by Diksha Basu
“And then he complained about how he had missed two trains in Japan because they ran on time there.”
“So you’re okay with this?” Mrs. Sethi said.
She looked out at Delhi in front of her, twilight settling in, the dust creating a romantic haze. How she loved this city.
“It’s the daughter,” Minal said. “I don’t want you to mother another daughter. Or son. That’s what I meant when I said I might sound petty.”
“I could never mother another daughter,” Mrs. Sethi said. “One hardheaded lesbian is enough.”
Mrs. Sethi heard her daughter spit out laughter.
“Did you just say ‘lesbian’?”
“Well, you don’t say it so I may as well, right? LGBTQ. I marched in the Delhi pride parade for you this year.”
“Ma, he’s a lucky man, this Mr. Das. Don’t replace me with the daughter but other than that, I’m cheering for you.”
“Then tell me, Minal, what does ‘think like a youngster’ mean? That’s what his message to me about tonight said.”
* * *
—
AT 7:30 P.M., MRS. SETHI was wearing a Benarasi silk sari and had tied a string of jasmine through her bun and picked up an off-white pashmina shawl. It wasn’t how young people dressed but it was her favorite sari and it made her skin glow. And she wasn’t a fool—she knew how sensual it was to remove a sari and then, perhaps even more so, to let a man watch her re-drape it. Even though she usually wore kurtas these days, saris still felt like armor. And the process of removing the sari, then the petticoat and the blouse, gave her a bit more time to process and protect herself. A kurta or a shirt was on and then it was off, stomach visible, bra out, nothing to shield, nothing to prepare. Or a dress—a dress was the worst offender when it came to getting unclothed in front of someone after a certain age. But a sari would allow her to ease into her nudity and her body. Nudity. Mrs. Sethi turned away from the mirror at the thought of that word and sat down at her dresser. She brushed some bronzer onto her cheeks and lined her lower lids with kohl. She pushed in a small pair of solitaire diamond earrings and dabbed Chanel No. 5 onto her wrists and neck right as her doorbell rang.
Mr. Das was standing on the doorstep of Mrs. Sethi’s home wearing a black suit that he had brought for the final wedding reception. He was holding a bouquet of a dozen red roses. He had considered a bouquet of orchids but the classic red roses seemed more fitting for tonight.
Mr. Das and Mrs. Sethi took a moment to just stare and smile at each other.
THURSDAY NIGHT
Nono’s House, New Delhi: The Guard Is Smoking a Cigarette and Reading a Dirty Magazine Wrapped in the Cover of an Old Issue of The Economist
MR. DAS GASPED AS THEY arrived at Nono’s house. A man wearing a blue-and-gold turban met them at the gate and escorted them to the greenhouse in the backyard. Everything was twinkling with fairy lights and a small but heavy rectangular mahogany table was set up inside the glass room within the greenhouse. Soft piano music played. Of course Nono didn’t want to get pushed out of her home, Mr. Das thought. Two chairs were placed side by side and Mr. Das and Mrs. Sethi sat down while the man poured still and sparkling water into chunky green glasses.
“What is this place?” Mrs. Sethi whispered to Mr. Das.
“I wanted to do something special for tonight,” Mr. Das said. He turned to face Mrs. Sethi and added, “I’ve enjoyed meeting you so much.”
“Nono recommends you begin with two glasses of prosecco,” the turbaned man said. “If there are no objections, I’ll return shortly with those and your amuse-bouche.”
“This doesn’t feel like Delhi,” Mrs. Sethi said, looking out at the colorful flowers filling the greenhouse, small lights sparkling everywhere, a mist forming above the plants.
Mr. Das looked around to see if he could find the camera. One vase in the corner looked a bit suspicious, with a round black design on it. He got up and walked over to it and turned it around, pretending he was examining the flowers in it. A few minutes later, the turbaned man re-entered with the two glasses of prosecco and small plates with single pieces of beetroot ravioli. He then walked to the same corner and turned the vase back around, bowed, and promised to return with their appetizer and an assortment of wine, unless either Mr. Das or Mrs. Sethi would like to order a cocktail.
