offers to buy out the residents of Vishram Society, planning to use the site to build a luxury apartment complex, his offer is more than generous. Initially, though, not everyone wants to leave; many of the residents have lived in Vishram for years, many of them are no longer young. But none can benefit from the offer unless all agree to sell. As tensions rise among the once civil neighbours, one by one those who oppose the offer give way to the majority, until only one man stands in Shah's way: Masterji, a retired schoolteacher, once the most respected man in the building. Shah is a dangerous man to refuse, but as the demolition deadline looms, Masterji's neighbours - friends who have become enemies, acquaintances turned co-conspirators - may stop at nothing to score their payday. A suspense-filled story of money and power, luxury and deprivation; a rich tapestry peopled by unforgettable characters, not least of which is Bombay itself, Last Man in Tower opens up the hearts and minds of the inhabitants of a great city - ordinary people pushed to their limits in a place that knows none.

Leseprobe

Last Man in Tower

Also by Aravind Adiga:

The White Tiger Between the Assassinations

Last Man in Tower

ARAVIND ADIGA

First published in Great Britain in hardback and airport and export trade paperback in 2011 by Atlantic Books, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright © Aravind Adiga, 2011

The moral right of Aravind Adiga to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination and not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Hardback ISBN: 978 1 84887 516 6 Trade Paperback ISBN: 978 1 84887 517 3 eBook ISBN: 978 1 84887 786 3

Printed in Great Britain

Atlantic Books An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd Ormond House 26–27 Boswell Street London WC1N 3JZ

www.atlantic-books.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Map

Book One How the Offer was Made

11 May

12 May

13 May

Book Two Mr Shah Explains His Proposal

14 May

18 May

Book Three Four or Five Seconds of Feeling Like a Millionaire

4 June

Book Four The Rains Begin

19 June

20 June

21 June

25 June

29 June

Book Five The End of an Opposition Party

3 July

6 July

Book Six Fear

15 July

21 July

23 July

24 July

31 July

1 August

2 August

3 August

6 August

17 August

Book Seven Last Man in Tower

2 Septemper

3 Septemper

4 Septemper

Book Eight Deadline

29 Septemper

30 Septemper

1 October

2 October

3 October

Book Nine The Simplest of Things

4 October

5 October

7 October

Epilogue Murder and Wonder

15 December

16 December

23 December

Acknowledgements

To my fellow commuters on the Santa Cruz–Churchgate local line

A NOTE ON MONEY

A lakh is 100,000 rupees, equivalent to around £1,400 or $2,200.

A crore is 10,000,000 rupees, equivalent to around £140,000 or $220,000.

So Mr Shah’s offer to the members of Vishram Society would translate into a typical windfall of around £210,000 or $330,000 per family.

The average per capita annual income in India in 2008–9 was 37,490 rupees, around £500 or $800.

PLAN OF VISHRAM SOCIETY (TOWER A) VAKOLA, SANTA CRUZ (EAST), MUMBAI – 400055

Ground floor:

0A

the security guard’s personal room

0B

allotted to the Secretary of the Society for official work, with an alcove for the cleaning lady to store her broom, disinfectant, and mopping cloth

0C

Felicia Saldanha, 49, and her daughter Radhika, 20; Mr Saldanha, an engineer, is said to work in Vizag

1st floor:

1A

Suresh Nagpal, 54, timber merchant, and wife Mohini, 53

1B

Georgina Rego, 48, social worker, and son Sunil, 14, and daughter Sarah, 11

1C

C. L. Abichandani, hardware specialist, 56, his wife Kamini, 52, and daughters Kavita, 18, and Roopa, 21

2nd floor:

2A

Albert Pinto, 67, retired accountant for the Britannia Biscuit Company, and wife Shelley, 64

2B

Deepak Vij, 57, businessman, his wife Shruti, 43, and daughter Shobha, 21

2C

Ramesh Ajwani, real-estate broker, 50, his wife Rukmini, 47, and sons Rajeev, 13, and Raghav, 10

3rd floor:

3A

Yogesh A. Murthy (known as ‘Masterji’), retired schoolteacher, 61, now living alone after the recent death of his wife Purnima

3B

Given on rent to Ms. Meenakshi, possibly a journalist, single woman of about 25. Owner Shiv Hiranandani (known as ‘Import-Export’) lives in Khar West

3C

Sanjiv Puri, 54, accountant, his wife Sangeeta, 52, and son Ramesh, 18, afflicted with Down’s syndrome

4th floor:

4A

Ashvin Kothari, 55, the Secretary of the Society, occupation unknown, his wife Renuka, 49, and son Siddharth (known as ‘Tinku’), 10

4B

George Lobo, 45, respectable chemist, his wife Carmina, 40, and daughter Selma, 19

4C

Ibrahim Kudwa, 49, internet-store owner, his wife Mumtaz, 33, and children Mohammad, 10, and Mariam, 2

5th floor:

5A

Given on rent to Mr Narayanswami, 35, working in an insurance company in the Bandra-Kurla Financial Centre. Wife said to be in Hyderabad. (Owner Mr Pais lives in Abu Dhabi)

5B

Sudeep Ganguly, 43, proprietor of a stationery shop in Bandra (East), his wife Sharmila, 41, and son Anand, 11

5C

left empty, on request of owner Mr Sean Costello, after the suicide of his son Ferdinand, who jumped from the terrace of the building; owner currently in Qatar, working as chef for American fast-food company

Other regulars:

Mary, 34, the khachada-wali, or cleaning lady; and Ram Khare, 56, the security guard; maids and cooks are employed in most of the households

If you are inquiring about Vishram Society, you will be told right away that it is pucca – absolutely, unimpeachably pucca. This is important to note, because something is not quite pucca about the neighbourhood – the toenail of Santa Cruz called Vakola. On a map of Mumbai, Vakola is a cluster of ambiguous dots that cling polyp-like to the under-side of the domestic airport; on the ground, the polyps turn out to be slums, and spread out on every side of Vishram Society.

At each election, when Mumbai takes stock of herself, it is reported that one-fourth of the city’s slums are here, in the vicinity of the airport – and many older Bombaywallahs are sure anything in or around Vakola must be slummy. (They are not sure how you even pronounce it: Va-KHO-la, or VAA-k’-la?) In such a questionable neighbourhood, Vishram Society is anchored like a dreadnought of middle-class respectability, ready to fire on anyone who might impugn the pucca quality of its inhabitants. For years it was the only good building – which is to say, the only registered co-operative society – in the neighbourhood; it was erected as an experiment in gentrification back in the late 1950s, when Vakola was semi-swamp, a few bright mansions amidst mangroves and malarial clouds. Wild boar and bands of dacoits were rumoured to prowl the banyan trees, and rickshaws and taxis refused to come here after sunset. In gratitude to Vishram Society’s pioneers, who defied bandits and anopheles mosquitoes, braved the dirt lane on their cycles and Bajaj scooters, cut down the trees, built a thick compound wall and hung signs in English on it, the local politicians have decreed that the lane that winds down from the main road to the front gate of the building be called ‘Vishram Society Lane’.

