Serious Men

the author took credit, in Marathi and in diplomatically chosen small font — ‘Hoarding Presented By P. Bikaji’. Bikaji was the man who was holding the massive garland. His white kurta had become transparent in his own sweat and he was almost trembling under the weight of the garland.
    ‘When he comes,’ he told Ayyan, ‘I will give him the garland first and then you speak.’
    ‘Why do you want to waste your time?’ Ayyan said. ‘He is not even going to look at you.
    Someone screamed, ‘He is here.’ The crowd surged into the road. A pilot jeep screeched to a halt and behind it stopped a light-blue Mercedes, which was quickly surrounded by people. From the jeep, four bodyguards with machine guns ran to the Mercedes. (They guarded the minister at all times from the danger of being considered unworthy of such security.) They had to jostle and push to open the door of the car.
    Waman, in a starched white kurta, emerged with joined palms.
    Bikaji shouted, ‘The Leader of the Masses,’ which was repeated by the crowd.
    Then they heard Bikaji scream, ‘Motherfucker,’ because an intrusive friend was now sharing the burden of the garland.
    ‘I am just helping,’ the friend said, offended.
    Bikaji pushed him away angrily and advanced to the leader to garland him before others tried to benefit from his roses. Waman held the garland over his shoulder until a bodyguard extricated him.
    ‘I made that banner for you,’ Bikaji said, pointing to the illegal hoarding on the pavement.
    ‘Nice, good,’ Waman said, and asked, ‘Where is the boy’s father?’
    Men began to yell, ‘Ayyan, Ayyan.’
    Ayyan emerged from the crowd, held the hand of the minister with both his hands, and then touched his chest.
    ‘Let’s go,’ the minister said.
    Ayyan and Waman walked down the broken, cobbled ways of the chawls with at least three hundred people following them. Photographers ran in front to take their pictures, and in-between the shots they jogged backwards. The minister looked around at the rows of grey identical buildings.
    ‘I know that you too lived in a chawl once,’ Ayyan said.
    ‘Yes, in Grant Road. A long time ago,’ Waman said, with a smile that was proud of its old sorrows.
    ‘We have been trying to sell,’ Ayyan said. ‘Builders are interested.’
    ‘Of course they will be. This land is worth its weight in gold.’
    ‘I want to sell too,’ Ayyan said, ‘but a lot of people are resisting. There are eighty thousand people who live here. It’s hard to get everybody to agree. Builders want all or nothing.’
    ‘Obviously,’ Waman said, shaking his head, ‘People are afraid, aren’t they? They have lived here all their lives. They are comfortable with the things here.’
    ‘Yes. They want the same neighbours, the same lives.’
    ‘How much are the builders offering, Mani?’
    ‘Twelve lakhs for a 150-square-foot flat,’ Ayyan said.
    ‘Drive it up to fifteen,’ Waman said confidently. He looked at the vast real estate and appeared to make some calculations in his head.
    The entourage went to the terrace of Block Number Forty-One, where a hundred others were already gathered. A table shrouded in a white cloth was at one end of the terrace. Waman made his way through the assembled crowd, smiling and bowing, and naming one hoisted baby who was already named.
    When he sat at the table, Bikaji and his men formed a human cordon around the minister. The cordon parted to admit Ayyan, with his son and wife. Oja joined her palms and gushed.
    The minister asked, ‘And this is the great Adi?’
    The boy was more absorbed in the machine guns of the guards.
    ‘Can I hold?’ he asked a guard who shook his head.
    ‘Lock it and give it to the boy,’ Waman ordered. ‘It’s very light,’ he said with affection to Adi.
    The guard did as he was told, and Adi felt the magic of holding an AK-47.
    The family sat down next to the minister. The audience was on the floor or on the chairs they had dragged from their homes.
    The minister gave a speech in which he narrated how when he was as old as Adi he was tied to a tree by Brahmin priests because he had committed the crime of entering a temple. ‘They left melike that the whole night,’ he said. ‘Next morning, I ran away from my village and came to Bombay with nothing, not even ten rupees in my pocket. Not even a pocket actually.’
    Ayyan had heard this story before, and many more that the minister would not recount. How he had once sold vegetables