“I wouldn’t mind a martini,” Mrs. Sethi said at the same time that Mr. Das said, “Nothing for me, thanks.”
“No, no, then nothing for me either,” Mrs. Sethi said.
“No, please go ahead,” Mr. Das said.
“I’ll get two martinis,” the turbaned man said and backed out of the room silently.
Mrs. Sethi was embarrassed. Her husband never liked it when she drank hard alcohol but she loved a good gin martini and got the feeling this place, whatever this place was, would make a perfect one.
“I do love these flowers,” Mr. Das said, standing again near the vase he suspected was a camera and turning it around.
“Calla lilies, I believe,” Mrs. Sethi said.
She walked over to Mr. Das and placed her hand on his arm. He turned to face her.
“I’m so happy we met,” Mrs. Sethi said. “I hadn’t expected to get along quite so well.”
Mr. Das squinted over her shoulder to see if there were any other cameras visible. Then he said to her, “I feel so lucky.”
They looked at each other, faces inches apart. Mr. Das touched the string of jasmine in Mrs. Sethi’s hair and said, “No smell makes me more nostalgic for India than jasmine.”
Mrs. Sethi removed her hand from his arm and touched her hair. Mr. Das dodged around her to check the vase at the other end of the room. Even this one had a black design on it. He was turning that one around to face the wall when the turbaned man returned with the martinis and two leather folders containing the menus for the evening.
Mr. Das opened his to a note from Nono that read That’s not where the camera is. You’re not going to find the camera and you’re going to lose your chance. She wants you to kiss her. Do it.
“Tuna tartar? And pork belly salad? Is this a restaurant? What is this? Neel, I am so impressed by your planning. I’ve lived in Delhi for decades but somehow you’ve discovered a secret dining option that nobody knows about. I thought Colebrookes was fancy.”
She removed her shawl and placed it on the back of her chair. Mr. Das looked at the inside of her right arm where there was a small line tattoo. He reached forward and touched it with his fingertip and said, “You have a tattoo?”
“Gosh, I forget it’s there sometimes,” Mrs. Sethi said. She looked down at her arm and Mr. Das’s finger pressed against it. His finger was slightly rough but his hand was not an old man’s hand. It was large and the fingernails were perfect ovals, short and tidy. “Minal and I got it together. It’s the gate of my house, our house. My husband had designed the gate to look like a supply-and-demand curve and he loved it so much. Last year when I was visiting San Francisco, Minal and I decided to get them done late one night after dinner. Do you have any?”
“Tattoos? Definitely not. I can’t think of anything I’d want to live with for the rest of my life,” Mr. Das said.
“Well, that probably isn’t that long anymore so the commitment doesn’t have to be so great. Getting a tattoo at eighteen would be riskier.”
“An origami swan,” Mr. Das said. “If I had to get one, gun to my head, I’d get an origami swan.”
“That was a quick answer,” Mrs. Sethi said. “Why an origami swan?”
“Tina loves them. She got really into origami for half a week, perfected the art of swans, and then lost interest. I don’t think I actually could do it, though.”
“You should. Getting old is so inherently unfashionable,” Mrs. Sethi said. “This little transgression makes me feel—”
Mr. Das cut her off. He stood up over
her and leaned down, hitting his hip against the edge of the table. That would bruise, he just knew it. Never mind. He bent over toward her and held her face in his hands and kissed her on the lips.
Mrs. Sethi sat still holding the menu open in her hands, her face reaching up to this man, his mouth on her mouth, happy. It didn’t feel so strange or so unknown or so frightening. It felt remarkably familiar, she noted. Except for the ache in her neck from the awkward angle. She tried to pull herself up to standing but Mr. Das was wedged in between the heavy table and her so as she stood she was pressed up against every bit of him and could feel his erection pressing against the pleats of her sari. That was perhaps too much for the moment. She slipped away from him to the other side of the table, put the menu down, and reached her hands up to his shoulders and kissed him again. When she pulled away, she smiled at him and said, “Finally.”
