Shah now pointed his finger northward, two or three times, to emphasize some place far, far away in that direction.
‘In 1978, when I was still learning this business, a friend, a broker, offered me a whole floor in a new project in Cuffe Parade. Name of Maker Towers. Three fifty rupees a square foot was the rate. It would be a new kind of construction, a small city, built on reclaimed land. I went to see the building and the area. I phoned my friend, and said: “No.” Why? That building was coming up where there had been sea just five years ago – and I thought, the land is the land and the water is the water. One day the water will swallow this land back. A square foot in Maker Towers would be worth today, what, 2,000 or 3,000 times my initial investment. That land is now worth more than land in London, more than land in New York. One day, ten years later, I came by Maker Towers, and I saw that building, how solid it looked, how many people had bought flats in it, and I thought: “I was beaten. Someone was dreaming bigger than me.” And there and then, I promised Lord SiddhiVinayak: “I am never going to underestimate this city again.” Mumbai’s future is here in the east, Shanmugham. This is where the space is, and once the new roads and new metro lines come up, the east will grow. We’ll get 25,000, maybe 30,000 a square foot for the Shanghai. Even more for the next thing we build. Vishram is an old Society. But it is the most famous building in the area. We’ll take it and we’ll break it – and everyone will know. Vakola is ours.’
He smiled at his assistant. ‘For six years we’ve been together. You’re like a son to me, Shanmugham. A son. Will you do this new job for me?’
For six years, at the start of each new project, Shah had asked him the same question, and for six years Shanmugham had answered this question in the same way. He extended his arm, showing a locked fist to his boss, and then opened it.
‘I’ve got this Society in my palm, sir. I know these people inside out.’
A homeless man, one of those sleeping under the concrete bridge that went over the highway, had been watching the two of them from beneath the protection of a blanket. Seeing the tall one in the white shirt walking towards him, he ducked under it.
Shanmugham signalled to a slow-moving autorickshaw.
A few seconds later, Kothari, the Secretary, came back with him to where the builder waited.
‘Sorry. Couldn’t bring my scooter. Had to take an auto. And what traffic.’
Shah swept the apology away.
‘If I were to leave every time a man got stuck in traffic, I would never meet anyone in this city. You didn’t tell anyone you were coming here?’
‘I was told not to tell anyone.’ The Secretary looked at Shanmugham. ‘Even my wife doesn’t know. Even I don’t know why I’m here.’
‘Nothing secret going on. My son’s birthday is next week, but we’re having the celebration tonight. I just wanted you to join me for some food. Some drinks if you like.’
Kothari breathed out. ‘Of course. How nice of you. Will we be waiting for Mr Ravi – the Secretary of Tower B?’
‘No. He isn’t invited.’
The car doors slammed, and then they were on their way into the city. Kothari sat slumped, hands between his knees.
‘Have you been to Malabar Hill before?’ the builder asked.
‘To the Hanging Gardens once or twice. No other reason.’
‘I’ve lived in Malabar Hill twelve years. And I’ve never been to the Hanging Gardens.’
Both of them laughed. The Secretary straightened his back and breathed out.
The barbecued mutton melted under his tongue like hot chocolate.
The Secretary opened his eyes, dried them with an index finger, and looked for the chicken kebabs. On a silver tray, floating about the far side of Mr Shah’s terrace. All the other guests were there: in suits, silk shirts, sleeveless saris and sherwanis, sitting at ebony tables lit by fat candles.
Kothari waved, so that the waiter would make an excursion to where he stood, alone, against the balcony. He felt the bald head beneath his comb-over becoming damp – spicy, that mutton. Rubbing his hands, he turned around to suck in cool air from the city: a panorama of glowing towers that stretched all the way to the distant dome of Haji Ali.
‘Paneer, sir?’
A waiter brought a silver tray full of those paneer cubes that seemed to have little cucumber-bits inside. Clutching three cubes in his hand, Kothari said, ‘Son, won’t you call that mutton man back here?’
