After bidding good-bye to Nicky, which Agastaya tried to make bittersweet but which only left him feeling bitter, and trying to summon tears on command, at which he didn’t succeed, Agastaya walked the circuitous loop from the taxi stand to the town square and headed for Baker’s Café. There, he ordered a coffee and looked at his watch.
Nicky had summed it up simply: “We are just from different worlds, Agastaya. I have seen your world, and you’ve seen mine—we can never belong in each other’s life.”
Nicky said he’d have moved out of the apartment, along with Cauffield, by the time Agastaya returned to New York. Agastaya wondered whether Nicky would provisionally move in with Anthony and Anthony Two and if he’d rekindle his romance with Anthony Senior. Nicky canceled the Agra-Jaipur trip. Agastaya would stay in Gangtok another day or two to play nurse to Aamaa while she, a vegetable version of her dynamic former self, conspired against the world.
Shivani was late arriving, but then, she hadn’t lived in the West. And she was female. She perhaps didn’t want to appear overenthusiastic. He had decided to see this woman because no one asked him to anymore. Shivani was a doctor and the daughter of two doctors. She had gone to Tashi Namgyal Academy when the Gorkhaland insurgency in the eighties had forced her and many like her to switch from St. Joseph’s Convent in Kalimpong.
She was a petite woman. The length of her nails unsettled Agastaya. There was no way those nails didn’t scratch or hurt babies when the pediatrician handled them.
“Hello,” she said.
“Oh, hi.” He put his hand forward, which she loosely took.
This was a meeting that the elders had coordinated with the explicit purpose of marriage in mind. She knew it. He knew it. It seemed the world around them knew it, too. Tomorrow, the entire town would be bustling with talk about Chitralekha Neupaney’s grandson drinking coffee with Dr. Dhakal’s daughter.
“Have they been forcing you to see men?” Agastaya asked, in Nepali, as Shivani took her seat.
“They’ve been pretty understanding—meh,” Shivani said, in English. “It’s the relatives who are the instigating type. They talk about the ticking clock like there’s nothing else to talk about. My parents are the understanding type.”
“I am sorry if you didn’t want to see me,” he said, genuinely. In Nepali.
“No, that’s okay.” She asked the waiter for a glass of Orange Crush in English-accented Nepali. “I don’t mind it. Do you?”
“A little bit.” He sugared his coffee. “I mean, I don’t know what the woman is thinking. I am afraid she’s been forced to see me by her parents.”
“We aren’t living in the forties,” Shivani said, finally in Nepali, and then quickly switched to English: “If a woman doesn’t want to see you, she will tell her parents so. No one’s being forced here. Sikkimese parents aren’t the forceful type.”
“Still.” Agastaya stirred his coffee gently and hoped Shivani’s drink would arrive soon.
Silence—the kind that amplified the swishing of doors, tinkling of spoons, and the shuffling of waiters—followed.
“So, you gave the USMLE, right?” she said.
“Yes, I took it,” Agastaya responded, emphasizing the correct verb and feeling like Ruthwa. The medical licensing exam had been easy after the rigors of a degree from JIPMER.
“Would you recommend it for me? I am already specialized. It will be a step behind—backward type—don’t you think?”
Her Orange Crush finally arrived, and he gulped his coffee right after she took her first sip. It was cold.
“It depends on what you want,” he said.
She asked him to elaborate.
“If you want to live in America, you have to take the medical licensing exam even if you’ve specialized—you probably already know that. Would you like to settle down in America?”
She looked at him, and he at her. It was a question with too many layers, too many implications.
“I don’t know. At twenty-seven, I thought I’d have it all figured out, but I know nothing. I sometimes feel I am still the teenage type.”
“Is type your favorite word?” He smiled.
“Do you mean my English isn’t good?” she asked.
“No, you speak excellent English. How do you like your job?”
“It’s a job—am I supposed to be passionate about it?”
“Wouldn’t it make a difference if you were?” he asked. He liked his job.
“I work at the STNM government hospital. I do my thing. I don’t find it rewarding or anything. It’s work. I am not the devoted doctor type.”
