The Sari Shop Widow

by Shobhan Bantwal

Nilesh’s thick eyebrows descended in a knot. “What?”

  “Shh, keep your voice down.” Usha went to the microwave and pulled out the steaming plate of food. “Your uncle has brought his business partner with him—a young man from England.”

  “England?” Nilesh paused. “What’s his name?”

  “Rishi Shah.”

  “Since when did Jeevan-kaka start taking on partners?” asked Nilesh, the frown still intact.

  “Since now,” said Anjali.

  “He’s a loner,” argued Nilesh. “And nobody could stand having him for a partner.”

  Usha put the plate on the table. “Well, he has a partner now. And since Rishi Shah is staying with us, we asked him to take your room. I’m afraid you’ll have to sleep on the sofa bed in the basement.”

  Nilesh pulled a face. “Oh fu…bummer! Why didn’t you put that dude in Anju’s room?”

  “When you meet him you’ll see why they couldn’t,” said Anjali and slid the mound of diced zucchini off the cutting board into a mixing bowl. “He’s a forty-ish white-skinned guy with an interesting British accent. He wears Armani and Gucci.”

  “Fashionable girly type, you mean?” Nilesh asked with frank contempt.

  “Hardly. He’s real macho. I doubt that he’d like to sleep in a feminine bedroom with lavender sheets, gardenia-scented candles, and lace curtains on the windows.”

  “Put him in the basement, then,” growled Nilesh. “That’s manly enough.”

  Anjali shook her head. “He looks more like he belongs in a suite at the Waldorf.”

  “Enough, you two.” Usha held up a spatula. “Anju, finish chopping the zucchini. Nilesh, you know we don’t treat guests that way in this house. Now sit down and eat your lunch.”

  Everything went quiet. For about two seconds.

  Grumbling about being treated like dirt in his own home, Nilesh sat down to eat his meal. Nothing distracted him from eating, though. Despite his slender physique the kid could pack away an awful lot of food. Over the next several minutes he polished off his lunch, followed by a banana and an apple, while Anjali and her mother worked on getting things ready for dinner.

  Nilesh must have felt better after eating and mulling over the situation, because he rose to his feet and placed his empty plate in the sink. “So is that Shah guy napping in my room right now or can I go in and get my stuff out of there?”

  His mother turned around from the stove where something was simmering in a pot. “You better transfer your things to the basement right now. Rishi has gone out with your father to rent a car. He’ll be back soon.”

  “Fine, I’ll go now.” Nilesh picked up his backpack and wandered out of the kitchen, his shoulders hunched in peevish resignation.

  He looked like a little boy again, thought Anjali, recalling the times when he was refused an expensive toy and he’d go sulking to his room. She turned at her mother. “I told you Nilesh would get upset.”

  Giving the fragrant, simmering spinach saag a vigorous stir, Usha replied, “He’ll get over it. As long as he has his precious computer, he can manage.”

  With a shrug Anjali returned to her task. Some ten minutes later she heard automobiles in the driveway. Then the front door opened and her father walked in.

  Curious, Anjali discarded her apron and stepped out into the foyer. “Did Mr. Shah get his rental car, Dad?” She was hoping the answer was yes.

  Her father nodded. “He leased a very nice luxury SUV.”

  Hearing a low whistle emerge from the staircase, Anjali looked up. Nilesh was coming down the steps, his laptop and a bundle of clothes tucked under his arm. “Luxury SUV? That son-of-a-gun must be filthy rich.”

  Mohan frowned at his son and motioned to him to shut up. Unfortunately it didn’t do much good because Rishi Shah was already approaching the front door and had heard every word of what Nilesh had uttered.

  Anjali noticed the frozen expression on Nilesh’s face. He seemed to be stuck on stair number three. “Shit!” he murmured under his breath. Then to Shah he said, “I—I’m sorry. That…wasn’t a very…uh…nice thing to say.”

  Seemingly unmoved by Nilesh’s embarrassment, Shah stepped forward to shake his hand. “Hello. You must be Nilesh? I’m Rishi Shah.” He seemed cool and in control.

  Nilesh transferred the laptop and clothes to his left armpit and took Shah’s hand. “Yeah, I’m Nilesh.” He managed to look sufficiently contrite. “Sorry…Didn’t mean to insult you or anything. It’s just, well…it’s the SUV.”