With each deposit of rich food in his stomach, Kothari became less conscious of his 70 per cent polyester 30 per cent cotton shirt, bought near Andheri train station for 210 rupees, and of his banian, bought for thirty-five rupees a pack of six, that glowed underneath like in an X-ray.
Oh, that gorgeous buffet table, which launched satellites of silver trays filled with kebabs.
In the centre of the table he saw a vision of a Johnnie Walker Black Label, five or six times the size of a normal bottle, suspended upside-down from a metal rack and ending in a little plastic tap on which a bow-tied attendant had a finger permanently placed.
‘Mr Kothari! There you are!’ The builder waved at him from the table.
Soon the Secretary found himself one of the charms auxiliary to the Johnnie Walker; Shah introduced him to each person who came up for a drink, saying, ‘This is Mr Kothari.’
Each one of the guests appeared to run a construction company. One of them, after shaking his hand, asked: ‘Which Group do you represent?’
‘Vishram,’ the Secretary replied.
The man nodded knowingly, as if recognizing the name. ‘A good Group. Good work you fellows are doing.’
Now the Secretary found himself led to one of the tables, where he sat next to a chubby unhappy teenager in a golden jacket, whom he took for the birthday boy.
The host was speaking into a cordless mike.
‘I want to thank all of you for coming here to attend my son’s birthday. The community to which we belong, the builders’ community, is known to be a close-knit one, and your presence here demonstrates this continuing closeness.’ (Scattered applause.) ‘I will come to your tables to thank each of you personally. But first, as a surprise treat, I am honoured to present a man who brings back lots of memories for all of us: the original dream-merchant himself.’
Music blared on the loudspeakers. To the rhythm of the audience’s clapping, a man in a grey suit got up from one of the tables, and came to the buffet table. A once-famous actor, now in his forties, a professional guest at birthday parties and weddings. With a forced smile, he turned a few steps with his right hand up in the air. A young girl in a red dress joined him in the dancing, and guests whistled. A mobile phone flashed its camera.
Back at the table, the star was out of breath, paunchy, and suddenly twenty years older. A guest asked for an autograph; the film star obliged on a napkin.
The napkin flew from the table. The builder had burst out coughing.
The film star was worth every rupee he charged to appear at such events: placing his hand on Shah’s, he grinned, as if nothing had happened.
‘They call me a dream-merchant, I am aware of this. But what am I, really? Just a small dream-merchant next to a big one.’ He pointed at the builder, who was wiping his face with the sleeve of his shirt.
‘When they come out of a film, people throw away the tickets, but the builder’s name is always on the building. It becomes part of the family name. I am a Hiranandani Towers man. He is a Raheja Complex man.’
The builder swallowed his spit and turned to the Secretary.
‘And what about you, Mr Kothari? Will you be a Raheja man or a Hiranandani man after 3 October? Or do you plan on spending all your money on expensive vices?’
The Secretary, who had been watching a platter of mutton kebabs, turned around. ‘My vices are sandwiches and cricket. Ask my wife.’
People laughed. The film star clapped and said, ‘Just like me.’
Which provoked much more laughter.
‘What do
you do, exactly?’ Shah asked.
‘Business,’ Kothari said.
The builder coughed again.
Kothari handed him a napkin, and said, ‘I was in timber. Now I keep myself happy with some bonds, some stocks. I don’t have vices, but…’ He took a breath and puffed his chest, as if the attention were expanding his personality, ‘I do have a secret. I am moving, after 3 October, to Sewri.’
Shah, wiping his lips with the napkin, had to explain to the others.
‘In most redevelopment projects, as you know, the residents are offered a share in the new building. In the case of the Shanghai, however, the new place will be super-luxury. A mix of Rajput and Gothic styles, with a modern touch. There will be a garden at the front, with a fountain. Art Deco style. Each place will cost two crores or upwards. The current residents certainly have the option of purchasing in the Shanghai, but they will be better served by moving elsewhere.’
