Ajwani peered at the boxes. ‘Which four?’
A sunny smile from Ibrahim Kudwa’s bearded face was a sure thing as one of his neighbours passed the jumble of wire, vegetation, brick, cheap roofing, and peeling paint that went by the title SPEED-TEK CYBER ZONE CYBER CAFÉ. The trunk of the banyan by the cybercafé had been painted white, in simulation of snow. Kudwa’s long-time assistant, Arjun, had apparently converted to Christianity some years ago; last Christmas, he won the banyan tree over to his religion and placed a private crib with toy figures, arranged in a splendour of cotton-snow, at its foot. Other evidence of Christmas could be found in the large five-pronged star, surrounded by bunting, that Arjun had hung over the roof of the café; months later, it was still there, un expected, colossal, the bunting fraying, and, with the light behind it in the morning, looking like a symbol of the Apocalypse. As if drawn to the mystic star, a Hindu holy man sometimes sat outside the café. Mr Kudwa saw no objection to his doing so; indeed he had even encouraged the man with the occasional two-rupee coin.
Man of enterprise, Ibrahim Kudwa; lead singer in a rock-and-roll band at university, he had chosen, after graduation, not to remain in the Muslim-only building in Bandra East where his brothers and sisters still lived. Vishram was old, but he wanted his children to mix with Hindus and Christians. On the advice of a magazine article, he had decided that the future was in technology. Rejecting an offer from his brother to join the family hardware store in Kalanagar, he opened a cyber-café in the neighbourhood in 1998. Easy money. His rates rose from ten rupees per hour, to fifteen, to twenty, and then declined again to fifteen, and then to ten. A treacherous thing, technology. Within six months, an internet connection had become so cheap that only the rough, the rowdy and the tourists needed a cyber-café. Hardware held its price; his brother had recently bought a second two-bedroom flat as an investment property. Then the government decided that anyone using a cyber-café was a potential terrorist. User name, phone number, address, driving licence or passport number – the café owner was legally obliged to keep detailed records of every customer, and the police swooped on Kudwa’s books for any excuse to extort a bribe.
Yet none of his neighbours would say that he was an unhappy man. He was a bear that could find honey at any level of a tree. He lavished his considerable free time on his two jolly children, ten-year-old Mohammad, who lost stout-heartedly to the little Ajwanis in tae kwon-do competitions, and two-year-old Mariam, who staggered elliptically about her father’s cyber-café in a nightie, inviting herself on to the laps of customers to strike at the old keyboards with glee. Mumtaz, his wife, saved up discount coupons and credit card points, so they could take holidays to Mahabaleshwar each summer. In August the previous year they had even accomplished the miracle, subsidized by the credit card points, of a family holiday to Ladakh, where they had visited Tibetan monasteries and returned with holy beads and T-shirts for their Hindu neighbours.
‘Why are you in the Opposition Party, Ibrahim?’
Ajwani had just lowered himself into the visitor’s chair in the café.
‘Opposition Party?’ Kudwa asked. Little Mariam was on his lap, and he was stroking her hair.
‘You are saying no to the offer. Why?’
Kudwa stared. ‘Who told you I had said no?’
He let Mariam crawl about the floor. ‘Do you think I want to stay in this internet café business all my life? Do I want my children to grow up poor?’
‘So you are going to support us, Ibrahim.’ Ajwani grinned. ‘Why didn’t you take your sweet-box, then?’
‘No, it’s not that simple.’ Kudwa gestured for patience by patting the air.
On the other hand, there was the thing Mrs Puri had called Masterji: ‘An English gentleman’. Even though she wanted to accept the offer, she admired his gesture. How would his neighbours interpret his character if he rushed to take Mr Shah’s money?
‘I want to be well thought of. People in the Society think of me as a fair-minded man.’
Kudwa scratched his beard with both hands.
‘Of course we do,’ Ajwani said. ‘By the way, that was a lovely joke the other day. What you wrote on that sign outside the Society. What was it, “Inconvenience is regretted, but work…”’
‘Inconvenience in progress, work regretted.’ Kudwa beamed. Mariam was venturing under one of the computers; he picked her up and brought her back to the chair.
‘You are liked by everyone, Ibrahim. But will people still like you if you don’t say yes – that I don’t know.’
