“I live in Chandigarh, yes,” Upen said.
Mrs. Jha appreciated the clarification. So her husband had been right—there was no family. That was the likely situation, of course. Family men didn’t come to visit their brothers without the rest of the family.
“Well, my friend, Reema…she has been wanting to visit Chandigarh for some time now. She is very interested in the Rock Garden there, but she doesn’t know much about the city and I’m afraid I’m of no help either—I have never been there. Perhaps you could give her some advice? It isn’t easy to travel in India as a single woman, so as her friend, I would feel much better knowing that a neighbor is helping her,” Mrs. Jha said.
“Of course. It would be my pleasure. Chandigarh is indeed a great city. It was designed by Le Corbusier, did you know that?”
“Oh yes, I’m sure it’s lovely,” Mrs. Jha said. “But no need to tell me all about it. Why don’t you give Reema a call instead?”
Mrs. Jha gave him Mrs. Ray’s phone number and felt an odd thrill. Surely they were too old for such behavior. This was what the young girls did—calling boys and telling them to call their friends. This was not what her generation did. In her generation, parents called other parents and talked about their children, who then met and got married. She was a little envious, she admitted to herself. After all, it was Mrs. Ray who was now going to get the phone call and whatever else followed. But probably nothing else would follow, Mrs. Jha reasoned. They were all too old now.
Mrs. Jha was in the bedroom closing the last two suitcases when she heard Mr. Jha come in the front door from his haircut.
“Bindu!” he shouted. “The sofa has arrived. They brought it to the Gurgaon house but I did not want them to leave it there unattended so I told them to bring it here. We’ll take it with us when we go on Monday.”
“How is the sofa here early? Anil, there’s no space for it. And now we’ll have to pay again to move it to the new house. Why did you get it sent here? I thought you were out getting a haircut.”
“I was. You know, in America, they call a haircut lowering the ears,” Mr. Jha said while behind him three men carried in the large black sofa with Swarovski crystals embedded into the stitching that Mr. Jha had had custom-designed and ordered from Japan. “See? Because the tops of the ears are more visible after a haircut.”
“Anil, why did you tell them to bring it here?”
“Bindu, they called from Gurgaon and there was nobody there to accept it. This is exactly why we need to hire a guard. The Japanese are too efficient is the problem. I wonder if the new neighbors will like this sofa. Just look at how the crystals catch the light.”
“What do the neighbors have to do with it?” Mrs. Jha asked.
“They just seem like they have good taste,” Mr. Jha said. “It doesn’t make sense to live in a new neighborhood and stick to all our old ways.”
“What are you talking about?” Mrs. Jha said.
“Nothing in particular. Just that the same way Mayur Palli has its norms and customs, so does Gurgaon. You asked for Mrs. Ray’s opinion before we bought our new fridge, didn’t you?”
“Anil, just please don’t let them remove all the packaging. I don’t want to have to repack the whole thing in two days.”
The men put the sofa down in the middle of the living room, waited for their tip, and left. The sofa was not made for their small Mayur Palli living room, and between the old furniture, the packed boxes and suitcases, and now the new sofa with the glinting crystals, you could no longer see the floor. Perhaps it was better this way, Mrs. Jha thought; perhaps it was better to spend this last weekend surrounded by chaos and furniture so that when they did finally get to Gurgaon with all their things and all the excess space and silence and greenery, she would feel a sense of relief that would overpower her sense of sadness.
On Monday morning, Shatrugan opened the gates to allow the Reading Moving Company van into the Mayur Palli compound. Nobody had moved in or out of this building in years. Some of the older couples had gone abroad to spend months at a time with their children, but no family had fully packed up and left in at least the last ten years. It was only the younger generation that left—to go to colleges or to their husbands’ homes in other parts of Delhi or the world. When the younger ones left, it never felt permanent. Their moves did not involve vans and sweaty men. Their departures were not talked about for weeks in advance and for weeks to follow. Their moves were done by their parents, in their cars, with suitcases and bags. The only other departures that took place were by hearse or ambulance, and those were a different breed of good-byes entirely.
Most people, Shatrugan found, did not die at home. People would get sick and go to the doctor or to the hospital and not survive, but there had only been two deaths in the actual compound. The bodies of those who died at hospitals were usually brought back to Mayur Palli for the neighbors to pay their last respects and because the soul can be freed more easily if the body is brought home before it is cremated.
Mr. Jha’s mother was one of the two who died at home. Shatrugan heard rumors from the maids that she had a heart attack on the toilet in the morning. He had never liked Mrs. Jha Senior, but that was an undignified death for anyone. All the rites were performed quickly. She had no other children and her husband had died years before, so they did not have to wait for anyone else to come to town for the cremation. They did not even need to put the body on ice. She was dead in the morning and her body was reduced to ashes by sundown.