Right then the turbaned man returned with the tuna tartar and a trolley of different wine options. Mrs. Sethi turned to Mr. Das and said, “What timing. It’s as if they’re watching us.”
She gave Mr. Das’s hand a little squeeze and looked at the bottles of wine and asked to try a Chenin Blanc from Australia. Behind her back, Mr. Das gave a small thumbs-up and smiled around the whole room so Nono would see, no matter where the camera was.
“He has no idea where the camera is,” Nono said with a laugh to her driver. They sat side by side on velvet armchairs in Nono’s television room with the live feed playing in front of them. In front of Nono was a teakwood box filled with her gold jewelry. She picked up a pair of gold earrings with mirrors on the inside and squinted at it closely. She was sick of these—she set them aside to send to her jeweler tomorrow to have melted down and turned into something else, a pendant perhaps. Nono sipped on a Campari soda, her driver had a cardamom tea, and in between them on a small wooden table was a plate of Afghani chicken tikka.
“Cameras,” the driver said, picking up the remote control and flipping angles. “Plural. I even put one on the actual dining table in case we ever decide to edit this and turn it into something.”
“This is for personal enjoyment, not some creepy art project,” Nono said. “Pass my ashtray. Why is it so far?”
The driver walked over to the bookshelf and brought Nono her ashtray and held up a lighter for her to light a cigarette.
Nono put an Afghani chicken tikka into her mouth. She spat it back out into a napkin and handed the napkin to her driver and said, “Take this to the kitchen and tell the cooks it’s overcooked. The chicken should melt, not taste like rubber. And make them send me a large serving of the dessert they’ve made for Mr. Das.”
Dessert was a flourless chocolate cake with a scoop of cinnamon ice cream on the side. In the greenhouse, it was served on only one plate with two spoons side by side. Mrs. Sethi touched Mr. Das’s hand and said, “Of course the one man I like lives around the world. Mr. Mehta lived in Gurgaon and I thought that was too far.”
“Otherwise he was a good option?” Mr. Das asked.
“Not at all,” Mrs. Sethi said. “The next day he sent me something called a Venmo request for my half of the meal. This after he had spent the entire meal talking about how rich he was.”
“So it’s better if I ask you for your share now?” Mr. Das asked.
Mrs. Sethi smiled at him.
“I don’t think I could ever live in America, Neel,” Mrs. Sethi said. “It’s a lovely country to visit but this is home for me.”
“I got malaria the last time I spent a long stretch in India,” Mr. Das said, thinking back to that awful summer spent weak and exhausted.
“Malaria? That’s a shame,” Mrs. Sethi said. “Touch wood, I’ve never had it. But I’m very particular about screens on the windows and burning camphor at dusk.”
It was nearing midnight and the turbaned waiter returned to the greenhouse with a small brown ROYCE box with two squares of dark chocolate and an envelope for Mr. Das. In it, a note from Nono said Enough now. I don’t like people on the premises past midnight. Well done tonight. You were charming. I wish you both luck for the future. You seem well-suited for each other.
“I should get home,” Mrs. Sethi said, the high of the evening wearing off as the reality of their situation was settling in. She visited her daughter every year, and she loved Niagara Falls and the Grand Canyon and even Manhattan but she didn’t see herself living in America. As an Indian, she worried she would never feel at home. And, more crucially, she would have to make her own morning tea and load her own dishwasher. Mrs. Sethi belonged in Delhi. She wasn’t sure about too much about the rest of her life, but of this she was sure.
Mr. Das followed Mrs. Sethi out of Nono’s yard and into his waiting car. He held the door open for her and came around to the other side. The Delhi autumn air smelled of fires burning to keep the night watchmen warm. An occasional crackle broke through the steady hum of traffic. Mr. Das and Mrs. Sethi sat side by side, his hand on top of hers, and they both looked out of their windows. Mrs. Sethi flipped her hand and laced her fingers through his. It didn’t matter what the future held, she decided. This moment was what mattered. She had taken two weekend-long workshops on mindfulness last year and this was exactly the kind of situation she had to use that in. She had to only think about the moment. After all, she had always believed that any years she got to live past sixty was borrowed time.
