Mrs. Ray looked at Mr. De looking around shiftily, laughing, trying to get the support of the others in the room.
“Besides,” he continued. “The ladies are correct—you can do yoga just as well in a salwar kameez. Probably even better. Mrs. Kulkarni, you are always wise. And Mrs. Baggaria, that is a lovely sari you are wearing today.”
They all agreed with each other, and Mrs. Ray wanted nothing more than to also move away from Mayur Palli. But where would she go? She looked toward Mr. Jha to see if perhaps he would defend her, but he was busy staring down at his shoes. She had hoped Mrs. Jha would be there tonight, but Rupak was due to leave this week so she was at home.
“You know what? It’s fine,” Mrs. Ray said. “It’s okay. I just wanted to mention the yoga pants, and I am glad I did. I trust that I will be left in peace now.”
She looked over at Mr. De, who was just shaking his head and whispering to Mr. Patnaik next to him, and Mrs. Ray regretted not just having mentioned her stolen yoga pants, but having worn them in the first place. She walked out of the meeting room and hurried home before anyone else could catch up with her.
Back in her empty apartment, she poured herself a glass of cold white wine. What else was there to do except wait until Ganga came home and told her about her relatives and the prices they paid for fish and why their fishseller was robbing them blind? Ganga was always full of stories and Mrs. Ray admired her for that.
Ganga had been a widow ever since Mrs. Ray knew her. Ganga’s aunt was Mr. Ray’s parents’ maid in Mumbai, and when Mr. and Mrs. Ray got married and moved to Delhi, Ganga’s aunt told his parents that she had a perfect maid for them—her niece in Calcutta who had recently been widowed and was looking for full-time work and would be happy to move to Delhi. Mr. Ray was thrilled at the thought of having a maid who could cook authentic Bengali prawns in mustard curry and agreed to hire her immediately. In her white widow’s sari, Ganga showed up in Delhi only six months after the Rays had moved to Mayur Palli, and Mrs. Ray had hardly known life in Delhi without her.
Ganga made herself at home in the new city faster than Mrs. Ray had. Within a week, she had walked the entire market area outside Mayur Palli and made friends with the fishseller, the vegetable seller, the cobbler, and the local electrician. Ganga had the luxury of not feeling shame or shyness. It was a perk of being poor. In a city in which all the men stare and many of them touch, Mrs. Ray always noticed how poor women marched around without a care in the world, widowed or not. How was she supposed to continue living here? Now everyone knew about her accusation and once the Jhas moved, she would be left with no friends in the neighborhood. But she had nowhere else to go. She would not know how to sell this apartment and, even if she did, all she would be able to afford with that money would be another similar apartment in a similar housing complex in a similar part of the city with people who would look at her the same way. There was no way to start over.
The doorbell. Mrs. Ray opened it thinking it was Ganga, but it was a man with a big jute bag offering to sell eggs and pav bread.
“This late on a Sunday night?” Mrs. Ray asked him. “You can’t go around ringing bells this late at night.”
“But you will need this for breakfast,” he said.
“No, thank you. And please don’t come so late at night again,” she said, and went to shut the door, but he held it open. He looked small and Mrs. Ray was feeling warmed by the wine, which meant she felt invincible despite the events of the day. But now that he was standing closer, she could tell that he was warmed by something as well. She could smell it on his breath and it was foul.
“But you will need this for breakfast,” he repeated. “Just one egg and one pav, right? Just one?”
Mrs. Ray pushed the door. He pushed back. She thought about screaming, but after the night she had already had, she did not want the neighbors to have the satisfaction of hearing her scream. She considered buying the egg and bread in case that would just get him out, but something about his dry hand pushing against the door told her that he wouldn’t go away after making a sale.
“Stop pushing my door. Go. Get out. Get out or I’ll scream.”
He sucked his teeth.
“Don’t get so upset,” he said, smiling at her. “I’m just trying to take care of you. You must keep your body healthy.”
Mrs. Ray heard metal clanging coming up the stairs. Ganga kept her keys tied to the end of her sari. Through heavy breathing, she heard Ganga say, “Is someone there?”
The man dropped his hand from the door and said, “I’ll check in again some other evening. To see if you need anything.”
Ganga reached the floor. “What are you doing?”
Today, like every day that Mrs. Ray had known Ganga, she was wearing the widow’s uniform of a white sari with a white blouse. Ganga had beautiful dark skin that shone and showed no signs of age. She was short and round and walked with a slight limp.
“Just selling eggs and pav, but madam says she doesn’t need any,” he said, moving past Ganga and down the stairs.
“Fool,” Ganga called out after him. “Don’t come knocking again so late at night. That useless Shatrugan—fast asleep at the gate downstairs.”
Ganga pushed past Mrs. Ray into the apartment, muttering about Shatrugan, and Mrs. Ray wanted to agree with her, wanted to agree with all that Ganga was saying. She wanted to tell Ganga that she was happy to have her home, how were her relatives, what did she eat, did she know that she’d come back at exactly the right moment, but she did not say any of that.
Mrs. Ray wondered if Ganga was also lonely. She used to think Ganga was too busy being worried about being poor to be lonely. Like all the homeless people you see everywhere—they couldn’t possibly have time to be sad. But you couldn’t say that to anyone. Of late she wished she and Ganga could talk about their sadness, their loneliness, their widowhood. But they couldn’t. Instead Mrs. Ray poured herself another glass of wine.
“You don’t need anything more to drink.” Ganga reappeared from her bedroom without her bags. “Let me make you a cup of tea instead.”
She stood in the doorway of the kitchen. Ganga was like a ghost sometimes. She seemed to appear just at the moment you were thinking of her. Mrs. Ray had a dream a few months ago in which Ganga was dead but the doorbell rang and Mrs. Ray knew it was her. In the dream, she opened the door and dead Ganga was standing there in the same white widow’s sari. She looked just like living Ganga except one of her legs was a wooden peg. Mrs. Ray must have screamed when she woke up because Ganga came running to her room. Of course that just terrified her more. But both of her legs were intact, thank God.
“What do you do in that room of yours after dinner in the evenings?” Mrs. Ray said.