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

the coconut palms and mango trees, the red blossoms of a gulmohar burned like love bites on the summer’s day.
    A stubby, gold-ringed index finger sketched round the Rajabai Tower and dragged it all the way to the other end of the Oval Maidan. There: it would fit much better there.
    Shah looked down. On the road directly below the window, a woman was talking on a mobile phone. He craned his neck to see what she was wearing below her waist.
    ‘It’s a girl, isn’t it, Dharmen?’
    Doctor Nayak came into the room with an X-ray photograph in his hand.
    ‘That’s the only thing that would get your neck out of the window.’
    The doctor flipped the photograph, and held it up against the view of the city.
    Dharmen Shah’s skull glowed. The X-ray had been taken less than an hour ago at the hospital. Shah saw something milky-white chuckling inside his cranium, a ghost grinning through his wide-open jaw. The doctor slid the X-ray back into its folder. He indicated for his guest and patient to use the sofa.
    ‘Why do you think I called you here to my home after the tests? I have cancelled three morning appointments for this.’
    Shah, with hands massaging his belly, grinned. ‘Real estate.’ He stayed by the window.
    ‘Not this time, Dharmen. I wanted to say things that are better said in the house than at the hospital. In the hope that you might listen this time.’
    ‘ So grateful.’
    ‘It is a bit worse each time I see you, Dharmen. That thing that is growing in your chest and head. Chronic bronchitis. Worse and worse each time. You have infected mucus in your lungs and in your sinuses. The next stage is that you have trouble breathing. We may have to put you in a hospital bed. Do you want things to come to that?’
    ‘And why would things come to that?’ Shah knocked on the window. ‘Despite the fact that I take every blood test, X-ray, and medical pill that you recommend. After starving myself the previous night.’
    Youthful and square-jawed, Doctor Nayak sported a black moustache above a tuft of goatee: when he grinned he looked like the Jack of Spades.
    ‘You’re a big, spoilt child, Dharmen. You don’t do what your doctor tells you to do, and you think he won’t find out as long as you turn up for blood tests and X-rays. I’ve been warning you for months. It’s the construction business that is doing this to you. All the dust you inhale. The stress and strain.’
    ‘I’ve been at construction sites for twenty-five years , Nayak. The problem began only a year or two ago.’
    ‘It’s all those old buildings you’re around. The ones you break up. Materials were used then that are banned now. Asbestos, cheap paint. They get into your lungs. Then these places you like going to, these slums.’
    ‘The place is called Vakola.’
    ‘I’ve seen it. Very polluted. Diesel in the air, dust. The system is weakened by pollution over time.’
    ‘What is this, then?’ Dharmen Shah drummed on his stomach. He pinched his thick forearms. ‘What is this, then? Isn’t this good health?’
    ‘Listen to me. I gave up three paying appointments for this. You’re picking up fevers, coughs, stomach illnesses. Your immune system is weakening. Leave Bombay,’ said the doctor. ‘At least for a part of each year. Go to the Himalayas. Simla. Abroad. The one thing money can’t buy here is clean air.’
    The fat man reached into his shirt pocket. Straightening out a cheaply printed brochure, he handed it to Doctor Nayak.
The ‘King’ of the Suburban Builders, J. J. Chacko, MD of the Ultimex Group, has astounded all his observers, friends, and peers, by acquiring a prime construction plot in Vakola, Santa Cruz (East) at an audacious rate that constitutes the HIGHEST PRICE ever paid for a redevelopment project in this suburb, despite the vigilant and audacious efforts of various competitors to bag the prize instead.
Mr Chacko exclusively discloses to ‘Mumbai Real Estate News’ that an architect from Hong Kong, the