Aravind Adiga - Last Man in Tower

Last Man in Tower

Also by Aravind Adiga:

The White Tiger
Between the Assassinations

ARAVIND ADIGA

First published in Great Britain in hardback and airport and export trade paperback in 2011 by Atlantic Books, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright Aravind Adiga, 2011

The moral right of Aravind Adiga to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authors imagination and not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Hardback ISBN: 978 1 84887 516 6
Trade Paperback ISBN: 978 1 84887 517 3
eBook ISBN: 978 1 84887 786 3

Printed in Great Britain

Atlantic Books
An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd
Ormond House
2627 Boswell Street
London WC1N 3JZ

www.atlantic-books.co.uk

To my fellow commuters on the Santa CruzChurchgate local line

A lakh is 100,000 rupees, equivalent to around 1,400 or $2,200.

A crore is 10,000,000 rupees, equivalent to around 140,000 or $220,000.

So Mr Shahs offer to the members of Vishram Society would translate into a typical windfall of around 210,000 or $330,000 per family.

The average per capita annual income in India in 20089 was 37,490 rupees, around 500 or $800.

Ground floor:

1st floor:

2nd floor:

3rd floor:

4th floor:

5th floor:

Other regulars:

If you are inquiring about Vishram Society, you will be told right away that it is pucca absolutely, unimpeachably pucca. This is important to note, because something is not quite pucca about the neighbourhood the toenail of Santa Cruz called Vakola. On a map of Mumbai, Vakola is a cluster of ambiguous dots that cling polyp-like to the under-side of the domestic airport; on the ground, the polyps turn out to be slums, and spread out on every side of Vishram Society.

At each election, when Mumbai takes stock of herself, it is reported that one-fourth of the citys slums are here, in the vicinity of the airport and many older Bombaywallahs are sure anything in or around Vakola must be slummy. (They are not sure how you even pronounce it: Va-KHO-la, or VAA-k-la?) In such a questionable neighbourhood, Vishram Society is anchored like a dreadnought of middle-class respectability, ready to fire on anyone who might impugn the pucca quality of its inhabitants. For years it was the only good building which is to say, the only registered co-operative society in the neighbourhood; it was erected as an experiment in gentrification back in the late 1950s, when Vakola was semi-swamp, a few bright mansions amidst mangroves and malarial clouds. Wild boar and bands of dacoits were rumoured to prowl the banyan trees, and rickshaws and taxis refused to come here after sunset. In gratitude to Vishram Societys pioneers, who defied bandits and anopheles mosquitoes, braved the dirt lane on their cycles and Bajaj scooters, cut down the trees, built a thick compound wall and hung signs in English on it, the local politicians have decreed that the lane that winds down from the main road to the front gate of the building be called Vishram Society Lane.

The mangroves are long gone. Other middle-class buildings have come up now the best of these, so local real-estate brokers say, is Gold Coin Society, but Marigold, Hibiscus, and White Rose grow and grow in reputation and with the recent arrival of the Grand Hyatt Hotel, a five-star, the area is on the verge of ripening into permanent middle-class propriety. Yet none of this would have been possible without Vishram Society, and the grandmotherly building is spoken of with reverence throughout the neighbourhood.

It is, strictly speaking, two distinct Societies enclosed within the same compound wall. Vishram Society Tower B, which was erected in the late 1970s, stands in the south-east corner of the original plot: seven storeys tall, it is the more desirable building to purchase or rent in, and many young executives who have found work in the nearby Bandra-Kurla financial complex live here with their families.