He walked back through the living room and dining room to the kitchen and kneeled by the paint can. He used the wooden tip of the paintbrush handle to wedge the lid open. The paint was yellow. Mr. Jha dipped the hardened bristles into the paint, stood, and picked up the stepladder. He didn’t like spiders. He was, in fact, quite scared of spiders and under any other circumstances, he would have first used something to clean the cobweb off before touching the ladder, but he had no time tonight. He took the ladder and paintbrush back out to the foyer, a series of yellow paint drops marking his path behind him. The leg of the ladder bumped a shelf in the living room on the way, and a small glass figurine of a butterfly tumbled to the ground and shattered. Mr. Jha stopped. He leaned the ladder against the wall and used his socked foot to kick the broken pieces under the shelf. He picked the ladder up and continued to the foyer.
He placed it down and looked up, the paintbrush now hanging limply from his hand, paint pooling under it, where he stood. The ceiling was domed here and he could see that the top would be difficult to reach. They say you aren’t supposed to climb to the top platform of a stepladder. But then they say a lot of things, Mr. Jha reasoned with himself. They say every generation should be more successful than the previous one, but they had clearly never lived in Gurgaon. He climbed up the ladder as it creaked under his weight. Slowly he reached the top, one foot still socked, one still bare. He stood upright. With his left hand he held the light that hung about a foot down from the ceiling and steadied himself. With the paintbrush in his right hand, he reached toward the sky, toward the center of the mural. He would need to perch higher on his toes. The ladder shifted slightly and Mr. Jha tightened his grasp around the metal rod of the light. With the brush, he reached up and pulled a small yellow streak against the painting. He needed a bit more height. A drop of yellow paint dripped onto his forehead and blended with his sweat. Mr. Jha shook his head to stop it from falling into his eye. He reached higher as he heard behind him, “Papa? Papa? What are you doing?”
Mr. Jha turned to look and saw his son standing in the doorway. As he turned, the ladder creaked and swayed and gave way below him. Rupak reacted immediately. When he was growing up, his father had always taught him that if someone was about to fall from a ladder or a chair or a stool, you had to rush to grab the person, not the ladder or chair or stool. The person—it was the person who needed protecting. Rupak remembered standing guard as his father climbed on stools and chairs in Mayur Palli to change lightbulbs or fix the time on clocks. He had always stood there nervously, unsure he was big enough to save his father from a fall. But his father never fell. Rupak thought of that as he rushed to his father. Mr. Jha fell into his son’s arms. Rupak fell to the ground. His father, with one sock on, fell on him. The paintbrush fell on the floor beside them. The wooden ladder fell on them both. A small spider scrambled off the ladder and down Mr. Jha’s pant leg.
Mrs. Jha came to the door, followed by Mr. and Mrs. Chopra and Johnny, to see what was taking her husband so long. Balwinder came running up behind them and said in Hindi, “He’s gone mad?”
Everyone else remained where they were. Rupak could feel his father breathing heavily on top of him. He thought he felt him trembling and he wanted to put his arms around his father. There was a click and Rupak looked toward the door and saw Balwinder putting his phone away, having taken a picture.
“Balwinder, get out,” Mr. Chopra said. “I should never have bought you a phone with a camera.”
“I…” Mr. Jha stuttered. “I was…”
Mrs. Jha wanted to go to him but she didn’t move.
“Papa…” Rupak started, unsure how to go on. “Papa has been to the Sistine Chapel. He loves it. And he was trying to correct one of the…” Rupak looked up at the ceiling. There wasn’t any yellow anywhere. “Rays of sunshine? There’s some more sun right in the middle of the original.”
“What? There’s no sunlight…” Mrs. Chopra said.
“He’s right,” Mrs. Jha said. “The sun. Anil has always been such a fan of the Sistine Chapel. And he’s such a perfectionist, you know. That’s why he’s so successful, but sometimes it goes too far.”
Rupak got up and helped his father up. They left the ladder and the paintbrush on the ground. Rupak guided his father to the door, where his mother took over, putting her arm through her husband’s and leading him out. Rupak looked into the living room, found his father’s shoes and second sock, and picked them up.
“It was very nice meeting you tonight,” he said to the Chopras, then followed his parents out into the darkness.
“She’s too old to be getting married,” Mr. Jha said. It was Saturday afternoon and he was lying on the sofa, a crystal poking him in the back, blankly flipping channels. A flannel blanket was wrapped around his legs. He had been avoiding discussing Mrs. Ray’s wedding celebration ever since she had announced it three weeks ago.
“It’s a mockery of the whole institution,” he continued. He changed the channel again from the news about an unexpected winter downpour in Bangalore to a channel that played Bollywood songs on a loop. “There’s nothing good on television these days.”
“Stop wasting time watching television every evening. You need to get out,” Mrs. Jha said. She was sitting on the chair near him, putting an extra hook on her blouse because, much to her pleasure, she seemed to have lost a bit of weight since returning from New York. “And there’s no such thing as too old to be getting married. We should be happy for her. I’m sad that she’s moving to Chandigarh, but it’s very exciting for her. Reema deserves this.”
“They’ve only known each other for a few months,” Mr. Jha said. “Besides, it’s too cold to even go outside. I wouldn’t be surprised if it starts to snow in Delhi one of these years.”
He adjusted his blanket.
“They call these ‘throws’ in America, Bindu,” he said. “You’re meant to just casually throw it on the sofa, not keep it neatly folded away in the closet.”
“We had only met twice before we got married, Anil. These things don’t matter. In many ways online dating is similar to arranged marriage. I think gradually people are returning to that way of doing things.”
“There’s an app now that lets you find someone according to distance—so you can say you want to find a person within only a one-kilometer radius and bam, you can marry your neighbor,” Mr. Jha said.
“I don’t think those programs are for marriage,” Mrs. Jha said. “Tonight will do us good. All three of us just need an evening out. Reema has asked Rupak to film the whole reception. He’s saying he’s going to edit it and make it into a video to give them. The dinner starts at eight p.m. If we leave at seven forty-five, that should give us enough time. Although I’m not quite sure how parking works.”
“How will it take only fifteen minutes to get there? Where is it? If it’s outdoors, I don’t think we should go. It’s too cold in Delhi this time of year,” Mr. Jha said. “I don’t want to get sick. I don’t want you to get sick.”
“It’s at the LRC,” Mrs. Jha said. “Maybe we can even look into a membership while we’re there. Surely that’ll cheer you up.”