by Diksha Basu
She would put it carefully in many plastic bags and pack it in his check-in bag. It was a twenty-four-hour journey and airports and airplanes were always cold; the chicken would be fine.
“Ma, seriously. I’ll eat it before leaving for the airport tonight.”
Rupak did love the methi chicken curry she made and missed it often in Ithaca, but even if it survived the journey, which he doubted it would, Elizabeth was going to pick him up from the airport in Syracuse in her open-top Jeep Wrangler, and she probably wouldn’t appreciate it smelling of methi chicken curry, even if you called it fenugreek.
Even though he had never met Elizabeth’s family, Rupak felt he could picture them perfectly. They lived in a house near the beach and donated a percentage of their income to the church. He didn’t know much else about her life and childhood, but in the same way that Rupak thought he knew America, he thought he also knew Elizabeth from Saved by the Bell or The Wonder Years or an Archie comic strip. But Elizabeth said she had never even read Archie comics. He had grown up reading the comics and watching those shows on hot, sticky afternoons in Delhi.
As a child, Rupak was one of the few students who took a bus home after school and one of the even fewer ones who returned all the way to East Delhi. The bus would be all but empty by the time it reached his stop. He would have to get off at the bridge and then walk the last dusty kilometer home. When he got home, Rupak would tear off his sweaty blue uniform and take a cool wash, pouring mugfuls of water from a bucket over his body. Then he would change into shorts and a T-shirt and the maid would put together cucumber and mint chutney sandwiches. Rupak would sit on the cane chairs in the living room and watch television until the sun had gone down, the heat had become slightly less oppressive, and it was time to go downstairs to play cricket with the other boys.
In Delhi, most of his wealthy classmates regularly went abroad for holidays, so they would all carry fashionable JanSports and flashy pencil boxes with Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston on them. But Rupak had only a metal Camlin geometry set. He used to keep his Apsara pencils, small white eraser, and one ink pen in a wooden pencil box with golden stars and moons carved into it that his mother had bought for him at the Thursday market. Two small hinges that had started off golden but quickly turned to rust that powdered at the touch held the lid in place. He thought now that a box like that would be something Elizabeth would love. Elizabeth liked to smoke pot and those little wooden pencil boxes would be the perfect place for her to store the paraphernalia.
“Ma, do you have any of those old wooden pencil boxes?”
Rupak saw his mother’s face relax into a smile as she looked up from the hot pan on the stove. He was still her little boy from Delhi, Mrs. Jha thought. She remembered what joy she would feel when she came home from work in the evening, in through the main gate of Mayur Palli, and saw Rupak in the small field right near the gate with his cricket bat and group of friends. The grass was patchy and it was often hot and dusty, but in her mind she could see a montage of Rupak on that field getting taller and broader and older and manlier.
The field had a few metal seats fixed into the ground around the edges, and the older residents of Mayur Palli would sit there at the end of their evening walks and catch up on gossip and watch the young children play. Whenever Mrs. Jha stood there after work, she had assumed that was how they would live out their old age. Buying bhelpuri from the vendor outside the gate and, who knows, maybe watching a grandson play cricket in the same spot where their son had played. If Rupak remembered the wooden pencil boxes, maybe there was still hope for it all.
“The type you used to take to school?”
Rupak nodded.
“They may sell them at Cottage Emporium for tourists. Nobody uses pencil boxes anymore.”
“I thought it might make a good gift. It’s no big deal, though.”
Mrs. Jha stirred some more mustard oil into the chicken and tried to sound casual. “Who would you like to give it to?”
Rupak wondered if it would be easier to tell his mother about Elizabeth first. And then let her tell his father while he was safely on a flight back to America. It wasn’t that his father would not approve or would forbid it. They would both simply fidget and not quite know how to respond, and that would be worse than any explicit lecturing.