  Mild amusement seemed to flit across Shah’s face. “Not to worry. I’ve been called a lot worse than a filthy rich son-of-a-gun.”

  “No kidding?” Nilesh looked incredulous.

  Shah shook his head. “Significantly worse. Besides, I’m the one who should apologize for usurping your room.”

  Perhaps because he’d been so easily forgiven for his faux pas, Nilesh made a magnanimous gesture with his long, slim hand. “Hey, no problem, Rishi. I’ll transfer some of my stuff from the room to the basement and then it’s all yours.”

  “That’s mighty generous of you.”

  Nilesh was too busy craning his neck to get a better look at the shiny black automobile parked in the driveway to pay attention to Shah’s gratitude. “That’s awesome. I’d kill to own one of those babies.” He threw a meaningful look at his father, and Anjali suppressed the urge to smile. Her brother was positively bubbling. Boy, was he easy to manipulate. The wimp.

  Anjali’s father started walking toward the kitchen. “One of those babies is worth more than two years of your college tuition, Nilesh. I can hardly afford to maintain your mom’s old sedan and my delivery van right now.”

  Nilesh rolled his eyes.

  Shah offered Nilesh a friendly grin and inclined his head toward the driveway. “Want to give that baby a test drive?”

  Anjali’s heart skipped a tiny beat. The man was capable of grinning? In fact, he had a great grin. It transformed his face completely. His eyes crinkled at the corners and the steel in them definitely turned to a warm, smoky tint. He had nice, even teeth and a tiny dimple in his right cheek.

  She hated to admit it, but Rishi Shah was a great-looking man, at least when he let his hair down and smiled a little. Even better when he grinned.

  Nilesh’s eyes lit up like twin candles. “You mean…like right now?”

  “Yes. We can go for a quick spin if you’d like.” Shah pulled the keys from his pocket and tossed them at Nilesh, who deftly caught them with one hand in midair. “Go get your driver’s license, Nilesh. I’d like you to show me the neighborhood. I want to familiarize myself with this area. And,” he added with a laugh, “get used to driving on the wrong side of the road.”

  “All right!” Nilesh turned and raced up the steps to get his license.

  Anjali watched his jean-clad legs disappear over the landing. A weird kind of feeling was beginning to bloom in her stomach. She looked up to see Shah studying her. She felt the heat rising in her neck and face.

  Fortunately, a minute later Nilesh was bounding down the staircase. “I’ll show you some really cool places to hang out, Rishi.”

  “Jolly good.” Shah lifted a dark eyebrow at Anjali. “Miss Kapadia, would you care to join Nilesh and me?” The ice in his voice was brittle enough to crack.

  How could he be so nice and friendly to her brother and so cold and distant with her? Anjali shook her head. “No, thanks.”

  “We’ll be back in a short while.”

  “I’m helping my mother make dinner.”

  Nilesh was already out the door. Anjali watched Shah follow him. His limp seemed a bit more pronounced now than it was that morning. She wondered if he was in pain. What exactly was the matter with his leg?

  As they reached the vehicle Nilesh said something to him. She couldn’t hear their conversation, but it must have been something ridiculously male-bonding, because she saw Nilesh and Rishi do a quick high-five. They looked like teenagers going off to meet their girlfriends fo
r a double date. Then the two of them laughed and climbed into the vehicle.

  Anjali felt a twinge of something shoot through her brain. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it. It felt almost like…envy. But that was entirely absurd. What was there to be envious about? So her young and impressionable brother was awed by a good-looking and wealthy man some two decades older than himself—a man who seemed to be sophisticated and well traveled and knowledgeable about business. So what?

  Besides, Nilesh was more dazzled by the SUV than the man who’d leased it.

  No, she concluded, it wasn’t envy. Perhaps it was the insignificant detail that he called everyone else by a friendlier handle than he did her. She was Miss Kapadia to him. She turned that over for a second. Oh well, that was fine with her. It kept a certain distance between them.

  She shut the front door and returned to the kitchen. But Shah’s mysterious limp and its cause kept her thinking.