“Someone’s a cynic.”
“I’ve done this so long. I want to take a break from it all. Perhaps paint. I am the creative type.”
“Can’t you do that on the side?”
“No. I want to be a hundred percent committed to painting. But you know what the world will say—‘If she didn’t want to become a doctor in the first place, she shouldn’t have claimed the Sikkim quota for a medical seat. Someone else could have gone in her place.’”
She said the world’s part in a squeaky voice, which provoked hushed giggles from the teenagers at the table next to theirs.
“Why do you care about what the world says?” Agastaya asked.
“This isn’t America. It’s society.”
“We are such different people,” he said, his eyes on the ant that was drowning in a sea of ketchup by the window.
“I know,” she replied. “By the way, I am not a virgin.”
He. Didn’t. Need. To. Know.
“I never asked you if you were.”
“I’ve read that all you America-returned types want virgin brides because you find none there,” she said offhandedly. “I am not one of those Sati Sabitri types. I have a past.”
He, too, had his.
“I don’t expect girls to be virgins—not in this age. Have you had a lot of serious relationships?”
The waiter hung around them in the expectation that their order would go beyond two drinks.
“Two serious ones. You?”
“Yes. I am just recovering from one.”
“Indian? Nepali?”
“Neither.” He was speaking the truth.
“A foreigner? Dream conquest?”
“It was more than simply conquest,” he said. “We lived together.”
“Live-in?” she said, with the shock that was the preserve of the Indian bourgeois. “You’re totally American. What happened?”
“We broke off recently. There were too many fights. Different worlds.”
“That’s what I keep hearing from all Indian men who go abroad.”
“The breakup was hard. It still is. But life goes on.”
“How’s your grandmother, by the way?” she asked.
“She’s all right. She still doesn’t talk a lot, which is not very characteristic of her at all.”
“We were all dressing up to go to the Chaurasi. We were late.”
“Yes, we couldn’t even celebrate Bhai Tika the next day. You still haven’t told me about your relationships.”
“Let’s keep it for some other time—maybe tomorrow,” she said. “It’s boring to share everything at the first meeting.”
They exchanged numbers and said their good-byes with handshakes. Agastaya offered to walk her home, but Shivani refused, stating that she had to stop by a friend’s.
A little dazed, Agastaya strolled around the square, hoping he wouldn’t run into anybody who knew him. In this town of well-wishers, there would be plenty of people inquiring about his grandmother’s health. He needed this alone time to mull over life. In the past forty-eight hours, he had gone from being committed to single. He had just met the woman Aamaa hoped he’d get married to.
At Supriya’s Bookstore, on his way back home, he purchased a Debonair, that Indian magazine that had introduced him—and thousands of boys of his generation—to the world of breasts. Prabin Uncle, the owner, was absent, but the manager glared at him—the stare of a man who couldn’t believe that the scion of such a respectable family would read smut—and gave him a copy, which Agastaya, as he did in his youth, rolled into a tube and stuffed into the back of his waistband.
He ran down the stairs of the overpass and down the steps of Zongri, the every-purpose store of his childhood, half of which was now a liquor shop. Before ascending to his grandmother’s house, he retraced his steps to the store and purchased a bottle of Smirnoff.
Once the crowd thinned on the non-liquor side, he asked for a pack of condoms, praying the shopkeeper of his childhood wouldn’t recognize him.
Condoms, a bottle of vodka, and a Debonair in hand, Agastaya returned home.
Thankfully, everyone was upstairs, attending to Aamaa. He slipped into the room of his childhood, where he had smuggled his first condom, his first Debonair, and his first vodka.
He undressed, checked himself out in the mirror, tried not to pay attention to the breasts he was sprouting, thought of Prasanti, dismissed her, thought of Nicky, dismissed him, thought of Shivani, dismissed her, uncorked the vodka, took a gulp, grimaced, took another one, opened a sachet with his teeth, put the condom on his flaccid penis while avoiding a look at his groin, and leafed through the pages of Debonair.
A photo of a big Indian woman with breasts the size of melons. Her vagina hidden but suggestions of hair down there. Hairy armpits. Hairy woman. Big hair. Hair above her lip carefully removed.
