Last Man in Tower

‘What is its name?’

Masterji could not say. The syllables were there, on the tip of his tongue. But when he tried to speak they moved the other way, as if magnetically repulsed. He shrugged.

At once the boy seemed frightened, as if his grandfather’s power, which lay in naming these animals, had ended.

To cheer him up, Masterji bought him some peanuts (though his daughter-in-law had told him not to feed the boy), and they ate on the grass. Masterji thought he was in a happy time of his life. The battles were over; the heat and light were dimmed.

Before it is too late, he thought, running his fingers through his grandson’s curly hair, I must tell this boy all that we have been through. His grandmother and I. Life in Bombay in the old days. War in 1965 with Pakistan. War in 1971. The day they killed Indira Gandhi. So much more.

‘More peanuts?’ he asked.

The boy shook his head, and looked at his grandfather hopefully.

Sonal, his daughter-in-law, was waiting at the gate. She smiled as he talked on their drive into the city. His son lived in Marine Lines, an apartment furnished by the insurance company he worked for. When they reached there, Sonal served Masterji tea and bad news: his son had just sent a text message. He would not be coming home until midnight. Busy day at the office. ‘Why don’t you wait?’ she suggested. ‘You can stay overnight. It’s your own home, after all . . .’

‘I’ll wait,’ he said.

‘Do you think of her a lot, Masterji?’ she asked.

‘All the time.’ The words just burst out of him. He tapped the arms of his chair. ‘Gaurav will remember when his grandfather died, in 1991, and she went to Suratkal to perform the last rites with her brothers, who lived there. When she came back to Mumbai, she said nothing for days. Then she confessed. “They locked me up in a room and made me sign a paper.” Her own brothers! They threatened her until she signed over her share of their father’s property and gold to them.’

Even now the memory stopped his breath. He had gone to see a lawyer at once. Four hundred rupees as a retainer, paid in cash up front. Masterji had come home and talked it over with Purnima.

‘“We’ll never put them behind bars,” I told her. “Is it worth spending the money?” She thought about it and said, “All right, let it drop.” Sometimes I would look back on the incident and ask myself, should I have paid for that lawyer? But whenever I brought it up with her, she just did this –’ he shrugged ‘– and said that thing. Her favourite saying. “Man is like a goat tied to a pole.” Meaning, all of us have some free will but not too much. One shouldn’t judge oneself harshly.’

‘That is so beautiful. She was a wonderful woman.’ Sonal got up. ‘I have to check on my father.’

Her father, once a respected banker, now suffered from advanced Alzheimer’s. He lived with his daughter and son-in-law and was fed, bathed and clothed by them. As Sonal slipped into an inner room, Masterji silently commended her filial devotion. So rare in an age like this. He tapped his knee and tried to remember the name of that striped animal in the cage.

Sonal came out of her father’s room with a blue book, which she placed on the table.

‘The boy doesn’t read much; he plays cricket. It is better that you keep it, since you are fond of books.’

Masterji opened the blue book. The Illustrated History of Science. Purchased a decade ago at the Strand Book Shop in the city, maintained impeccably, until last week when he had given it to his grandson as a gift.

He got up from his chair. ‘I’ll go back now.’

‘At this hour? The train will be packed.’

‘What am I, a foreigner? I’ll survive.’

‘Are you sure you won’t wait? Gaurav will be here . . .’