Karma Gone Bad

by Jenny Feldon

  “I’m being serious!” I said, outraged. “Ask Raju if you don’t believe me.” Hating it here was one thing. Exaggerating to the point of flat-out lies was quite another. The accusation stung.

  My non-electrical attempts at cleaning our all-marble mansion weren’t going well, either. The floors were brand new, but inexplicably streaked with angry swipes of white and gray that no amount of scrubbing could erase. The construction dirt that blew in through the open doors and windows clung to every surface, leaving a brown, sticky film. Nothing was shiny. What was the point of having an all-marble house if it was as dull and matte as 1970s linoleum? The broken mirror in the upstairs bathroom remained broken.

  “Try using Dawn,” my mother suggested on our weekly call. “It really cuts through the grease.”

  “Mom, are you kidding? They don’t have Dawn here. Our kitchen sink doesn’t even have hot water. I’m lucky they sell dishwashing liquid at all.”

  “Maybe baking soda? Do they have that?” she asked.

  I sighed tragically. “I doubt it.”

  My attempts to take out the garbage, hang up a clothesline, and water the lawn were as comical as they were pathetic.

  “Servants would be fixing,” Raju observed as he watched my efforts from the driveway.

  I grunted from beneath an armful of soaking wet towels and ignored him.

  “It’s pretty filthy in here,” Jay said, taking his shoes off at the door but leaving his socks on so his feet wouldn’t touch the floor. I’d adopted the Indian custom of shoe removal prior to entering a home, but in our case it didn’t seem to be helping with the dirt. Not that I appreciated Jay pointing this out.

  “It’s not my fault. It’s the marble. It just won’t get clean. There must have been a problem at the factory or something. It’s defective.”

  “The factory? You mean the quarry?”

  “Whatever.”

  “Did the phone get installed? The cell service here is awful. I really need to start making my calls from a landline.”

  “Our application got rejected again.”

  Jay gave me an exasperated snarl and stomped upstairs. Like it was my fault Hyderabad had more red tape than Capitol Hill when it came to utilities.

  The water, tank refill issues aside, was controlled through the Jasmine Heights development itself. Which meant we had it, no questions asked. The electricity too was controlled through the community. A bill was slipped underneath the front door every two weeks. I sent Venkat to the electrical office with a handful of rupees to pay in cash. But the telephone line and the gas tank for the kitchen stove were totally different stories.

  The fancy stove with the gleaming stainless steel hood I’d so admired on our first visit to Plot 39 was deceptively modern. There was no gas line to the house. In order to turn the stove on, it needed to be connected to a propane tank with an orange rubber hose. A hose that looked about as substantial as a drinking straw, one that might snap at any moment, filling the house with toxic gas, which, with an open cooking flame, would be enough to blow us and the house into a million little pieces. This particularly neurotic scenario of mine was on hold, however, because the city refused to give us a gas tank.

  “They’re all out,” Jay had said, coming home empty-handed for the third day in a row. “I guess there are only a certain number of tanks, and someone has to turn one in before we can get ours. There’s a wait list.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” I said. “How can there only be a certain number of tanks? Can’t they just make more? And anyway, the neighbors got theirs yesterday and the people up the street got theirs the day before that. There can’t possibly be a tank shortage.” Our neighbors, and the people up the street, had also gotten phone lines installed. They were Indian. We were not. I was beginning to suspect this wasn’t a coincidence.

  “You want Ginger Court? Venkat’s in the car waiting. Let’s go meet Alexis and Peter.”

  Jena was thrilled to see us. He brought out a plate of chili-fried American corn without being asked. Peter and Alexis rushed in a few minutes later.

  “Younus and Venkat are hanging out in the Scorpio, blasting music,” Peter said, hugging us both hello. “Should we send them down some dinner?”

  “Younus only eats veg,” Alexis reminded him. “Jena, can we send some chana masala to the boys downstairs?” Jena bobbled his head and disappeared.

  “What’s happening in Bel Air?” Peter asked, slapping Jay on the back. “Now that you’ve moved on up, we never see you guys anymore.”

  “I hate to admit it, but I’m missing Matwala Shayar a little,” I admitted. “The backup generator. The wireless. I’m even a little lonesome for Subu.”

