by Diksha Basu
“London,” Tina said. “Where’s his cousin?”
“Who?” Divya asked. “Right, his cousin is out of town. Visiting Jaipur.”
“We should get going,” Sid said. “Tina, I’ll see you soon. Right now we’re rushing to the Delhi Zoo.”
“Unless you want to first join us for a cup of chai,” Divya said to Rocco, who had rejoined the group after placing all the bags in the car.
“I could use a good cup of chai tea,” Rocco said.
“That’s redundant,” Tina said.
“Don’t be that person,” Rocco said. “Just accept that it’s become the language now. I also love naan bread.”
Tina shook her head at him and laughed.
“And I love latte coffees,” she said.
“As do I,” Rocco said. “They’re delicious.”
“Let’s go, then,” Divya said to Rocco. “There’s a little place just around the corner. We’ll walk.”
Rocco walked alongside Divya and Tina followed behind with Sid. A stray dog with a small puppy beside it fell into pace with them. Tina stiffened, as she always did around stray dogs, but Divya bent down and picked up the puppy. She held it up in the air and brought it down to her chest and nuzzled its head.
“Isn’t she cute,” Divya said. “I’m dying to get a dog.”
She held the puppy out to Tina and Tina stared into its eyes. It was cute enough, but surely it had fleas or lice or something. Her shawl was pure pashmina. Still, with Sid watching, Tina gave the dog a gentle pat on the head. The puppy closed its eyes and leaned into Tina’s hand and for a moment Tina was willing to sacrifice her shawl for the puppy. Divya placed the puppy back down on the ground and they continued walking along the dusty path.
They arrived at what was nothing more than a shack on the roadside, a blue tarp tied with rope on two tree limbs. Under it, two men had set up two large cauldrons over flames in which they continuously stirred large amounts of milky tea. On a rickety shelf were packets of Lay’s and Parle-G biscuits. Over one of the sides of rope hung packets of Gems chocolate, and in a dirty-looking plastic container with a red lid, there was coffee candy for sale. On a shelf behind the two men were packets of open cigarettes for people to buy singles. On a scratchy radio, the latest Bollywood song played. Tina recognized it only because she had already heard it more than a dozen times since arriving in India—outside the airport, in the car, on the gardener’s phone this morning, in a car that drove past them earlier in the day, and other places she couldn’t remember. But now she liked the song because of the familiarity. She liked that the whole country was moving to this one song.
Three plastic chairs and one wooden bench stood in front of the shack. Two other men squatted with earthen cups of tea in the shade of one of the trees. The stray dog and her puppy hovered around the periphery, licking the broken pieces of previously used cups and empty chips wrappers. It was a small lane and few cars went by, the occasional bicycle, and it was quiet and calm.
Sid ordered for them all—four cups of chai, two packets of Lay’s—Magic Masala and Spicy Tomato—and four coffee candies. Tina reached into her pocket to pay but Sid brushed her off. As they sat, Tina’s eyes met Sid’s. He was clearly looking at her. They exchanged a hidden smile and then Tina sat down.
They all listened as Divya did most of the talking, asking Rocco questions about himself then following up with lengthy stories distantly connected to her own life.
“My cousin’s friend’s brother went to Australia to study. I saw all the pictures when he came back,” Divya said. “What a beautiful country. He said people walk around on the road wearing bathing suits there. That’s how I want to live. Some of the women don’t even wear tops on the beach.”
“Did he go to Bondi?” Rocco asked.
“Australia,” Divya said. “Here you wear jeans that are slightly too tight and all the men will climb up the walls to get a better look at you. Look all you want, I always say. But you touch me and I’ll break your finger off. I’m not scared of them.”
“Bombay isn’t like that,” Sid said.
“I want to go to Bombay too, but mostly because I want to see all the film stars. Sid says he’ll show me Shah Rukh Khan’s house. You know, once I was walking near the Oberoi hotel and three black cars with tinted windows pulled out, one after another. I heard it was Amitabh Bachchan in the car. You couldn’t see anything inside. I don’t really like his acting these days but it was still quite exciting.”
