“I’m not too sure. Maybe you can just take the keys and hold them up to your head near the main shrine? I’m not sure if we should disturb him,” Mrs. Jha said. The priest was standing just a few feet away and looked about as trustworthy as their real estate agent and better fed than any of the gods here. It wasn’t easy to trust someone with visible gold caps on his teeth and rings on most of his fingers, and seeing him now she was reminded again of why she came to the temple less and less these days.
“Now that we’ve come all the way here, may as well get the pujari to actually bless the keys,” Mr. Jha said. “I don’t want to go home without doing it and then have you blaming me and saying I’m impatient and whatnot.”
“I’m just happy you agreed to come. I’m sure God will also be happy,” Mrs. Jha said. “Let’s just give a small donation and go home.”
“You are giving a donation for a blessing?” the priest walked over to the Jhas to ask. “What would you like to have blessed? You know, with the moon in the fifth quarter, it’s an auspicious day today.”
He had been listening. He was always listening for the word donation. If this couple handed him the donation, he would be able to pocket it, but if they put it in the donation box, it would go directly to the temple’s main management. Unfortunately priests didn’t work on commission.
“Our new car,” Mr. Jha said.
“Oh, nothing,” Mrs. Jha quickly added.
“A new car?” the priest said. “A new car must be blessed. You have done well, praise God. People these days come to me only with misfortune upon misfortune. God has been kind to you. It was good of you to come to me. Where is the car? Have you brought a coconut or should I get one?”
“No need, no need,” Mrs. Jha said. “We just came to pay our respects to God. Thank you for taking the time to speak to us. That is more than enough.”
“But, Bindu, we’ve come all this way and he is being so generous,” Mr. Jha said. “Let us at least get the keys blessed. We couldn’t bring the car, but we brought the keys.”
“Well,” said the priest, eyeing the unfinished peace sign symbol of the Mercedes car keys in Mr. Jha’s hands. “I can bless the keys here, but if you would like, for just a small amount—a donation—I can come to your home and do a prayer for the actual car.”
“Just the keys will do,” Mrs. Jha said.
The priest took the keys and said he would take them to the back directly near the idol and sprinkle them with holy water and have them blessed.
“Right here is fine,” Mrs. Jha added. “The evening prayer rush will start soon and I don’t want to delay you.”
Mrs. Jha did not want him taking the keys out of their sight. She had been hearing about a series of crimes in Delhi lately in which thieves apparently took quick imprints of keys in bars of soap and then created copies of the keys and stole things effortlessly. She wasn’t going to fall victim to a key-copying priest.
“Bindu,” Mr. Jha whispered. “Now why are you causing a scene? This is why we came. Let’s get the keys blessed.”
“We are getting the keys blessed. Here in front of us, right now,” Mrs. Jha said.
“But if the keys can get closer to God, we should let them.”
“You be quiet,” Mrs. Jha said. “You have a leather shoe in your pocket. Now let’s just finish up here.”
Mr. Jha took out a hundred rupee note from his wallet, but before he could place it in the priest’s donation bowl, his wife snatched it out of his hand and walked toward the locked wooden donation box near the idol.
“I’ll just put it in directly,” she said to the priest. “Why increase your work?”
She looked over her shoulder, saw her husband busy talking to the priest, put the hundred rupee bill in her wallet, took out a fifty rupee bill, and slipped it into the slot of the locked donation box. Fifty was a lot, but at least now it was going directly to the temple management.
Outside the temple, back in the hot sun, on the dirty asphalt, Mr. Jha felt rejuvenated. He had gotten the priest’s cell phone number and would find out more about a prayer room in Gurgaon. He took his right shoe out of his back pocket, put it on, and limped over to find his left shoe. Mr. Jha picked it up, placed his left foot gingerly in it, flexed his toes against the soft leather, and stood up satisfied. God would protect them.
Behind him, Mrs. Jha also slipped her feet into her sandals, which were hot from the sun, and felt relieved that they had come to the temple. Even if parts of the temple were getting more and more commercial lately, it was still the home of the gods and it was wise to hedge their bets. They would be safer now and, despite not paying extra for the exam time prayers, she was certain that God would look after her son, across the world in America.
In Ithaca, Elizabeth walked into Rupak’s living room, where he was sitting on the floor with his management textbooks spread out around him, all closed, while he flipped through the manual for the new camera flash that had arrived in the mail the previous day. Elizabeth was wearing jeans and a plain white T-shirt, and she held a bottle of water in one hand and her iPad in the other.
“There’s an a cappella concert on the quad. Do you want to go?”
“I should study,” Rupak said.
Elizabeth sat on his lap, straddled him, and kissed his neck.
“If I don’t, how will you marry a rich Indian investment banker? You go. I’ll be more fun after I finish this problem set,” he said.
“You won’t ever marry a white girl anyway,” Elizabeth said, laughing.
“What? That’s not true.”
“Yes, it is. I’m a stopover for you. It’s okay.”
“Hold on,” Rupak said, lifting Elizabeth off his lap.
“I was just joking. Relax,” she said, pinching a section of his neck between her front teeth.
Rupak felt the comfortable stir in his pants. His penis reacted immediately to Elizabeth’s touch, and he sat back and allowed it. He had avoided the relationship conversation with Elizabeth since he’d been back. It was easy to avoid the topic when the sun was shining and they were both busy trying to make the most of the fall. It was even easier since Rupak had hinted that he had told his parents and then quickly changed the topic. He was good at changing the topic.
“How do you find time to study?” he asked Elizabeth now. “I’m struggling to pass and the semester has only just started.”
Elizabeth shrugged her shoulders and got up and walked to Rupak’s kitchen.
“You just do. We’re here to study, right? So that’s what you do. You don’t say you’re studying while playing with your new camera flash.”
“You make it sound easy,” Rupak said, putting the manual aside and picking up a textbook.
“It isn’t hard. It isn’t easy but it isn’t hard. We aren’t in high school being forced to take these classes,” she said, opening his fridge and looking in. “I wish you knew how to cook Indian food.”
Rupak thought back to the chicken curry he had left with the men at the airport and felt guilty. He would call his mother more often, he promised himself. And he would not fail the semester.
“I just can’t seem to focus,” Rupak said, putting the textbook down on the floor and leaning his head back against the sofa.
“That’s because you should be studying film, not business,” Elizabeth said, returning to the living room with a handful of grapes. She sat down on the sofa behind Rupak and ran her fingers through his hair.