Mrs. Jha switched off the light in the hallway and walked toward her bedroom door. It was hot in the hallway, the Delhi summer in full swing. There was an air conditioner in each room, jutting out of a window, but they never kept all three of them running at the same time. The electrical circuit would not be able to handle the load. Instead, they cooled only the rooms they were using. The kitchen, the bathrooms, and the hallway remained hot. When they first got an air conditioner installed, it was only in the master bedroom and Rupak would drag a thin mattress in and sleep on their floor.
Mrs. Jha stopped in front of Rupak’s bedroom. The air from inside his room trickled out from under the closed door and cooled her feet. She considered knocking, but she thought she heard a muffled voice. Either he was watching something on his laptop or he was on the phone, and she no longer felt comfortable letting herself into his bedroom to have a chat. She pushed her ear against the door, but the white noise of the air conditioner made it impossible to make sense of the voices. That was okay, she didn’t need to interfere, she told herself. She just liked knowing he was home and she liked feeling his presence. As much as she swore she never had a preference regarding the sex of her child, she was glad she had a son. A son who, despite quickly adopting some Americanisms she didn’t much care for, was soon going to have a master’s in business administration from Ithaca College in New York State. It really did give her a sense of security.
She continued to her bedroom and entered as her husband was coming out of the small attached bathroom. The warm smell of sandalwood soap and a hot bath filled the room.
“Did you turn off the geyser?” she asked.
Mr. Jha poked his head back in the bathroom to check the switch and nodded.
“The geysers in the new house are all automatic, which means we can leave them on twenty-four hours a day,” Mr. Jha said. “That’s twenty-four hours a day of not having to wait for hot water in the taps. In the sink too! Just imagine.”
“I know,” Mrs. Jha said. “I’m the one who got them all installed. But they say it’s best to keep the switches off when they’re not in use.”
“You know in Korean apartments you can operate all your switches from your phone. Lights, gadgets, everything. You can even draw your curtains with a button on your phone. You can be on the way home and turn all the lights on so you don’t have to enter a completely dark house.”
“Couldn’t you just leave a light on when you go out so it’s still on when you come home?” Mrs. Jha asked.
Mr. Jha looked at her, thought for a second, and nodded. “That is another possibility.”
A minute later he added, “You could turn the teakettle on so the water would be hot when you got home.”
“That was a successful evening,” Mrs. Jha said to her husband as he buttoned the top button of the white kurta he wore to sleep every night. For as long as she had known him, he had always worn the exact same outfit to bed. He owned four sets of kurta pajamas and he had asked her to stitch numbers onto each top and each bottom so they would remain sets and, even though they were all identical, he would never wear a number two top with a number three pajama.
“That Mr. Gupta interferes too much,” Mr. Jha said, rubbing a small towel through his hair.
“He was just being curious. Don’t let it trouble you.”
“I just think it’s impolite—he wouldn’t go asking other rich people how much they’ve paid in black money,” Mr. Jha said.
“They’re our friends, Anil. They can ask us such questions. Anyway, I thought you handled the question very gracefully. Now please forget it and come to bed. And don’t rub your hair so roughly, it’ll damage the roots.”
“And why did he say we were too old for change? You heard him—he said at this stage to make a move like this was to become a small fish in a big pond and we’d understand that only after leaving the pond we know. I’m not a fish, Bindu. Is that any way to speak to a friend?”
“Those are his own issues. Forget it,” Mrs. Jha said, although she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Mr. Gupta’s comment either. How were they meant to start from scratch at this age? Why were they trying to start from scratch? They were happy. How was she supposed to make new friends and adapt to a new world? She was sitting on the edge of the bed rubbing Nivea cold cream into her cracked heels, trying not to let her husband see her concerns. Not tonight. It had been a difficult night for him.
“I read somewhere that fish have very basic nervous systems,” Mr. Jha said. “I never get nervous. Except in airplanes, but that’s understandable.”
He stooped in front of the small mirror that was attached to the dresser in the corner of the room and combed his hair.
“I’m looking forward to having a full-length mirror in the bedroom,” he said. “This is like looking into a phone camera, it’s so small.”
Let Mr. Gupta say what he wanted; he was going to get a full-length mirror in his bedroom. Mr. Jha thought about his mother. She always took such pride in how she dressed, but while she was alive, forget a full-length mirror, they did not even have a dresser. The only mirror she had to use was the small one that hung in the bathroom in a plastic frame above the sink and had become speckled with dried toothpaste over the years. Mr. Jha wished his mother had lived to see him become successful. She would have died a happier woman if she’d had any idea what her son would go on to achieve.
Mr. Jha’s father had died when Mr. Jha was eight years old. Before he died, his father was doing well enough, climbing the ranks of an income tax office in the small, dusty, tier-three town of Giridih—which used to be in the state of Bihar but was now part of the new state of Jharkhand and was a town most people in Delhi hadn’t even heard of. He wore black slacks and carried a briefcase every day. Once a week, they went out for dinner and Mr. Jha’s mother would dress in the latest fashions of the town and push her feet into sandals with high heels and stiff straps that made her ankles bleed and she loved it.