  Chapter 7

  Anjali nearly choked on her food. Jeevan-kaka had just pulled out a gun from his pocket and was brandishing it like a mad highwayman. His short, stubby fingers were amazingly nimble as he twirled it, allowing the folks around the dinner table to get a good look at his toy. He looked like a little kid with his first ever birthday present.

  Her hands shook so much she had to put her water glass down so it wouldn’t slide out of her grip. She’d never seen a gun up close—only in movies and TV. Almost everyone at the dinner table silently watched Jeevan’s dramatic gesture with a mixture of awe and fear, except Rishi Shah, who continued to eat his dinner with no more than a casual glance at Jeevan.

  Nilesh looked positively giddy with delight. “Way to go, Jeevan-kaka!” he exclaimed, his eyes ablaze. “That could blow a nice little hole in a guy’s head.”

  Jeevan-kaka looked like Danny DeVito trying to play John Wayne. “Beautiful gun, huh, Nilesh? You want to look at it?” The old man started to lean across the table with the gun held out.

  “No!” Usha’s voice cracked like a whip, making Nilesh’s spoon clatter onto his plate and Jeevan withdraw his hand. “Nilesh is not allowed to touch a gun. Not in this house.”

  “Mom!” Nilesh exploded at his mother. “I just wanted to look at it, okay? I’m not exactly planning to go on a wild shooting spree.”

  Usha tossed him a blistering glance. “No. Guns are not to be taken lightly.” Then she sent her brother-in-law a dark look. “I would appreciate it if you don’t let my son anywhere near that…that thing, Jeevan-bhai.”

  Cousin Sejal’s pretty face was frozen in wide-eyed wonder. Anjali hoped Sejal wasn’t going to pee in her pants. At four it was understandable, but at twenty-four it would be a major embarrassment. Anjali’s aunt, Varsha-kaki, was nervously trying to brush imaginary hair off her face. Not a single loose tendril was to be seen anywhere in the vicinity of her round, fair, moonlike face.

  “Jeevan-kaka, what are you doing with a gun?” Anjali managed to ask after she’d had a few seconds to recover.

  Her uncle flashed a grin. “This is protection, Anju. If anybody tries funny business with me, I will shoot his brains with my pistol.”

  Naren-kaka looked like he was about to throw up. “Jeevan-bhai, p-please put that thing down. It is making me n-nervous.” Naren-kaka was a slim man who resembled Anjali’s father quite a bit. The two brothers had the same sharp features, high cheekbones, and dense mop of hair, except Naren was shorter than his brother, and his hair was not entirely gray yet.

  Jeevan of course was in a league of his own—no resemblance whatsoever to the siblings, physical, mental, emotional, or intellectual.

  Anjali’s father kept swallowing large quantities of water while her mother looked like she was ready to pick up the nearest saucepan and hit Jeevan over the head. Usha spoke in a quietly authoritative voice. “Jeevan-bhai, this is a safe neighborhood and nobody’s going to try any funny business with you. Please put that thing away.”

  “See how it is making everybody nervous? It always works. Even murderers are afraid of my gun.” Jeevan-kaka’s glee was unmistakable.

  Until a little while ago, her Indian uncle was merely a crusty old man, Anjali reflected. He was still a crusty old man, but now he was armed and dangerous. He was turning into a demon. Where had he acquired a gun? And if he’d had it all along, how had he brought it with him all the way from India? Security at airports these days was extremely tight. Did he have a permit to carry one of those things?

  Mohan glanced warily at his oldest brother. “Why do you need that kind of protection?”

  Jeevan-kaka’s eyes had a feral gleam in them. “Do you know what life in rural India is for some of us? There are bandits roaming the countryside these days. They break into people’s houses in the middle of the night.”

  “Bandits in this century?” asked Mohan.

  “Oh yes. They’re heavily armed. The only solution for their victims is a gun, Mohan.”

  “That might be the case in India, but not here,” Anjali protested. “We live in a civilized society.”

  “Doesn’t Amreeka have the worst crime rate?” sneered Jeevan. “Almost every television show has Amreekan people getting robbed and murdered and raped—even worse than India.”

  “You’re talking about fictional crime dramas and movies.” Anjali was losing her patience with him. “Real life isn’t like that.”

  “What are you talking about, Anju? I read newspapers and watch TV news all the time. Somebody is murdering somebody every day. Amreeka has the most guns in the world.”

