by Diksha Basu
“A lot of people do,” Mrs. Jha said. “That’s not something you need to feel guilty about. You gave her a very good life.”
Mr. Jha pulled the sheet aside and got in under the covers. The Usha fan creaked overhead on every turn. Mrs. Jha reached across her pillow and placed her hand gently on his shoulder.
“It was a good night, Anil,” she said.
Mr. Jha nodded.
“I’m glad Rupak was here,” he added after a brief silence. “America is suiting him. Just imagine if he gets a job with a big multinational after finishing his MBA. I’ll throw a party for the whole city when he gets a job—all our friends from here, and our new neighbors from Gurgaon.”
“We must book our tickets,” Mrs. Jha said. She had to go and see her son in America soon. She worried every day about how he survived on his own. He needed someone to take care of him while he studied. He had to do his own laundry, make his own food, even change his own bedsheets. She wanted him to come home after his degree so she could fuss over him for a little while. What was so bad about working in Delhi?
“Right after we are settled in, we will go,” Mr. Jha said. “In business class, Bindu. We will lie flat on our backs while flying through the skies.”
“Don’t be crazy!” Mrs. Jha said. She gently slapped her husband’s shoulder. “Business class tickets are ten times the price of economy! For what? Hardly twenty hours. We’re getting carried away.”
Mrs. Jha laughed, turned off the small lamp near the bed, and pulled the white sheet up to her shoulders. She ran her large toe against her husband’s ankle and said, “Good night.”
Mr. Jha rested his hand against her thigh.
“Why are you whispering?” Elizabeth said on the phone.
“My parents are still awake,” Rupak said, and regretted it immediately.
“And you haven’t told them about me yet.”
He had promised Elizabeth that he would tell his parents about her this summer, and now the summer was almost over and he had still not told them. He also had not told them that he was starting his second year on academic probation because of his shockingly low grade point average the previous semester. They would both be so disappointed. He knew how proud they were that he was studying in America and seemed poised on the brink of a bright future. He had decided it was best not to tell them; he would work to get his grades back up this semester and they would never have to know.
It was all his own fault, Rupak knew. He got to America soon after his parents became wealthy, and he immediately fell in love—not with Elizabeth, but with the whole country, and with the bank account that his father kept replenishing. He found himself falling into a version of what he thought life in America was meant to be. He signed up for sailing lessons on Cayuga Lake and golfing lessons at the Robert Trent Jones Golf Course. But he didn’t end up going for the golf classes, and now a thousand-dollar golf club set sat unused in his apartment. He bought an iPhone and an iPad and a GoPro camera. He downloaded Final Cut Pro and spent his time filming his life in America and creating his own mini film versions of the shows and movies he had grown up watching.
His parents were under the impression that after his MBA, he would find a job with a big bank or consulting firm and then they would find him a suitable Bihari match. When Mr. and Mrs. Jha were introduced in 1989 through Mrs. Jha’s uncle’s friend who was the head of the Bihari Ladies’ Club of East Delhi, Mr. Jha was finishing a master’s in electrical engineering and Mrs. Jha had recently finished a bachelor’s in social work and was working with a local organization to help collect and distribute free school supplies for slum children in the area. From what Rupak had heard, his parents had been allowed to meet alone once before they decided to get married. They were going to push for a contemporary equivalent for Rupak. He would be given at least a few months to get to know the woman and would technically have the right to refuse. Even though the word dating would never be used, they would be allowed to go out for dinners and movies alone and the final decision would be theirs to make, but Rupak wanted to do it his own way. However, he still had not managed to say anything to his parents, and he knew that was going to upset Elizabeth.
“What are you doing all day?” Rupak said to change the topic. She was spending the summer doing an internship in the finance department of Doctors Without Borders in New York, but he pictured her lying in her bedroom in Florida, her dog on the floor beside the bed. He sometimes thought he was more fascinated by her life in Florida than she was by his life in India.