“You’re going to visit Sid in Bombay?” Tina asked.
“I’m going to travel the world,” Divya continued. She pulled out a small atlas from her bag. “I carry this with me everywhere I go. And if I ever get lazy or think about taking some time off from work, I look at the maps of countries far away that I want to go to and how much money it will cost to travel. I’m training to be a makeup artist. Right now the money isn’t great because I’m just starting out, but eventually I’ll work for one of the big magazines and make enough in one night to buy a plane ticket. That’s my plan. Or Sid will become a world-famous star and take me along with him.”
A reality show based on a group of young women working in a local beauty salon, Tina thought. All with their own private hopes and dreams and stories.
“That depends on Tina,” Sid said with a laugh. “I certainly hope so. I’ll take everyone along with me. Rocco, we’ll all come and visit you in Australia.”
A motorbike pulled up in front of the chai stall and a man whistled at the two men making the tea. One of them took a cup of tea and two Parle-G biscuits on a steel plate over to the bike. The man drank his tea and ate the biscuits wordlessly, handed the cup and plate back to the tea seller, turned his bike on, and drove off.
Sid leaned over to Tina and said, “You’ll have to send me a picture of yourself in the outfit you bought this morning. I bet you’ll look beautiful.”
Tina could feel his breath against her neck. She looked sideways at him and he smiled at her and said, “I just hope you get bored again tonight and you can sneak away. I know of a night market in Chandni Chowk where we can eat kulfi and watch hijras dancing.”
“I’ve got to go,” Rocco said, standing up. “I told Kai and Karan I’d meet them for lunch. Although I think this is more fun.”
“I agree,” Tina said, smiling at Sid. “I don’t want to go either. But I told my father I’d meet up with him and Mrs. Sethi and I need to grab lunch before that.”
“What wedding activities are there today?” Sid asked.
“Nothing,” Tina said. “It’s a day off. Shefali wanted to get her nails redone and extensions put in and all kinds of other things.”
“How much is she paying her makeup artist, do you know?” Divya asked.
“I don’t, sorry,” Tina said.
“Some of the makeup artists charge thirty or forty thousand rupees for just one evening. Can you imagine? And they have their own assistants who carry their makeup boxes and clean up and wash the brushes. And they buy all their makeup at Sephora.”
A lizard was crawling along the tarp behind the two men and fell to the ground. Tina had never seen a lizard fall before. Had it died? Maybe it was sick. Or just got tired and let gravity win for once.
WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON
Lodhi Gardens, New Delhi: A Young Boy Is Sitting under the Shade of a Tree Going Through an Old Playboy He Bought in Daryaganj and Will Have to Throw Out Before Going Home
MR. DAS WAITED FOR MRS. Sethi near the India International Centre at the Lodhi Gardens entrance. It was a lovely afternoon, the dust and pollution adding a haze to the air that was quite romantic and diffused the afternoon sun. A fat street dog wearing a sweater lay lazily in the sun near the entrance, its tail swatting away flies every few seconds. Mr. Das was tempted to have a similar afternoon—something about India always made him want afternoon naps. It was a habit that starte
d during the long summer afternoons in Calcutta when he was a little boy. He would come home from school and have lunch, usually rice and daal with steamed potatoes followed by a fish curry and dessert, always dessert. His father used to have a spoonful of sugar after every meal, even breakfast, if there wasn’t dessert at home. His father was a family doctor who had his clinic attached to the house so, on the one hand, his father was always around but, on the other hand, he was really never around and always at work. He had regular clinic hours from 10 A.M. until 7 P.M. and he reserved his evenings to do house calls and hold free clinic hours for poor people. Mr. Das used to resent those poor people lined up outside their gate with their illnesses and ailments that would keep his father in his clinic until long after he had gone to sleep. He never saw his father take time off. On most days, the servant, Karthik, would take a tray of food to the clinic for lunch and Mr. Das would look at the empty tray return an hour later. On occasion, his father came into the main house for lunch, his stethoscope hanging off his neck but he spent most of lunch on the phone diagnosing patients who were too old or too sick to come and see him. Once his father left or the empty tray returned, Mr. Das would take a bath and have a long afternoon nap before waking up to do his homework and play cricket with the neighboring children.