The mangroves are long gone. Other middle-class buildings have come up now – the best of these, so local real-estate brokers say, is Gold Coin Society, but Marigold, Hibiscus, and White Rose grow and grow in reputation – and with the recent arrival of the Grand Hyatt Hotel, a five-star, the area is on the verge of ripening into permanent middle-class propriety. Yet none of this would have been possible without Vishram Society, and the grandmotherly building is spoken of with reverence throughout the neighbourhood.

It is, strictly speaking, two distinct Societies enclosed within the same compound wall. Vishram Society Tower B, which was erected in the late 1970s, stands in the south-east corner of the original plot: seven storeys tall, it is the more desirable building to purchase or rent in, and many young executives who have found work in the nearby Bandra-Kurla financial complex live here with their families.

Tower A is what the neighbours think of as ‘Vishram Society’. It stands in the centre of the compound, six storeys tall; a marble block set into the gate-post says in weathered lettering:

THIS PLAQUE WAS UNVEILED BY SHRI KRISHNA MENON, THE HONOURABLE DEFENCE MINISTER OF INDIA, ON 14 NOVEMBER 1959, BIRTHDAY OF OUR BELOVED PRIME MINISTER, PANDIT JAWAHARLAL NEHRU.

Here things become blurry; you must get down on your knees and peer to make out the last lines:

… HAS ASKED MENON TO CONVEY HIS FONDEST HOPE THAT VISHRAM SOCIETY SHOULD SERVE AS AN EXAMPLE OF ‘GOOD HOUSING FOR GOOD INDIANS’.

ERECTEDBY:

MEMBERS OF THE VISHRAM SOCIETY CO-OPERATIVE HOUSING SOCIETY FULLY REGISTERED AND INCORPORATED IN THE CITY OF BOMBAY 14-11-1959

The face of this tower, once pink, is now a rainwater-stained, fungus-licked grey, although veins of primordial pink show wherever the roofing has protected the walls from the monsoon rains. Every flat has iron grilles on the windows: geraniums, jasmines, and the spikes of cacti push through the rusty metal squares. Luxuriant ferns, green and reddish green, blur the corners of some windows, making them look like entrances to small caves.

The more enterprising of the residents have paid for improvements to this shabby exterior – hands have scrubbed around some of the windows, creating aureoles on the façade, further complicating the patchwork of pink, mildew-grey, black, cement-grey, rust-brown, fern-green, and floral red, to which, by midday, are added the patterns of bedsheets and saris put out to dry on the grilles and balconies. An old-fashioned building, Vishram has no lobby; you walk into a dark square entranceway and turn to your left (if you are, or are visiting, Mrs Saldanha of 0C), or climb the dingy stairwell to the homes on the higher floors. (An Otis lift exists, but unreliably so.) Perforated with eight-pointed stars, the wall along the stairwell resembles the screen of the women’s zenana in an old haveli, and hints at secretive, even sinister, goings-on inside.

Outside, parked along the compound wall are a dozen scooters and motorbikes, three Maruti-Suzukis, two Tata Indicas, a battered Toyota Qualis, and a few children’s bicycles. The main feature of this compound is a three-foot-tall polished black-stone cross, set inside a shrine of glazed blue-and-white tiles and covered in fading flowers and wreaths – a reminder that the building was originally meant for Roman Catholics. Hindus were admitted in the late 1960s, and in the 1980s the better kind of Muslim – Bohra, Ismaili, college-educated. Vishram is now entirely ‘cosmopolitan’ (i.e. ethnically and religiously mixed). Diagonally across from the black Cross stands the guard’s booth, on whose wall Ram Khare, the Hindu watchman, has stencilled in red a slogan adapted from the Bhagavad Gita:

I was never born and I will never die; I do not hurt and cannot be hurt; I am invincible, immortal, indestructible.

A blue register juts out of the open window of the guard’s booth. A sign hangs from the roof:

ALL VISITORS MUST SIGN THE LOG BOOK AND PROVIDE CORRECT ADDRESS AND MOBILE PHONE NUMBER BEFORE ENTRY

BY ORDER – THE SECRETARY VISHRAM CO-OPERATIVE HOUSING SOCIETY

A banyan tree has grown through the compound wall next to the booth. Painted umber like the wall, and speckled with dirt, the stem of the tree bulges from the masonry like a camouflaged leopard; it lends an air of solidity and reliability to Ram Khare’s booth that it perhaps does not deserve.

The compound wall, which is set behind a gutter, has two dusty signs hanging from it:

VISIT SPEED-TEK CYBER-CAFÉ. PROPRIETOR IBRAHIM KUDWA

RENAISSANCE REAL ESTATE. HONEST AND RELIABLE. NEAR VAKOLA MARKET

The evening cricket games of the children of Vishram have left most of the compound bare of any flowering plants, although a clump of hibiscus plants flourishes near the back wall to ward off the stench of raw meat from a beef shop somewhere behind the Society. At night, dark shapes shoot up and down the dim Vishram Society Lane; rats and bandicoots dart like billiard balls struck around the narrow alley, crazed by the mysterious smell of fresh blood.

On Sunday morning, the aroma is of fresh baking. There are Mangalorean stores here that cater to the Christian members of Vishram and other good Societies; on the morning of the Sabbath, ladies in long patterned dresses and girls with powdered faces and silk skirts returning from St Antony’s church will crowd these stores for bread and sunnas. In a little while, the smell of boiling broth and spicy chicken wafts out from the opened windows of Vishram Society into the neighbourhood. At such an hour of contentment, the spirit of Prime Minister Nehru, if it were to hover over the building, might well declare itself satisfied.

Yet Vishram’s residents are the first to point out that this Society is nothing like paradise. You know a community by the luxuries it can live without. Those in Vishram dispense with the most basic: self-deception. To any inquiring outsider they will freely admit the humiliations of life in their Society – in their honest frustration, indeed, they may exaggerate these problems.

