by Anne Cherian
Then, his final check at 4 a.m. had put him into a hopeful mood. Scattered was gone from the forecast, and there was just a 20 percent chance of morning showers.
When he awoke at 6 a.m., Vic immediately looked out the window. The sky was dark, but not full and low as if pregnant with condensation. He breathed in the air. He was sighing with relief that it didn’t smell like rain when Priya came into the bedroom and pronounced, “It’s going to rain.”
“Who are you?” he asked, “The god of rain?”
“I just heard the weather report,” she said. “They are saying there is a 50 percent chance of rain, so you had better order some canopies.”
“That means there is a 50 percent chance it will not rain. Those weather people are idiots. How many times do they announce it is going to rain and it doesn’t? Look outside. It’s a little dark, but that is only because the clouds are still covering the sun.”
“What will we do if it rains?”
She was always asking him to fix problems, whether they existed or not, always looking on the gloomy side of things.
“I told you, it isn’t going to rain,” he shouted.
“You can’t control the weather, Dad,” Nikhil said from the doorway. “Mom’s right. It is going to rain, and since we can’t possibly fit all the people you invited into the house, I suggest we cancel.”
“When I want your suggestions, I will ask you,” Vic shot back.
“Might be too late,” Nikhil warned, and disappeared before Vic could rebut him.
“You just make sure your son is dressed and ready to greet the guests this evening,” Vic told Priya. “I’ll manage everything else.”
He wanted to remind her that she had hardly helped with the party, and this wasn’t the time for her words or worries. He had made every single arrangement, from choosing the guest list to picking out the invitation to ordering a cake big enough for 150 people. Compared to all those details, today was easy. He simply had to make sure that everything fit together. As he had told Priya’s cousin Rajesh, who had wanted to come in the morning to help out, it was like writing a computer program. Vic had already done the hard part. Now all that remained was the follow-through.
He had told their cleaning woman, Flora, to come at 9 a.m. and bring two friends. She usually took all day to clean the house on her own, and he wanted her to be finished by 3 p.m. Flora used to help Priya when Nandan was born, and after he started kindergarten, she began cleaning for them. She knew them, and the house, and didn’t need to be told what to do.
When she arrived on the dot at nine, he simply said, “Make sure everything, everything, is very clean.”
An hour later, a big truck pulled into the driveway. The chairs and tables had arrived. Vic rubbed his hands together. It was, as his classmates at UCLA would say, starting to be party time.
Within a week of arriving at UCLA, a student he had just met had invited him to his first party. It was in a house that five people shared. All night long, men and women traipsed in and out. Vic had never seen something that luxurious at IIT. There was wine, cigarettes, food, music, and someone had even bought a keg of beer. He didn’t drink in those days, so he had spent the time watching the others. They were so free with their kisses, their food, their bodies touching each other as they swayed to music.
Jay had invited him to a number of parties, and Vic was amused that Frances always made sure to tell him to bring something. Once she even told him where to buy cheap wine. He knew that some offering was expected, so he usually brought chips, nuts, anything crunchy. He never told Frances—he just let her believe that he didn’t know how to behave at American parties.
He had wondered, at that first party, when he would have the chance to throw one, and whether he would be as generous with his invitations and food. These days, money wasn’t a problem, and he had been able to invite everyone he wanted to and serve whatever he wished.
So far, everything was going according to his careful plans. Vic hurried to the kitchen to remind Flora that she would also be cleaning the tables and chairs that were being unloaded from the truck. Then he ran to the front to instruct the workers where to set them up.
“Hey, hey, stop,” he called out to the men who were already arranging the tables and chairs. “Who told you where to put everything?”
“The lady in the house, she gave to us this paper.” A burly man who seemed to be in charge handed Vic a detailed drawing showing the layout for the round tables where the guests would sit, as well as the long buffet tables.
