“Best in the world,” Jiten added.
Sabina’s face lit up in a bright smile, and there was a hint of bashfulness mixed with pride. It was the first time Meena noticed her beauty. When Sabina’s features—bright black eyes, high cheekbones, thick arched brows, and full red-painted lips—were relaxed, the woman was stunning. Meena fiddled with the zipper on her purse. Sam helped her open it, and she took out her phone. It had been hard to leave her camera back in the apartment, but she’d been invited as a guest.
“Do you mind if I snap some pictures? Everyone looks so great,” Meena asked.
The aunties were dressed in saris, with Sabina in red, Uma in an eggplant color, and Tanvi in bright pink.
“Later.” Sabina waved her off. “Sit and talk with us. This is not work.”
Meena did as told and tried not to put her back up at Sabina’s stern tone. It was her party, her rules.
“How are you settling in?” Jiten asked.
Meena gave a rote reply, then decided she needed to be a better guest. “You have a lovely home.”
“It’s my wife’s main passion.” Jiten patted Sabina’s knee. “Not just our apartment but the Engineer’s House. To preserve its history falls on her shoulders. It was her grandfather who bought this building in 1932.”
“He was part of a contingent of Indians who came here from the 1920s to the late forties,” Sabina said. “Over a hundred of them came to study at MIT right before the fall of the British Raj in India. My grandfather’s uncle was one of the first.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Not many do,” Uma opined. “Even Indians who’ve been born and raised here don’t know about it. Mostly people assume Indians came here in the 1970s.”
“Once the quotas opened up in sixty-five, more Indians began to migrate here,” Vin said. “But before the end of colonialism in India, this group of mostly Gujarati men came here to study. They were in civil work in India, working for the British, but they did not want to go to the UK. They came here instead, knowing that the Raj was coming to an end because of what Gandhi and others were doing. They paid their own way and studied engineering at MIT so they could go back and rebuild India. They aspired to remake the country.”
“It wasn’t easy for them.” Sabina’s face softened. “They were a different kind of foreigner. They had wealth, but because they were not white, they had very little community and faced a lot of discrimination. So my grandfather bought this building, through a trust, and invited his fellow Indians to live here while they were studying. He stayed instead of going back, to oversee a sort of dormitory, make those that came feel a sense of home.”
“Most went back,” Jiten added. “Except five.”
“At first they stayed as constants, welcoming new students as they came. Helping them adjust,” Vin said. “Then they stayed to make a go of it in America.”
“They turned this building from a single residence into five separate apartments.” Sabina’s chest puffed with pride. “Like the communal homes in India. They lived separately and collectively. Open doors between the families, no need for formal invitations. They went back to India to marry and started their families here. The children, our parents, were raised by all of the adults.”
Meena finally understood the symbolism of the unlocked door. She hadn’t welcomed them freely into the space they’d been used to going in and out of their whole lives, as a matter of tradition. She’d been keeping them out.
“And the same for us, and our children.” Tanvi smiled. “Right, Sam?”
“It took an entire year of my meager ten-year-old allowance to pay Uma auntie back for breaking her window with a baseball,” Sam said.
“You were a good kid,” said Uma. “Each generation assimilated more and more within American culture, but we kept a lot of our heritage, our traditions. Our parents taught us. We teach our children.”
Meena caught the pointed look Sabina gave her son. “Our parents didn’t have easy access to Indian groceries. It is only in the last twenty years that all these Patel Brothers opened. Before, they would bring suitcases full of masala and dal and nuts, everything they could, from India. Then each family would share with others.”
“Did Neha have a large family?” Meena wanted to know if there were others, if she shared DNA with anyone else.
“She was an only child,” Sabina said. “Her parents moved to Nairobi after Neha received her master’s degree from Harvard.”
“They left her the apartment?”
“It goes to the eldest child,” Sabina explained. “At twenty-five.”
“She wasn’t married when she took it over?”
“No,” Uma said. “It’s not a requirement. Neha put it off for as long as possible. Then, in her early thirties, she agreed to an arranged marriage with Kaushik.”
“What happens if there are no children?”
Silence enveloped the room.
“Neha was the only one, to date, who did not have any.” Sabina sipped her drink. “I spoke with her about the future, offered to buy her unit. You can only sell if it is to one of the descendants of the original five. But she was stubborn and refused me. Several times. She wanted to decide who to leave the apartment to. I finally agreed to it with the caveat that whoever inherited the apartment would have the option to sell it to one of us after a year if they chose to do so.”
They all looked at Meena. She didn’t know if she was supposed to agree or disagree to whatever wasn’t being directly asked. She chose to stay quiet.