Number one. The Society, like most buildings in Vakola, does not receive a 24-hour supply of running water. Since it is on the poorer, eastern side of the train tracks, Vakola is blessed only twice a day by the Municipality: water flows in the taps four to six in the morning, and 7.30 p.m. to 9 p.m. The residents have fitted storage tanks above their bathrooms, but these can only hold so much (larger tanks threaten the stability of a building this ancient). By five in the evening the taps have usually run dry; the residents come out to talk. A few minutes after seven thirty, the reviving vascular system of Vishram Society ends all talk; water is coursing at high pressure up the pipes, and kitchens and bathrooms are busy places. The residents know that their evening washing, bathing, and cooking all have to be timed to this hour and a half when the pressure in the taps is the greatest; as do ancillary activities that rely on the easy availability of running water. If the children of Vishram Society could trace a path back to their conceptions, they would generally find that they occurred between half past six and a quarter to eight.

The second problem is the one that all of Santa Cruz, even the good part west of the railway line, is notorious for. Acute at night, it also becomes an issue on Sundays between 7 and 8 a.m. You open your window and there it is: a Boeing 747, flying right over your building. The residents insist that after the first month, the phrase ‘noise pollution’ means nothing to you – and this is probably true – yet rental prices for Vishram Society and its neighbours are at least a fourth lower because of the domestic airport’s proximity.

The final problem, existential in nature, is spelled out by the glass-faced noticeboard:

NOTICE

Vishram Co-operative Hsg Society Ltd, Tower A Minutes of the special meeting held on Saturday, 28 April

Theme: Emergency nature of repairs is recognized

As the quorum was insufficient, even on such an urgent issue, the meeting had to be adjourned for half an hour; the adjourned meeting commenced at about 7.30 p.m.

ITEM NO. 1 OF THE AGENDA:

Mr Yogesh Murthy, ‘Masterji’, (3A) suggested that the minutes of the last meeting of ‘A’ Building be taken as read as the copy of the minutes had already been circulated to all members. It was unanimously agreed that the said minutes be taken as read.

ITEM NO. 2 OF THE AGENDA:

At the outset, Masterji (3A as above) expressed serious concern about the condition of the Society Building and emphasized the need to start repair work immediately in the interest of the members’ safety and the safety of their children; most of the members gathered expressed similar…

… meeting was finally concluded about 8.30 p.m. with a vote of thanks to the chair.

Copy (1) To Members of Vishram Co-op Hsg Society Ltd, Tower A

Copy (2) To Mr A. Kothari, Secretary, Vishram Co-op Hsg Society Ltd, Tower A

Pinned behind this notice are older notices of a similar nature. After more than four decades of monsoons, erosion, wind-weathering, air pollution, and the gentle but continual vibrations caused by the low-flying planes, Tower A stands in reasonable chance of complete collapse in the next monsoon.

And yet no one, either in Vishram Society or in the neighbourhood at large, really believes that it will fall.

Vishram is a building like the people living in it, middle class to its core. Improvement or failure, it is incapable of either extremity. The men have modest paunches, wear checked polyester shirts over white banians, and keep their hair oiled and short. The older women wear saris, salwar kameez, or skirts, and the younger ones wear jeans. All of them pay taxes, support charities, and vote in local and general elections.

Just one glance at Vishram in the evening, as its residents sit in white plastic chairs in the compound, chit-chatting, fanning themselves with the Times of India, and you know that this Society is – what else? –pucca.

BOOK ONE

How the Offer was Made

11 MAY

Three o’ clock: the heat at its annual worst.

Ram Khare, the guard, cooled himself with his checked hand kerchief, while reading aloud from a digest of the Bhagavad Gita scarred in places by the long fingernails which he pressed down on it.

… never over a man’s actions, said the Lord Krishna, but only over the fruit of a man’s actions, is…

A fly rubbed its legs near the holy book; two sticks of jasmine incense burned under an image of Lord Shiva, only partly masking the odour of rum inside the guard’s booth.

A tall man in a white shirt and black trousers – salesman, Ram Khare assumed – stood in front of the booth and entered his details into the ledger. The visitor put his pen back in his pocket. ‘Can I go in now?’

Ram Khare moved a thumb from his holy digest to the visitors’ register.

‘You haven’t filled in this last column.’

The visitor smiled; an upper tooth was chipped. Clicking the ballpoint pen back to life he wrote in the column headed Person(s) to see:

Hon’ble Sec

Turning to his right upon entering the building, as directed by Ram Khare, the visitor walked into a small room with an open door, where a bald man sat at a desk, one finger of his left hand poised over a typewriter.

‘… no-tice… to… the… res-ee-den-ts… of Vi-shraaam…’

His other hand held a sandwich over a scalloped paper plate brightened by comets of mint chutney. He bit into the sandwich, then typed with one finger as he ate, breathing laboriously, and murmuring between breaths: ‘… sub-ject… Gen-ral… Wa-ter… May-n-tenanse…’

The visitor knocked on the door with the back of his hand.

‘Is there a place to rent here?’

The man with the sandwich, Mr Kothari, Secretary of Vishram Tower A, paused with a finger over the old Remington.

‘There is,’ he said. ‘Sit down.’

Ignoring the visitor, he continued typing, eating, and mumbling. There were three printed sheets on his desk, and he picked one up and read aloud: ‘… questionnaire from the Municipality. Have all the children in the Society received anti-polio drops? If so, kindly provide… if not, kindly…’

A small hammer sat near the typewriter. With the polio notice in one hand, the Secretary stood up with the hammer in the other hand and went to the noticeboard, whose glass face he opened. The visitor saw him pinning the notice into place with a nail, then driving the nail into the wooden board with three quick blows – tuck, tuck, tuck – before closing the glass. The hammer returned to its spot near the typewriter.

Back in his chair, the Secretary picked up the next piece of paper. ‘… complaint from Mrs Rego. Giant wasps are attacking… why am I paying monthly maintenance fees if the Society cannot hire the…’ He crushed it.

And then the final sheet. ‘… complaint from Mrs Rego. Ram Khare has been drinking again. He should be replaced with a sober, professional… Why am I paying monthly maintenance…’ He crushed it.

About to return to his typing, he remembered the visitor.

‘A place to buy, you said?’ he asked hopefully.

‘Rent.’

‘Good. What is your line of work?’

‘Chemicals.’

‘Good. Very good.’

Dark-skinned, tall, upright, in well-ironed Oxford-style shirt and pleated cotton trousers, the visitor gave the Secretary no reason to doubt that he was in a solid field like Drug & Chem.

‘Nothing is strictly speaking available now,’ the Secretary confessed, as the two men climbed the stairs. (‘Ninety-nine per cent of the time the lift works.’) ‘But, I can tell you, confidentially, that the owner of 3B is not fully happy with the present situation.’