He resisted the temptation to read an erotic story and kept flipping, the condomed dick in the right hand and the bottle of vodka in the other. The condomed dick he let go when a page needed to be turned. Another spread—this one of a blonde. Legs crossed. Breasts covered. Milky-white skin. Blue eyes. Another one—same woman, pointy nipples, staring at him, mocking his refusal to get it up.
When he was fourteen, a few nights after his younger brother informed him about the Disney World that was pleasuring himself, he had tried it for the first time. Now, vodka forgotten on the nightstand, he rhythmically did what he had to, closing his eyes and opening them. At fourteen, while he tried swallowing the vodka that had made him vomit a little, he had rubbed the head of his member with his palm. Now he pinched his nipples, made patterns on them, and inserted a finger into his rectum. At fourteen, he had put his fingers into his mouth, then bitten them one by one. Now, he looked at the blond woman and invoked an image of her moaning and groaning and crying. At fourteen, he had looked at the picture of a different blond woman and imagined the combined nudity of all the girls in his class.
Finally, Agastaya accomplished his purpose. At fourteen, an almost-battered dick and a bleeding foreskin later, he had known something was wrong because the thought of all the girls in his class parading naked around him hadn’t done the trick.
He sent a text to Shivani—“Great time today. Fun types. When do I hear all about your relationships? I leave the day after tomorrow”—and added a smiley.
“Snr or ltr.” Double smileys followed.
As he cleaned up and redressed himself, he laughed sardonically at having purchased a magazine in this age of Internet pornography, and also at the audacity of every so often dreaming about a life with Nicky.
Outside, workers cleared away detritus of the Chaurasi celebration that wasn’t to see its end.
•
Bhagwati would tell herself all her life that right before she left Gangtok, she stepped into Prasanti’s room so she could have one last look at it, that a comparison between her kind of poverty and Prasanti’s poverty would inspire her to get out of the financial doldrums she and Ram found themselves in, that she went into the servant’s room to say good-bye.
The truth was that she walked into Prasanti’s room with the intention of stealing.
Bhagwati placed three pairs of gold earrings in her purse. And a necklace. And twelve gold bangles. She could have even pilfered the money, but the gold would be sufficient.
She then said her good-byes—to Aamaa, who feebly asked her to be safe; to Agastaya, whom she reminded to cash her check and who wouldn’t divulge what had gone on at his meeting with the doctor; and to Manasa, who said she’d likely see her in Colorado, right before declaring that getting away from her father-in-law would be tough. She wanted to say good-bye to Nicky, whose CPR skills suggested that he wasn’t simply an anthropologist Agastaya had met in a taxi to JFK, but he had abruptly left.
Bhagwati’s farewell lingered the longest with Prasanti, whom she thanked for taking such good care of Aamaa and to whom she gave a big bundle of bills.
“But everyone says you have no money,” Prasanti said.
“I may not have as much money as they do, but you deserve this.”
Prasanti accepted the envelope, visibly moved. “I feel guilty taking your money.”
“You shouldn’t,” said Bhagwati, and she got into the waiting taxi.
“How’s your grandmother, madam?” the taxi driver asked.
“Fine,” Bhagwati replied. “Recovering fast.”
“And the factory in Kalimpong?”
“Not recovering at all.”
“Fucking scoundrels—whoever did it,” the driver spat out. “Thieves, all of them. Has the culprit been found?”
“No, not yet.”
“But we know who did it. It’s always the politicians who stir trouble. Thieves—that’s what they are. Who sets an entire factory on fire?”
“I know,” Bhagwati said. “But they aren’t thieves. They didn’t steal anything.”
“They are thieves—no better than thieves.”
“So, in your book, thieves are worse than robbers, murderers, and rapists?”
The driver didn’t understand. “How was your Bhai Tika, madam?” he asked.
“It didn’t happen.” It fell the day after the Chaurasi. It would have been her first Bhai Tika in eighteen years.
“These rascals—do they know what they do to people’s families?”
“I’ll try to sleep,” she said.