“Why are these here?” he pointed to the buffet tables that would, by the evening, be weighed down with pakoras, samosas, biryani, two dals, four types of vegetables, pickles, papads, and, at Priya’s insistence, tandoori chicken and lamb kebabs.
“We don’t eat meat,” he had told her, because he knew she would get angry if he mentioned cost.
But she had a ready answer that he could not dismiss: “So many people make sure we have vegetarian items when we go to their houses. We should do the same.”
“Why don you ahs her?” the man pointed behind Vic. He turned and saw Priya walking toward them, her knee-length kurta fluttering in the breeze.
“The buffet tables are in the wrong place,” Vic announced, not sure whether he was annoyed that she had taken over or pleased that she was helping.
“They are all correct,” Priya countered calmly. “I arranged it that way so two lines of people can serve themselves at the same time. It will go faster, and, just as you are always saying about your computer programs, faster is better.”
“Ees going to rain,” the man said. “You have cover for the tables?”
“It’s not going to rain,” Vic refuted, just as the first drops of fat, cold rain started bouncing off the tables.
“Thank God they’re plastic,” Priya said, as everyone rushed back to the house. “Vic, you had better arrange for canopies. I only hope we can get some at this late hour. I don’t want to be sitting and worrying the entire evening about whether it’s going to rain or not. As it is, people are going to have enough problems walking on the wet grass.”
Vic sighed. He was sure this was a freak shower. The drops of rain were too big and far apart to turn into a downpour. He wondered how the idiot weather people made their forecasts.
“You fellows have some canopies?” Vic asked the burly man.
“I will call and check. But that will be more spensive.”
“Just find out,” Vic said, though, as he had suspected, it stopped raining. But now moisture lingered in the air, and Vic wasn’t sure if the day was going to turn into the wrong 50 percent.
Perhaps he should have listened to Priya and arranged a catered dinner at a hotel. It wasn’t tightfistedness that had prevented him from booking one of the local hotels. He had wanted his son’s party to be special, didn’t want it to be just another revolving event at a hotel. He had attended too many receptions, conferences, dinners that were all jumbled up in his memory because they were so similar. The ugly carpets, the impersonal rooms, the flat-tasting food. He wanted to greet his friends in his own home, not rent a large one that would be transformed for an entirely different event the next day. Years from now, he wanted to look outside his window and recall the arrangements of the chairs, the people talking in groups, the purple flowers of the jacaranda tree, the scent of the roses that Priya had planted when they bought this house.
“We can make the cover for you,” the man said. An hour later, Vic looked outside and saw a large white canopy flapping between poles.
By 3 p.m., the heaters had been set out. Almost everything was in place. Nikhil had returned from exercising and Nandan was inspecting the numerous tubs of sodas that Flora had placed on the edges of the lawn.
“Don’t spill any on your clothes,” he cautioned his younger son.
Nandan was so careless with his things. He was always leaving his jackets in school, and one time when he was very small, he had handed over a $20 bill to buy some ice
cream and grandly told the vendor to keep the change. Vic had lectured him for days afterward, until Priya begged him to stop. Nandan, she said, had got the message, and he would never make such a mistake again. Vic wanted his sons to get all the benefits he had never enjoyed, but he didn’t want them to behave like little rajas who don’t know that earning money is hard work.
“Dad, I haven’t spilled stuff in years,” Nandan said as he started drinking a Sprite. Vic was about to remind his son of the number of times he had spoiled his shirts, then decided it wasn’t that important.
This party was about Nikhil. Nikhil was the VIP today. Nikhil was going to be wearing the suit he had worn a few weeks ago at his graduation. Vic had been saturated with pride that day, greeting other happy parents, including many Indians. The Indian men were bragging about their children’s GPAs and the jobs they had lined up. Vic had listened. He didn’t say a word. Didn’t tell them that his son didn’t just have a job, he already had a company that he was going to inherit.
