The World We Found (5 page)

After all these years Kavita could still remember the coldness that had spread through her stomach when she’d read Richard’s name. Because without knowing, she had known. Armaiti would’ve never mentioned a boy’s name unless she was serious about him. And this was her way of gently rebuffing Kavita’s declaration.

Kavita pushed down on the accelerator, absentmindedly running a red light as she came to a resolution. If they went to America—
when
they went to America, with or without Nishta—she would tell Armaiti. Not about the night in jail, perhaps. But about the other thing. About love. About how it had bloomed, unexpected and delicate, even in the inhospitable, barren soil of India in the 1970s.

Chapter 4

A
dish Engineer dipped two fingers into the silver bowl and dabbed his eyes with holy water from the Bhika Behram well. It felt cool against his tired eyes. He nodded to the few other Parsi worshippers gathered around the well and then made his way to a private corner where he could pray. He unbuttoned the lower buttons of his shirt so that he could reach for the kusti, the woven strings of sacred threads, that rested on his sudra, the thin undershirt that was a symbol of his faith. He untied the kusti from around his waist. “Ashem vahu,” he prayed with his eyes closed.

Even more than the cool sanctuary of a fire temple, Adish liked coming here to pray. Unlike the cloistered, dark, exclusive cocoon of the fire temple, which only Parsis could enter, the Bhika Behram well stood in the center of a large, mosaic-tiled room that was open to the busy street. Adish loved the incongruity of being in this tranquil, airy space while all around him horns blared and vendors yelled and the Bombay office crowd moved at its usual frenetic pace. He liked concentrating on his prayers to the point of blocking out the sounds of the thriving metropolis around him. He relished the scent from the rose garlands and the rich smell of the oil lamps lit by his fellow worshippers. He enjoyed being in the company of the elderly, old-fashioned Parsi gentlemen who gathered here to pray, took pleasure in touching his forehead and saying a respectful “Sahibji” to them. It calmed him down, this place, took him away from the stress of business and family.

And he needed to get away from family—from Laleh, specifically—for an hour or so. Even though they’d made up before going to bed, some part of him was still fuming at how badly she’d behaved at the party last night, how brazenly she’d insulted Girish, their host. Sure, she had been in pain from the dental work. Sure, she was reeling from the heartbreaking news about Armaiti. But still and all, her behavior had been inexcusable.

T
he party was so big that they had been there for an hour and still not met their hosts. “How much longer do you want to stay?” Laleh yawned. “I’m tired.”

“Remember how willingly I went to the theater with you last week?” Adish grinned. “Did I ask to leave during the intermission?”

“Don’t you dare compare this wretched party to that heavenly experience.”

“Shh. Keep your voice down.” Adish tossed back the last of his scotch. “Okay. Let’s go pay our respects to Girish before we leave.”

“You go. I can’t make any more small talk.”

“Laleh.” Adish took her hand and discreetly pulled his wife across the room to where Girish was holding court, his entourage around him. In his beige cotton shirt and blue jeans, Girish looked more like a young, hip movie director than what he was—a prominent real estate developer who was the heir to a textile fortune. “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Engineer,” he said to Laleh, after Adish introduced them. “So glad you could come.”

“Thanks,” Laleh said. “Nice party.” Her tone was flat, noncommittal.

Girish bowed. “We try.” He looked around. “Let me introduce you to my wife. This is my lovely Bindu.”

At the mention of her name, Bindu turned slightly toward the Engineers, bestowed a haughty half-smile on them, and wordlessly turned back to her friends. Laleh arched an eyebrow and Girish said hastily, “Bindu’s shy around strangers.”

“So was my puppy. But we trained her.”

Girish went pale. “I—beg pardon? You . . . ?”

“I’m sorry,” Laleh began. “I didn’t mean to—”

Adish stepped in. “Lal is so crazy about that puppy,” he said smoothly. “I swear, I’ve heard her compare our children to that dog. ”

“
We
have a puppy,” Bindu said. Her voice was squeaky, childlike. “A Portuguese water dog. Just like the Obamas. Once they got one, bas, I had to have one also.” She smiled. “My father-in-law had one sent to us from America.”