He thought of that as he waited for Mrs. Sethi. A young couple pulled up on a motorbike, the man with a helmet on, the woman sitting behind him sidesaddle in a salwar kameez with her dupatta draped around her hair and face to protect it from the pollution. She jumped off the back of the bike and untied the dupatta as the man put the bike into park and removed his helmet. He smiled at her and she turned away from his smile as if they were in the middle of a conversation. She went off a few steps ahead of him and he tossed his motorbike keys in the air, caught them, put them in his pocket, and rushed to catch up with her. He grabbed her elbow and spun her around and they both disappeared into the gardens. That was what new love was supposed to look like, Mr. Das worried. What kind of future could he have with Mrs. Sethi when most of their years were already in the past? What were her afternoon rituals, he wondered. What was her childhood like? What did her parents do? Were they alive? Did it matter? Are those questions you even ask someone over fifty? And would he ever know her as well as he knew Radha? Was this all a fool’s errand?
“Neel,” came Mrs. Sethi’s voice from behind him.
He spun around and said, “Do you sleep in the afternoons?”
Mrs. Sethi laughed and said, “Hello to you too. And no, I don’t usually sleep in the afternoons. I find it depressing. It can be so tempting, especially in the hot summers and also in the cold winters here, but I don’t like it. I like to keep my days occupied. These days I’m volunteering at a school for poor children. I should be there today as well, but that’s the problem with volunteering, isn’t it? I take days off whenever I want to. I really ought to be more disciplined. That’s a long answer to an easy question. Why do you ask? Do you usually sleep in the afternoon?”
“Not since I was a child. In Calcutta, my father was a doctor. Where do I begin to tell you about a life that’s so old?”
“I think we’ve been doing a good job so far,” Mrs. Sethi said. She pointed to her wrist and said, “I’ve started wearing a Fitbit—do you mind if we walk?”
Mr. Das smiled and showed her his wrist as well and said, “Let’s walk. Although I find it much more challenging to try and maximize my step count while minimizing my steps.”
Mrs. Sethi laughed loudly and Mr. Das decided it didn’t really matter what her parents used to do or whether or not she slept in the afternoon. For now, he was going to enjoy Lodhi Gardens and the autumn sun and a walk with a woman who seemed to enjoy his company.
“Tina is going to join us this afternoon. I hope that’s okay.”
“That’s wonderful. I’m looking forward to meeting her.”
Mr. Das looked up at the ruins in the middle of the garden and marveled at how majestic Delhi could be. It always amazed him that centuries-old tombs could exist, scattered in the midst of chaotic, crowded Delhi, surrounded by acres and acres of green grass and walking paths open to the public free of charge. When they had visited here when Tina was young, Mr. Das always suggested picnics in Lodhi Gardens but Radha thought it was more hassle than it would be worth—packing all the food and drinks, the plates, Tina’s toys, a sheet to sit on, water bottles, napkins—and for what? To sit out in the sun and the dust and worry about flies settling on their food? And yes, that was all probably true and fair, but Mr. Das thought it was worth the hassle, worth the worries about the dust and the heat. One group of men and women was celebrating a birthday and the remnants of a large cake lay in an open cardboard box. There were several flies on the cake but none of the people seemed to mind or care and they continued to eat from their plastic plates and laugh and talk.
“That looks nice,” Mrs. Sethi said.
“Picnics seem like such a hassle,” Mr. Das said. Why had he said that?
“It certainly is easier to eat at home without all the flies buzzing around,” Mrs. Sethi said. “But my husband loved picnics and I learned to start enjoying them as well. But my rule was always that we don’t bring sweet food and we bring food that won’t have any remnants, like a sandwich. Nothing with chicken bones or big lemongrass leaves that need to be left aside at the end of the meal. And it was always an argument because our maid used to make the most delicious pomfret fry and my husband loved that but I never agreed to bring those because of the hassle. So we would stop at Sugar and Spice in Khan Market and pick up sandwiches only. It was still fun and the cleanup was much easier but I suppose the pomfret fry wouldn’t have been so hard either. I would have just had to pack one extra plastic bag for all the garbage and some wet wipes for our fingers. Anyway, never mind now.”