An eczema of blue-skinned gods, bearded godmen, and haloed Christs covered the metal door of 3B – a testament to generations of ecumenical tenants who had each added a few icons of their own faith without removing those of any other – so that it was impossible to know if the present tenant was Hindu, Christian, or a member of a hybrid cult practised only in this building.

About to knock on the door, the Secretary checked himself – his fist was going to hit a sticker with the face of Jesus on it. Shifting his hand to find one of the few blank spots on the door, he knocked with care; after knocking again, he used his master key.

The cupboard doors had been left wide open; the floor an archipelago of newspapers and undergarments – the Secretary had to explain that 3B was currently rented to a most unsatisfactory single woman, a working journalist. The stranger looked at the peeling grey paint and the water-damage blotches on the wall; the Secretary got ready with the official line given to potential tenants – ‘in the monsoons the rainwater stains the walls, but does not reach the floor’. He got ready with official answers to all the usual tough questions – how many hours of water supply, how much noise from the planes at night, whether the electricity ‘tripped’.

Stepping over a variety of underwear, the stranger touched the wall, scratched on the flaking paint and sniffed. Turning to the Secretary, he took out a striped red notebook and wet a finger on his tongue.

‘I want a legal history of Towers A and B.’

‘A what?’

‘A summary of lawsuits filed, pending, or likely to arise in the future?’

‘There was a disagreement between the Abichandani brothers, true, over 1C. Solved out of court. We are not court-loving people here.’

‘Very good. Are there any “peculiar situations”?’

‘Peculiar…?’

‘I mean: family disputes ongoing or pending, pagdi system dealings, illegal sub-rentings, transfers of property under the informal method?’

‘None of that happens here.’

‘Murders and suicides? Assaults? Any and all other things that may make for bad luck, karma, or negative energy in the Vastu sense?’

‘Look here.’ Secretary Kothari folded his arms on his chest. The stranger seemed to want to know the moral history of every doorknob, rivet and nail in the Society. ‘Are you from the police?’

The visitor looked up from his notepad, as if he were surprised.

‘We live in a dangerous time, do we not?’

‘Dangerous,’ the Secretary conceded. ‘Very.’

‘Terrorists. Bombs in trains. Explosions.’

The Secretary couldn’t argue.

‘Families are coming apart. Criminals taking over politics.’

‘I understand now. Can you repeat your questions?’

When he was gone, the Secretary, though eager to resume his typing, found himself too nervous. He refreshed each day’s labours with two ready-made sandwiches, purchased in the morning and stored in the drawers of his desk. Unwrapping the second sandwich, he nibbled on it ahead of schedule.

He thought of the visitor’s jagged upper tooth.

‘Fellow might not even be in chemicals. Might not even have a job.’

But the anxiety must have been merely digestive in nature, for he felt better with each bite he took.

The residents of Vishram Tower A, thanks to the ledger in the guard’s booth, knew the basic facts about the strangers who visited them, something that could not necessarily be said about the people they had lived with for twenty or thirty years.

Late in the morning Mr Kothari (4A), their Secretary, got on his Bajaj scooter and left on ‘business’. Early in the afternoon, while all the others were still working, he drove back, the rear-view mirror of his scooter reflecting a quadrilateral of sunlight on to his upper breast like a certificate of clear conscience. From his movements his neighbours had deduced the existence of a ‘business’ that did not require a man’s presence for more than two or three hours a day and yet somehow funded a respectable existence. That was all they knew about Mr Kothari’s life outside their gates. If they asked, even in a round-about way, how he had saved up enough to buy the Bajaj, he would reply, as if it were explanation: ‘Not a Mercedes-Benz, is it? Just a scooter.’

He was the laziest Secretary they had ever had, which made him the best Secretary they had ever had. Asked to resolve disputes, Kothari listened to both parties, nodding his head and scratching sympathetic notes on scrap paper. Your son plays music late at night disturbing the entire floor, true. Yet he’s a musician, true. When the disputants left his office, he threw the paper into the waste bin. Jesus be praised! Allah be praised! SiddhiVinayak be –! Etc. People were forced to adjust; temporary compromises congealed. And life went on.

Kothari brushed his hair from ear to ear to hide his baldness, an act that hinted at vanity or stupidity; yet his eyes were slit-like beneath snowy eyebrows, and each time he grinned, whiskery laugh-lines gave him the look of a predatory lynx. His position carried no salary, yet he was ingratiating at each annual general meeting, virtually pleading for re-election with his palms folded in a namaste; no one could tell why this bland bald businessman wanted to sit in a dingy Secretary’s office and sink his face into files and folders for hours. He was so secretive, indeed, that you feared one day he would dissolve among his papers like a bar of Pears’ Soap. He had no known ‘nature’.

Mrs Puri (3C), who was the closest thing to a friend the Secretary had, insisted there was a ‘nature’. If you talked to him long enough, you would discover he feared China, worried about Jihadis on the suburban trains, and favoured a national identification card to flush out illegal Bangladeshi immigrants; but most had never known him to express any opinion, unless it was related to the game of cricket. Some believed that he was always on his guard because as a young man he had committed an indiscretion; his wife was rumoured to be his cousin, or from another community, or older than him by two years; or even, by the malicious, his ‘sister’. They had one son, Tinku, a noted player of carom and other indoor sports, fat and white-skinned, with an imbecilic smile pasted on his face at all times – although whether he was truly stupid, or whether, like his father, merely hiding his ‘nature’, was unclear.

The Secretary threw his sandwich wrapper into the waste bin. His breath was now a passion of raw onion and curried potato; he returned to work.

He was calculating the annual maintenance fees, which paid for the guard, Mary the cleaning lady, the seven-kinds-of-vermin man who came to fight invasions of wasps and honeybees, and the annual heavy repairs to the building’s roofing and general structure. For two years now Kothari had kept the maintenance bill constant at 1.55 rupees a square foot per tenant per month, which translated into an annual bill of (on average) 14,694 rupees per year per tenant, payable to the Society in one sum or two (in which case the second instalment was recalculated at 1.65 rupees a square foot). His ability to keep the maintenance bill steady, despite the pressure of inflation in a city like Mumbai, was considered his principal achievement as Secretary, even if some whispered that he pulled this off only by doing nothing at all to maintain the Society.

He burped, and looked up to see Mary, the Khachada-wali, who had been sweeping the corridor with her broom, standing outside his office.

A lean silent woman, barely five feet tall, Mary had big front teeth erupting out of her concave cheeks. Residents kept conversation with her to a minimum.