Then he turned to the Secretary and asked: ‘Sewri? Why not Bandra or Andheri? You’ll have the money now.’
‘The flamingoes, sir,’ the Secretary said. ‘You know about them, don’t you?’
Of course, Shah knew. Sewri in winter was visited by a flock of migratory flamingoes, and bird lovers came to watch with binoculars. But he did not understand.
‘Were you born here, Mr Shah?’ the Secretary asked.
‘I was born in Krishnapur in Gujarat. But I am a proud tax-paying resident of Mumbai.’
‘I didn’t mean it that way,’ the Secretary said quickly. ‘I have nothing against migrants, nothing. I meant, all of you at this table were born in India. Correct?’
‘Of course.’
‘Not me. Not me.’
The Secretary smiled. ‘I was born in Africa.’
His father, lured from Jamnagar to Kenya by an African-born cousin, had set up a grocery shop in Nairobi in the 1950s; the shop had prospered; a son had been born there. Ashvin Kothari spoke now of things even his wife had never heard. Of an African servant lady wiping a large porcelain dish and laying it on a table with a blue tablecloth; a market in Nairobi where his father was a big man; and then one more thing, a memory which blazed in his mind’s eye like a pink flame.
Flamingoes. A whole flock of them.
When he was not yet five, he had been taken to a lake in the country side full of the wild pink birds. His father had put his thumbs under his armpits and lifted him up so he could see to the horizon; the flamingoes rose all at once and he had screamed over his father’s head.
Shah listened. The dream-merchant listened. Waiters gathered round the table.
Now the Secretary felt something he had felt only once in his life, when as a ten-year-old schoolboy he had recited the famous lines from the Ramayana:
Do as you will, evil king:
I, for my part, know right from wrong
And will never follow you,
said the virtuous demon Maricha
When the lord of Lanka
Asked him to steal Rama’s wife
so perfectly at a poetry competition that everyone in the audience, even his father, had stood up to applaud. He sensed that same shimmer now around his bald head: his comb-over felt like a laurel wreath.
‘And then?’ Shah asked. ‘What happened to your father?’
Kothari smiled.
‘He found out that Africans did not like Indian men who did well.’
When he was eight years old, there was a threat to their business, and his father had sold it for a pittance to return to Jamnagar, to die there in a dingy shop full of green-gram and brinjal.
‘That was how they treated us then,’ the Bollywood actor remembered. ‘Idi Amin saying to the Indians, get up and get out.’
The builder coughed. ‘They look up to Indians in Africa now. We’re drilling for oil in Sudan.’
A quarter of an hour later, with a valedictory flourish of dance steps, the dream-merchant bowed and vanished. Mr Shah looked at his guests and at once they knew it was time to leave. By the same power, Kothari was made to know he was not to leave. He sat at the table as hands came to shake the builder’s; some of them shook his hand too.
‘Do you know why I did not invite Mr Ravi of Tower B here tonight?’
The guests had left. Shah watched the waiters clear the buffet.
Kothari sensed that Mr Shah, who had changed from a vivacious host into a sick man with a cough in the course of the evening, was now about to turn into yet another man. He shook his head. ‘No, sir.’
‘His building won’t make any trouble: it’s full of young people. Reasonable people. So you are the key man, Mr Kothari. Do you follow me?’
‘Not exactly.’
The birthday boy joined the table, sitting between his father and the Secretary.
The builder moved his son out of his line of sight. He spoke softly.
‘In my experience, some older people oppose a redevelopment project because they are frightened of any kind of change. Some just want more money. And then there is one kind of person, the most dangerous, who says no because he is full of negative will power: because he does not enjoy life and does not want others to enjoy life. When these people speak, you must speak louder and clearer than they do. I will not forget it; I repay kindness with kindness of my own.’
The waiters, having removed the food, were now taking away the totemic bottle of Johnnie Walker.
