Free Slumdog Millionaire: A Novel by Vikas Swarup Page B

campus. Three years ago he discovered a new star. It was a very important scientific discovery but one of his fellow astronomers took credit for it. This shattered my husband completely. He started drinking. He started having fights with his colleagues and one day he got so angry with the director of the Institute he almost beat him to death. He was thrown out of the Institute immediately and I had to beg the director not to have him arrested by the police. After leaving the Institute, my husband got a job as a physics teacher in a good school, but he could not keep his drinking and his violent temper in check. He would thrash boys for minor lapses and was kicked out in just six months.
    Since then he has been doing odd jobs, working as a canteen manager in an office, as an
    accountant in a factory, and now as a sales assistant in a clothes showroom. And because we have exhausted all our savings, we are forced to live in a chawl.'
    'Can't Mr Shantaram stop drinking?' I ask her.
    'My husband swore to me he would not touch alcohol again and I had begun to hope that the worst was over. But he couldn't stick to his promise, and look what has happened.'
    'Do me a favour, Ram Mohammad Thomas,' Gudiya says. 'Please look after Pluto till I return home.'
    'Definitely,' I promise.
    Suddenly she stretches out her arm and takes my hand in hers. 'You are the brother I never had.
    Isn't he, Mummy?' she says. Mrs Shantaram nods her head.
    I do not know what to say. This is a new relationship for me. In the past, I have imagined myself as someone's son, but never as someone's brother. So I just hold Gudiya's hand and sense an unspoken bond pass between us.
    That night I dream of a woman in a white sari holding a baby in her arms. The wind howls
    behind her, making her hair fly across her face, obscuring it. She places the baby in a laundry bin and leaves. Just then, another woman arrives. She is also tall and graceful, but her face is swathed in bandages. She plucks the baby from the bin and smothers him with kisses. 'My little brother,' she says. 'S-i-s-t-e-r,' the baby gurgles back. 'Meeeow!' A strangled cry from a cat suddenly pierces the night. I wake up and try to figure whether the cry I heard came from the dream or the adjacent room.
    I discover Pluto's limp and mangled body the next morning, lying in the same dustbin in which Mr Barve disposes of his copy of the Maharashtra Times. The cat's neck has been broken and I can smell whisky on his furry body. Shantaram tells his wife that Pluto has run away. I know the truth, but it is pointless mentioning it. Pluto has indeed run away. To another, better world, I think.
    'I like Gudiya very much,' I tell Salim. 'I have to ensure that Shantaram does not repeat what he did to her.'
    'But what can you do? It is his family.' 'It is our business as well. After all, we are neighbours.'
    'Don't you remember what you told me once? That it's not a good idea to poke your nose into other people's affairs, or make other people's troubles your own, Mohammad?'
    I have no response to this.

    * * *
Gudiya comes home, but I don't get to see her because Shantaram will not permit a boy to enter his house. Mrs Shantaram tells me that her husband has realized what he has done and will now reform, even though in her heart of hearts she knows that Shantaram is beyond redemption. But even she did not know the depths to which her husband could descend.
    Barely a week after Gudiya returns from the hospital, he does something to her again. He tries to touch her. But not like a father. At first, I don't understand. All I hear is some references to Gudiya being his moon and then Mrs Shantaram crying, and Gudiya screaming, 'Papa, don't
    touch me! Papa, please don't touch me!'
    Something snaps in my brain when I hear Gudiya's plaintive cry. I want to rush into Shantaram's room and kill him with my bare hands. But even before I can gather my courage, I hear
    Shantaram's loud snores. He has crashed out. Gudiya is still