‘That man who asked all the questions is taking a long time to make up his mind,’ she said.

The Secretary went back to his figures. But Mary still stood at the doorway.

‘I mean, to ask the same set of questions for two days in a row. That’s curiosity.’

Now the Secretary looked up.

‘Two days? He wasn’t here yesterday.’

‘You weren’t here yesterday morning,’ the servant said. ‘He was here.’ She went back to her sweeping.

‘What did he want yesterday?’

‘The same thing he wanted today. Answers to lots and lots of questions.’

Mr Kothari’s bulbous nose contracted into a dark berry: he was frowning. He got up from his desk and came to the threshold of the office.

‘Who saw him here yesterday other than you?’

With a handkerchief over his nose he waited for Mary to stop sweeping, so he could repeat the question.

Mrs Puri was walking back to Vishram Society with her eighteen-year-old son Ramu, who kept turning to a stray dog that had followed them from the fruit and vegetable market.

Mrs Puri, who moved with a slight limp due to her weight, stopped, and took her son by the hand.

‘Oy, oy, oy, my Ramu. Slowly, slowly. We don’t want you falling into that.’

A pit had materialized in front of Vishram Society. It swallowed everything but the heads and necks of the men digging inside it, and an occasional raised muddy arm. Pushing her son back, Mrs Puri looked in. The soil changed colour every two feet as it went down, from black to dark red to bone-grey at the very bottom, where she saw ancient cement piping, mottled and barnacled. Wormy red-and-yellow snippets of wire showed through the strata of mud. There was a sign sticking out of the pit, but it faced the wrong direction, and only when Mrs Puri went all the way around the hole did she see that it said:

WORK IN PROGRESS INCONVENIENCE IS REGRETTED BMC

Ramu followed her; the dog followed Ramu.

Mrs Puri saw the Secretary was at the guard’s booth, reading the register and holding a hand up against the early-evening sun.

‘Ram Khare, Ram Khare,’ he said, and turned the register around so it confronted the guard. ‘There is a record of the man today, Ram Khare. Here.’ He tapped the entry the inquisitive visitor had made. ‘But…’ He flipped the page. ‘… there is no record of him in here yesterday.’

‘What are we talking about?’ she asked.

Ramu took the stray dog with him to the black Cross, where he would play until his mother called him in.

When the Secretary described the man, she said: ‘Oh, yes. He came yesterday. In the morning. There was another one with him, too. A fat one. They asked all these questions. I answered some, and I told them to speak to Mr Pinto.’

The Secretary stared at the guard. Ram Khare scraped the ledger with his long fingernails.

‘If there is no record in here,’ he said, ‘then no such men came.’

‘What did they want to know?’ the Secretary asked Mrs Puri.

‘Whether it is a good place or a bad place. Whether the people are good. They wanted to rent a flat, I think.’

The fat man with the gold rings had impressed Mrs Puri. He had red lips and teeth blackened by gutka, which made you think he was lower class, yet his manners were polished, as if he were of breeding, or had acquired some in the course of life. The other man, the tall dark one, wore a nice white shirt and black trousers, exactly as the Secretary had described him. No, he said nothing about being in chemicals.

‘Maybe we should tell the police about this,’ the Secretary said. ‘I don’t understand why he came again today. There have been burglaries near the train station.’

Mrs Puri dismissed the possibility of danger.

‘Both of them were good men, polite, well dressed. The fat one had so many gold rings on his fingers.’

The Secretary turned, fired – ‘Men with gold rings are the biggest thieves in the world. Where have you been living all these years?’ – and walked away.

She folded her fat forearms over her chest.

‘Mrs Pinto,’ she shouted. ‘Please don’t let the Secretary escape.’

What the residents called their sansad – parliament – was now in session. White plastic chairs had been arranged around the entrance of Tower A, right in front of Mrs Saldanha’s kitchen, an arrangement that allowed those seated a glimpse, through an almond-shaped tear in the green kitchen curtain, of a small TV. The first ‘parliamentarians’ were about to sit on the plastic chairs, which would remain occupied until water returned to the building.

A small, slow, white-haired man, refined by age into a humanoid sparrow, lowered himself into a chair with a direct view of the TV through Mrs Saldanha’s torn curtain (the ‘prime’ chair). A retired accountant for the Britannia Biscuit Company, Mr Pinto (2A) had a weak vascular system and kept his mouth open when walking. His wife, almost blind in her old age, walked with her hand on his shoulder, although she knew the compound well enough to navigate it without her husband’s help; most evenings they walked as a pair, she with her blind eyes, and he with his open mouth, as if sucking sight and breath from the other. She sat next to her husband, with his help.

‘You have been asked to wait,’ said Mrs Pinto, as the Secretary tried to make his way around the plastic chairs into his office. She was the oldest woman in the Society; Mr Kothari had no choice but to stop.

Mrs Puri caught up with him.

‘Is it true, Kothari, what they say the early-morning cat found in 3B’s rubbish?’

The Secretary, not for the first time during his tenure, cursed the early-morning cat. This cat prowled the waste bins that the residents left out in the morning for Mary to collect, in the process spilling beans, bones, and whisky bottles alike. So the residents of the building knew from the rubbish who was a vegetarian and who merely claimed to be one; who was a rum-man and who a gin-man; and who had bought a pornographic magazine when on holiday in Singapore. The main aim of this cat – ginger and scrawny, according to some, black and glossy according to others – indeed, was to make sure there was no privacy in the building. Of late the ginger (or black) fellow had led Mrs Puri to a vile discovery when it knocked over the waste bin of 3B (the flat Kothari had shown to the inquisitive stranger).

‘Among young people today, it is a common thing for boy and girl to live without marriage,’ he said. ‘At the end, one says to the other, you go your way, I go my way. There is no sense of shame in the modern way of life, what do you expect me to do about it?’

(Mr Pinto, distracted by a stock market report on the TV, had to be filled in on the topic of discussion by his wife. ‘… the modern girl on our floor.’)

Turning to her left, Mrs Puri called: ‘Ramu, have you fed the dog?’

Ramu – his soft, pale face hinted at the presence of Down’s syndrome – looked perplexed. His mother and he left a bowl full of channa near the black Cross to feed stray animals that wandered into the Society; he looked about for the bowl. The dog had found it.

Now Mrs Puri turned back to the Secretary to make one thing clear: the modern, shame-free way of living counted for nothing with her.

‘I have a growing son—’ She dropped her voice. ‘I don’t want him living with the wrong kind of people. You should call Import-Export Hiranandani now.’