A tiny pulse beat in Laleh’s forehead. “You had a dog imported from America?”

Adish’s head jerked up, alerted by a peculiar note in Laleh’s voice, but before he could speak, Girish did. “Papa is crazy about Bindu. I’m always telling him, Papaji, don’t spoil my wife so much.” His entourage murmured approvingly. He looked at Laleh. “My father is Motilal Chandani, you know.”

“Yes, I know your father.”

Girish grinned. “Everybody knows my dad.”

Adish felt Laleh shift next to him and his heart sank. Surely Laleh wouldn’t. Girish was a new client. Surely Laleh knew better. He tried to catch her eye but she was staring directly at Girish.

“We used to picket outside his textile mills,” he heard Laleh say. Her dark eyes searched Girish’s face. “Your father refused his workers a twelve-paisa-an-hour raise. Can you imagine?”

Girish blanched. Then he laughed nervously. Bindu, who had gone back to talking to her friends, turned around to look at them curiously. “Your wife is a funny lady,” Girish said to Adish.

“She is,” Adish said grimly. He touched Laleh’s elbow in warning, but she shook him away.

“In any case, my dad is now retired,” Girish said. His voice was cheery, as if that fact explained away all past misdeeds.

“I know,” Laleh said. “He made even more money developing the land the mills sat on than if he’d kept running the factories. That’s where your high-rises are now being built.”

“It was the bloody labor unions,” Girish said. “Made it impossible for a businessman to earn a decent living.”

Laleh let out a short laugh. “Oh, come on. Your dad did all right for himself,” she said. “It’s the workers who lost their jobs when your father closed the mills that we should worry about, no?”

Bindu spoke. “Hey, what are you?” she giggled. “A terrorist or something?”

There was a short silence. Then Girish said, “A Communist. Bindu means, ‘Are you a Communist or something?’ ” He laughed, his eyes imploring his entourage to follow. They snickered dutifully.

Adish heard Laleh make a low growling sound and hastily put his arm around her shoulder and squeezed a warning. “I’m sorry. I apologize. My wife . . .” Girish was looking at him curiously. “We have to go. . . . She’s not well. Had some dental work done today. Sorry. I’ll phone you tomorrow, Girish. Okay?”

He hurried a protesting Laleh out of the roof-top apartment and into the elevator. He waited grim-faced until the doors shut behind them. Then he turned toward her. “What the hell was that performance about? What on earth is the matter with you?”

She was silent.

“Laleh. I want an answer. How dare you insult my client in this manner? What bhoot has gotten into you this evening?”

She looked up, her eyes flashing and dangerous. “I’ve told you a million times not to drag me to your work parties. You know how I get around these people.”

“These people?” he snapped. “These people?” He grabbed her by her shoulder and spun her around so that they both faced the mirror in the back panel of the elevator. “Take a good look at yourself, Laleh. You—we—are these people. You have a maid and a chauffeur, you live in a huge flat at Cuffe Parade, you spend money as your heart desires. Who the hell do you think you are? The proletariat? You’re no longer twenty years old, Laleh. You’re no longer a rebel giving your old man conniptions. So give it up. Just give it up.”

“It’s not what you own, Adish. It’s who you are. What values you have.”

Adish banged his fist against the steel of the elevator. “Dammit, Laleh. Do you know how holier-than-thou you sound? What are you saying? That we’re better people than the Chandanis? How dare you?”

“I should’ve known better than to expect you to understand.” She was quiet for a second, and when she spoke again her voice was placating. “In any case, I was being semifacetious, when I compared his wife to our nonexistent dog.”

He was about to say,
That’s redundant. Either you are facetious or you’re not
, but he stopped himself. He did not want to engage in his usual banter with Laleh tonight. He knew where it would lead—Laleh would say something impossibly witty and he would laugh, and his anger would fade. But she had crossed a line tonight and he wouldn’t let her off the hook that easily. “You know what, Laleh?” he said. “You’ve done enough damage for one evening. So just shut up, okay?”

