“I don’t know why you are in such a state. Go do some work and once they have settled in, we will call them over for a drink,” Mrs. Chopra said.
“It is not that simple,” Mr. Chopra said. “It’s almost noon. Please go and put a sari on. Wear that new Manish Malhotra one you just bought.”
“That one is too nice to wear around the house. This is fine for now. I’ve got Sunita coming over to give me a pedicure later anyway.”
“Why can’t you get a pedicure while wearing the new sari?”
“I also want a full massage. My back has been hurting lately from all this weight I’ve gained,” Mrs. Chopra said, and rubbed her back and laughed.
Mr. Chopra went back to staring out the window. Ladies were changing these days, but his wife refused to. Just look at Upen’s ex-wife. She had had an actual affair. Not that Mr. Chopra wanted his wife to have an affair, but she could at least try losing a bit of weight.
“Why don’t you go to a proper beauty parlor instead of having Sunita come home?” Mr. Chopra said. “And please get your upper lip threaded as well.”
Mrs. Chopra ran her finger across her upper lip and said, “No need yet. I’ll give it another week.”
Mr. Chopra heard a car coming down the road. Sunita took a bus from wherever it was that she lived and then walked in from the main road, so it had to be the new neighbors.
“They’re here. They’re here,” he said. “I must go and say hello. It is time, Geeta. Keep your fingers crossed that they have come back from London.”
Mr. Chopra looked over at his wife, now focused on Bollywood music videos and thoughtlessly fingering the six-lakh diamond necklace around her neck while a gold bangle still lay on the floor. Mrs. Chopra, originally Ms. Khanna, came from wealth; she came from a family of farm owners in Ferozepur, and she didn’t have the same relationship with money that he did. Since before independence, her family had endless acres of farms. Her brothers were all politicians in Ferozepur with mistresses in Chandigarh. When the British army showed up in their village on the morning of August 14, 1947, to draw a border and create India and Pakistan, the Khannas on the other side of the border merely got up, walked across to the Indian side, and immediately started work on claiming new land to make up for what they had lost to the other side. They did not complain about the British—and how could they? Before independence, most of their closest friends were British, and Mrs. Chopra’s parents firmly believed Indian independence was to be a temporary misfortune. They died waiting for the British to come back. They did not dramatize the separation of the countries, and they did not worry about the massacre that followed. They were very aware of what they could and could not control, so they quietly set about re-creating whatever they had lost, through whatever means needed. And this was the attitude with which Mrs. Chopra lived every day.
Mr. Chopra’s parents, on the other hand, made their money in the construction business in Chandigarh after independence, and it did not come easily. There were financial ups, and there were downs and more downs, and it took quite a while for it to become largely ups. They had gained membership to the local club and then lost it because of an inability to pay the annual dues. They then managed to get in again, but it was never quite the same. He was aware of what his parents had been through, and that always made him nervous about his own money, even though his father had bought him the mica mine when he was eighteen and he had never actually experienced any difficulty. His older brother, Upen, had never been afraid. He had taken over their parents’ construction business right in Chandigarh and never cared much about money. He was more interested in trying to convert people to using solar power than making money for himself. That was probably why his wife had an affair and eventually left him to move to Hong Kong with a hedge fund manager. Not that Upen’s life seemed to have been destroyed by any of this. He looked fitter and younger than Mr. Chopra even though, at sixty-three, he was four years older. What, he wondered, was the secret to his brother’s youth? He didn’t even eat meat.
Mr. Chopra himself had worked extremely hard in the beginning. And it paid off. Now he only went to the mine two or three days a month, and he usually chartered a helicopter to get there. The mine was in the Bhilwara district in Rajasthan, which was close enough to do in a day but far enough to justify spending a night if he needed a night away from his wife’s nagging. The rest of the time he did the minimal work required to manage the mine from his home office.
Mr. Chopra made his way down the driveway toward the gate. He saw Balwinder, the security guard, snoozing.
“Balwinder! Do we pay you so much just to sleep all day?” he said. “Get up. And how many times have I told you to wear your hat even if we aren’t expecting visitors?”
Balwinder lazily picked up his hat, brushed off the dust, and placed it on his head. He liked working for the Chopras. There was hardly anything for him to do. On days when Mr. Chopra went to Bhilwara, he opened the gate once in the morning to let Mr. Chopra’s Jaguar out and once in the evening to let Mr. Chopra’s Jaguar back in. Other than that, he only had to open the gate a few times a week to let Mrs. Chopra’s BMW in and out as she headed to the mall or her ladies’ lunch parties.
The Chopras were good employers. They made him sleep out near the gate only on nights when they were having parties. Other than that, he went to his quarter at the back at ten p.m. and anybody who needed to be let in or out buzzed the bell at the gate that rang in his room. The only one who went in or out after ten p.m. was Johnny, and Johnny always had pretty young girls in flimsy clothing with him. Just last Sunday he had seen Johnny and a girl stumble out of a taxi and down the driveway. About halfway there, Johnny had pushed the girl against the compound wall and slipped his hand down the front of her tight jeans. The girl tilted her head back and moaned, and the image kept Balwinder warm through the night.
Mr. Chopra peered over the gate and saw Mrs. Jha step out of a taxi.
“Sir, would you like me to open the gate? Or call for the car?” Balwinder said.
Mr. Chopra ducked down and said through clenched teeth, “Be quiet, you good-for-nothing. I am trying to see the new neighbors. And put your hat on properly.”
Mr. Chopra waited a few seconds and then went back on his toes to look through the protective barbed wire on the top of the gate. It was a regular black-and-yellow taxi. Not air-conditioned. The woman inside was wearing a simple pale pink sari, heavily starched, with a dark pink blouse, and Mr. Chopra’s first thought was that the new neighbors had fancier maids than he did. Perhaps it was time to put his staff in uniforms.