Vic inspected every room in the house. He had bought the house because it was the biggest one on the block. Priya had preferred a smaller house that was closer to the ocean, but Vic had remembered how the seth’s large house in the village had inspired admiration and envy. He was aware that though many Americans were happy to welcome him to a country to which their own ancestors had immigrated, just as many considered him an alien. He would, he thought, force them to account for him. He had long practice at being an outsider, at needing to find ways to make people look at him with respect. At IIT, he had used his brains; in America, where money was just as lustrous as back in India, a huge house would make everyone know one thing: He was rich. And, just as in India, wealth gave status to a person.
The house had five bathrooms and four bedrooms. The dining room could easily accommodate twenty-five people, as could the living room, and both had fireplaces that had never been used. Priya complained that the house was too big for their small family, that she did not like the boys’ bedrooms being so far from theirs. She did, however, agree that the garden was beautiful, and she especially liked the apple trees. She had eaten very few apples when she was young, because they were expensive, and considered Western fruit. Now she could eat as many as she wanted, and she had learned to make delicious, chunky chutney.
Flora had done a good job of cleaning, and the furniture gleamed. She had put new rolls of toilet paper in the bathrooms and had boiled cinnamon-laced water so the entire house had a lovely aroma. She had also helped Priya put bright tablecloths and vases of flowers on the round tables.
Vic thought the flowers were as unnecessary as gift wrapping. “People only care about drinks, food, and the company,” he told Priya, but she shook her head and said that he was just being stingy.
“Stingy?” he looked at her in amazement. “Do you know how much this party is costing me?”
“You wanted to have it, so you must do it properly.”
The one thing he made sure to do very properly was the drinks. The French bikers had asked if he was the sort of Indian who did not serve drinks at home. He had laughed and told them that all Indians love to drink, and his countrymen would be very disappointed if he didn’t have an open bar.
“I’m having two stations with four bartenders,” he told them, and they had raised their glasses to him in thanks.
“We will drink enough to make a boat float,” they promised, and, for a moment, he regretted inviting them. But they had changed the date for the Vegas trip to accommodate him, and they kept asking him about the party. So he finally invited them, expecting to hear excuses.
Instead they said, “We’d love to. We promise not to tell your wife any stories about you.”
The bartenders were setting up, and Vic was happy to see that they had followed his instructions and come well stocked.
The only item that required double-checking was the food. Vic had worried about the food from the moment he gave the order to Kumar, who owned a local Indian restaurant. He had warned Kumar from the outset that since he, too, was Indian, he knew all about his countrymen’s penchant for late deliveries, as well as the inevitable issue of something, somehow, going wrong with the order.
“You are in America now,” he reminded Kumar, “so make sure you give me exactly what I ordered. And you better be on time.”
Still, to confirm that Kumar was going to do his job properly, Vic phoned him at 4 p.m. Three rings, four . . . he was just beginning to fret that Kumar had mixed up the day when he answered.
“Surely, Mr. Jha, we are coming there. We will definitely be at your house by five thirty.”
He had taken the precaution of telling Kumar five o’clock, even though the party was set for six. When Vic heard this new time, uttered without any apology, any sign that it was half an hour later than planned, he felt as if his blood was going to explode.
“If you are not here by five thirty sharp, I am not going to pay you one single paisa.”
“Surely, Mr. Jha, we will be there. And in America we are not using the paisa,” the man heh-hehed over the phone, half laughing, half apologetic.
“And every dish had better be hot.”
“But Mr. Jha, you were telling us only mild spices. You were telling us that you have invited many foreigners, and also many of our own people have been living here so long, they cannot stomach our hot dishes.”
“I mean temperature hot, you—!” Vic shut his mouth before the word idiot slipped out. In this bad economy, Kumar needed the order, but right now Vic needed the food more.