That Mr Hiranandani, the owner and original resident of 3B, a shrewd importer-exporter of obscure goods, known for his guile in slipping phosphates and peroxides through customs, had moved to a better neighbourhood (Khar West) was understandable; all of them dreamed of doing the same thing. Differences of wealth among the members did not go unnoticed – Mr Kudwa (4C) had taken his family last summer to Ladakh, rather than nearby Mahabaleshwar, as everyone else did, and Mr Ajwani the broker owned a Toyota Qualis – yet these were spikes and dips within the equalizing dinginess of Vishram. The real distinction was leaving the Society. They had come to their windows and cheered Mr Hiranandani when he departed with his family for Khar West; yet his behaviour since had been scandalous. Not checking the identity of this girl tenant, he had taken her deposit and handed her the keys to 3B, without asking the Secretary or his neighbours if they wanted an unmarried woman – a journalist, at that – on their floor. Mrs Puri was not one to pry – not one to ask what was happening within the privacy of a neighbour’s four walls – but when the condoms come tumbling on to your doorstep, well, then!

As they were talking, a trickle of waste water moved towards them.

A pipe from Mrs Saldanha’s ground-floor kitchen discharged into the open compound; although she had been chided often, she had never connected her kitchen sink into the main sewage – so the moment she began her cooking, it burped right at their feet. In every other way, Mrs Saldanha was a quiet, retreating woman – her husband, who was ‘working in Vizag’, had not been seen in Vishram for years – but in matters of water, brazen. Because she lived on the ground floor, she seemed to have it longer than anyone else did, and used it shamelessly when they could not. The emission of waste water into the compound only underlined her water-arrogance.

A glistening eel of water, its dark body now tinted with reddish earth, nosed its way towards the parliament. Mr Pinto lifted the front feet of the ‘prime’ chair and moved out of the sewage-eel’s path; and it was forgotten.

‘Have you seen anyone going into her room?’ the Secretary asked.

‘Of course not,’ Mrs Puri said. ‘I am not one to pry into my neighbours’ lives, am I?’

‘Ram Khare hasn’t told me he has seen any boy come into the building at night.’

‘What does that mean, Ram Khare has seen nothing?’ Mrs Puri protested. ‘A whole army could come in, and he would see nothing.’

The stray dog, having done crunching its channa, ran towards the parliament, trotted through the water, slid under the chairs, and headed up the stairwell, as if pointing out to them the solution to their crisis.

The Secretary followed the dog.

Breathing heavily, one hand on the banister and one hand on her hip, Mrs Puri went up the stairs. Through the star-shaped holes in the wall she could see Mr Pinto standing by the black Cross to keep watch on Ramu until she returned.

She smelled the dog on the second landing of the stairs. Amber eyes shone in the dim stairwell; pale legs, impastoed with dry dung, shivered. Mrs Puri stepped over the sickly legs and walked to the third floor.

The Secretary was standing by Masterji’s door, with a finger on his lips. From inside the open door, they could hear voices.

‘… and my hand represents…?’

‘Yes, Masterji.’

‘Answer the question, boys: my hand represents…?’

‘The earth.’

‘Correct. For once.’

The bi-weekly science ‘top-up’ was in session. Mrs Puri joined the Secretary by the door, the only one in Vishram Society unmarked by religious icons.

‘This is the earth in infinite space. Home of Man. Follow me?’

Reverence for science and learning made the Secretary stand with folded hands. Mrs Puri pushed past him to the door. She closed an eye and spied in.

The living room was dark, the curtains were drawn; a table lamp was the only source of light.

A silhouette of a huge fist, looking like a dictator’s gesture, appeared on the wall.

A man stood next to the table lamp, making shadows on the wall. Four children sitting on a sofa watched the shadows he conjured; another sat on the floor.

‘And my second fist, which is going around the earth, is what?’

‘The sun, Masterji’ – one of the boys.

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘No, no, no. The sun is this. See—’ A click, and the room went entirely dark. ‘Earth without sun.’ Click. ‘Earth with sun. Understand? Lamp: sun.’

‘Yes, Masterji.’

‘All of you say it together.’

‘Yes, Masterji’ – three voices.

‘All of you.’

‘Yes, Masterji’ – four.

‘So my second, that is to say, my moving fist is –? Big white object seen at night if you look up.’

‘Moon.’

‘Correct. MOON. Earth’s satellite. How many satellites does the Earth have?’

‘Can we go now, Masterji?’

‘Only after we get to the eclipse. And what are you wriggling about for, Mohammad?’

‘Anand is pinching me, Masterji.’

‘Stop pinching him, Anand. This is physics, not fun. Now: how many satellites does…’

The boy on the floor said: ‘Question, Masterji.’

‘Yes?’

‘Masterji, what happened when the dinosaurs died out? Show us again how the meteor hit the earth.’

‘And tell us about global warming again, Masterji.’

‘You’re trying to avoid my question by asking your own. Do you think I taught in school for thirty-four years not to see through tricks like this?’

‘It’s not a trick, Masterji, it’s a—’

‘Enough for today. Class is over,’ Masterji said and clapped his hands.

‘We can go in now,’ the Secretary whispered. Mrs Puri pushed open the door and turned the lights on in the room.

The four boys who had been sitting on the sofa – Sunil Rego (1B), Anand Ganguly (5B), Raghav Ajwani (2C) and Mohammad Kudwa (4C) – got up. Tinku Kothari (4A), the fat son of the Secretary, struggled to his feet from the floor.

‘Enough, boys, go home!’ Mrs Puri clapped. ‘Masterji has to have dinner soon. Class is over. Go, go, go.’

It was not a ‘class’, though conducted with such dignity, but an after-class science ‘top-up’ – meant to do to a normal schoolchild what a steroidal injection does to a merely healthy athlete.

Anand Ganguly picked up his cricket bat, which was propped up against the old fridge; Mohammad Kudwa took his blue cricket cap, emblazoned with the star of India, from above the glass cabinet full of silver trophies, medals, and certificates attesting to Masterji’s excellence as a teacher.

‘What a surprise to see you here,’ Masterji said. ‘I hardly have visitors these days. Adult visitors, that is.’

Mrs Puri checked to see if the lights were off in 3B – of course they were, young people of that lifestyle are never home before ten – and closed the door. She explained, in low tones, the problem caused by Masterji’s neighbour and what had been found in her rubbish by the early-morning cat.

‘There is a boy who goes into and comes out of that room with her,’ Masterji conceded. He turned to the Secretary. ‘But she works, doesn’t she?’

‘Journalist.’

‘Those people are known for their number two activities,’ Mrs Puri said.

‘She seems to me, though I have only seen her from a distance, a decent girl.’

