he may even benefit financially, in light of the undeniable fact that lucrative conversions of cantonment-era ruins by conglomerates have become standard. Dynamo withholds comment on the popular speculation that the majority of such lucrative conversions of dilapidated-beyond-repair single-family habitations are given unstoppable velocity by a select number of conglomerates with underworld connections. As the ditty goes, the times, they are changing. And yet… Aye, there's the rub for entrepreneurs with conscience.
If Dynamo had his druthers, he would continue his charitable outlays ad infinitum rather than confront the saddest of all urban spectacles: the rape of relics. The ravaging and razing of things unique diminishes us all. And in a city like Bang-a-Buck, where gaudy architecture is spreading like invasive bacteria and choking what little remains of originals, we are losing signposts to our collective past.
Like many who dabble in the alchemic black art of urban architecture in this confused and confusing age of rapturous rupture, Dynamo has long fixed his gaze on Madam's Bagehot House. (Dynamo hastens to clarify to his readers that his interest in Madam's establishment is devoid of popular prurient fascination with the generations of delectable lady-lodgers, those iron-clad frigates known in popular parlance as Bagehot Girls.) It is the academic perfection of the house and its grounds that have merited Dynamo's affectionate admiration (that admiration having been sparked by his reading at an impressionable age of Mr. Peter Champion's
Dynamo has it on irrefutable authority that at the time of Madam's sudden-but-not-precocious expiration, the board members of the Bagehot Trust, each of whom is a Bang-a-Buck VIP (no, make that a VVIP), were engaged in a bitter feud regarding financial plans for the immediate future of the rapidly deteriorating property. Dynamo's source, a trustee who has requested anonymity, has divulged to Dynamo that the trust was set up for the sole purpose of executing a legal contract with Madam, who had for two decades or more been afflicted with deep penury. Per said contract the board of trustees acquired the property deed from Madam in exchange for allowing her (1) to occupy the main residential structure gratis, and (2) to obtain and retain 100 percent of rents she collected from respectable migrant working ladies. As additional incentive they guaranteed the delivery of monthly gifts of provisions and liquor-Madam was partial to brandies. At the time of transfer of deed, the trustees, applying actuarial tables, had counted on Madam 'to kick the bucket' within months, if not weeks, and by unanimous vote had nominated a committee to explore lucrative commercial development of the long-neglected property. Thanks to either the medicinal benefits of potent brandies or to the ironic string-pullings of the Big Puppeteer in the Skies, and much to the aggravation of the trustees, Madam bamboozled the actuaries. The consequence of Madam's stubborn longevity was loss of unanimity among the trustees. According to Dynamo's source, last month a minority faction on the board proposed the Bagehot property be designated a city or national historical heritage site, thus qualifying for not-for-profit status and funds for preservation and restoration.
Madam, by her own admission, was eighty-two years old. Madam's passing, therefore, was not untimely, but, and this is
If the attending physician is to be believed, Madam's 'great heart' gave out. Dynamo counters the physician with a resounding 'Poppycock!' Madam is known to have suffered from dyspepsia (both gastronomical and temperamental), but not from a dicky ticker. Dynamo demands an investigation of the factors that induced the shock that induced heart failure. Sources have implied
(1) that Madam's only servant was in the pay of a trustee and facilitated the fatal shock to his employer's inconveniently sturdy heart;or
(2) that the same servant accidentally happened upon Madam's lifeless body and alerted his powerful paymaster, who then instructed his henchmen to wreck the structure and purloin contents under the guise of a spontaneous riot by Bang-a-Buck's underclass.
Madam's death is a sad fact. But the true tragic victim of this incidence of plutocratic greed is the young lady- tenant of Madam, the innocent job-seeking migrant, who was mistakenly ensnared in a London-based terrorist plot-'implicated,' in police jargon-and cruelly harassed and humiliated, her spirit scarred permanently. That young lady arrived in Bang-a-Buck to discover, fulfill, and exceed her potential; instead she became collateral damage of countenanced greed. Did 'fearful symmetry,' which the bard William Blake alerted us to two hundred years ago, require the extraction of such a price?
Dynamo's suspicions are just that: suspicions. By Madam's wishes, which she expressed in writing to the Bagehot Trust, she was to be buried on Bagehot grounds. No resting place is permanent. Her bones will be crushed or bared by developers' crews. But if there's to be a memorial for Madam, let it be this: Bagehot House surrendered its ghosts so that one young lady might break the power of our property triads. In an earlier column, I labeled such ladies 'the New Miss Indias.' They will transform our country. Dynamo is inflamed by the new species of tyger- lamb. If there is any triumph to be gleaned from this experience, it is that this time the costs of symmetry have been borne by ancient bricks and mortar, not by flesh and blood.
Anjali reread Dynamo's column this time as a love letter. She had mistaken Mr. GG's gallantry for indifference. He hadn't lost his desire for her. He had promoted her from a plaything to an ideal worthy of devotion. She read his 'Tyger! Tyger!' again and again.
Clarity came to her with each rereading, especially of the closing paragraph. Dynamo was 'inflamed' by her. She resolved to cross back to the colony of the living. In the monstrous evening at the police thana, Rabi had joked about the Peter Champion network. The butterfly effect. How lucky she was to have Parvati, Auro and Rabi for temporary family! Luckier still to have Mr. GG drop by so regularly. She wasn't sure what Dynamo meant by 'the new species of tyger-lamb' or why he misspelled
3
Over the next couple of postdawn walks in the residents-only park and postwalk breakfasts of tea, fruits and yogurt in the garden, Rabi entertained Anjali with anecdotal histories of his mother, Tara Chatterjee, and her sisters, Parvati-Auntie and the oldest, the New York-based gadabout Padma. His mother ('A bit of a flake, you'd like her') was the youngest; Parvati-Auntie was 'the responsible middle sister, and don't get me started on the oldest.'
But he started with the two house dogs, Ahilya the female and her pathetically enamored littermate, Malhar, which had been plucked off the street: pariah pups, raised inside, grown large, strong, and very territorial, very fierce looking, but never at ease, never comfortable. Never knowing where they belonged. Canines, he called them, not really dogs. It would take generations to breed a true dog from India's abundant canines. 'That's the kind of woman my Auntie is,' he said. 'She follows her heart. She believes love is the answer to everything.'
And then he gave his take on Dollar Colony, where Auro-Uncle had chosen to settle as the CFO of a startup after retiring from the Mumbai branch of a multinational behemoth. 'He lived in Hong Kong, Boston, Los Angeles, Mumbai, and he picked Bangalore for building his dream house! What does that say about Bangalore? What does it say about
'The only places I know, or maybe I
'Not a very high standard, Angie.' Rabi scooped out a tiny, slippery black papaya seed the maid had missed when she was preparing the fruit platter.
'Shall I tell you about Rock City?'
'Please, spare me the mysteries of Rock City. I've read the CCI training manual: learn about one little town and you've learned about the whole country. Learn some specialized vocabulary and you'll discover the whole language. Was Rock City all you hoped for?' He flicked the seed at her. 'Bottom line, as they like to say, you were right to back out of CCI.'
