Mrs. Jha was one of the few women of her generation who had carried on a full career after getting married and even after having a child. Maybe it was time to consider going back to it now. The house was settled; there was not too much else for her to do all day, every day. And it was so quiet and lonely here. It had been over a week that they had been living here and they had not even met the neighbors yet. In Mayur Palli, even when she did not work, life felt hectic, but here it was too quiet. She could hear her own thoughts too loudly. And she could never be one of those women who spent her days at beauty parlors or out for endless lunches with friends. She did not have to work in quite the same way she used to. She could, perhaps, get a car and driver, for instance. And maybe she could even hire an assistant—a young graduate from the National Institute of Design, maybe, who would be the one to actually go to the villages and find the craftsmen. And Mrs. Jha could handle more of the business side of it.
She looked in the mirror to line her eyes with black kohl, and deep down she knew she no longer wanted to spend hours in the heat and dust of villages. Working with local craftsmen around Rajasthan had been fine, and even rewarding, when she was young and had the energy to drive and spend all day outdoors, using the villagers’ bathrooms and drinking questionable water. Not that she needed this big luxurious house and lifestyle in Gurgaon now, but she was tired of working. There were too many days when it felt hopeless.
So many of the craftsmen she worked with no longer wanted to do what they were doing, and how could she convince them that they should keep embroidering saris by hand in the heat when a machine could do it many times faster? And machines rarely made mistakes and the saris made by the machines cost much less. Most of the craftsmen she worked with lived in villages, but even the smallest villages now had cybercafés and the villagers were all aware that the world was changing in a way it never had before. Some of the craftsmen in Jaipur had heard about her husband’s sale, and they had started pestering her to find jobs in Delhi for their children. One of the women even got angry with Mrs. Jha for being from the big city and not helping to guarantee her children’s future. Why couldn’t she see how much Mrs. Jha was already doing for them? They didn’t understand that she could stay at home in comfort all day long. She did not have to try to help them. She did not have to go back and forth between shops in Delhi and the hot, dirty villages without proper plumbing. She did not have to help them get bank accounts and transport their creations back to Delhi. She did not have to do any of that. And so she just stopped doing it. She told herself it was because of the new house and the big move that was going to require a lot of her attention, but now that was all done and she was just another rich housewife.
Next door, Mrs. Chopra could not find one of her solitaire diamond earrings. It was only a one-carat one, but this was the second time in the past two months that she had misplaced a single earring. The last one, she was fairly certain, had been pulled out of her ear when she was changing and then had probably been thrown into the wash and there was no hope of finding it again. Now where had this one gone? Were the maids stealing? But then why would they steal a single earring? They could easily steal a pair. In fact, they probably had stolen many pairs—Mrs. Chopra never kept track of her jewelry and now that she was looking in her jewelry box, her collection did seem smaller than usual. Maybe she ought to start keeping the more precious pieces under lock and key. But she believed precious things should be treated the same way as nonprecious things. Placing too much value on anything was the simplest way to lose the possible pleasure to be derived from that thing. Still, her husband probably wouldn’t be thrilled that she had lost another earring. It was best not to mention it for now. She put on a pair of earrings that had an oval jade stone set in the center, surrounded by a frame of small diamonds. She fixed the pallu on her new sari—it was a dark blue chiffon sari with red vertical patterns from Rita Bahl’s new collection. Small pieces of onyx were stitched into the hemline, and the pallu was covered with silver zari work. It was quite a heavy sari, but Mrs. Chopra was looking for an excuse to wear it and she did not have to do much other than sit this evening. She checked her reflection in the mirror. She sparkled. She knocked on the bathroom door, told her husband to hurry up, and went downstairs to find her iPad and play some more Angry Birds while waiting for the neighbors.
Mrs. Chopra heard the next-door gate creak open.
“We should get someone in to oil these hinges,” Mrs. Jha said to her husband.
“Once we get a guard, he can probably do it himself,” Mr. Jha said.
Mrs. Jha ignored him. It was so quiet and dark out here. You could barely hear any traffic sounds, let alone hear the neighbors talking. The only sound was the occasional jackhammer at work on a construction site nearby; most construction in Delhi happened under the cover of night, and sometimes all of Gurgaon still felt under construction. What did all these people do in their big houses by themselves, Mrs. Jha wondered? There were four lights on the road and, as they walked the few feet between their gate and the Chopras’ gate, she was grateful for the eight other guards on the street. But she still didn’t think they needed one of their own.
Balwinder saw the Jhas approaching and pushed the gate open for them. He had not had much chance to interact with Mr. Jha, but Mrs. Jha was friendly and comfortable with him—two things that Mrs. Chopra certainly never was.
A few days ago, a taxi had stopped outside the gate and Mrs. Jha had stepped out with bags full of vegetables. Balwinder had walked over to help her open the gate and carry everything all the way in to her house. It was decorated quite differently from the Chopras’ house. The living room, which was all he saw, had minimal furniture—there was a black sofa with jewels on it that stood out—and two big bookshelves along the walls. Balwinder had only studied until seventh grade, so he did not get much pleasure out of reading, but he had always liked the sight of books. And Mrs. Jha was so kind to him. She offered him water and asked him questions about how long he had been working next door and where he was from.