Masterji continued, his voice gaining authority from the echoes of ‘sun, moon, eclipse, physics’ that still seemed to ring through it: ‘When this building first came up, there were no Hindus allowed here, it is a fact. Then there were meant to be no Muslims, it is a fact. All proved to be good people when given a chance. Now, young people, unmarried girls, they should also be given a chance. We don’t want to become a building full of retirees and blind people. If this girl and her boyfriend have done something inappropriate, we should speak to them. However…’ He looked at Mrs Puri. ‘… we have no business with her rubbish.’

Mrs Puri winced. She wouldn’t tolerate this kind of talk from anyone else.

She looked around the flat, which she had not visited in a while, still expecting to see Purnima, Masterji’s quiet, efficient wife, and one of her best friends in Vishram. Now that Purnima was gone – dead for more than six months – Mrs Puri observed signs of austerity, even disrepair. One of the two wall-clocks was broken. A pale rectangle on the wall above the empty TV stand commemorated the ancient Sanyo that Masterji had sold after her death, rejecting it as an indulgence. (What an error, Mrs Puri thought. A widower without a TV will go mad.) Water stains blossomed on the ceiling; the pipes on the fourth floor leaked. Each year in September Purnima had paid for a man from the slums to scrub and whitewash them. This year, unscrubbed, the stains were spreading like ghostly evidence of her absence.

Now that Mrs Puri’s issue was dismissed, the Secretary raised his own, more valid, concern. He told Masterji about the inquisitive stranger who had come twice to the Society. Should they make a report to the police?

Masterji stared at the Secretary. ‘What can this man steal from us, Kothari?’

He went to the sink that stood in a corner of the room – a mirror above it, a framed picture of Galileo (‘Founder of Modern Physics’) above the mirror – and turned the tap; there was a thin flow of water.

‘Is this what he is going to steal from us? Our plumbing?’

Each year, the contractor who cleaned the overhead tank did his work sloppily – and the silt from the tank blocked the pipes in all the rooms directly below it.

The Secretary responded with one of his pacifying smiles. ‘I’ll have the plumber sent over next time I see him, Masterji.’

The door creaked open: Sunil Rego had returned.

The boy left his slippers at the threshold and entered holding a long rectangular scroll. Masterji saw the words ‘TUBERCULOSIS AWARENESS WEEK FUND-RAISING DRIVE’ written on the top.

Fourteen-year-old Sunil Rego’s mother was a social worker, a formidable woman of left-wing inclinations nicknamed ‘The Battleship’ within the Society. The son was already proving to be a little gunboat.

‘Masterji, TB is an illness that we can overcome together if we all—’

The old teacher shook his head. ‘I live on a pension, Sunil: ask someone else for a donation.’

Embarrassed that he had to say this in front of the others, Masterji pushed the boy, perhaps too hard, out of the room.

*

After dinner, Mrs Puri, folding Ramu’s laundry on the dining table, looked at a dozen ripe mangoes. Her husband was watching a replay of a classic India versus Australia cricket match on TV. He had bought the mangoes as a treat for Ramu, who was asleep under his aeroplane quilt.

Closing the door behind her, she walked up the stairs, and pushed at the door to Masterji’s flat with her left hand. Her right hand pressed three mangoes against her chest.

The door was open, as she expected. Masterji had his feet on the small teakwood table in the living room, and was playing with a multi-coloured toy that she took a whole second to identify.

‘A Rubik’s Cube,’ she marvelled. ‘I haven’t seen one in years and years.’

He held it up for her to see better.

‘I found it in one of the old cupboards. I think it was Gaurav’s. Works.’

‘Surprise, Masterji.’ She turned the mangoes in her right arm towards his gaze.

He put the Rubik’s Cube down on the teakwood table.

‘You shouldn’t have, Sangeeta.’

‘Take them. You have taught our children for thirty years. Shall I cut them for you?’

He shook his head.

‘I don’t have sweets every day – once a week: and today is not that day.’

He would not bend on this, she knew.

‘When are you going to see Ronak?’ she asked.

‘Tomorrow.’ He smiled. ‘In the afternoon. We’re going to Byculla Zoo.’

‘Well, take them for him then. A gift from his grandfather.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘The boy shouldn’t be spoiled with mangoes. You are too generous in every way, Sangeeta. I see that there is a stray dog lying on the stairs now. It seems to be ill – there is a smell from it. I hope you didn’t bring it into the Society, as you have done before.’

‘Oh, no, Masterji,’ she said, tapping on the mangoes. ‘Not me. It was probably Mrs Rego again.’

Though she had not actually given Masterji the mangoes, Mrs Puri felt the same sense of neighbourly entitlement that would have resulted from the act, and moved to his bookshelf.

‘Are you becoming religious, Masterji?’

‘Certainly not,’ he said.

Sliding out a thin paperback from the shelf, she showed it to him as evidence; on the cover was an image of the divine eagle Garuda flying over the seven oceans.

The Soul’s Passageway after Death.

She read aloud from it: ‘In its first year out of the body, the soul travels slowly and at a low altitude, burdened by the sins of its…’

‘Purnima’s first anniversary is not so far away. She wanted me to read about God when she was gone…’

‘Do you think about her often, Masterji?’

He shrugged.

For his retirement, Masterji had hoped to re-read his collection of murder mysteries, and history books of old Rome (Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars; Tacitus, The Annals; Plutarch, Illustrious Figures of the Roman Republic) and old Bombay (A Brief Life of Mountstuart Elphinstone; The Stages of the Creation of the City of Bombay, fully illustrated). An Advanced French Grammar (with Questions and Answers Provided), bought so he could teach his children at home, also stood on the shelf. But since the murder novels were in demand throughout the Society, and neighbours borrowed them frequently (and returned them infrequently), he would soon be left only with history and foreign grammar.

Mrs Puri claimed one of the last Agatha Christies from the bookshelf and smiled – there were a few Erle Stanley Gardners too, but she was not that bored.

‘Does it say on my door, Agatha Christie lending library?’ Masterji asked. ‘I won’t have any books to read if people keep borrowing them.’

‘I’m taking this for my husband. Not that I don’t read, Masterji. I was such a reader in my college days.’ She raised her hand over her head, to indicate its extent. ‘Where is the time now, with the boy to look after? I’ll bring it back next week, I promise you.’

‘Fine.’ He had begun playing with the Cube again. ‘Just bring the book back. Which one is it?’

Mrs Puri turned the cover around so he could read the title: Murder on the Orient Express.