Elizabeth had been engaged once, to a man she met during her undergraduate years, but that engagement broke off after six months and she hardly ever talked about it. For some reason Rupak was always intrigued by how her ex had proposed, but Elizabeth never offered any details. All he knew for sure was that the ex’s mother had called Elizabeth after the breakup to ask for the ring back. “That sums up the kind of guy he was,” Elizabeth said. Now she was in no rush to get engaged again or married. But she still wanted his parents to know about her.
This was the moment to confess, he decided. He had set it all up. It was going to be easy. But instead he found himself saying, “Gaurav. He’s an Indian guy on campus who hasn’t been back to visit in years, and he mentioned the wooden pencil boxes. But it isn’t worth going all the way to Cottage Emporium.”
“Do you want me to pack some rice with the chicken? That way you’ll have a full meal as soon as you arrive. I’ve also put in a bottle of tamarind chutney. Don’t worry, I’ve taped the lid down carefully and put it in three plastic bags—there’s no chance it will leak. I can pack some extra for Gaurav as well. I didn’t know you had an Indian friend there.”
This was her chance to get closer to her son, Mrs. Jha thought. She knew very little about his life there. Was he lonely? Was he eating properly? Was he drinking too much? Was he carrying on with women? White women? Black women? Was there even a Gaurav? His changing body made her nervous. He had been a skinny boy who needed glasses at an early age, but now he wore contacts and his arms and chest looked broader than she would ever have expected. He looked like a man but not the type of man Mr. Jha was. He was starting to look like the type of man who bought drinks for women at bars and allowed them to do things to him in the bedroom. Did he know about the risks and the diseases out in the world? They never talked about those things and the Indian school system certainly didn’t provide classes on the dangers of sex, so she just had to hope that he had good sense and would not be led astray by a woman.
“Do you want me to tell your father to stop at Cottage Emporium and try to pick up a pencil box? Where is Gaurav’s family from?”
“Who?” Rupak said, his mind on Elizabeth.
“Gaurav. Your friend.”
“Right. Bombay. He’s from Bombay.”
“Is he also doing his MBA? What do his parents do?” Mrs. Jha asked.
Rupak was always amazed by how much his mother cared about people she didn’t know and would probably never meet. She’d become much worse ever since she stopped working. When she first quit, it was in order to handle the new money from the sale, and that made sense to Rupak. His mother had thrown herself into finding a suitable house for them to buy. She must have seen nearly fifty properties, and it would have been difficult for her to also be working while trying to buy and set up a new home. But then they bought the home and her time freed up but she never returned to work; these days she hardly even mentioned it. She had a Facebook account now. But she didn’t quite know what to do with it yet. Whenever anybody posted anything, she would comment, Seen, thanks.
When he was growing up, she had never been one of those mothers who sat and fussed over him all afternoon. She did not obsess over his homework and interfere in his life. Unlike a lot of mothers, his mother had never abandoned her own life for his sake, and he appreciated that about her.
She used to work for a nonprofit organization that helped rural weavers and craftsmen get their goods to shops in Delhi and Mumbai and get paid. He never really knew the details about her work, but he knew that she was passionate about it and often talked about fair wages for the craftsmen who did all the work and about not wanting them—or was it the shops?—someone, n
ot wanting someone to get exploited. There was more to her work, he was sure, but his father’s work always took the main stage so he really didn’t know details.
“I’m not sure. But don’t worry about the pencil box. It isn’t that important.”
“Please, can I just take a taxi?” Rupak asked his parents. They were getting ready to drive him to the airport, and something about saying good-bye in the midst of the chaos of the Delhi airport always made him sad.
“No,” Mrs. Jha said.
Mr. Jha brought the scale from the bathroom out to the middle of the living room and stood on it. He noted his weight, got off, picked up Rupak’s suitcase, and got back on the scale.
“It’s one kilo overweight,” he said. “I’m sure they won’t create a hassle about that.”