“Working. And my mother’s visiting so I’ll take her out for dinner tonight. She says she wants sushi, but her idea of sushi is only shrimp tempura rolls,” Elizabeth said. “How was your day?”
“Fine. Good. All my parents’ friends were over for dinner just now. I grew up around these people but I feel so detached from them now. It’s strange.”
Rupak tried to picture Elizabeth being a part of tonight’s dinner party. His parents would have no idea how to react to her and her snug jeans and T-shirts. They would all assume they knew everything about her based on what she looked like. She was about his height, and blond, and had visible collarbones, and Rupak himself found it difficult to see past her looks. She wore no jewelry and, as far as he could tell, hardly ever used makeup. She took her contacts out and wore glasses in the evening, before bed, but he preferred her in her contacts so he could look at her face uninterrupted. How would Mrs. Gupta talk to her, he wondered? How would he explain her to them and them to her?
His father, always aspiring, had sent Rupak to an elite private school in central Delhi, and the world of his rich classmates, the world his parents were about to have in Delhi, was so much simpler to explain in America. In his classmates’ homes, in leafy lanes in central Delhi where it always felt five degrees cooler than it did in East Delhi and where cars honked much less often and you could hear brief stretches of actual silence, at four p.m., trolleys with cheese toast and slices of Black Forest cake from Khan Market and bottles of Coca-Cola would be wheeled into the air-conditioned room where the children played. In his home, maids grumpily offered oily samosas from the local market and glasses of pink, syrupy Rooh Afza. When he was young, they had no air conditioner, only a loud cooler that sat outside the main window in the living room and did little to actually cool down the apartment. Their television had no remote. His India was neither rich nor poor. There were no huge homes and elaborate weddings, nor were there slums and water shortages and child laborers. The middle ground was too confusing to explain to an outsider. It was neither exotic enough nor familiar enough.
“Hang on. My mom’s calling for me,” Elizabeth said. And then Rupak heard her shout out, “I’m leaving in half an hour. I’m on the phone with Rupak,” and return to the phone and say, “My mom says hi.”
“Hi,” Rupak said.
“I miss you,” Elizabeth said.
Rupak turned to his side and looked at his bedside table. On the top right corner were the remnants of a sticker of the Indian cricket team from 1996. He had tried, over the years, to scratch it off, so you couldn’t make out the faces of any of the players anymore but you could see the blue uniforms.
He couldn’t help but think about what Mrs. Gupta had said tonight after his father told them about the move and after her husband was done trying to ask how much they had paid in black money. Mrs. Gupta, with a mouthful of chicken and rice, had simply said, “Why?”
Rupak had been wanting to ask his parents that himself, but he hadn’t, and seeing them stumble to find an answer made him glad he hadn’t asked. “Why not?” his father had said, and his mother had just gotten up and started taking dishes back to the kitchen.
“Escaping the minute you can?” Mr. Gupta had said with a laugh.
“Hardly,” Mrs. Jha had said from near the kitchen entrance. “This will always also be home. We raised our family here.”
“But it will no longer be your home,” Mr. Gupta had said, and Mrs. Jha had ignored him and wal
ked into the kitchen.
And he was right, Rupak thought. This was no longer going to be home.
“It’s nice being home with my parents,” he said to Elizabeth. “Of course, I miss you too, though.”
“Tell them to come visit soon,” Elizabeth said. “Or I’ll come to India with you next time.”
Rupak scratched at the sticker of the cricket team again. A few small pieces came off under his fingernail, but the rest remained stubborn. He gave up and fell back against his pillow. Even though he was twenty-three, when he was at home with his parents, he immediately returned to feeling like he was fourteen. For the last two weeks, his mother had been reminding him every morning to pack up his room so everything could be moved to Gurgaon, and Rupak still hadn’t because he didn’t quite believe that they were actually moving homes. Had the money come just five years ago, he would have been part of the transition, but now, like the neighbors of Mayur Palli, he felt like an observer. The money had made his parents more youthful, less parentlike. Under normal circumstances he would get a good job after his MBA and then buy a Mercedes and show it off to his parents, who would look on proudly. Instead, yesterday, his father had taken him out for a ride in the new car and insisted on heating the car seats despite the summer temperatures.