Kudwa winced.
‘It upsets my stomach, Ramesh. Just thinking about this decision. My wife says I have a high ratio of nerves to flesh. A man with a bad stomach should never be asked to make decisions.’
Ajwani saw a strip of heart-shaped antacid tablets in Kudwa’s shirt pocket, like multiple testimonials to his claim. He reached over and snapped his fingers against the strip of antacids.
‘Come with me, Ibrahim. I’ll solve your problem in a second.’
Picking little Mariam up from the floor – and shouting to Arjun, who was sweeping the courtyard behind the café, to mind things and make sure the customers did not surf on to ‘dirty’ sites while he was away – Kudwa followed his neighbour into Vishram Society.
As they passed their building, Kudwa glanced at the Secretary’s office.
Kothari had told him his Africa story that morning, as he had told it to every other member of Vishram Society. It made sense to Kudwa at last – the Secretary’s strange, secretive, and yet somehow sociable personality. All these years his African-returned father’s shame – the shame of the expatriate who had returned empty-handed – had crushed his natural gregariousness. If not for his shame, Kothari would have been a different kind of man. All of them could have been different men.
‘How strange that the Secretary should have a passion for flamingoes,’ he said.
Ajwani turned. ‘How strange that the Secretary should have a passion for anything.’
‘Perhaps we will stay here, in the building, and know each other better. Maybe that is what this Shah’s proposal is really meant to do.’
‘No.’ Ajwani minted invisible currency with his fingers. ‘It’s meant to make us rich.’
He cut across the compound in the direction of Tower B. In the parking area in front of the building, he pointed to a vehicle with a gold ‘V’ ribbon on its bonnet.
Fresh from the showroom, a Toyota Innova. It had been bought two days ago; the order, however, must have been placed weeks before Mr Shah’s offer.
Ajwani, who hoarded information on all the middle-class residents of Vakola, had quickly discovered the name of the owner: Mr Ashish, a software engineer, one of the residents of Tower B.
‘What do you see?’ Ajwani asked.
‘A car. A new car.’
‘No. You see ten years of slogging, skimping, and sacrificing, before you can buy something like this. There is a new way to look at new things, Ibrahim. Touch it.’
‘Touch it?’
Ajwani brushed a few spots of dandruff from Kudwa’s shoulder, and gestured for Mariam.
‘Don’t worry about the owner. He wants you to touch it. You know what people in Tower B are like, don’t you?’
Ibrahim Kudwa handed his daughter over to his neighbour. He ran his hands through his beard, then took a step towards the gold-ribboned car. His index finger reached for its shining metal skin: and at once the shell surrounding the Innova that said ‘Ten years from now’ broke and fell to pieces. He spread all his fingers on its skin, and could not repress a grin.
On the way back, Kudwa asked for his red sweet-box at the guard’s booth.
Tapping his fingers behind his back, Ajwani went down to the fruit and vegetable market.
He did all his best thinking in the market. At least once a week he came here with his two boys to teach them how to bargain. An essential part of their education. If a man could not be cheated on his food, he could not be cheated on anyt
hing else.
Africa, Ajwani said to himself, as he went among carts full of ripe watermelons. He had never been to Africa. Nor America, Europe, Canada, Australia. Had never crossed the ocean.
Women had been his Africa. They come into a real-estate broker’s office all the time – air hostesses, models, sales girls, single girls, divorced women – looking for rooms in a hurry, sometimes in a desperate hurry. A broker can seem a fatherly figure to them – benevolent, decisive. In his younger days, Ajwani, while never resorting to coercion or blackmail, had slept with plenty of his clients. Plenty. At first there was a hotel by the train station, the Wood-Lands, that rented rooms by the hour. Later he built an inner room in his office. A coconut to sip on, as they lay side by side in bed. The women were happy; he was happier than they were. That was how he liked his deals to be.
Money – money had been his India. He had not made a rupee on the stock market; even in real estate, his own field, his investments had flopped. Someone or other had always tricked him. He had bought the Toyota Qualis from a cousin so he could feel rich, but it was killing him. Drank too much diesel. Needed repairs month after month. Once again he had been cheated. In the movie of his own life, he had to admit, he was just a comedian.
But not this time.
