Mr Dalal, meanwhile, was thinking: a sink on the stairwell is sure to impress visitors. Now that he was a company manager, who could say who might visit the building?
The workmen toiled for several hours. They ran up and down the stairs and ate their lunches squatting against the banister poles. They hammered, shouted, spat, and cursed. They wiped their sweat with the ends of their turbans. In general, they made it impossible for Boori Ma to sweep the stairwell that day.
To occupy the time, Boori Ma retired to the rooftop. She shuffled along the parapets, but her hips were sore from sleeping on newspapers. After consulting the horizon on all four sides, she tore what was left of her quilts into several strips and resolved to polish the banister poles at a later time.
By early evening the residents gathered to admire the day's labours. Even Boori Ma was urged to rinse her hands under the clear running water. She sniffed. "Our bathwater was scented with petals and attars. Believe me, don't believe me, it was a luxury you cannot dream."
Mr Dalal proceeded to demonstrate the basin's various features. He turned each faucet completely on and completely off. Then he turned on both faucets at the same time, to illustrate the difference in water pressure. Lifting a small lever between the faucets allowed water to collect in the basin, if desired.
"The last word in elegance," Mr Dalal concluded.
"A sure sign of changing times," Mr Chatterjee reputedly admitted from his balcony.
Among the wives, however, resentment quickly brewed. Standing in line to brush their teeth in the mornings, each grew frustrated with having to wait her turn, for having to wipe the faucets after every use, and for not being able to leave her own soap and toothpaste tube on the basin's narrow periphery. The Dalals had their own sink; why did the rest of them had to share?
"Is it beyond us to buy sinks of our own?" one of them finally burst out one morning.
"Are the Dalals the only ones who can improve the conditions of this building?" asked another.
Rumours began spreading: that, following their argument, Mr Dalal had consoled his wife by buying her two kilos of mustard oil, a Kashmiri shawl, a dozen cakes of sandalwood soap; that Mr Dalal had filed an application for a telephone line; that Mrs Dalal did nothing but wash her hands in her basin all day. As if this weren't enough, the next morning, a taxi bound for Howrah Station crammed its wheels into the alley; the Dalals were going to Simla for 10 days.
"Boori Ma, I haven't forgotten. We will bring you back a sheep's-hair blanket made in the mountains," Mrs Dalal said through the open window of the taxi. She was holding a leather purse in her lap which matched the turquoise border of her sari.
"We will bring two!" cried Mr Dalal, who was sitting beside his wife, checking his pockets to make sure his wallet was in place.
Of all the people who lived in that particular flat-building, Boori Ma was the only one who stood by the collapsible gate and wished them a safe journey.
As soon as the Dalals were gone, the other wives began planning renovations of their own. One decided to barter a stack of her wedding bracelets and commissioned a white-washer to freshen the walls of the stairwell. Another pawned her sewing machine and summoned an exterminator. A third went to the silversmith and sold back a set of pudding bowls; she intended to have the shutters painted yellow.
Workers began to occupy this particular flat-building night and day. To avoid the traffic, Boori Ma took to sleeping on the rooftop. So many people passed in and out of the collapsible gate, so many others clogged the alley at all times, that there was no point in keeping track of them.
After a few days Boori Ma moved her baskets and her cooking bucket to the rooftop as well. There was no need to use the basin downstairs, for she could just as easily wash, as she always had, from the cistern tap. She still planned to polish the banister poles with the strips she had torn from her quilts. She continued to sleep on her newspapers.
More rains came. Below the dripping awning, a newspaper pressed over her head, Boori Ma squatted and watched the monsoon ants as they marched along the clothesline, carrying eggs in their mouths. Damper winds soothed her back. Her newspapers were running low.
Her mornings were long, her afternoons longer. She could not remember her last glass of tea. Thinking neither of her hardships nor of earlier times, she wondered when the Dalals would return with her new bedding.
She grew restless on the roof, and so for some exercise, Boori Ma started circling the neighbourhood in the afternoons. Reed broom in hand, sari smeared with newsprint ink, she wandered through markets and began spending her life savings on small treats: today a packet of puffed rice, tomorrow some cashews, the day after that a cup of sugar cane juice. One day she walked as far as the bookstalls on College Street. The next day she walked even farther, to the produce markets in Bow Bazaar. It was there, while she was standing in a shopping arcade surveying jackfruits and persimmons, that she felt something tugging on the free end of her sari. When she looked, the rest of her life savings and her skeleton keys were gone.
The residents were waiting for Boori Ma when she returned that afternoon at the collapsible gate. Baleful cries rang up and down the stairwell, all echoing the same news: the basin on the stairwell had been stolen. There was a big hole in the recently whitewashed wall, and a tangle of rubber tubes and pipes was sticking out of it. Chunks of plaster littered the landing. Boori Ma gripped her reed broom and said nothing.
IN their haste the residents practically carried Boori Ma up the stairs to the roof, where they planted her on one side of the clothesline and started screaming at her from the other. "This is all her doing," one of them hollered, pointing at Boori Ma. "She informed the robbers. Where was she when she was supposed to guard the gate?"
"For days she has been wandering the streets, speaking to strangers," another reported.
"We shared our coal, gave her a place to sleep. How could she betray us this way?" a third wanted to know.
Though none of them spoke directly to Boori Ma, she replied: "Believe me, believe me. I did not inform the robbers". "For years we have put up with your lies," they retorted. "You expect us, now, to believe you?"
Their recriminations persisted. How would they explain it to the Dalals? Eventually they sought the advice of Mr Chatterjee. They found him sitting on his balcony, watching a traffic jam.
One of the second-floor residents said: "Boori Ma has endangered the security of this building. We have valuables. The widow Mrs Misra lives alone with her phone. What should we do?"
Mr Chatterjee considered their arguments. As he thought things over, he adjusted the shawl that was wrapped around his shoulders and gazed at the bamboo scaffolding that now surrounded his balcony. The shutters behind him, colourless for as long as he could remember, had been painted yellow. Finally he said:
"Boori Ma's mouth is full of ashes. But that is nothing new. What is new is the face of this building. What a building like this needs is a real durwan."
So the residents tossed her bucket and rags, her baskets and reed broom, down the stairwell, past the letter boxes, through the collapsible gate, and into the alley. Then they tossed out Boori Ma. All were eager to begin their search for a real durwan.
From the pile of belongings Boori Ma kept only her broom. "Believe me, believe me," she said once more as her figure began to recede. She shook the free end of her sari, but nothing rattled.