Mr. Das tried to picture a young Mrs. Sethi sitting on a sheet and eating a sandwich with the dust particles moving down toward her in the rays of the sun. It was an easier image than picturing her sifting through a whole pomfret to free the flesh of the fish from the bones. But he wondered if Colebrookes did a good pomfret fry; he could use a tandoori pomfret for dinner.
The fresh smell of marijuana wafted toward them and Mrs. Sethi inhaled deeply and said, “I always love that smell.”
“Of drugs?” Mr. Das asked, unable to hide his shock. “You like drugs?”
Mrs. Sethi laughed loudly. She shook her head and looked over at Mr. Das looking wide-eyed at her.
“America makes everyone so conservative,” she said. “Marijuana is hardly a drug. It’s better than the anti-anxiety drugs everyone is hopped-up on all the time. But I sound like an addict. I rarely smoke but come on, Neel, we’re children of the sixties. Don’t tell me you’ve never done any drugs.”
“I haven’t,” Mr. Das said. “I’ve never even smoked cigarettes. Well, no, I did once but I hated it.”
“I tried ecstasy on a cruise in Halong Bay last year,” Mrs. Sethi said with a laugh. “I loved it. Can you imagine? I went on an organized tour of Vietnam for single Indian women and at first that sounded like just about the saddest thing I’ve ever heard of but I went and it ended up being one of the best two weeks of my life. There were twenty-five-year-old women and one seventy-plus-year-old spinster, and everything in between, and it was so refreshing. No more ecstasy for me but my gosh, it was fun. That’s one of the few things I’ve never told Minal about.”
Mr. Das looked over at Mrs. Sethi not sure how to respond. None of this was the India he remembered. When he had first heard of Mrs. Ray’s Matchmaking Agency for Widows he had expected to be set up with some old lady wearing a synthetic sari and orthopedic shoes and maybe sprouting a chin hair. But here was Mrs. Sethi, glamorous in her raw silk kurtas, drinking port from Portugal, and confessing to having tried drugs on a cruise and not hiding any of it. And here was Mr. Das coming across as the conservative old man from New Jersey. A
bee buzzed near Mr. Das and he frantically tried to move it away from his face. He knew there was nothing less manly than a man trying to escape a determined bee.
“Papa!” Tina shouted from across the small bridge over a pond on the other side of the garden. She waved in his direction. Mr. Das watched her trying to dodge the bee that had made its way over to her.
“Damn it,” Tina shouted. “Do I run? Are you supposed to run when you see a bee or play dead?”
“It’s not a bear, you don’t play dead,” Mr. Das shouted.
“So I run, then?” Tina asked, her hands waving around in front of her face. “I hit it, I felt I slapped it.”
“Just leave it alone and walk away,” Mrs. Sethi shouted. “Have you two never been outdoors before?”
Tina looked at the bee and then ran, reaching her father and Mrs. Sethi flustered.
“Hello, Mrs. Sethi, I’m Tina. It’s nice to meet you,” Tina said as she showed her palm to her father. “Do you think it stung me?”
“You would know if it had,” Mrs. Sethi said. “It’s nice that you could join us. I’ve been so keen to meet you.”
“You know, bees can fly at speeds of up to fifteen miles per hour,” Mr. Das said.
“And the buzzing sound is actually just their wings moving at a fast pace,” Mrs. Sethi added.
The three of them continued walking down the path talking about bees and the weather and the Delhi air because to talk about anything else was too uncomfortable and too intimate.
A man walking four dogs of various sizes walked straight into their path and made Mr. Das, Mrs. Sethi, and Tina scatter. Mr. Das caught himself up in the leash of a golden retriever. The dog walker, wearing headphones, mumbled an apology but kept walking. Mr. Das brushed off his pants and said, “People have no business keeping dogs like that in Delhi. Imagine how it survives in the summer with so much fur. And none of the houses here are big enough for what a dog like that needs.”