‘My father used to say,’ Kothari cleared his voice, ‘my father… the one who was in Africa, he used to say, a man who lives for himself is no better than an animal. All my life I did nothing for anyone but myself. I even married late because I preferred to live alone. My wife is a good woman. She made me become the Secretary of Vishram: so I would do something for others. I am grateful for any… extra kindness you show me. But I cannot accept until I ask you this: what about everyone else in Vishram Society? Will you keep your word to them and pay each one his rightful share?’
Shah said nothing for a beat, then reached out and took the Secretary’s hand.
‘I am honoured, Mr Kothari, to be doing business with a man like you. Honoured. I understand why you are worried about me. Perfectly understand. In the old days, a builder in this city thought he could get rich only if he cheated his customers. He would cheat them as a matter of routine – on cement, on steel rods, on finishing. Every monsoon one of his buildings collapsed. Most of those you saw here today were old builders.’ He dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘They would strip you in a second if they were doing this redevelopment. But now there is a new builder in the city. We want to win, yes, but believe me, Mr Kothari: we also want our customers to win. The more winning there is, the better; because we think Mumbai will again be one of the world’s great cities. Ask at any of my projects about Mr Shah’s reputation. Find a single customer of mine who has a complaint. I am not one of the old builders of Mumbai.’
The Secretary sucked his lips and nodded. Satisfied.
Shah was still holding his hand; he felt the pressure grow.
‘But I tell you one thing, Mr Kothari. Old builder or new, the basic nature of my business has not changed. Do you know what a builder is?’
‘A man who builds houses,’ Kothari said, hoping his hand would be released.
‘No. Architects build houses. Engineers build roads.’
Kothari turned around for help. Shanmugham was looking at the night sky; the birthday boy was jerking his right arm back and forth behind his head for some reason.
Shah held up a gold-ringed index finger.
‘The builder is the one man in Bombay who never loses a fight.’
With this he let go of Kothari’s hand.
‘Why were you gone so long?’ Mrs Kothari asked, as her husband joined her in bed. ‘People kept asking for you, but I didn’t tell anyone you were at the builder’s house.’
Saying the name of Lord Krishna three times, the Secretary switched off the bed lamp.
‘Did his car drop you off? What is his home like? Gold fitting
s in the bathroom? Is there a jacuzzi?’
Her husband covered his face in the blanket and said nothing.
In the darkness he saw a flock of pink birds flying around him. He felt his father’s fingers pressing on his – and then all the wasted decades in between fell away, and they were together once again at the lake in Kenya.
Ashvin Kothari fell asleep with tears on his cheeks.
18 MAY
Like an army that had been coming closer for months and was now storming a citadel, they went into the Fountainhead and the Excelsior with bricks on their heads.
It was the final surge of work before the monsoons. Those day-labourers who had wilted in the heat and fled to their villages were replaced by those offloaded from buses at ever-rising cost: the day rate for men was now 370 rupees. Heat or no heat, humidity or no humidity, all the civil work – walls, floors, columns – must be done before the rains.
Once again, as he had been every hot morning, Dharmen Shah was here, dipping his silk trousers in the slush and muck, pointing fingers at things and shouting at men. He stood by the roaring cement grinder, as women in bright saris and diamond nose-rings bent down and rose up with troughs of wet dark cement on their heads.
Shah put his foot on a pile of concrete tubes. ‘Faster, son,’ he told one of the workers. ‘I’m paying you good money. I want to see you work.’
Shanmugham, running his fingers up and down the spine of a green financial prospectus, stood behind the boss.
Shah directed his assisant’s attention to two teenagers breaking in half a long corrugated metal rod.
‘Work. Hard work. A beautiful thing to see.’
The two muscled boys had rested the rod on a metal triangle; one of them raised a mallet. He brought it down. With each blow, the long rod trembled. Behind the boy swinging the mallet, a bag of cement rose into the upper floors of the Confidence Excelsior on a pulley.