Small dark apples sat in a pyramid on a blue cart like medieval munitions; pointy-tipped papayas, modern artillery shells, surrounded them on all sides. Ajwani picked up a papaya and smelled its base for ripeness. He would do the same with Masterji, the Pintos, and Mrs Rego; sniff and tap, sniff and tap, find their weak spots, break them open. Kudwa he had done for free, but Mr Shah would have to pay for the next three.
The talk in the market, as it was every year at this time, was that the rains would be late, and that the water shortage would soon become terrible.
Stale gossip to the left, mediocre produce to the right: Ramesh Ajwani knew that his eyes were the brightest things for sale in Vakola market.
BOOK FOUR
The Rains Begin
19 JUNE
Pizzicati of intercepted raindrops dripped from a coconut palm: a virtuoso of brightness in the concert of thunderclouds, dense sky, thickening rain.
From their bedroom window Ramu and the Friendly Duck watched.
The metal trellis meant to guard the window from burglars came to life; the wrought-iron foliage dripped and became real leaves and real flowers.
‘Oy, oy, oy, my prince. What deep thoughts are you thinking?’
Sitting next to her son, Mrs Puri pointed to the sky. The lines of diminishing rain were sparkling: the sun was coming out.
‘Remember what Masterji says? When there is rain and sun together, there is a… You know the word, Ramu. Say it. It’s a rai… a rain… a rainb…’
Shielding Ramu’s wet head with her arm, Mrs Puri looked up. A drop of rainwater was hanging from the ceiling. Vishram’s old walls glistened with bright seepage; moisture was snuggling into cracks in the paint, licking steel rods, and chewing on mortar.
Ramu, who could read his mother’s thoughts, reached for her gold bangles and began to play with them.
‘We don’t have to worry, Ramu. We’re moving into a brand-new home. Just three months from now. One that won’t ever fall down.’
Ramu whispered.
‘Yes, everyone, even Masterji and Secretary Uncle.’
The boy smiled; then plugged his ears and closed his eyes.
Mrs Puri turned and shouted, ‘Mary! Don’t make so much noise with the rubbish. I have a growing son here!’
*
Mary, as she did every day, was dragging a mildewed blue barrel from floor to floor of Vishram Society, emptying into it the contents of the rubbish bins placed outside each door, and cleaning up the mess made by the early-morning cat as it looked for food.
The people of Vishram Society did not praise servants lightly: but Mary they trusted. So honest that even a one-rupee coin dropped on the floor would be put back on the table. In seven years of service not one complaint of theft. True, there was always dirt on the banisters and on the stairs, but the building was an old one. It secreted decay. Why blame Mary?
Her life was a hard one. She had married a pair of muscled arms that drifted into and out of her life, leaving bruises and a child; her father sometimes turned up under the vegetable stalls in the market, dead-drunk.
Done with 5B, the last flat on the top floor, she rotated the blue bin down the steps, filling the stairwell with a noise like thunder. (‘Mary! Didn’t you hear me! Stop that noise at once! Mary!’) With the branching veins on her forearms in high relief, as if the bin were tied to them, she rolled it out of the Society and out of the gate and down the road to an open rubbish pit.
The rains had turned the pit into a marsh: cellophane, eggshell, politician’s face, stock quote, banana leaf, sliced-off chicken’s feet and green crowns cut from pineapples. Ribbons of unspooled cassette-tape draped over everything like molten caramel.
Throwing plastic bags from her blue bin into the marsh, Mary, through the corner of her eye, saw a man walking towards her. She smelled Johnson’s Baby Powder. She took a step closer to the rubbish pile, preferring its odours.
‘Mary.’
She grunted to acknowledge Ajwani’s presence. She disliked the way he looked at her; his eyes put a price on women.
‘What was in Mrs Puri’s rubbish bag this morning?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Will you find it for me?’ he asked, with a smile.
She waded into the rubbish and picked out a plastic bag, which she threw at Ajwani’s feet. He turned it over with his shoe.
‘Do you remember, Mrs Puri said she was taking her Ramu to the temple yesterday? Sitla Devi in Mahim, she said, when I asked her. Now, when Hindus go to the temple they bring things back with them – flowers, coconut shells, kumkum powder – and you don’t see any of them in her rubbish. What does that tell you?’
