Part Four — The Ground · Chapter 34 of 40

The Reasons He Gives

To Ketkar, on the second day, in two rooms above a chemist, with the folder on the desk:

“It’s clean and it’s cheap and it’s been cheap for seventeen years for a reason that isn’t a title defect. I’ve had a solicitor tell me four times in twenty years that a plot is cheap because of paper. This one’s cheap because of a story.”

Ketkar went through the folder for an hour and eleven minutes and said that it was in order, that the 2001 decree was properly certified, that the daughter in Bangalore would need to be dealt with through a power of attorney and that this was routine, and that if Wagh saheb wanted a plot, this was, on the documents, a better plot than four of the five he had bought in his career.

“You’ve had a quiet eighteen months,” he said, at the end, not looking up.

“Yes.”

“That’s not a criticism. A quiet eighteen months at your age is a decision, and I’ve watched you not make it.” He squared the folder. “Buy the plot or don’t buy the plot. But do not buy it in order to have made a decision.”

To Athavale, on the sixth day, after a sub-committee meeting, over tea, unprompted:

“I may take a plot at the creek. There’d be no society in it. It’s a straight development, forty flats, sold to whoever buys them, no families waiting anywhere for anything.”

Athavale, who was seventy and had been a schoolmaster, took about four seconds.

“That is the first time you have described a job to me by what it does not contain.”

“That’s what’s good about it.”

“I did not say it was not good. I said it was the first time.” He put his cup down. “You told me last September you did not want to be in a room with eleven families and a period. This is a job with no room and no families and no period that anybody is waiting on. I would call that consistent.”

“You’d call it consistent.”

“I would call it consistent,” said Athavale, “and I would also observe that a man who solves a problem by removing every other person from it has not solved the problem. But I am a schoolmaster, and that is the sort of thing we say.”

To Kelkar the tailor, on the ninth day, on a step in Kopar, over tea that was too sweet, and this is the only one of the four in which he told the truth about the ground:

“You know the creek plot.”

“Everybody knows the creek plot.”

“I’m looking at it again.”

Kelkar raised the shutter the rest of the way and did not say anything for a while.

“Your father wrote about that plot,” he said eventually.

“Four lines. I’ve read them.”

“He came in here in ninety-one after you went and looked at it. Sat where you’re sitting.” The old man lowered himself onto the step. “He was not proud of you. I want to be accurate. He was puzzled. He said: the boy has gone and stood in the water and come back and said no, and he will not tell me what he saw, and I do not think he can say it.”

Jagdish held his tea.

“That’s right,” he said.

“So say it now. I’m eighty-one, who am I going to tell?”

“The low corner floods.” He said it to the lane rather than to Kelkar. “Not the creek coming up — the ground. Water stands in that corner after any real rain and it stands for two days, and in 1991 there was nowhere for it to go except across onto the far bank, where there were eleven households. That is all it ever was. It wasn’t a case and it wasn’t fishermen and it wasn’t anybody’s brother. It was that I could not see how to build there without putting my water on top of people who had no paper and could not have stopped me.”

Kelkar drank his tea.

“That is a very small reason to be famous for,” he said.

“Yes.”

“And now there is nobody on the far bank.”

“No. There’s a warehouse and a compound wall.”

“Then it is finished,” said Kelkar, “and you should buy the plot,” and he got up to serve a customer, and that was the end of the most nearly honest conversation Jagdish Wagh had in that fortnight, and it was with a tailor, and it left out the only part that mattered, which was that the water was still going to stand in the corner.

To Meera, on the eleventh day, at home, last:

“Ghaisas came about the creek plot. I’m looking at it.”

She was at the table with a folder from the office. She closed it.

“Which time is this?”

He had not expected that and it took him a moment, and in the moment she watched him take it.

“Third,” he said.

“Third.” She put her hand flat on the folder. “Nineteen ninety-one, and February 2005, and now.”

“How do you know about 2005?”

“Pradhan’s wife told me in 2005. Eleven days after it happened.” Meera said it without any weight at all. “She thought I knew. She thought it was a nice thing — that a man had come to you with a big plot and you had said no in four minutes, and she was telling me the way you tell somebody something good about their husband.”

Jagdish sat down.

“You’ve known for three and a half years.”

“Yes.”

“You never said.”

“No,” said Meera. “I wanted to see how long it would take you.”

That is the fourth reason, and it is the only one of the four that he did not give.

He had told Ketkar it was cheap because of a story. He had told Athavale it was a job with nobody in it. He had told Kelkar the truth about the water and then let a tailor tell him the objection was finished. And to his wife, who had known since 2005 and had spent three and a half years waiting for him to mention it, he said nothing about the plot at all, because the conversation stopped being about the plot in about nine seconds and never went back.

What she said, at the end of it, after a silence that ran some minutes, was:

“I’m not going to tell you not to buy it. I’ve never told you not to buy anything and I’m not going to start at fifty. Buy it if it’s a good plot.”

“And if it isn’t?”

“Then don’t.” She opened the folder again. “But do me one thing first, and then I’ll say nothing else about it ever. Go and stand on it. Not with Ghaisas and not with a paper. On your own, in the rain, the way you did in ninety-one.”

“It’s September.”

“Then you’ve got three weeks,” said Meera Wagh, “before the rain stops.”