by Diksha Basu
The Chopras were stagnant. The other piece of residential property they owned was a bungalow in Goa with only three floors that wasn’t even close enough to the beach for them to be able to rent it out to white travelers at a good markup. And the down payment they had made on a Dubai flat was held up because the builders were under scrutiny for violating local building regulations.
“Why aren’t you working?” Mrs. Chopra asked her husband’s back from the sofa. He was standing and gazing out the window into the front yard. “And where is Johnny? I haven’t seen him all day.”
“I don’t think he came home last night,” Mr. Chopra said, laughing a little. His son, at age twenty-eight, still showed no ambition or signs of having a real career. Mr. Chopra supported him financially and everyone knew that. Johnny went to all the best restaurants in town, regularly traveled abroad with his friends, and wore flashy designer jeans, and Mr. Chopra paid for everything, which made it clear that Mr. Chopra earned enough not just for himself and his wife but also for his son to live a lavish lifestyle. Clearly he was earning the equivalent of at least three high incomes. He often wished they’d had another child, but really only so everyone at the club would know that he was earning enough for four. Shashi Jhunjhunwala, who had made his money exporting slightly subpar medical supplies to hospitals in the Middle East, had four children, all of whom drove BMWs and none of whom had ever held a job.
Mr. Chopra continued to stare out the window.
“The bushes need to be tended. You can’t even tell the one on the left is supposed to be a swan. Don’t give the gardener’s wife any more old saris until the bush looks perfectly like a swan. And I think it may be time to install a swimming pool.”
“Everything grows too fast this time of year. The house is fine for now. Only thing I want is to get the Mona Lisa, Bollywood style, with a bindi on her forehead, painted on the wall in the master bathroom. Why are you standing and staring out the window?”
Mr. Chopra turned around to face his wife. She was sitting cross-legged in her nightgown on the large white L-shaped leather sofa that went along the wall of the living room. In front of her, a wooden box sat open with her jewelry spilling out. A gold bangle had fallen on the carpet in front of her. Not many homes in Delhi had full carpeting, but theirs did. On the low glass coffee table, Mrs. Chopra’s iPad was open with the current Bollywood hits playing with a tinny sound.
“I’m standing here because I want to meet the neighbors. It is only polite to say hello. And then I’m going to the club. Why is your jewelry box out?”
“I’m looking through my jewelry because I need to buy some new gold. How do you know the neighbors are coming today? You’re wasting time. If you want something to do, check on all the arrangements for Upen. That brother of yours is getting too demanding with old age. You tell him if he plans to eat vegetarian food only, he can make his own arrangements. And I don’t want to hear one word about carbon footprints while he’s here. After his divorce, he’s hardly one to go around talking about the environment.”
“They are coming to get some work done. The gas installation men are waiting outside the gate for them. It doesn’t look nice not to at least say hello and ask them a little bit about themselves. Upen doesn’t need arrangements; he just needs a break from Chandigarh.”
“I don’t know why you are in such a state. Go do some work and once they have settled in, we will call them over for a drink,” Mrs. Chopra said.
“It is not that simple,” Mr. Chopra said. “It’s almost noon. Please go and put a sari on. Wear that new Manish Malhotra one you just bought.”
“That one is too nice to wear around the house. This is fine for now. I’ve got Sunita coming over to give me a pedicure later anyway.”
“Why can’t you get a pedicure while wearing the new sari?”
“I also want a full massage. My back has been hurting lately from all this weight I’ve gained,” Mrs. Chopra said, and rubbed her back and laughed.
Mr. Chopra went back to staring out the window. Ladies were changing these days, but his wife refused to. Just look at Upen’s ex-wife. She had had an actual affair. Not that Mr. Chopra wanted his wife to have an affair, but she could at least try losing a bit of weight.
“Why don’t you go to a proper beauty parlor instead of having Sunita come home?” Mr. Chopra said. “And please get your upper lip threaded as well.”
