“Well, we should be going,” he said. “We only wanted to come and say a quick hello and see how you’re settling in here.”
“We’re very happy here,” Mrs. Jha said. “It’s such a lovely neighborhood. Quiet, peaceful, calm.”
Mr. Jha smiled at his wife and added, “A real oasis in the middle of the chaos of the rest of Delhi. So wonderful of you to have stopped by.”
“Yes, yes,” Mr. Gupta said. “It’s very nice. Very different from those old expensive bungalows around Aurungzeb Road. Now those are truly unaffordable. It’s nice that they’re making more reasonable neighborhoods like Gurgaon.”
“Well, those big central Delhi bungalows are never for sale,” Mr. Jha said.
“Everything is on sale for a certain price,” Mr. Gupta said.
The Jhas walked the Guptas down the driveway out of the gate and toward their Swift.
“Do come again sometime,” Mrs. Jha said politely.
As the Guptas were about to get into their car, Mr. Chopra’s Jaguar turned onto the lane and stopped right near them. Mr. Chopra put his window down and stuck his head out.
“Friends visiting?” he asked.
“Old friends,” Mr. Jha said. “This is Mr. and Mrs. Gupta.”
“Old neighbors,” Mr. Gupta said. “Come to see their new life.”
“Nice to meet you,” Mr. Chopra said. “I am Dinesh Chopra, the new neighbor. Is that a Swift? Do they still make that car?”
“Evidently so,” Mr. Jha said with a smile. “Nice to see you again, Dinesh. Twice in one day! Golf soon. We must join the LRC.”
“You are joining?” Mr. Chopra asked. “But New York…”
“Lovely seeing you!” Mr. Jha said, and quickly turned his back.
Mr. Chopra waved and put his window back up, and the Jaguar pulled noiselessly into his driveway, and Balwinder pulled the gate shut behind them.
“Lovely neighbors,” Mr. Jha said. “We’ve already become so close. There’s a country club here, which we will be joining. There’s a full golf course.”
“Mr. Ramaswamy is keen for his wife to start a morning yoga class in Mayur Palli,” Mr. Gupta said. “There has been lots of positive response for such a venture. Times are changing. Do come visit.”
With that, Mr. Gupta got in the car and leaned over and unlocked his wife’s door.
“The airport is more like a train station these days. Too many people get to travel. How do more planes not crash into each other?” Mr. Jha said, as their taxi pulled up to the terminal.
“We’ve already survived the most dangerous part of the journey,” Mrs. Jha said. She knew her husband was going to keep talking to keep his nerves about flying at bay.
“But once something happens, there is zero chance of surviving in an airplane. I’ve heard that they’ve reduced the amount of time between takeoffs to less than sixty seconds. That means we can easily bump into the plane ahead of us now. Stop here. Just here is fine. This is the terminal,” Mr. Jha said to the driver.
It went completely against nature to lurch up into the sky and over the seas in a heavy metal tube. But he certainly did admire that Richard Branson fellow. He had heard stories about Branson flirting with young journalists and he was always photographed in white linen clothes looking sun-kissed and youthful. Mr. Jha was getting there, he thought—today he had traded his usual slacks and button-down shirt for a navy blue tracksuit and new white sneakers. Maybe he would buy some nice linen clothes in New York City. He would try to convince his wife to also buy some more fashionable clothes. How would she possibly travel comfortably in the sari that she was wearing? He looked over at her in her matching sari and blouse with her brown jacket on, and darker brown shawl draped on her arm. She looked older than she needed to.
Mrs. Jha tidied the pleats of her sari while the driver went to get a trolley for their luggage. She looked over at her husband in his matching tracksuit and new sneakers and wanted to protect him—from his own fears, from Gurgaon, from New York City, and now from the policeman who was blowing his whistle in Mr. Jha’s face and rapping on the Innova with his wooden stick.
“Move this car along,” the policeman said to Mr. Jha. “Come on. Move it along. Is this your car?”
Mrs. Jha was worried that the policeman would think Mr. Jha was the driver, and she wanted to protect Mr. Jha from that as well. She did not want him to know that his outfit made him look stiff and uncomfortable, the exact opposite of the effect he was hoping it would have. She rushed over to his side and said to the policeman, “The driver is just getting the trolley. He’ll move the car as soon as we have our luggage.”
With their luggage piled up, Mr. Jha pushed the trolley through the crowds toward the main entrance.
“There should really be a separate entrance altogether for business class travelers. What is the point of paying so much extra if we have to wait in line like this?” he said.
“But then you can say they should have a separate lane for cars of business class travelers, then you will say a separate road leading to the terminal, then a separate highway leading out of Delhi. Where will it end? We can’t just separate ourselves endlessly.”
“Bindu, this is not the time or place for your communism. Our tickets are nearly three times the price of economy and this is what we have to deal with,” Mr. Jha said, standing now behind a young family of four and all their bags and chaos. One short curly-haired toddler stared up at him with a finger up her nose.
As soon as the plane touched down on the tarmac at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York City, Mr. Jha unbuckled his seat belt and jumped up from his seat, feeling as though he had just survived an eighteen-hour brush with death.
“Sir, please remain seated until the plane has come to a complete halt and the captain has turned off the fasten seat belt sign,” the flight attendant called out to him from her seat at the front of the cabin.
“Not a problem,” Mr. Jha said to her. “Small bumps don’t worry me.”
He opened the overhead compartment as the plane raced down the tarmac.
“Sir! Please close that and sit down and buckle your seat belt,” the flight attendant repeated, looking toward the other flight attendant strapped into her seat across the aisle.
“Just getting our bags,” Mr. Jha said. “Bindu, get your things together. The sooner we get off, the faster we will get through the line for immigration.”