  “Come over tomorrow and visit,” Alexis said. “He’ll barge in on us unannounced two or three times and you’ll be cured.”

  Jay and Peter caught up on BKC gossip while Alexis listened to my housekeeping woes. “Sounds like you might be better off just finding someone to help,” she said. “No one is going to think any less of you for it.”

  “It’s not that. I just…I don’t know who I am anymore. If I’m not being a housewife, there isn’t a whole lot I’m supposed to be doing.”

  Alexis laughed. “I’m sure you’ll figure something out.” She launched into a description of her latest painting class, the traditional Indian still life she was working on of a gourd and a painted bowl. Even in India, she still identified as an artist. Alexis spent her days in museums, studying artwork and artifacts. She wore kurti tunics and taught drawing to Indian school children in the afternoons. She and Peter seemed to be back on solid ground, comfortable and happy together. I envied Alexis the unfailing sense of self that followed her around the world, as comforting and ubiquitous as a shadow.

  In New York, I had belonged. I defined myself by where I worked, what I wore, the words I wrote. I knew exactly who I was—a writer, a yogini, an Upper West Side newlywed. The world made sense. Lights turned on and off when I expected them to; people smiled at me instead of stared; eating food made me feel full, not violently ill. My fierce independence was rewarded, not mocked. I was just Jenny—not Madam or Sir Ma’am or Mrs. Jay Sir. But in India, I was no one. Infamous and invisible at the exact same time. With no familiar world to tether myself to, I felt like a torn balloon in the sky, spiraling toward the earth in a free fall, desperate for a gust of wind that would lift me up again.

  Chapter 13

  By October, the rains had stopped. But despite the impending arrival of Hyderabad’s “winter,” it was hot.

  So hot I could feel the sidewalk burning beneath my Havaiana flip-flops, so hot I couldn’t shower until long after the sun went down because the water that came from the tank on the roof had literally boiled in the relentless sun. At Ginger Court, Jena tried to tempt us with “hot weather specialties” like mint soup and anari raita, but I just picked listlessly at the plates. Even the air seemed like it was on fire. The Indian city had an ever-present scorched smell that seared the inside of my nostrils with every breath.

  “You sleep too much,” Jay declared one morning, whipping the sweat-soaked sheet off my body. “Get out there and do something.” I stayed still, curled into the fetal position, willing him to go to his air-conditioned, electrically sound office and leave me to my misery. He didn’t budge.

  “I mean it, Jen. This isn’t good for anyone.”

  You mean it’s not good for YOU, I thought to myself, but I got it. I was slipping deeper into a semi-conscious state, hiding in bed and melting into a pool of nothingness while the Indian world marched on around me. It was too hot to shop, too hot to read, too hot to venture out into the crowded city streets for sightseeing. Venkat tried to amuse me by reciting the daily temperature and proclaiming the weather “Much worse hot climate ever, Madam” but his numbers were in Celsius and my brain was too scorched to do the math required to convert them to Fahrenheit.


  One day, trying to manipulate our air conditioner to crank out more than a whisper of tepid air, I turned the dial all the way. There was a loud blast. Panicked, I jumped back. White smoke poured from the metal unit, filling the living room. I grabbed Tucker and ran outside, barefoot and screaming, begging for help.

  No one came. Venkat was hanging out at the office. Raju was nowhere to be found. A handful of workers in the empty house next door looked up, snickered, and resumed their tedious brickwork under the pounding sun. A neighbor peered out from an upstairs window and then disappeared. Smoke continued to pour from the front door. I dialed frantically on my phone—Venkat, Alexis, Jay, anyone who would come rescue me—but I couldn’t get a signal and eventually I gave up, sinking to the sidewalk with my head in my hands, Tucker trembling beside me. If the house went up in flames, maybe I’d get to go home.

  ***

  “What did you do all day?”

  Jay asked this question, with no trace of irony, every night when he walked in the door. At first I thought he was being sarcastic. So I got creative, exaggerating the nothing much I’d actually done into epic tales of struggle and valor on foreign soil. Just as I was crossing the street, the buffalo bared its teeth and started to charge! Then I got defensive, indignantly standing up for my work-permit-less right to do nothing at all. So what if I stayed in bed all day? It’s not like I had anything better to do.