“You should. I shall not put on any music.”
She knew why she had stolen from Prasanti—because she had pride.
She was too high-minded to steal her grandmother’s things. Even nefarious deeds had degrees of heinousness to them—pride guided what was an acceptable monstrous act and what was not. Stealing her grandmother’s jewelry would have compromised Bhagwati’s integrity.
“Bhai,” she said to the driver. “Let’s go to Jaigaon instead of Bagdogra.”
“You mean Phuntsholing?”
“Yes, Phuntsholing.”
“Won’t you miss your flight if you go to Bhutan?”
“It’s not until tomorrow. I’ll go to Bagdogra from Phuntsholing.”
Thanks to the open border between India and Bhutan, she didn’t really need an ID as long as she restricted her movements to Phuntsholing on the Bhutanese side. A penetrable border in an impermeable country.
She decided on a detour to Bhutan so she could see what she had left behind. Years before, this was the same route Ram and she had taken to start a new life together. Then, she was a young woman running away from home who’d never be accepted by her family again. Now, she was a thief who would never be discovered because of the number of people visiting her sick grandmother. Nobody would think she did it.
As the car traversed the vast, ugly plains of North Bengal, Bhagwati wondered if anyone would recognize her in Bhutan. Once she and her husband had been corralled out of the country, her brothers-in-law had cut off all contact with Ram and her by ignoring their phone calls and letters. But now Ram and the siblings were back in touch because the pariahs had been magically moved to America.
Jaigaon was a filthy town full of stray dogs, stray cows, and stray people. Phuntsholing, on the other side of the border, had fewer people and was more planned and cleaner. The border patrolmen didn’t stop anyone. She wasn’t a suspect. She wasn’t going to disrupt national peace. She wasn’t about to stage demonstrations. This was her home before she was kicked out. It was the only home her husband had known. It appeared scared now—as though the entire town was afraid of speaking.
“Where are you from?” a shopkeeper asked.
“Sikkim,” she said.
“Oh, Sikkim.” There was admiration, the asker from the land of monasteries and Buddhism respecting the asked from the land of monasteries and Buddhism.
“Where are you from?” an Indian shopkeeper asked. Stores in Phuntsholing could be licensed out only to Bhutanese (the bona fides, of course, those who received the chance to continue living in the country) and were then leased out to Indians.
“Nepal,” she lied. The shopkeeper looked at her with distrust, with fear.
“Where are you from?” a third salesman asked. He looked Nepali. He was Nepali—one of those lucky few who got to stay.
“I was one of those driven out,” she said.
“And you’ve come back because . . .” He stared inquiringly.
“I want to experience how bad things are. You look so happy—as though nothing has happened.”
No ethnic cleansing. No bloodshed. No displacement of over a hundred thousand people.
“How can you be so certain?” he said. “We hate it here. Your kind is so lucky.”
“You’re delusional. You wouldn’t have survived all those years at the camps. You, with the pencil shop, living in this comfortable world, couldn’t have done it.”
“That’d have been better. Look at where we are now. We can’t even smoke in peace. There’s a new law against it.”
“It’s a good law for the environment and for your health,” Bhagwati said.
“My cousins were at the camps,” he said. “Now they are in America.”
“Who were they?”
“Anamika Chettri.”
“The pretty woman—I know her.”
“Lucky woman.”
“Yes, she’s incredibly lucky. Her second husband is abusive—beats her every single day.”
“Doesn’t matter. They are in America.”
“You really think being beaten up is all right just because you’re in America?”
“You’re in the best place in the universe. I’d much rather have been among those ejected.”
“Best place? Where? In heaven?”
“Isn’t America heaven?”
She’d have visited the palace just to show herself she could travel freely but thought better of it.
“Airport,” she said to one of the many taxi drivers flitting like flies around her. “Bagdogra Airport.”
“Where are you from, madam?” the polite taxi driver asked once they had crossed the border into India.
“Me? From a place in America called Boulder. Heard of it?”
The driver shook his head to deny knowledge of the strange place.
“It’s different from Bhutan. People live freely. People can be themselves.”