Mrs. Chopra ran her finger across her upper lip and said, “No need yet. I’ll give it another week.”
Mr. Chopra heard a car coming down the road. Sunita took a bus from wherever it was that she lived and then walked in from the main road, so it had to be the new neighbors.
“They’re here. They’re here,” he said. “I must go and say hello. It is time, Geeta. Keep your fingers crossed that they have come back from London.”
Mr. Chopra looked over at his wife, now focused on Bollywood music videos and thoughtlessly fingering the six-lakh diamond necklace around her neck while a gold bangle still lay on the floor. Mrs. Chopra, originally Ms. Khanna, came from wealth; she came from a family of farm owners in Ferozepur, and she didn’t have the same relationship with money that he did. Since before independence, her family had endless acres of farms. Her brothers were all politicians in Ferozepur with mistresses in Chandigarh. When the British army showed up in their village on the morning of August 14, 1947, to draw a border and create India and Pakistan, the Khannas on the other side of the border merely got up, walked across to the Indian side, and immediately started work on claiming new land to make up for what they had lost to the other side. They did not complain about the British—and how could they? Before independence, most of their closest friends were British, and Mrs. Chopra’s parents firmly believed Indian independence was to be a temporary misfortune. They died waiting for the British to come back. They did not dramatize the separation of the countries, and they did not worry about the massacre that followed. They were very aware of what they could and could not control, so they quietly set about re-creating whatever they had lost, through whatever means needed. And this was the attitude with which Mrs. Chopra lived every day.
Mr. Chopra’s parents, on the other hand, made their money in the construction business in Chandigarh after independence, and it did not come easily. There were financial ups, and there were downs and more downs, and it took quite a while for it to become largely ups. They had gained membership to the local club and then lost it because of an inability to pay the annual dues. They then managed to get in again, but it was never quite the same. He was aware of what his parents had been through, and that always made him nervous about his own money, even though his father had bought him the mica mine when he was eighteen and he had never actually experienced any difficulty. His older brother, Upen, had never been afraid. He had taken over their parents’ construction business right in Chandigarh and never cared much about money. He was more interested in trying to convert people to using solar power than making money for himself. That was probably why his wife had an affair and eventually left him to move to Hong Kong with a hedge fund manager. Not that Upen’s life seemed to have been destroyed by any of this. He looked fitter and younger than Mr. Chopra even though, at sixty-three, he was four years older. What, he wondered, was the secret to his brother’s youth? He didn’t even eat meat.
Mr. Chopra himself had worked extremely hard in the beginning. And it paid off. Now he only went to the mine two or three days a month, and he usually chartered a helicopter to get there. The mine was in the Bhilwara district in Rajasthan, which was close enough to do in a day but far enough to justify spending a night if he needed a night away from his wife’s nagging. The rest of the time he did the minimal work required to manage the mine from his home office.
Mr. Chopra made his way down the driveway toward the gate. He saw Balwinder, the security guard, snoozing.
“Balwinder! Do we pay you so much just to sleep all day?” he said. “Get up. And how many times have I told you to wear your
hat even if we aren’t expecting visitors?”
Balwinder lazily picked up his hat, brushed off the dust, and placed it on his head. He liked working for the Chopras. There was hardly anything for him to do. On days when Mr. Chopra went to Bhilwara, he opened the gate once in the morning to let Mr. Chopra’s Jaguar out and once in the evening to let Mr. Chopra’s Jaguar back in. Other than that, he only had to open the gate a few times a week to let Mrs. Chopra’s BMW in and out as she headed to the mall or her ladies’ lunch parties.