  I filled my days with nothing much. I shopped for souvenirs, met Alexis for lunch at Little Italy, went to Q-Mart or the vegetable stand. I stopped by the men-only chai stand on the side of the road, braving the stares of semi-hostile confusion to grab two shot-glass-sized Styrofoam cups of hot, sweet black tea for Venkat and me to drink in the car. It was a phantom nod to my afternoon Starbucks breaks, back in the old days when I’d had days I’d actually needed to take a break from. The chai, unlike the rest of India, was growing on me.

  The brilliance of New York was the seamless blend of public and private, together and alone. Everybody was really, really busy—which meant no one had time to worry about what anyone else was doing. Everybody was different, which meant no one was. For a New Yorker, staring at someone—even if they were walking down Fifth Avenue wearing a chicken costume singing “Desperado” at the top of their lungs—was a dead giveaway you weren’t actually from New York. Same as being nice to taxi drivers or pronouncing “Houston” like the city in Texas. You could ride the subway with a thousand other people, crammed into a space too small for secrets, and feel absolutely anonymous, blissfully alone. You could be as quiet or as loud as you liked, engage in the world or detach completely, and New York would go on in a liquid stream around you, supporting your decision with the endless buoyant swell of an ocean.

  India was the opposite. There was no privacy, no delineation between the masses. Rich, poor, old, young—everyone was thrown together in forced intimacy. The tent camps directly outside the gated housing developments, the street urchins crawling over imported C-class Mercedes sedans, pounding on the windows for spare change. There was no such thing as personal space, because there was no space. Everything was shared.

  Our Indian neighbors never came to say hello, but I could see them watching us through the windows at night, staring into our lit-up living room like Jay and I were characters on a screen. Whispers traveled through the tent camps like feathers in the air. It felt like we were trapped under a microscope. I felt judged and ridiculed for being the exact stereotypical American princess I’d sworn I’d never be. I craved just one subway ride where I could slip back inside the security blanket of cultural anonymity. I wanted to disappear.

  Tucker and I started most of our days in Jubilee Hills’s KBR park, walking the long circular hiking trail, ignoring the occasional shout from the groundskeepers who didn’t appreciate his presence. (I’d checked the official rules; nowhere, in English or Hindi, did it say no dogs allowed.) We were often alone in the early morning hours; only serious joggers were out braving the morning heat. The outer trail was a six-kilometer loop built around four hundred acres of conservation land that boasted six hundred species of trees, flowers, and plants, and 140 species of animal life. So far, we’d only seen peacocks and the occasional stray dog, panting and lethargic in the sun.

  “Tigers, Madam,” said Venkat solemnly when he dropped us off at the entrance gate in Jubilee Hills. “Much tigers inside KBR park. Much danger.”

  “I don’t think so, Venkat,” I said, strapping Tucker into his harness. “Do you want to come for a walk with us?” I always felt guilty when he was stuck behind the wheel of the Scorpio in a parking lot, roasting in the blazing sun, waiting for me to finish something or other so he could turn the engine back on and crank the AC.

  “No, thank you, Madam. I am staying here.” He climbed in the front seat and reclined it all the way, pulling a comb from his pocket. When he thought I’d walked away, he propped a wallet-sized photograph on the dashboard. The picture showed a girl in braids wearing a turquoise sari. I wondered who she was.

  Diana, a fitness freak, ran KBR’s full six-kilometer trail almost every weekend. Kyle, who was opposed to exercise of any kind, thought she was insane. Tucker and I hadn’t made the full loop yet; we usually picked a point thirty minutes in to stop and rest before we turned around and retraced our steps. I kept an eye out for tigers, just in case. My favorite stretch was a straight uphill climb that ended at a lookout point, stone benches arranged beneath a banyan tree that overlooked the entire city. Even from here, the skyline was sepia: heat and dust, smoke from cooking fires and funeral pyres and garbage piles burning in the tent cities.