“And what do you work there as, madam?”
“I am a dishwasher,” she said.
“I hear even dishwashers in America make more money than officers here.”
“Yes, you heard right. In America, they make a lot of money. Momo sellers make even more.”
“Do they sell momos in America?”
“They do. My husband and I plan to do it, too. We might even sell a Bhutanese dish or two.”
•
She apologized to Prasanti because it was the civil gesture to make. Up until her grandmother’s stroke, Manasa had considered Prasanti an unnecessary appendage to the household. After the hospitalization and the dedication with which the servant looked after Aamaa, Manasa was compelled to change her opinion. They couldn’t have done without the eunuch.
“I know I shouldn’t have slapped you,” Manasa said. “It’s just that so many things—bad things—are happening in my life right now. When I see you so happy and carefree, I wish I could be like you. I am jealous.”
“You mean, become a hijra?” Prasanti asked.
“No, not become a hijra. I wish I had no cares, no stress, no tension. You have an easy life.”
“Try running the house for a few days,” Prasanti said. “You’ll want your old life back.”
“You’re lucky.”
Prasanti made light of the apology, but Manasa could see the spring in the eunuch’s steps. It was tragedy’s way of unifying a family.
“Now, no mischief from you, Aamaa,” she said to her reclining grandmother. “No drugs, no flirting, and no fighting with the world.”
The older woman replied with gibberish, but she was smiling.
At the Bhadrapur airport, from where she’d fly to Kathmandu, the daughter-in-law of the once all-powerful and now entirely powerless Ghimirey family wouldn’t have to submit herself to the humiliation of being frisked. An old loyal dog worked there. His anxiety at her father-in-law’s retirement from active politics was palpable.
“Your Bua did great things for my family,” he said. “He was responsible for this job I have now.”
A man who had positively changed the fates of so many families had distorted hers. She smiled politely.
“Now we hear he lives in London,” the man continued. “That he isn’t keeping well. But he doesn’t need to be well in the body to contribute to this nation. As long as he’s well in the head, he should stay here.”
“He’s not well in the head, either, Daai,” she said. “He had problems remembering things. Some other people have taken over the reins of the party, as they should.”
“How can you say that?” It was a gentle admonishment. “Who can take over the mantle from someone as great as your father-in-law?”
“Don’t know.”
“How about your husband?”
“Himal?”
“I’ve known him since he was a child,” the man proudly said while shooing away the short, dark porter who had been a staple at the airport in Bhadrapur for decades. “Your husband perhaps remembers me.”
Manasa gave the porter a ten-rupee bill.
“Why don’t you enter politics?” he said. “The daughter-in-law of Madhav Prasad Ghimirey belongs to the country.”
“I hardly belong to Nepal. I am not even from here.”
“But you got married into it.”
That solved matters. Marriage solved everything.
Himal was waiting for her at the Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu. As though by reflex action, Manasa craned her neck to see if Bua was next to him. He wasn’t.
“How was the flight?” Himal asked.
“Shaky,” Manasa replied. “I could see the cockpit from my seat.”
“We have to go to Kancha Kaka’s for lunch.”
“Right now? Straight from the airport?”
“Sorry,” Himal said, as though a quick stop at his place in Baneshwor, so close to the airport, would derail the entire lunch. “We have to go now.”
Manasa was quiet in the car while the new family driver stole glances at her in the mirror. Feeling violated and ambushed (both by this strange driver and her husband), she stared out at the city stretching out around her. The driver shifted to the side-view mirror to check her out.
It had been such a beautiful city. Nature had been bountiful. Man had been uncharitable. Manasa could see the mountain range behind her. Beside her and in front of her, she saw lofty hills of trash. The car didn’t move because the traffic was unbearably bad. Dendrite-sniffing five-year-olds exchanged their tubes of adhesive with hashish-smoking six-year-olds for the benefit of a foreigner who videotaped them in their natural habitat.
This city had become uncontrollable. People were moving into the valley because of the relative stability here. Such a small place, and so many people—it would continue growing. Tomorrow there’d be a strike, and a hundred new families would migrate into the capital. A natural disaster somewhere, and a few more would adopt the city. Some faction of the Maoists would murder some family member, and the rest of the deceased’s relatives would move in.