“If they do,” Mrs. Jha added, “just take some books out and put them in your hand bag. Don’t pay for excess luggage. Or leave some things behind and we can bring them to you when we come.”
“Do you know when you’re coming yet?” Rupak asked, trying to calculate how much time he had to make his life in Ithaca seem like the kind of life they would want him to have.
“As soon as we’re settled in Gurgaon,” Mrs. Jha said. She was tying a piece of red string around the handles of Rupak’s two suitcases. “I don’t know why you insist on carrying black suitcases. You won’t be able to identify yours. Here. Is this red string enough or do you want me to tie another one?”
“One red string is enough. I know what my suitcases look like,” Rupak said.
“I wish you were going to be here for the move,” Mrs. Jha said.
“Rupak,” Mr. Jha said. “I want you to study hard. Make friends and have fun as well. I want you to be well rounded. But don’t forget to study. It’s important. Take it from me, son. Success makes you happy. There’s simply no argument about that. I became successful late in life and I wish my mother had been alive to see it. You have opportunities I never had. Take advantage. Each generation should do better than the previous one, they say. Find a good job in America.”
“Or India. There are plenty of good opportunities in India now,” Mrs. Jha added.
Rupak was sitting on the couch checking his passport and ticket printouts while his father spoke. His father never spoke so explicitly. Did he somehow know that Rupak was already on academic probation after his first year of the program?
“Anyway, you’re an adult now,” he continued. “You know all this. But sometimes it is good to say these things. You know I admire that about American families—you see it on all the movies and television shows—they have very serious conversations with each other.”
“I think it’s too formal,” Mrs. Jha said. “Next we’ll have to start charging him rent.”
“Or letting him ‘borrow’ money from us that he has to pay back,” Mr. Jha said.
Rupak watched his parents laugh. Despite his own concerns and despite some of the tension surrounding the move, it must be fun for them, he thought. Few adults got the chance to start over.
“But your father is right, Rupak. Study hard. And make sure you can take some time off when we come to visit you.”
“Enough now,” Mr. Jha said. “Come on, come on. Let’s get in the car. I don’t want you to miss your flight.”
As Rupak was about to zip up his backpack, Mrs. Jha said, “Wait. Don’t close that yet. I have one more thing.”
She reached into her purse and handed him a wooden pencil box with golden stars and moons embossed onto the cover.
“For Gaurav,” Mrs. Jha said.
“Ma, how did you get this?” Rupak asked.
“Friends, Rupak. We have friends. If you live in one place for long enough, you make friends who will help you find an old wooden pencil box that is no longer manufactured. You give it to Gaurav and tell him we want to meet him when we come to visit.”
Rupak held the box in his hand and looked around the living room. He suddenly realized his parents were moving and that the only home he had ever known was no longer going to be his home. He looked at his mother picking up her purse from the dining table, and a blurred memory flashed through his mind. He remembered falling on the living room floor and splitting his lip right before his fifth or sixth birthday party. His father had gone out to pick up the cake, he remembered now, and his mother had seen him on the ground, with blood gushing from his mouth, and quietly picked up her purse, picked him up in her arms, and rushed him out the door to a taxi to the local clinic. She just held him in the taxi with a towel pressed against his mouth and said nothing. He was fine—the doctor said he wouldn’t need stitches and would just have a bit of a swollen mouth for a while—and when they left the doctor’s office and got back in a taxi, Mrs. Jha had burst into tears. At the time Rupak had rolled his eyes and been impatient to get home to his party, but now, thinking of her face in the evening light in that taxi, he wanted to tell her he was sorry he had ever caused her fear.
“Ma, will you be happy in Gurgaon?” he asked.
Mrs. Jha looked at her son sitting on the sofa. She wanted to tell him that she hoped so. She wanted to thank him for asking and tell him she was confident that she’d be happy anywhere as long as Mr. Jha and Rupak were happy, but she was interrupted.