Yogesh Murthy, known as Masterji, was one of the first Hindus allowed into Vishram on account of his noble profession and dignified bearing. He was lean, moustached, and of medium height: in physical terms, a typical representative of the earlier generation. Good with languages (he spoke six), generous with books, passionate about education. An adornment to his Society.

Barely had the buntings of his retirement party (catered with samosa and masala chai, and attended by three generations of students) been cut from the auditorium of St Catherine’s the previous May than his wife was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer – a side-effect, it was speculated, of years of medication for her rheumatoid arthritis. She died in October. She was his second death; a daughter, Sandhya, had fallen from a train over a decade ago. On the positive side of the ledger, Gaurav, his only surviving child, a banker, was now ‘put up’ in a good flat in South Mumbai – Marine Lines – by his employer (who had paid the six-month down-deposit for his flat and even took care, it was said, of half of each month’s rent); so Masterji’s story was, in a sense, over – career ended with retirement party (catered), wife passed away without unreasonable suffering, and child having migrated to the golden citadel of inner-city Bombay. What would he do with his remaining time – the cigarette stub of years left to a man already in his sixties? After the loss of his wife, he had continued to keep himself clean and his home tidy; had continued to teach children, to lend murder mysteries, to take his evening walks around the compound at the right pace and to buy his vegetables in appropriate quantities from the market. Controlling appetites and sorrows, he had accepted his lot with dignity, and this elevated his standing among his neighbours, who had all, in one way or the other, and usually in the matter of children or spouses, been blighted by fate. They knew they were complainers, and that he, though he had suffered more than his fair share, bore it.

12 MAY

‘Oyoyoy, my Ramu. Out of bed now. Or Mummy will whack your bottom harder. Up, or the Friendly Duck will say, Ramu is a lazy lazy fellow.’

Mrs Puri coaxed Ramu into a bath half filled with warm (never hot) water, and let him play with his Friendly Duck and Spiderman for a few minutes. Mr Puri, an accountant, left for work an hour before Ramu woke up, with a metal lunch box that his wife had packed. It was a long trip for him – auto, train, change of train at Dadar, and then a shared taxi from Victoria Terminus to Nariman Point, from where he would call Ramu punctually at noon to inquire about the state of the Friendly Duck’s health that day.

‘Rum-pum-pum,’ the naked, dripping boy said, while she scrubbed his pale, downy legs. (Good for the circulation, according to Reader’s Digest.) ‘Rum-pum-pum.’ There was a time, not so long ago, when he would bathe and dry himself off with a towel in minutes – and she had had dreams of his being able to dress himself one day.

‘We should learn a new word today, Ramu. Here, what’s this word in Masterji’s novel? Ex-press. Say it.’

‘Rum-pum-pum.’

Treading on the old newspapers lying on the floor, Ramu, now fully dressed, headed into the dining room. The Puris’ 834 sq ft of living space was a maelstrom of newsprint. The sofas had been lost to India Today and Femina magazines, while the dining table was submerged under office papers, loan applications, electricity bills, savings bank statements, and Ramu’s cartoon drawing books. The face of the fridge in the dining room was a collage of philantrophic stickers (‘Fight Global Warming: Lights out for one hour this week’) and crumpling notes with long-expired messages. There were cupboards in each room; their doors gave way suddenly to let books and newspapers gush out with traumatic force, like eggs from the slit-open belly of a fish. Every few weeks, Mr Puri would scatter magazines while searching for a bank cheque or letter and shout: ‘Why don’t we clean this house up!’ But the mess grew. The enveloping junk only enhanced the domestic glow from the neat beds and the well-stocked fridge, for (as outsiders instinctively understood) this dingy, dirty flat was an Aladdin’s cave of private riches. The Puris owned no property and little gold. What they had to show for their life was in the form of paper, and how comforting that all of it was within arm’s reach, even Mr Puri’s old, old Shankar’s Weekly magazines, full of cartoons mocking Prime Minister Nehru, borrowed from a friend when he dreamed of becoming a professional caricaturist.

As his mother put Ramu’s shiny black shoes on her knees, one after the other, to tie his laces, he sneezed. Down below in 2C, Mrs Ajwani, the broker’s wife, was spraying herself generously with synthetic deodorant. Done with the laces, Mrs Puri spat on the shoes and gave them a final polish with a thick index finger, before she took Ramu to the toilet, so he could admire his good looks. The moment the boy stood before the mirror, the toilet filled with gurgling noise, as if a jealous devil were cursing. Directly overhead in 4C, Ibrahim Kudwa was performing extraordinary exercises with salt water, designed to strengthen his weak stomach. Mrs Puri countered with some gargling of her own; Ramu pressed his head into her tummy and chuckled into his mother’s fatty folds.

‘Bye, watchman!’ Mrs Puri shouted, on Ramu’s behalf, as they left the Society. Ram Khare, reading his digest of the Bhagavad Gita, waved without looking up.

Ramu disliked heat, so Mrs Puri made him walk along the edge of the alley, where king coconut palms shaded them. The palms were an oddity, a botanical experiment conducted by the late Mr Alvares, whose mansion, full of unusual trees and plants, had been sold by his heirs to make room for the three florally named concrete blocks, ‘Hibiscus’, ‘Marigold’, and ‘White Rose’.

Mrs Puri tickled her son’s ear.

‘Say “Mar-i-gold”, Ramu. You could say lots of things in English, don’t you remember? Mar-i…?’

‘Rum-pum-pum.’

‘Where did you learn this thing, Ramu, this “Rum-pum-pum”?’

She looked at her boy. Eighteen years old. Never growing, yet somehow picking up new things all the time – just like the city he lived in.

As they neared the church, Ramu began to play with the gold bangles on his mother’s hand.

The school bus was waiting for them in front of the church. Before helping Ramu board its steps, Mrs Puri loaded him with a home-made sign: it showed a big green horn with a red diagonal going through it and the legend ‘NO NOISE’. Once again, Mrs Puri made his classmates promise, as she did every morning, to be quiet; and then she waved, as the bus departed, at Ramu, who could not wave back (since he was pressing the NO NOISE sign to his chest), but said what he had to say to his mother with his eyes.

Mrs Puri hobbled back to Vishram. Walking around the big construction hole in front of the gate, which the workers were now filling up with shovels, she noticed that the sign:

WORK IN PROGRESS INCONVENIENCE IS REGRETTED BMC

had been crossed out and rewritten:

INCONVENIENCE IN PROGRESS WORK IS REGRETTED BMC

Age had accumulated in fatty rings around Mrs Puri, but her laughter came from a slim girl within: a joyous, high-pitched, ascending ivory staircase of mirth. The shovels stopped moving; the men looked at her.