Kathmandu was the easiest escape route, sometimes a long-term layover on the way to the greener pastures of Abu Dhabi, Heathrow, and Houston. Until the country became stable, Kathmandu would burst at its seams with newer migrants. Once the country became stable, Kathmandu would inflate with newer migrants. It was a city that wouldn’t stop gaining weight.
“Aren’t you going to ask how he is?” Himal asked.
“No,” Manasa said.
“I think he misses the way you take care of him.”
“I am such a fine nurse.”
“Don’t be cynical, Manasa. Everyone is very excited to see you.”
Before entering Kancha Kaka’s, where the driveway wound to a gigantic mansion whose multicolored exterior gave it the appearance of a cheap, house-shaped cake, Manasa covered her head with her shawl, a gesture that attracted her husband’s gratitude.
Himal’s uncles and aunts were gathered in the sitting room with Bua. Manasa touched the feet of all the women with her head.
“The youngest daughter-in-law in the house,” an aunt quipped.
The token separation between genders occurred once greetings and blessings were dispensed, with the men sticking to the sitting room while the women congregated in the kitchen.
After the youngest aunt went on an ignorant spiel about how beautifully Manasa spoke Nepali despite having been born and brought up in India, Manasa excused herself to go to the bathroom. There, she inserted her finger into her throat and vomited loudly, forcefully.
“I just threw up,” she said to the bevy of females in the kitchen. Pregnancy, their favorite subject, was staring them in the face.
“Is it true—the good news?” her father-in-law asked her on their way home.
“I don’t know, Bua. I haven’t tested myself. It might be something I ate.”
“I hope it is good news. It’s about time. I need a little boy to play with.”
“And what if it’s a daughter?” she asked.
“When the first-born is a daughter, she’s Lakshmi,” her father-in-law said unconvincingly.
Once home, she fed Bua some porridge, washed his face, brushed his teeth, and put him to sleep. Five minutes later, he shit all over the bed. The servant was out, so Himal cleaned Bua while she changed the sheet.
In bed that night, Manasa asked Himal if his ear was better.
“Not better or worse than when we left London,” Himal replied.
“Yes, honey.” He was equally soft.
“I can’t go to London.”
“Will you stay in Kathmandu with Bua? He has been talking about sticking around a little longer.”
“Aamaa had a stroke. There’s no one with her.”
“What about Prasanti?”
“She’s not family.”
“And the others?”
“No, Himal. I looked after your father all these years. It’s time for me to look after my grandmother.”
“When will you be back?”
“When she’s better.”
“What if she’s never better?”
“Then I’ll stay until she dies.”
“I can’t look after Bua alone—you know that.” Voice a little louder.
“I’ll look after Aamaa alone. You should try it.”
“I have a job.”
“I had one, too, before I started looking after your father.”
“Please, Manasa.”
“It’s not to get back at you, Himal. It’s the way things happened. I have to go. Hire a home-care aide—some Gurkha’s daughter or son. I know of someone called Gita. I’ll put you in touch with her.”
“What will the relatives say?”
“They are your relatives, Himal.”
“And what if you’re pregnant?”
“I vomited on purpose to get away from Kancha Kaka’s house.”
“So, you aren’t pregnant at all? Should we try to have a baby?”
“Earlier I’d have said I am already looking after your father, Himal. Now, I can’t say anything until Aamaa is better.”
“I wasn’t expecting this.”
“I wasn’t expecting Aamaa to have a stroke. I am leaving tomorrow. Please get your ear surgery done.”
She had already made peace with Prasanti. Now she’d have to learn to live with her.
•
Prasanti hadn’t been this busy in years. Aamaa’s appetite had taken a nosedive, which the doctors said needed rectifying. Force-feeding her mistress was no easy task now that everyone, especially Manasa, was gone. Manasa had known how to deal with Chitralekha when her grandmother was being difficult—the tyrant thrust the spoon of rice into Aamaa’s mouth. Aamaa would spit it out, mutter something about being treated like a disabled baby, but Manasa had carried on unfazed. Before long, the old woman was grudgingly chewing away. When Prasanti attempted to imitate Manasa’s militant method, Aamaa, weak as she was, nearly slapped her.