Rupak suspected that if his father had waited, he could probably have sold his website for much more than he did, but when he sold it, the twenty million U.S. dollars that was offered felt like more money than there was in the whole world. Another small startup, www.justcall.com, bought the site and used the technology and was now worth close to two hundred million U.S. dollars. He wondered if his father ever felt angry about how little he had made compared to how much the site was now worth, but he realized, as he got older, that it was such an outrageous amount for his father that he could not actually understand the difference between twenty million and two hundred million dollars.
Mr. Jha had grown up with very little and, until the sale, earned the equivalent of two hundred dollars a month. Rupak thought now about how he had spent that amount on a pair of shoes recently.
“I think I would like India. Bring me back some books by Indian writers,” Elizabeth continued.
Rupak hardly read. He didn’t even know the names of the current Indian writers.
“Done. And you bring me books by writers from Pensacola.”
“There’s no such thing,” Elizabeth said with a small laugh. Rupak heard her let out a small moan as she stretched her body in bed. “I should get to work.”
“I really do miss you,” Rupak said.
“Send me more pictures. I like being able to see what you’re seeing. Your pictures make India seem not so far away.”
“What else should I get you from here?” Rupak asked.
“I don’t need anything else,” Elizabeth said. “Except knowing that your parents know about us. See if you can get me that.”
Rupak wanted to get her that. He pictured her languorously getting out of bed and stretching her arms up over her head, a sliver of her stomach exposed, and he wanted to get her anything she wanted.
On Sunday evening, in the small multipurpose room on the first floor of A block in Mayur Palli, the monthly meeting for the residents was coming to a close. On the last Sunday of every month, the Ping-Pong tables were pushed aside, the young boys and girls who used that space to play games and flirt with each other were sent home, and the board members and any residents who had grievances to share would settle into old plastic chairs for two hours. Four tubelights along the edges of the room gave a cold, clinical quality to the light, and two old metal standing fans creaked noisily in opposite corners, forcing everyone to speak loudly. Every meeting ended with a discussion about having ceiling fans installed in the multipurpose room.
Many residents had grievances to share on these Sunday evenings. Tonight, there had already been the following—on the main billboard, Mrs. Patnaik had glued a notice to sell stuffed teddy bears over Mr. Prasad’s notice that he was looking for a new mechanic. How long should notices be allowed to stay up uncovered? Mr. Ruddra was cutting his toenails off the edge of his balcony and the half-moon clippings were falling into Mrs. Kulkarni’s potted plants on the balcony below. Could he please be asked to stop? Mr. Ghosh should have warned the B block residents that his furniture was being delivered at night. Mr. Baggaria had confused the sound and rumbling of the cupboards being taken up the stairs for an earthquake and gone running down the stairs in a state of panic in his pajamas. Mr. Rastogi suspected that Mr. Sen was stealing his newspaper in the morning, completing the crossword puzzle, and then replacing it.
The last order of business had been Mr. Jha letting everyone know about their new tenants—the Ramaswamys, a young couple from Chennai. They were not officially required to get approval for their tenants, but now that they had told all their neighbors that they were moving, Mrs. Jha had insisted that it was in good form to go to the meeting and tell the board about the Ramaswamys.
“You know how people here can be,” she said. “We don’t want the tenants to feel unwelcome from the minute they come in.”
“I’m looking forward to having neighbors who interfere less,” Mr. Jha had said.
He was pleased that he had more money, and he wanted to travel more and spend more freely. He wanted the new car, the home with a driveway, crystal chandeliers, sparkling water, better shower heads, and softer shoes. He wanted to be a member of a private club. He wanted to get a bidet installed in the master bathroom. And he knew that if he did any of that while still living in Mayur Palli, he could face criticism and judgment. He did not think life needed to be a lengthy experiment in sacrifice.