  “But that is in some inner cities only,” Mohan explained patiently. “Ours is a quiet suburban area. There is practically no violent crime here.”

  Perhaps noting the fearful expressions on everyone’s face, Rishi Shah intervened. “They’re right, Jeevan-kaka. This seems like a safe area. I went out with Nilesh for a ride earlier. I didn’t notice anything dangerous. Why don’t you put that thing away for now?” When Jeevan-kaka hesitated, he quietly added, “Please.”

  “All right.” Jeevan deposited the gun on the table and went back to finishing his meal, astounding Anjali once again. Five years ago, he would have done exactly as he pleased, but now he’d actually agreed to abide by his young partner’s request.

  What sort of hold did Shah have over her uncle? No one else had that kind of influence over the old man. But whatever it was, it worked, and she was grateful. For now, the gun was safely out of her uncle’s hands.

  Anjali sent Rishi Shah a silent look of thanks across the table. He acknowledged it with a nod and went back to eating. The food was terribly bland this time around because of Jeevan-kaka’s gastric problems, but nobody was complaining—not even Jeevan-kaka.

  The rest of the folks still seemed a bit on edge. Sejal and her mother threw quick, nervous glances at the gun. Nilesh was still sulking from his mother’s reprimand.

  Anjali felt her stomach tremble at the thought of having a firearm in the house, in the hands of a madman like her uncle. She wasn’t sure if he knew how to use it properly. She also wondered how Shah put up with that sort of thing. Unless…he carried a gun, too? Was that why he was serenely polishing off the food on his plate, like a gun on the dining table was an everyday occurrence?

  Her uncle had said he needed a firearm to protect himself in present-day rural India. Anjali had often wondered why her uncle had moved from his spacious city home in Anand to his farm in the country, and why he’d continued to live there when all his siblings lived either in the U.S. or the U.K. But then he had a lot of his money invested in Gujarat, a legacy that had come down from his father, Anjali’s grandfather, who’d started out as a clerk but had worked hard to start a small cloth mill and eventually succeeded.

  As the meal came to an end, Anjali was somewhat grateful for the gun episode because it had diverted her uncle’s attention from the food. Another round of critical comments about her mother’s cooking would have resulted in some major fireworks. Although the rest of the group was made up of family,
Rishi Shah was an outsider and she didn’t want the embarrassment of a family feud in his presence.

  A little later, her mother brought out dessert—doodh paak. She had remembered to make a separate batch with low-fat milk and a sugar substitute for Jeevan-kaka. Anjali watched him finish two helpings of the rice pudding garnished with almonds and pistachios.

  Anjali’s aunt and cousin helped wash the dishes and when the kitchen was neat and clean once again, everyone settled down in the family room to chat over a cup of chai.

  What caught Anjali’s eye was her cousin Sejal slanting coy glances at Rishi Shah. Was shy little Sejal beginning to develop a mild crush on Shah? It was understandable, of course. Sejal was raised in a very strict home and not allowed any real social contact with men except the nice and nerdy Gujarati guys her parents tried to fix her up with.

  Shah, on the other hand, was an entirely different species of male: suave, successful, older, and far more mature than the men Sejal was used to. He exuded cool confidence—exactly what Sejal would consider sexy and a bit of a challenge. And his unusual Caucasian looks were probably enticing, too. More disturbing was Shah catching Sejal’s eye once or twice and smiling—just a quiet hint of a smile, but a smile nevertheless.

  Sejal blushed violently each time.

  Anjali bristled. Shah was flirting with her young cousin. If he thought he could find some free entertainment in Sejal during his visit to the U.S. he was sadly mistaken. He could even be married, with kids. Well, if he made a move on Sejal, Anjali would tell Jeevan-kaka about him and have Shah properly chastised.

  But somehow Anjali doubted if anything or anyone could intimidate Shah. He looked much too self-assured to be easily scared away, and looked entirely too comfortable in the U.S.

  Chapter 8

  Anjali came awake to the ear-shattering sound of a bell ringing. What the heck was that? Then it struck her. The house was on fire! She shot out of bed, the adrenaline instantly spiking in her blood. It was dark in her room and she groped frantically for the light switch till she found it. At least the electricity was still on.