Last Man in Tower

He went back to bed. In the old days, his wife’s tea and talk and perfume would wake him up. He closed his eyes.

Hai-ya! Hai-ya!

Screams from down below. The two sons of Ajwani, the broker, began the morning by practising tae kwon do in full uniform in their living room. Ajwani’s boys were the athletic champions of the Society. The eldest, Ravi, had won a tremendous victory in the martial arts competition last year. As a gesture of the Society’s gratitude, he was asked to dip his hand in kerosene and leave a memento of his victorious body on the front wall, where it could still be seen (or so everyone was sure), just above Mrs Saldanha’s kitchen window.

Now from Masterji’s left, a callisthenic voice, flipping diphthongs up and down. ‘Oy, oy, oyoyoyoy, my Ramu – come here . . . Ay, ay. Turn that way my prince, oyoyoy . . .’ What was Ramu going to take to school for lunch? Masterji wondered, yawning and turning to the side.

A noise from the kitchen. The very noise Purnima used to make when chopping onions. He tiptoed into the kitchen to catch a ghost, if one was there. An old calendar was tapping on the wall. It was Purnima’s private calendar, illustrated with an image of the goddess Lakshmi tipping over a pot full of gold coins, with key dates circled and marked in her private shorthand. She had consulted it to the day she had been admitted to hospital (12 October; circled), so he had not removed it at the start of the year.

He would have to walk a bit today with his grandson; in anticipation, he wrapped a pink orthopaedic cloth tightly around his arthritic left knee before putting on his trousers. Back at the teak-wood table he picked up The Soul’s Passageway After Death.

The bell rang. Bushy-haired, bearded, bespectacled Ibrahim Kudwa, the cybercafe owner from Flat 4/C, with dandruff sprinkled like spots of wisdom on the shoulders of his green kurta.

‘Did you see the sign, Masterji?’ Kudwa pointed to the window. ‘In the hole they made outside. I changed the sign from “Inconvenience is in Progress, Work is Regretted” to the other way.’ Kudwa slapped his forehead. ‘Sorry, I changed it from “Work is in Progress, Inconvenience is Regretted” to the other way round. I thought you would like to know.’

‘Very impressive,’ Masterji said, and patted his beaming neighbour. In the kitchen, the old calendar began tapping on the wall again, and Masterji forgot to offer his visitor even a cup of tea.

By midday, he was at the Byculla Zoo, leading his grandson by the hand, from cage to cage. The two of them had seen a lioness, two black bears rolling about in fresh grass, an alligator in emerald water, elephants, hippos, cobras and pythons.

The boy had questions: What is the name of that animal in the water – Who is the tiger yawning at – Why are the birds yellow? Masterji enjoyed giving names to the animals, and added a humorous story to explain why each one left his native land and came to Mumbai. ‘Do you think of your grandmother?’ he asked the boy from time to time.

The two of them stopped in front of a rectangular cage with bars and a low tin roof; an animal moved from one end to the other. The idlers who had turned up to the zoo, even the lovers, stopped at the cage. A green tarpaulin on the roofing made a phosphorescent glow through which the dark animal came, jauntily, as if chuckling, its tongue hanging out, until it stood up on a red guano-stained stone bench and reared its head; it got down, turned, went to the other end of the cage and reared its head again before turning back.
It was filthy – it was majestic: the grey fleece, the dark doglike grinning face, the powerful striped lower limbs. Men and women watched it. Perhaps this mongrel beast looked like one of those – half-politician and half-criminal – who ruled the city, vile and necessary.