And Kumar had better not have put his usual quota of chilies in the food. Some Americans could tolerate spicy cuisine, but he didn’t want to take a chance. Then there were the Indians like Lali who had married Americans and had probably lost all ability to eat chilies. Vic had thought of both types of people when ordering the food. The Indians would like the familiarity, though a few might complain that the food lacked definition. The Americans would be surprised, because they would assume that all Indian cuisine was spicy, and therefore inedible.
“Bloody idiot!” Vic said as he hung up the phone.
“Is Kumar not bringing the food?” Priya asked, her face showing alarm.
“Of course he is. He just likes to play a little.”
“As long as he brings the food on time, and it’s tasty.”
“I’m going to make a last-minute check of the outside before getting ready.”
The sky was gray, and even though he heard thunder, it hadn’t rained since those few drops in the morning. He had been correct, after all.
He walked around the lawn, which now looked smaller because of all the furniture and heaters. The tablecloths dressed up the plastic tables, and the flowers added an elegant yet homey touch. He hurried in to tell Priya that she had made the outside look better than he had imagined, but she wasn’t in the bedroom getting ready. It usually took her much longer, because she had to comb her long hair and apply all types of powders and colors to her face.
He looked around for the sherwani he had decided to wear. She typically hung his chosen outfit on the closet door. The mojari shoes were still in their box.
He had invested a lot of thought not just in the party but also in his clothes. Should he be American in a suit? But he wore a suit every day to work, and he wanted this occasion, this moment when he publicly brought his son into the company he had created, to be special. His own father had worn cotton dhotis all his life and had borrowed a silk one for his own wedding. Vic had given his dhotis to his younger brother Vijay when he started studying at IIT. He wasn’t about to go backward and put on something that would feel strange and make Americans think of a diaper. Gandhi hadn’t cared, but he did.
Then Vic remembered Gandhi’s right-hand man, Nehru, the prime minister his mother adored, the man who had popularized Indian-style jackets in the West. He would, he decided, wear a Nehru coat. But when he went online, he realized that Nehru jackets needed to be tailored. Sherwanis—the long
, beautifully embroidered kurtas that come down to the knee and are worn with narrow pajamalike pants—did not need to fit perfectly. And they came in different styles. He chose one with a Nehru collar. On the bottom of the Internet page, he noticed that many people paired sherwanis with mojari shoes. It had been years since he had seen those pointed shoes that looked like something Aladdin might have worn. These shoes were special even in India. At one time, they were the footwear preferred by royalty. He had never owned a pair, because his village was far from Rajasthan. The website had a large selection, and he liked the idea that they were handmade. They would go perfectly with his outfit, and, because it was summer, he would not get cold. He had ordered a white pair, to match the pants, and he had selected blue for the embroidery, to match the color of his sherwani.
He had just stepped into the mojaris when Priya came in.
“Why are you not dressed?”
“I was talking to Nikhil.”
“He’d better be getting ready. People will be here in half an hour to congratulate him.”
“No, people are coming because you have invited them.”
Vic stared at her. She didn’t usually make stupid, obvious statements. After they were married, he had been happily surprised by her intelligence. He had not known what to expect, what to hope for, when he returned home to marry the girl his parents had selected for him. She had been in her second year of college, studying sociology. He had insisted that his parents find him a girl who had attended college, thinking it would give him more time as a bachelor. But then his parents wrote to him about Priya, and since she fit his basic requirements, he could not refuse their wishes.
She had not looked up during their only meeting prior to getting married. But he had already seen a picture, so he knew that her face wasn’t scarred by smallpox or pimples, that she was, as his mother had said, fair, which meant pretty. She had been properly nervous but acquiescent on their wedding night, and though he hadn’t made a big production of looking for blood, he had made sure to see it on the white sheet. Then he had returned to America and worked hard. He wrote her a few letters, though she sent him one every week. Her English was stilted but basically correct, the letters filled with information about what she was studying. She was starting her third year when her visa came through and Vic sent her a ticket. She was sad not to be able to finish her BA degree; she clearly wasn’t like those girls who considered college a waiting period before getting married. She had actually learned something.