The Chopras were good employers. They made him sleep out near the gate only on nights when they were having parties. Other than that, he went to his quarter at the back at ten p.m. and anybody who needed to be let in or out buzzed the bell at the gate that rang in his room. The only one who went in or out after ten p.m. was Johnny, and Johnny always had pretty young girls in flimsy clothing with him. Just last Sunday he had seen Johnny and a girl stumble out of a taxi and down the driveway. About halfway there, Johnny had pushed the girl against the compound wall and slipped his hand down the front of her tight jeans. The girl tilted her head back and moaned, and the image kept Balwinder warm through the night.
Mr. Chopra peered over the gate and saw Mrs. Jha step out of a taxi.
“Sir, would you like me to open the gate? Or call for the car?” Balwinder said.
Mr. Chopra ducked down and said through clenched teeth, “Be quiet, you good-for-nothing. I am trying to see the new neighbors. And put your hat on properly.”
Mr. Chopra waited a few seconds and then went back on his toes to look through the protective barbed wire on the top of the gate. It was a regular black-and-yellow taxi. Not air-conditioned. The woman inside was wearing a simple pale pink sari, heavily starched, with a dark pink blouse, and Mr. Chopra’s first thought was that the new neighbors had fancier maids than he did. Perhaps it was time to put his staff in uniforms.
Mrs. Jha could feel sweat dripping along her spine and wished she had opted for a lighter cotton sari. She didn’t want to give in to the pressure of this new neighborhood, yet she had worn one of her nicer handloomed saris today. But the houses here were so spaced apart that it was unlikely that she would encounter anyone. The only sign she had seen of people on this road was a passing blue Aston Martin with such darkly tinted windows there was no way of knowing if there was a dog driving the car. A year ago she wouldn’t even have known what an Aston Martin was.
Suddenly, Mrs. Jha heard voices. She looked up toward the closed gate to her right just in time to see a balding head vanish from above the gate.
“All the staff needs to wear uniforms. Not just the guard and driver.” Mr. Chopra burst into his living room. His wife had applied a mud pack to her face and looked like she had leaned into a pile of cow dung as she settled back peacefully on the brown leather sofa. The news was playing on television, but on the couch Mrs. Chopra was ignoring it and watching a YouTube video of a little child sitting on the ground shrieking with laughter every time his father tore a piece of paper.
“My weekly inspections are thorough,” she said. “They look just fine. Have you seen the remote control? I can’t find it and the television is too loud.”
“I’m worried that the new neighbors are from London. What if this is just a holiday home for them? We need to put more pressure on the builders in Dubai or put an offer on another property. Have you spoken to the real estate agent? Maybe we can also consider something in Singapore.”
“They have returned from London? How nice. I miss Harrods. Is it a family?” Mrs. Chopra said, and lifted her fingertips to gently feel the mask on her face. It was almost dry.
“What are you going on about Harrods for?” Mr. Chopra said. “You handle the staff uniforms and call the real estate agent tomorrow, and I will see about getting a swimming pool put in.”
“We are not getting a swimming pool. And where is Johnny? When are you planning to speak to him? He does nothing all day every day,” Mrs. Chopra said, allowing her mask to crumble.
“He’s fine. He has a tennis coach now. He’s improving.”
“He’s twenty-eight. He is not going to become a tennis star. Coach or no coach, I’ve seen him play—he has no talent. You promised you would talk to him about getting a job.”
“Shh,” Mr. Chopra said. “Your mask is cracking. I’m going to the club. After you are done with the uniforms, order one of those little round vacuum cleaners that goes around the house by itself cleaning everything. It looks better than having a maid pushing a huge vacuum cleaner around every morning.”
The Gurgaon Select Luxury Recreation Club (the LRC, as everyone called it) was barely a ten-minute drive from the Chopras’ home, and it had an eighteen-hole golf course, a driving range, an indoor swimming pool, an outdoor swimming pool, a full gym, tennis courts, table tennis tables, a bar, a formal dining hall with Chinese food, one with Indian food, and an outdoor casual restaurant with the best club sandwiches in all of Delhi. There was also a small Hollywood-themed mini-golf course, but that was used only by children and some of the women. There had been talk about installing an ice-skating rink.
