“Good afternoon,” Mrs. Ray said, feeling incapable of saying more. The Jhas had a handsome new neighbor. Handsome in the way none of the men in her world were. Did people in Gurgaon look different from people in the rest of Delhi, she wondered.
“Lovely day,” Upen said. “You can feel winter around the corner.”
“Thank goodness. It’s been a hot summer,” Mrs. Ray said, reaching instinctively to stroke her neck. She had meant to stroke it to imply that the summer had been sweaty, but she realized now that her gesture was far too sexual for a woman her age.
Upen was going to ask her more, for his brother’s sake, when he found his eyes lingering on the spot on her neck that she had just touched. A thin gold chain vanished into the neckline of her kurta and Upen was too distracted to say more.
“Well, I must be off then,” he said, and walked briskly away in the direction of the main road. He was not used to finding women over the age of thirty-five attractive.
Mrs. Ray watched him turn and walk away. She wanted to continue the conversation; she wanted to know more about him, but she had lost her window. In any case, his wife was probably somewhere inside their home, and she knew that women rarely appreciated it when their husbands spoke to her.
“Good afternoon, madam,” Balwinder said from behind her, now that Upen had left. “You have just shifted in, madam?” he asked her in Hindi.
“My friends. Not me. I have just come with them to see the house today,” Mrs. Ray said. “You work here?”
“Yes, madam,” Balwinder said. So she wasn’t the lady of the house then, he thought. That means the woman in the tidy matching saris and blouses who sometimes came by taxi and opened the gate herself was the lady of the house. How strange. “I work for Mr. and Mrs. Chopra, and their son, Johnny. Madam, they will be staying here from tonight onward?”
“No, not yet. They’re just getting some work done today—getting showers fitted, air conditioners, dishwasher, and so on. I think they will be shifting in a few days.”
Mrs. Ray smiled and nodded good-bye and walked along the lane. It was quiet and one side was lined with trees. She couldn’t see into any of the houses because they all had high fences and gates with guards outside them. Some of the guards had big mustaches and bigger guns, and they ignored her completely. Some of the less imposing ones watched her as she walked past. As lovely as these homes were, she would be lonely living in one of them, she realized. All the lives here were so private. Did more money mean more secrets? If she had more money, she would have entertained the idea of moving to Europe, at least for a little while, after her husband died. Instead she had just worked to continue living the exact life she had been living before his death, with nicer bedsheets and peppermint foot cream. She had never even bought a new bed. She probably wouldn’t actually have traveled the world, but if she had money, she would at least have allowed herself to think about it. She would have imagined walking the streets of Paris or Amsterdam or Lisbon and taking dance classes and reading books while sitting near lakes and ponds and rivers. She would have planned to return to India eventually because she could not bear the thought of dying anywhere but here, but she could have imagined sampling a different life. Only the rich claim that money can’t buy happiness.
Mrs. Ray continued walking toward the end of the Jhas’ lane and turned left at the end of the street, toward the main road. There were hardly any people anywhere. Unlike the lanes around Mayur Palli, here there were no hawkers on the road selling cigarettes or tiffin boxes or bindis. There were no groups of maids sitting around having lunch and gossiping. There were no stray dogs or cows. It was all empty and quiet and neat and tidy. Even the drains that ran along the side of the road were covered. Who could blame the Jhas for moving when even the government seemed to prefer this part of town? Not just compared to the slums where people lived on top of each other in rooms the size of cupboards, but compared to East Delhi where people like her lived. There was no visible stagnant water anywhere in Gurgaon.
Near the gate of a house at the corner, Mrs. Ray saw a white BMW stopped but running, with two women standing and talking near it. They both looked, at first glance, like she did—one was wearing jeans and a kurta and the other was wearing black yoga pants and a red jacket. They were probably in their late forties, just a few years older than Mrs. Ray. Or, more likely, they were a full decade older but were better preserved through lotions and potions and less exposure to the polluted Delhi air. Both had sunglasses propped up on their heads. Unlike her, though, diamonds flashed from their wrists, their ears, their fingers, and their noses, and their hair looked professionally blow-dried. They were both wearing makeup that had caked itself into the creases near their eyes. Mrs. Ray heard snippets of their conversation as she walked past.
“…salwar kameez to yoga class. Just imagine…”
“…just not the same anymore…”
“…the new people…”
“…Upen was at the LRC, I heard…”
She smiled at the women as she walked past. Both of them went silent, smiled weakly back, and watched her walk away. She wondered what they thought of her. Did she look obviously like an outsider? A poor wolf in sheep’s clothing. Mrs. Ray made her way to the main road, where it felt more like the Delhi she was used to. She could hear traffic rumbling by, and there was a man pushing a cart full of guavas for sale. Mrs. Ray waved him over and picked a ripe guava and asked him to cut it in fours and powder it with the spicy orange masala they all carried in little plastic bags near the fruit. The man did as he was told, displaying no interest in her, asking no questions. Even the street vendors here were different from the ones in the lanes around Mayur Palli. Here, they were not interested in her or her life. There, they wanted to know everything, and every interaction quickly turned into a conversation.
“It’s a good time of year for guavas,” Upen said. He had seen the woman next door from down the street and had composed himself enough to redirect his run her way, anxious to be able to speak to her without trying to see where her necklace fell. He had been caught off guard, yes, but being nervous around women was simply not his style. And, despite his age, he thought he looked quite good out for a jog.
“It is, yes,” Mrs. Ray said, surprised to see him again. Had he come toward her deliberately? What were the rules of this world? She wondered what the two women around the corner would do in her situation. Would they, like young women in films, toss their hair back casually, make a joke, touch his arm, and laugh? Or was one of them Mrs. Chopra, who would come charging around the corner in a rage?
“Would you like one?” Mrs. Ray asked, feeling her stomach tighten into a ball.
Upen smiled and picked a guava and handed it to the vendor to cut.
“No masala,” he added. “It looks suspiciously orange, doesn’t it?”