“Bindu! Hurry up,” Mr. Jha shouted from near the elevator. “There’s going to be traffic. But you can see how lovely the new car is even when standing still in exhaust fumes from other cars.”
At the airport, Rupak waited until the car was out of sight and pushed his cart across the road, opened his suitcase, took out the metal box filled with chicken curry and rice and the thrice-wrapped bottle of tamarind chutney that his mother had spent all that morning making and handed it all to two young men who were sitting on the sidewalk with small pull-along suitcases next to them, looking lost.
“Where are you traveling to?” Rupak asked.
They both looked up at him, suspiciously. They were about his age but looked older because of how skinny they were. They were wearing slightly loose slacks and tucked-in shirts with short sleeves. They had cheap black sandals on their feet and their hair was oiled back neatly. Rupak knew they were day laborers heading to somewhere in the Middle East. All the flights leaving for the Middle East always had the worst departure times, and security would only let these men into the airport three hours before their scheduled departure time. They would have to sit and wait and hope it didn’t rain before then. That was their life, and handing over home-cooked food before heading back to America was his.
“Qatar,” one of them said. “Is the plane going on time?”
“I don’t know. I hope so,” Rupak said. “While you’re here, would you like some dinner? I have some food and I can’t take it on the plane with me.”
The two men looked at each other, then accepted the food, and then the same one who had spoken said, “I also have a bottle of chutney in my suitcase. My mother gave it to me before I left. Can I take that on the plane?”
“Make sure you check it in,” Rupak said.
The man stared at him.
“Just put it in the bag you give to the agent at the counter.”
They looked even more confused. There was little Rupak could do.
“You’ll see when you get inside,” he said. “Have a good trip.”
Mr. Dinesh Chopra from Block C, Sector 12A of the Delhi suburb of Gurgaon was not afraid of much. He could count on one hand the number of things that frightened him—stray dogs, rusted edges on cans, bearded men on airplanes, and young women in two-piece bathing suits. But the thing that frightened him most was poverty.
And he understood far too well that poverty, like all tragedy, was largely relative, and the Mukherjees next door had recently sold their house in Gurgaon and moved to London. Not Houndslow, either. Kensington. This had been particularly humiliating for Mr. Chopra because he had spent a considerable amount of money and two months having the dome of the Sistine Chapel re-created on the ceiling in his foyer.
“It is a small investment,” he told Mr. Mukherjee one afternoon. “But I am a big fan of art. I would be happy to give you the number for the painters. They can re-create anything. Even Bollywood posters.”
“I am sure it will turn out beautifully. I just don’t think it is worth spending so much right now,” Mr. Mukherjee had replied.
“It is quite an indulgence, yes,” Mr. Chopra had said. “This market has spared no one, but one must spoil oneself.”
At the time, he had walked away feeling smug about his wealth, but looking back at it, now that the Mukherjees had sold their house and disappeared to London—Kensington—he felt humiliated. And nervous. If the Mukherjees had managed to make the move to London—that too without telling the whole neighborhood about it—they were clearly making a significant amount of money. That meant that relative to the Mukherjees, the Chopras were becoming poor. And not just relative to the Mukherjees; relative also to the family that had bought the Mukherjees’ house. Mr. Chopra knew that house was not cheap. It was a bungalow with front and back yards. The driveway was comfortably fifteen yards long and the Mukherjees had planted trees so carefully along the fence around the perimeter that you couldn’t see any of the barbed wire that ran above the fence. So thick was the greenery that over the last five years, two thieves had injured themselves on the barbed wire while trying to climb into the Mukherjees’ property. Not a single thief had tried coming into the Chopras’ property. It was worrying. To experiment, Mr. Chopra had the glass shards that lined the top of his fence removed one day. He then sat in his yard at night and monitored those sections, waiting for a thief to intrude. None did. A lone monkey climbed through around eleven p.m., which caused Mr. Chopra to go rushing back into the house and have the glass shards put back in place the next day.
