“Sir, please call Mr. Chopra-sir and let him know that the neighbors are here. I could not quite see what kind of watch Mr. Jha was wearing, but his wife was wearing big sunglasses.”
“What are you talking about, Balwinder?” Upen said, walking toward the front door of the house. At nearly six feet, Upen was taller than his brother and many men in Delhi. And he was slim. His hair was gray and still thick—it was said about men that if they were lucky and their hair started graying before it started falling, it would remain thick as it grayed. Upen was lucky. He had a neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard to match his hair, and he had inherited their mother’s light brown eyes that made him look like a North Indian warrior who had descended from the mountains and, if anyone were to see Mr. Chopra and his brother side by side, they would find it impossible to believe that the two were related and that Upen was the elder one. Today he was wearing dark jeans and a plain long-sleeved black T-shirt. “Don’t shut the gate. Nimesh just came to drop me home. He has to go and pick up Dinesh and Geeta from the mall.”
Balwinder followed Upen to the front door.
“Sir, please call Mr. Chopra and tell him to hurry home.”
“Balwinder, you’re a stubborn fellow,” Upen said. “My brother doesn’t know how good you are. I should offer you more money and take you to Chandigarh.”
Upen dialed his brother on the phone.
“Dinesh, this guard of yours wants me to tell you that the new neighbors are here. And something about a watch and the wife’s sunglasses.”
“They’re there now?” Mr. Chopra said. He was at the DLF Mall waiting in line for a scoop of M?venpick ice cream while his wife collected a stone figurine of pugs in a basket that they had ordered from a home décor shop. “How long have they been there? Have you sent the car back? I hope we get back in time to speak to them properly. Hold on.” Mr. Chopra was at the head of the line. “Two scoops of chocolate swirl caramel. I want it with a wafer cone but keep the cone separate. Put the ice cream in a cup and hand me a cone. Otherwise it gets too soggy and you can’t properly enjoy the cone. Give me two cones. My wife will also like one. But no ice cream; she is gaining weight.” He returned his attention to his brother and said, “I hope they’re foreigners. Then our property value will go up. Upen, why don’t you make yourself useful and see what you can find out about the neighbors before we get home?”
“I’m not going to pester your poor neighbors. I’m going for a run and if I see them when I’m out, I will be polite, but I’m not going to go cross-examining them about their income. And buy your wife some ice cream. You’ve gained more weight than her.”
“You look like a fool when you go running through the roads here,” Mr. Chopra said. “People will get nervous thinking you are being chased. Nobody runs here. If you insist on exercising, I’ve told you a thousand times to use the gym at the LRC. It has a wonderful sauna.”
“You know I don’t like running indoors. And all the ladies at the LRC make me nervous, the way they look at me. I don’t know why you tell everyone I’m widowed.”
“Widowed is much easier to explain than divorced. Very few of the men at the LRC are widowed; all the widowed women are looking to see if you’re interesting. And most of the other women know that with their husbands’ eating habits, they will also soon be widowed. But nobody wants a divorcé. That is exactly why you should go to the LRC. I don’t know how you can handle being all alone in Chandigarh. Are you putting up with some young college student again?”
“You go eat your ice cream and do your shopping. I will get changed and go for my run.”
Upen put the phone down and went upstairs to the guest room to get changed. He had to admit he was also slightly curious about these new neighbors. Maybe they really would be foreigners. He would not usually have cared much, but the truth was that he had recently had a brief affair with Sue, a young American filmmaker who was directing a film in Chandigarh and was using his marble-and-tile warehouse to shoot. The young woman, “a bisexual” she had freely said about herself, was half Irish, half Indian, and was making a feature film about farmers in Punjab. Upen met her the first day she arrived at his factory and spent the next three weeks sleeping with her when she wasn’t filming. After that, she packed her equipment and her actors and headed to Sri Lanka for the next segment of their filming schedule without even pretending she might be interested in seeing him again.
Maybe his brother was right about using the gym at the LRC. Part of the reason for coming to Delhi was to meet some new people, after all. Chandigarh got boring day in and day out with its neatly laid-out streets and small-town mentality. He would go for a run outside today and try the gym at the LRC tomorrow. Upen sat and tied his laces on the large wooden swing that Mr. Chopra had installed on the front porch. He could hear voices and activity from the front yard next door.
Mr. and Mrs. Jha were having an argument about the bathrooms in the house while workers stood in the driveway holding materials for the showers that were going to be installed.
Mrs. Ray, who was sitting on one of the discarded plastic chairs in the front lawn listening to the Jhas argue over a bathtub, knew she was about to be asked to pick a side, so she stood up and walked toward the gate.
“I’m just going to walk down the lane and take a look at the other homes,” she said as she opened the gate.
“A bathtub is terrible for the environment, Anil. Even a shower is much worse than a bucket and mug, but I’ve agreed to that,” Mrs. Jha said.
“Bindu,” Mr. Jha said. “Why leave a carbon fingerprint when you can leave a carbon footprint?”
Mrs. Ray pulled the gate shut. Outside, under the banyan tree, Balwinder was snoozing when he was woken up by the creak of the Jhas’ gate. He got up in a rush and brushed off the dirt and grass that was sticking to his pants. Although Balwinder was hoping for another sighting of the pretty maid, he was happy to see the glamorous woman next door come out. He was about to say hello when Upen pulled the Chopras’ gate open and stepped out, and the woman next door looked only at Upen.
Balwinder was used to this. He was mostly invisible on this street. He didn’t blame anyone. When he went to Sugandha’s neighborhood, he was the wealthy one and he had the luxury of ignoring the poorer, dirtier men who hung around in the narrow alleys around her building. And being invisible here made it easier for him to observe others. The woman next door, in her tight jeans and short red kurta, was beautiful, and Balwinder noticed Upen also taking her in.
“Good afternoon,” Upen said, bowing his head toward the woman who had just pulled the gate shut next door. Upen had not expected someone so beautiful to step out of that driveway.