Agastaya, the last person to leave, had asked Prasanti if he could help her with anything before he left later that day, which she thought odd.
“If you want to work, go wash your sheet, condo,” Prasanti had remarked. “How will a man know how to do a woman’s job?”
To her surprise, Agastaya actually washed his sheet.
“You must really like to work,” Prasanti said. “What an idiot.”
Agastaya’s good-bye message to her was not to work too hard.
“You do all the chores inside the house,” he said. “Let Nirmal Daaju do the rest.”
“That stupid driver knows nothing—all he does is stare at my condo.”
“I have spoken to him about it,” Agastaya said. “He’ll do all the man’s work.”
“There’s no man’s work to do here. Let him do all my work, and I will do the man’s work. Then, I’ll get to relax all day.”
“This is for you.” Agastaya gave her an envelope.
“I hope the money you’d have given me for Bhai Tika is included in this,” Prasanti said. “Your condo white friend didn’t give me anything.”
“He’s from a different world. He doesn’t know better.”
“Never be friends with stingy people. Even that stingy Ruthwa left money on my bed—it’s only two thousand rupees, but I wouldn’t have expected the person who nearly killed Aamaa to leave me anything.”
“I thought you said you wanted nothing to do with Ruthwa,” Agastaya teased. “Why take his money?”
“It’s money, you condo. Why should I say no to money?”
“And thank you for everything you do for Aamaa,” Agastaya said. “You’re the reason she’s lived so long. You take excellent care of her. She’s so much better now. With your care, she’ll be even better.”
“I run this condo place. One of you should now come back and stay here. What will happen when she dies? I alone cannot look after this house.”
“It’s your house as much as it is ours. Of course you will look after it if Aamaa isn’t alive. But don’t talk that way. Aamaa will live for many, many years.”
“If you all don’t bother her so much,” Prasanti said, happy that she had received yet another doctor’s reassurance about Aamaa’s health. “At least you went to see that ugly girl.”
“Aamaa is stable now. If she were still in danger, I’d have stayed.”
“Liar.” Prasanti laughed, relieved. “You tell me she’s stable only because you want to get out of here.”
“Thank you again, Prasanti. You’re a real sister.”
“Now, talk to your real sisters about one of you moving back here. Aamaa would like that.”
Agastaya’s taxi trundled down the driveway, belching smoke on her. Everybody came and everyone left. Only she stayed behind with Aamaa.
Prasanti was a day late for her weekly inventory.
First, she counted the cash. With the addition of the monies left behind by the siblings, she was up to 60,000 rupees. This was a lot of money, and her room wasn’t safe—she needed to talk to Aamaa about starting a bank account. Aamaa repeatedly told her to deposit her money in the bank, but Prasanti was afraid that her mistress would question her about the mostly illegal means by which she, a servant, had accrued that big an amount. The money in her Godrej, therefore, kept piling up. Aamaa had a right to be suspicious. A lot of the cash Prasanti had stolen or shortchanged. But she was a servant, Prasanti reasoned, and servants stole and shortchanged.
She was a rich woman. Forty thousand rupees more, and she’d be a lakhapati in money alone. If she counted all her assets—the jewels she had amassed along with hard cash—she was a lakhapati four times over. She peeked into the safe-deposit box where lay her jewels, many of which she had acquired by one genius act of thievery.
At Manasa’s wedding, after Aamaa presented her granddaughter with a boxful of jewelry, Prasanti had seen her mistress throw some bangles, a necklace, and earrings into a trinket box. Aamaa didn’t wear any jewelry, so Prasanti asked her whom the gold was for.
“Only after my death should that Damaai be given these,” Aamaa had said. “That destroyer of my family’s name doesn’t deserve even these.”