  But it was quiet beneath the banyan tree, like someone had pressed a button to mute the car horns and the pounding construction. I stretched out in the rare luxury of shade. Tucker and I shared sips of water from a bottle of Himalaya. I liked this feeling, of being small way up above something huge. It was the same feeling I’d had when I sat on our tiny New York balcony on the twenty-second floor, looking out over the city lights to the Hudson River. Taking in the enormity of the world and feeling cozy in the tiny space I’d carved out within it. Up here, I could look at Hyderabad with that same kind of wonder, enjoying the vastness without feeling swallowed up.

  I took my new journal from my pocket, hand-tooled in orange leather. It was a recent purchase from my bag-selling friend at Shilparamam; I’d been hoping it would bring me some Indian inspiration. I tried to capture my feelings on the journal’s pulpy white pages. But the words didn’t come. This brief space of silence wasn’t enough to quiet the noise in my mind.

  A family clambered up the hill, their laughter and shouts filling the air. A boy and a girl raced ahead of their parents to reach the summit. When they saw me, they stopped dead, brown eyes saucer-wide. Their mother came up behind them, wrapping them into the saffron skirts of her sari. They all stared.

  I tried a friendly wave, but their expressions were impenetrable. The sanctity of my moment under the banyan tree was ruined. Disgusted, I scooped Tucker up and started back down the hill, stomping my feet harder than necessary. Little clouds of dirt swirled around my ankles.

  In New York, when life got stressful, I’d spent many a dejected hour soothing my sorrows at Barneys or Bloomingdale’s, filling the hollow places in my heart with luxurious things. My credit card bills suffered (cheaper than therapy, I’d tell Jay defensively, shoving shopping bags into each other so it would look like there were fewer, or smuggling them into the house hidden under the dry cleaning), but my spirits never failed to lift once I became the proud owner of a new bag or a necklace or a bottle of imported perfume. Even a lip gloss at Duane Reade would do the trick. Maybe an Indian shopping trip would help me get out of my funk. A little dose of fashion would go a long way toward making me feel like the self I was losing. I’d get my retail therapy fix and maybe, with a new wardrobe, I’d fit in a little better too.

  “Venkat, I want to go shopping.”
/>   “Q-Mart, Madam?”

  “No. Clothing. Take me somewhere to get Indian clothing.”

  “Indian dress? You, Madam?” He looked doubtful.

  “Somewhere nice, OK? Somewhere the other housewives would go.”

  “But…”

  “Just drive, Venkat.”

  Snapping at Venkat always made me feel guilty, though I did it more and more these days. Really, Venkat was one of the only bright spots in my days. He was smarter than his position; kinder and more sensitive than his tough swagger let on. And while his English wasn’t good enough to tell me, and his private nature prevented him from trying, I knew his dreams were different too. I wondered who he would have been if he’d been born on my side of the world, instead of in a village that raised goats and sent teenagers away to earn money for their families by chauffeuring rich Indians and expats like us.

  In my upper-middle-class neighborhood, born to second-generation American parents, I was raised on the American dream, believing that anyone could rise above their circumstances if they worked hard and dreamed big enough. But that concept didn’t apply in India. Someday, Venkat—with his fourth-grade village education and his limitless potential—would leave his personal driver days behind and go back to his goats. And he would be happy. But he’d never be everything I knew he could be. I wasn’t sure which was the bigger tragedy: his acceptance of his linear fate or my inability to reconcile it.

  We pulled up outside a white-washed concrete building, three stories high. Mirrored chandeliers like disco balls hung in the windows. Mannequins in head-to-toe sequins sparkled in the revolving light. A parking lot attendant rushed to open my door, speaking to Venkat in rapid Telugu.

  “I am waiting for you here,” Venkat said.

  “I won’t be long. Keep the air conditioner on for Tucker, please.”

  Inside there were rows and rows of fabric, sparkly and embroidered, sewn with tiny mirrors and jewels. My style had always been basic, classy, with a little bit of urban boho mixed in. I loved street jewelry with T-shirts, little black dresses and strappy gold sandals, jeans and chunky sweaters and boots. I liked dark, rich colors like navy and charcoal. India’s riot of bright colors and shiny embellishments were the exact opposite of my New York uniform.