His anger thinned into melancholy as he drove home. It perplexed him, how Laleh could go from seeming like a soul mate to a stranger in the course of a single day. Several times he opened his mouth to speak but changed his mind, not wanting to disturb the silence. He pulled the car into their building’s underground garage and then turned toward his wife. “Let me tell you something, Laleh,” he began. “I know you’re embarrassed by the life we live. I know you’re even embarrassed by me—”

“That’s not true,” she interrupted.

“Don’t lie. You are. But I want to say this—I’m not. I don’t apologize for what I have, Lal. You would’ve been happy marrying some milquetoast social worker with ice water in his veins and TB in his lungs. Well, that’s not me. I’m proud to provide my family with a good life. And we can do more to help others now than we ever could if we were piss-poor ourselves.”

“You sound more and more like my father as you get older. This is exactly what he would’ve said.”

“So? Your dad was a great man.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“You don’t even know what you’re saying.”

“I’m saying that I’m not willing to throw in the towel, okay? I refuse to believe that what we once stood for was just wishful thinking, and that people like Girish were the smart ones all along.”

Adish made an exasperated sound. “Why do you have to be so damn dramatic, Laleh? Why can’t it be what it was—a moment in history? And then history changed and the moment passed.” Absently, he flicked a piece of lint off his jacket. “Do you remember the day the Soviets invaded Afghanistan?” he asked abruptly.

“Of course I do. We were sitting in Kavita’s living room when the news came over the radio.”

“And do you remember what we all said? That the days of the American Empire were over, that the Soviet Union was the new imperial power.” Adish’s lips twisted into a smile. “Do you realize how wrong we all were? A few years later, the Soviet Union breaks into a thousand pieces, disappears like a child’s dream. Just like that.”

“So we were wrong. What does that prove?”

“You’re right. In itself, it proves nothing. But, Lal, we also thought that liberalizing the economy would destroy India. Instead, look at what has happened. The economy is booming. Shit, there’s so much construction going on in Bombay itself, my firm can’t keep up with it.”

“And in the meantime, farmers are killing themselves in record numbers,” she snapped. “And there are food riots breaking out in the countryside.”

“Laleh. It’s a huge country. It will take time. But in the meantime, look at our own Farhad. Look at the pride he feels in his country. I asked him just last week if he wanted to go abroad to study. He said, ‘Papa, why should I when I have so many opportunities here?’ Now, isn’t that a huge difference?”

“So what’s the big deal? We could’ve all gone. We chose not to.”

“True. But, Lal, we didn’t go because of some twisted, misguided sense of loyalty to India. That’s not why Farhad doesn’t want to leave. He wants to stay—for his own sake. We stayed—for the sake of India. There’s a difference.”

I
t’s no use, Adish now thought, flicking the strands of his kusti with more vigor than usual. She will never change. Laleh was the most exasperating, infuriating woman he knew. But she was also the most loyal, passionate, and fair. And he could not imagine his life without her. There you had it—a conundrum. When she smiled at him in that coy, flirty way of hers, his heart still flipped like a trained whale. After all these years.

He moved to the section with the burning oil lamps and decided to light one for Armaiti. She had always been kind to him in college, sticking up for him, protecting him from the lash of Laleh’s sarcasm and advising him on how to win her affection. “Listen,” she’d once told him. “I’ve known Laleh since the fourth standard. You know the best way to get her to pay attention to you? Ignore her.”

He was smiling at the memory when he felt someone tap him on his shoulder. It was Maneck Sethna, the old man with the bad case of Parkinson’s who prayed at the well every day.

“Sahibji, Maneckshaw,” Adish said.

“Sukhi re, deekra, sukhi re,” Maneck replied. “Be happy.”

“Thank you. How are you?”

The old man’s eyes filled with tears. “Chalta hai, deekra. Life goes on.” Adish noticed how he labored to spit out those words. The Parkinson’s seemed even worse than he remembered. He shifted his attention back to Maneck’s words. “I’m worried about my son,” he was saying.