“Mr. Jha, what work do they do, the Ramaswamys?” Mr. Gupta, presiding over the meeting, asked. He had been the president for the last six years because the only other person who had run against him was Mrs. Ghosh, and Mr. Gupta had found it easy to convince everyone that the idea of a woman being the president was preposterous. As a compromise, he made Mrs. Ghosh the “head of communications,” which meant that she was responsible for writing a newsletter after the meetings and leaving copies in everyone’s mailboxes. Mrs. Ghosh would sometimes attach her favorite recipes along with the newsletter—she had dreams of putting together a cookbook. The neighbors suspected her dreams would go unrealized because in her last recipe for fish with mustard curry, the first paragraph called for a large chopped onion, only for the onions never to be used.
“The husband will be working for Standard Chartered Bank, and the wife—also an IIT graduate, I’m told—teaches bharatanatyam dance classes in Chennai and may start a class for some of the young girls around here.”
“Dance classes become fronts for brothels too easily,” Mr. Ruddra objected.
“That is a very good point,” Mr. Prasad said. “Dance classes cannot be allowed.”
“I’m sure Mr. Gupta will make sure nothing untoward goes on,” Mr. Jha said. He wanted to go home. Mr. Ruddra thought everything was a front for a brothel. When the new air-conditioned coffee shop opened across from the gates, he spent hours monitoring the young women who went in and out. One of the women finally complained to the manager and Mr. Ruddra was told that he could not sit there without making a purchase.
Mr. Gupta leaned back in his chair, pushed his fingers together like a steeple, and nodded.
“Interesting. Mr. Ruddra does bring up a good point. Mr. Jha, you will have to ask Mr. Ramaswamy to come and see me before his wife starts running a business from their home.”
“Of course,” Mr. Jha said. “I will make sure of that. Is that it for today, then?”
“Mr. Jha,” Mr. Ruddra added. “Would you mind telling us why you are renting out this apartment? Surely you don’t need the money?”
“Maybe they’re getting carpets made of gold thread,” Mrs. Sen said.
“Or lightbulbs with diamonds,” Mr. Prasad added.
“Or a twelve-foot-high fence to keep the commoners out,” Mr. Madhavan sai
d.
A small laugh went through the crowd.
“Don’t be silly,” Mr. Jha said, eager to end this meeting. The fence that was in place was sufficient and, frankly, lightbulbs with diamonds was not a terrible idea and if he wanted to get that done, he should have the freedom to get it done. But he said none of that. “We don’t want to leave this lovely apartment empty. It’ll be nice for another family to enjoy it for now and who knows what we may do in the future, or where we may live.”
“You mean you may move back here?” Mr. Gupta said.
“Perhaps,” Mr. Jha said. He had no intention of moving back to Mayur Palli after living in Gurgaon, but he also did not want his neighbors and friends to dislike him. They were, after all, their closest friends in Delhi, and what if making new friends in Gurgaon was not as easy?
“Oh, that will be just lovely,” Mrs. Patnaik said from the back. “This will always be your home.”
“You may return here to the masses someday?” Mr. Gupta said. “That will require lots of adjusting.”
“Yes, it will. And so will moving to Gurgaon in the first place. All of this will require adjusting, and my wife and I are doing exactly that. We are not building carpets of gold and our lightbulbs will…probably…not have any diamonds on them, but we are moving. And we will have full-length mirrors in our home. Mr. Gupta, this is the life that my family has chosen, and I assure you, we will adjust. I have always adjusted. Are we finished here?”
“That is all for this evening, yes,” Mr. Gupta said. “Thank you to everyone who attended. Frankly not enough members of this housing complex take these meetings seriously. I am considering imposing a fee on residents who do not send at least one member of the household to the meetings.”