She didn’t invite Mr. Das to come upstairs. She wanted this evening to stand alone in its perfection. And Mr. Das, as he kissed her hand on her doorstep, felt similarly. Sex—whatever that looked like at this point—was easier left to the imagination for now.
THURSDAY, 11:45 P.M.
Colebrookes: Across Town Shefali Is Nervous, Looking Up at the Ceiling—Is This It? Is Pavan the Only Man She’ll Ever Be with Again? If She Doesn’t Go to Sleep Right Now, She’s Going to Look Tired Tomorrow
“A CIGARETTE?” MR. DAS SAID as he got out of his car and saw Radha sitting on the front porch of his cottage. “Quite a throwback, as they say. How does this fit in with David Smith and his morning walks?”
“Why do you think I’m sitting on your porch? And I’ll be coming in to use your mouthwash before I return to my cottage.”
Radha took a long drag and looked over at him.
“Bubbles Trivedi is keen to plan my wedding. She thinks it should be a destination wedding in Mallorca so it’s about halfway between India and America and she wants to book Malaika Arora’s yoga instructor to hold yoga sessions with the guests every morning.”
“Who is Malaika Arora?” Mr. Das asked sitting down across his ex-wife.
“That’s what you’re concerned about? Not that I’m planning my wedding?” Radha said.
“You won’t marry David Smith,” Mr. Das said. He leaned back in his chair and looked out across the lawn. “This country has changed, Radha. In ways I never could have imagined when I left.”
Radha leaned forward and crushed her half-smoked cigarette in a small metal ashtray that sat on the glass table in between them.
“We’ve changed too,” she said. “I can’t believe how heavily I used to smoke. Half a cigarette now and my lungs feel blackened. Why do you assume I won’t marry him?”
“You just won’t,” Mr. Das said. “I say this as a compliment—I don’t think you were made to be married. A partner, yes. And maybe you and David Smith will end up together until death does you part and so on. But that piece of paper, that formality, that legal binding—all that isn’t you.”
“Where are you coming from so late at night?” Radha asked.
Mr. Das took his wallet from his back pocket.
“You need a new wallet. You’ve had that for at least twenty years,” Radha said.
“It does the job,” he said. He opened the coin pouch and pulled out his gold wedding band.
“Is that ours?” Radha asked.
“I never knew what
to do with it,” Mr. Das said. “And then the day I found that gorgeous Jersey City apartment, it fell out of my wallet as I went to pay for a coffee, and I started seeing it as some kind of good luck charm and kept it.”
“I had mine melted down and turned into a pendant,” Radha said.
“See?” Mr. Das said, pointing his ring at Radha. “Not the marriage type.”
He put the ring back into his wallet and put the wallet back in his pocket.
“I feel as though I ought to have some big revelation this week,” Radha said. “A week in the country of my birth with my ex-husband and my new American boyfriend. But I’m pretty happy. I was happy before this trip and I’m going to return and continue being happy. How dull. I can’t even pretend to be shocked by your statement that I’ll never marry David. You’re right, I won’t. I love him and will stay with him but I don’t want another marriage. But I’ve known that all along; that’s nothing new.”
“Well then, I’ll have the revelation for us both, Radha. I think I want to see where things go with Mrs. Sethi,” Mr. Das said.
FRIDAY MORNING
Colebrookes: Across Town, Half a Sleeping Pill Later, Shefali Has Woken Up Happy; She Slept Beautifully Last Night and Her Eyes Look Bright Today and Pavan Is Perfect for Her
“MARIANNE,” TINA SAID. “ARE YOU awake?”
There was no answer so slightly more loudly Tina again said, “Are you awake?”
“Tina, when you ask me that it wakes me up, you know?” Marianne said. “What is it? It’s really early.”
“A reality show about Bubbles,” Tina said. “And lavish Indian weddings in general.”
She propped herself up on her elbow and looked over at Marianne in her bed.
“I’d watch hours of Bubbles Trivedi doing pretty much anything,” Marianne said, stretching her arms up and out. She reached over and looked at her phone and placed it back down on the table and took a sip of water from a Bisleri bottle.
