“I don’t quite remember the days following that, so I suppose that’s the violence. My mind doesn’t remember it.”
She looked over at Upen, who was listening and didn’t seem scared. But still she smiled to offer him a possible reaction—as wonderful as he was being so far, she knew it was impossible to know how to react to this story.
“Thank you for asking. Honestly,” she said. “I think it honors his memory to talk about it. He was a very logical man—about life, death, and everything in between. He wouldn’t want his own death to be shrouded in silence.”
“He sounds wonderful,” Upen said. “It seems like it was a good marriage.”
“It was,” Mrs. Ray said. “It wasn’t exciting, but it was good. It was very good.”
“Excitement doesn’t last,” Upen said. “A good spouse is someone with whom you can successfully run a boring nonprofit organization. Don’t you think? Most things fade. But you need to find someone you can do the boring things with. See, that’s why the whole arranged-marriage idea worked for so many generations. The expectations were more realistic; divorce rates were lower. Marriage isn’t the same as courtship. Marriage is companionship. And that online dating that all the young people do these days is basically what our parents and grandparents were doing for us for years—using a formula to work out compatibility.”
“That’s a bleak way of looking at it,” Mrs. Ray said. “What about romance?”
“That’s exactly it, though. That’s the romance!” Upen said. “You can’t have a lifetime of flowers and holidays. The romance comes from finding the boring stuff fun—like this. Like walking around Dilli Haat. And you can usually guess when that will be there—like with you and me—we’re both in the same place in our lives, we’re both looking for companionship, we both get along, have similar ideals and views. I’m telling you—if our parents were alive, they’d arrange our marriage.”
Mrs. Ray laughed.
“And you’d come with your family to meet me and I’d make tea and bake a cake and sit across from you looking coy?”
“Exactly,” Upen said. “And your mother would tell us how good you are at cooking and maintaining a home. And educated—they’d tell us you’re educated because clearly we’re a modern family.”
“Not too educated, though,” Mrs. Ray said.
“No. Certainly not too educated. Nothing that would threaten me,” Upen said, also laughing. “And then I’d go home and tell my parents you were wonderful and wasn’t the cake delicious and sure, I could see myself spending the rest of my life with you.”
“Romance,” Mrs. Ray said with a smile.
“Romance.”
A group of school students, still in their uniforms, sat down at the table next to them and called loudly for a waiter. Mrs. Ray heard them order plates of steamed vegetarian momos, chicken chow mein, and cups of tea. They had personalized their school uniforms—crisp white collared shirts with blue pleated skirts for the girls and blue slacks for the boys—with scarves and jewelry and fluorescent bras that were ever so slightly visible. One of the boys was wearing a necklace. Mrs. Ray looked at them with admiration. Surely the young girls in this group, with their skirts rolled up at the waist to show more leg, and buttons undone to show hints of their young breasts, would not grow up and turn into Mrs. De or Mrs. Gupta. Surely these girls would let each other live in peace no matter what the future held for them. One of the girls and one of the boys were the couple in the group. Mrs. Ray noticed their knees touching under the table and the ease with which they shared a fork. Emboldened by their romance, she allowed her own knee to relax against Upen’s. Two of the boys threw a tennis ball back and forth and all of them chattered loudly, mixing English and Hindi. The tennis ball rolled away from them and landed at Upen’s feet. One of the boys jumped up and came over to retrieve it.
“Sorry, Uncle. Sorry, Aunty,” he said politely and returned to his group. There it was again, Mrs. Ray thought. The world seeing her once again as one half of a couple. And that half felt so much bigger than the one ever had.
“Perhaps next time you can come over for dinner,” Mrs. Ray said. Let the world know, she decided.
Mr. Jha was going to the DLF Emporio Mall to buy a set of branded matching luggage for their upcoming trip to New York. This was the first international trip for which he had booked business class tickets for his wife and himself, and he wanted their luggage to fit their surroundings. Mrs. Jha, of course, had said that it was unnecessary—who was going to see their luggage once it was checked in?—but he was not going to stand in the queue outside the airport, or at the check-in counter, with mismatched suitcases, so when she went to take a shower, he quickly left the house to go shopping. He reversed the car out of the driveway and got out to pull the gate shut because, of course, they had not hired a gatekeeper yet. At the same time, Mr. Chopra’s Jaguar pulled out of the driveway next door while Balwinder pushed their gate shut.
Mr. Jha had not seen Mr. Chopra since the evening at their home, nearly a week ago. It was difficult to keep up with the neighbors when there was no way to know what the neighbors were doing.
Mr. Chopra’s Jaguar came to a stop near Mr. Jha. Mr. Chopra lowered his window and said, “Good morning, good morning. How have you been? Mr. Jha, would you like me to tell Balwinder to shut your gate for you? He won’t mind. He hardly has any work to do here anyway. God only knows what we pay him for.”
“Oh no, no,” Mr. Jha said. Despite the slightly cooler October temperatures, he was already sweating and now this. “Not a problem. We will have our guard here soon. We have just been so busy, you know, with all this settling in and planning our travel. Did I mention that we are off to New York for a holiday? We are leaving in a few days, at the end of this week. And we’ve been so busy, we booked our tickets at the last minute as usual, so you can imagine the cost. Air travel is just so expensive. But it’s time to take a bite of the Big Apple. Have you been?”
Mr. Chopra had not. New York just never interested him. Now Las Vegas—that was a good travel destination. New York was too dangerous. But he had no desire to admit to that.
“Ah yes, to visit your brilliant son. We are looking forward to meeting him. You tell him to study hard and come when he can take a break. And good thing it isn’t peak season—tickets are relatively cheaper this time of year.”