That is how Prasanti came into possession of many of those precious ornaments—she had stolen what was meant for Bhagwati. Prasanti, not that she needed to do it, had replaced the gold ornaments in Aamaa’s box with trinkets that hardly looked like the real things. She knew Aamaa wouldn’t revisit the box’s contents. Even if she did—and Prasanti was caught—her mistress would dismiss the theft as a casualty of servant keeping. The jewelry would be confiscated, and Prasanti would be forgiven.
Right now, though, the little bag that should have contained her wealth lay empty. Prasanti removed all her clothes from where they were stacked, dropped them on the floor, shook them out, and turned them inside out. She checked under the bed, under the mattress, and under the pillow. She hurled the blankets on the floor and then spread all her clothes about. She looked inside the sleeves of her kurtas, the pants of her pajamas, and the cups of her bras. Finally giving up, she went about the chores of the day, assuming some guest from the Chaurasi had stolen her prized possessions.
She couldn’t talk to Chitralekha about the missing pieces because she would then have to confess her crime. She couldn’t talk to anyone. Chitralekha could barely walk, and Prasanti was afraid of the shock her disclosure—of her original theft and of the theft of her theft—might cause her mistress. Prasanti understood, though, that it made no sense for the money to remain in her room. If her jewelry had been stolen, the money wasn’t safe here. She’d have to ask Aamaa about a bank account.
“Aamaa,” Prasanti said to Chitralekha, who was lying down. She was always sleeping since her hospitalization. “Guess how much money I have accumulated?”
Chitralekha’s eyes danced a little. With effort, she said, “Twenty thousand?”
“More.”
“Thirty?”
“More.”
“More than that? Have you been stealing?”
“No. Bhagwati and Manasa gave me four thousand each. Agastaya gave me ten thousand. Ruthwa gave me two thousand, but I didn’t take his money.”
“Liar,” Aamaa said. “Like you’d say no to money.”
“No, I didn’t take anything from him.”
“Stupid girl—nobody says no to money.”
“Okay, I took it.” Prasanti giggled.
“So, how much do you have in all?”
“Sixty thousand,” Prasanti said, hoping Chitralekha wouldn’t be suspicious about the origin of half the amount.
“That’s a lot of money,” Chitralekha said.
“Yes, I want to deposit it in the bank.”
“You should. The money in your account must have matured.”
“What account?”
“I started an account for you when you first came to live with us.”
“You mean I have more money?”
“Yes, you are a rich woman.” Aamaa coughed hard. She was still weak.
“More than sixty thousand?”
“Yes, a lot more than that.”
“How much?”
“You could build a cottage with it somewhere if you decide you’ve had enough of me,” Aamaa said.
“This is my house,” Prasanti replied. “Why do I need another house?”
“I know,” Aamaa said. And with that, she fell asleep.
Downstairs, the phone rang.
“Aamaa,” Prasanti said, flustered. “Manasa was just on the phone.”
“Has she reached Kathmandu?” Chitralekha slowly rose.
“She has, and she’s coming back. She’s in Rangpo. She wants me to cook some rice for her.”
“Why is she coming back?”
“She didn’t say.”
“I knew she’d be back. I am surprised she even left.”
“What do you mean?”
Chitralekha didn’t answer. “Help me to the terrace,” she said, taking baby steps. “Go, clean my office. Remove all my pictures from there.”
“Why?” Prasanti supported Chitralekha’s frail body.
“Just do what I ask.”
“Okay.”
“And hang Manasa’s diploma—the frame on the windowsill in the sitting room—on one of the office walls.”
“All right.”
“And on the table, lay the dirtiest sheet you’ll ever find—let it be filthy, full of holes, old. Hurry up. It will be fun to watch her ugly face react to the sheet.”
Outside, the sky was blue, and the sun flexed all its muscles. Soon, it would only reticently appear from behind the clouds. The Kanchendzonga was partly visible. In front of Prasanti and Chitralekha, masons were laying the foundations for the seventh floor of the new hotel. Hammers, sieves, mallets, sand, cement, bricks, bamboo poles, and mortar all came together in clanging harmony.
The doctor had forbidden her mistress from doing it, but Chitralekha puffed on a beedi.