Last Man in Tower by Aravind Adiga Read Free Book Online Page A

College – was about to finish her opponent off with a riposte, but Ramu came to his mother’s ear and whispered.
    ‘There’s no water coming up the pipes, Ramu,’ she said. ‘No water tonight, dear. I told you, didn’t I?’
    Ramu’s lower lip covered his upper, and bulged up towards his nose: his mother knew this as a sign that he was thinking. He pointed to the pipes that went up the sides of Vishram Society’s walls.
    ‘Quiet, Ramu. Mummy is speaking to Communist aunty.’
    ‘I am not a Communist, and I am not anyone’s aunty, Mrs Puri.’
    Mrs Kothari, the Secretary’s wife, put her head out of the window and shouted: ‘Water!’
    It was an unscheduled blessing from the Municipality, a rare kindness. The fighting adjourned; both women had to obey a higher imperative – fresh water.
    Where is Masterji? Mrs Puri wondered, as she went up the stairs. He should have returned from seeing his grandson by now. After giving Ramu his evening bath, she made sure to collect an extra bucket of water for the old man, in case the Municipality, for giving them water they were not meant to have, punished them by annulling their morning water supply. That was, after all, how the people who ran Mumbai thought.
    Despite dismissing the idea that the inquisitive stranger might represent any danger, Masterji woke up realizing he had spent a part of the night dreaming of the man.
    In this dream, which he powerfully recollected several minutes after waking up, the stranger (whose face appeared as a black playing-card) had smelled of sulphur; posed riddles to the members of the Society (including Masterji); grown wings, laughed, and flown out of a window, while all of them ran after him, shouting, trying to knock him down with a long stick. Masterji puzzled over his dream, until he realized that some of its images had been borrowed from the book he had been reading late into the night; he picked it up and continued reading:
    The Soul’s Passageway after Death
(Vikas Publications, Benaras)
In its first year out of the body, the soul travels slowly and at a low altitude, burdened by the sins of its worldly existence. It flies over green fields, ploughed fields, and small dams and dykes. It has wings like an eagle’s at this stage of its voyage. In the second year it begins to ascend over the oceans. This flight will take it all of the second year, and a part of the third year too. It will see the ocean change colour, from blue to dark blue, until it is almost a kind of black. The darkening of the colour of the ocean will alert the soul to its entry into the third year of its long flight…
    With eyes closed, imagine a human soul with your wife’s face – and with wings like an eagle… yes, eyes, nose, cheeks like your wife’s, wing-span like an eagle’s, suspended in mid-flight over the ocean…
In all, the flight of the soul after death lasts seven hundred and seventy-seven years. The prayers and pious thoughts offered by relatives and loved ones from the world of the living will greatly affect the course, length, and comfort of this journey…
    Yogesh Murthy, called ‘Masterji’, sixty-one years old, distinguished emeritus teacher of St Catherine’s High School, yawned, and stretched his legs: The Soul’s Passageway after Death landed on the teakwood table.
    He went back to bed. In the old days, his wife’s tea and talk and the perfume from the fresh flowers in her hair would wake him up. He sniffed the air for scents of jasmine.
    Hai-ya! Hai-ya!
    The screams came from somewhere below, and to his right. 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 elder, Rajeev, had won a great victory in the martial arts competition last year. As a gesture of the Society’s gratitude, he was allowed to dip his hand in kerosene and leave a memento of his victorious body on the front wall, where it