Mary, having emptied the blue bin, scraped its insides with her palm. Three dark hogs began snivelling in the muck; a fourth, its eyes closed, stood stationary in the slush, like a holy meditating thing.
‘I don’t know.’
‘A man has no secrets from his rubbish bin, Mary. From now on, I want you to look through three rubbish bags every morning. Masterji’s, Mr Pinto’s, and Mrs Rego’s.’
‘That is not my work,’ she said. ‘It is the early-morning cat’s work.’
‘Then become the cat, Mary.’
With a smile Ajwani offered a ten-rupee note. She shook her head.
‘Take it, take it,’ he said.
‘This is for you too.’ Ajwani held out a red box with the image of Lord SiddhiVinayak on it. ‘For your son.’
Mary looked at the red box: large spots of grease stained its cardboard sides.
Two scavenger-women had been waiting for Mary to toss out the contents of the blue bin; one was holding a car’s windscreen-wiper. Now they went barefoot through the wet refuse, old jute bags on their shoulders, sifting through the rubbish with the wiper. They left Mrs Puri’s bag alone. They were not looking for information: merely plastic and tin.
Back in Vishram, Mary hid the sweet-box in the servant’s alcove, then swept the common areas, the stairwell, and the compound.
Half an hour later, with the sweet-box in one hand, she was buying vegetables at the market. Something fresh for her son. Beetroots. Good for children’s brains, Mrs Puri said, who was always cooking them for her boy. She should give me the beetroots, Mary thought. What was the point of wasting them on that imbecile?
Balancing a pav of beetroots on top of the red sweet-box, she came to Hibiscus Society.
‘Why are you looking for work here? Don’t you have a job at Vishram?’ the security guard asked.
‘The builder has made them an offer. Everyone leaves on October 3.’
‘Oh, a redevelopment.’ The guard sucked his teeth. He was an old man; he had seen Societies. ‘It will take years and years. Someone will go to
court. You don’t have to worry now.’
‘Anyone living in the slum by the nullah – attention!’
A man came running through the market. He cupped his hands to his mouth: ‘Slum clearance! The men are here!’
The guard at Hibiscus Society, scratching his head and contemplating Mary’s proposal, said, ‘All right. But what’s my interest in this? Do I get a monthly cut? If I don’t, then…’
But where the maid-servant had stood, a red box of sweets now lay on the ground, beetroots rolling around it.
Bumping into people, she ran. Pushing cycles and carts, she ran.
Past Vishram Society, past the Tamil temple, past the construction site where the two towers were coming up, and into the slums; passing narrow lane after narrow lane, dodging stray dogs and roosters to run into the open wasteland beyond. A plane soared above her. Finally she reached the nullah, a long canal of black water, on whose banks a row of blue tarpaulin tents had risen.
Her neighbours were chopping wood; a rooster strutted round the huts; children played on rubber tyres tied to the trees.
‘No one is coming here, Mary,’ her neighbour told her in Tamil. ‘It was a false alarm.’
Slowing down, breathing deeply, Mary came to her tent, and looked inside its blue tarpaulin cover, held aloft by a wooden pole. Everything intact: cooking oil, cooking vessels, her son’s school books, photo albums.
‘They won’t come till after the monsoons,’ her neighbour shouted. ‘We’re safe till then.’
Mary sat down and wiped her face.
Among the patchwork of fully legal slums, semi-legal slums and pockets of huts in Vakola, this row of tents next to a polluted canal, the nullah that cut through the suburb, led the most precarious existence. Because they had come here after the last government amnesty for illegal slums, and because the canal could flood during a heavy monsoon, the squatters had not been granted the identification cards which ‘regularized’ a slum-dweller’s existence and gave him the right to be relocated to a pucca building if the government bulldozed his hut. Municipal officials had repeatedly threatened the dwellers by the nullah with eviction, yet someone had always intervened to save them, usually a politician who needed their votes at the next municipal election. Last month, Mrs Rego had come down to explain to them that things had changed. It was now a season of will power in Bombay: the coalition of corruption, philanthropy, and inertia that had protected them for so long was disintegrating. A new official had been put in charge of clearing the city’s illegal slums. He had smashed miles of huts in Thane and promised to do the same in Mumbai. Every day their slum survived should be considered a miracle.