As usual, Mr. Chopra felt himself relax as he pulled up to the gates of the LRC. The sounds of traffic were distant and workers with large pails were busy watering the plants that lined the driveway. They watered everything three times a day to keep the dust settled within the LRC. Becoming a member was no easy or affordable task, and it was unlikely that the new neighbors had a membership yet—you had to have a Gurgaon address, be recommended by someone who had been a member of the club for at least one year, and have another Gurgaon reference on file. Applications were only accepted twice a year, in January and July. Then, if your application made it through the first round, you had an interview with the board. And, if all that was approved, you had to pay a twelve lakh rupee initiation fee plus an annual eight lakh rupee. Even if the new neighbors were earning in dollars, nearly thirty thousand dollars was not cheap.
Mr. Chopra noticed Johnny walking down the long driveway chatting with Vivek, who doubled as a personal trainer at the gym and a golf caddie. As usual Johnny was wearing jeans that were so tight, they looked like they belonged on a girl. He was wearing one of his many collared shirts with the collar unfolded upward. And as Johnny walked next to Vivek, Mr. Chopra could clearly see how short Johnny was. Mr. Chopra knew he himself was not a tall man, but he always wished Johnny would grow taller. For men, it was one thing being short if you were successful. If you were short and unsuccessful, it was just embarrassing.
“Stop, stop, stop,” Mr. Chopra said to Nimesh. “What is Johnny doing walking along the driveway like some laborer? Stop the car.”
Once the car pulled alongside Johnny, Mr. Chopra said out the window, “What are you doing walking? Why didn’t you take the car? And push the hair out of your face. I swear you spend more time at the beauty parlor than your mother.”
Johnny looked surprised to see his father. “I was out, so I took a taxi. I don’t know why they don’t allow taxis into the LRC. This driveway is really long. Did you know they make all the workers park their cars and bikes next door and then walk in? Seems silly when this parking lot is usually half empty. Vivek is caddying for you today.”
Vivek looked over at Mr. Chopra and waved.
“Good evening, sir. Nice weather tonight. It’s easier to play when it’s a bit cooler.”
“It is indeed. I’ll see you on the course, Vivek. Johnny, get in the car. Where are you going?”
“The bar,” Johnny said, opening the door and getting into the front seat of the car.
“Get in the back,” Mr. Chopra said. “I need to speak with you.”
“I like the front. I don’t know why you don’t drive this car. It is so smooth. Nimesh knows.” Johnny patted Nimesh on his shoulder and smiled.
“Johnny, you are the only member of the club who walks in. It doesn’t look right.”
“It’s fine. Kunal will drop me home after.”
They had just a
bout reached the main entrance to the clubhouse. Johnny’s best friend, Kunal Jhunjhunwala, son of Shashi Jhunjhunwala, was pulling up in a shiny new Lexus at the same time.
“He’s got a Lexus now?” Mr. Chopra said. “What happened to the BMW?”
“His father bought him the Lexus for his birthday last month,” Johnny said.
It was practically impossible to get a Lexus in India, everyone knew that. And Shashi Jhunjhunwala kept beating Mr. Chopra at golf. To have his son pull up in a taxi and walk to the bar while Kunal arrived in his Lexus was adding insult to injury, and he had had enough. He would buy his son a car, Mr. Chopra decided. Johnny had been asking for one, but Mrs. Chopra refused to allow him to get one until he had a job, which didn’t look likely to happen anytime soon. He spent his days either playing tennis, flitting around with his pretty little girlfriends, or writing poetry. They had sent him to the United Kingdom to study, but he came back with a degree in English literature and no earning potential.
Johnny got out of the car and slapped hands with Kunal Jhunjhunwala. Kunal came over to Mr. Chopra and said, “Hi, Uncle. How are you? I hear you are having a golfing tournament next week. I should start playing more often. We can have a father-son competition. Johnny?”
