by Leah Franqui
Dodos was a small bar, the kind that was, Rachel had learned, an anomaly in Mumbai’s Bandra neighborhood. The area was splashed with stylish places with pricey menus that pretended to be bars but were actually restaurants, teeming with waiters who fluttered over customers like errant moths. But Dodos actually felt like a bar, like a divey kind of place where you could have a drink in private, where you could chat with the bartender—that is, if you spoke his language—where you could be alone without people looking at you askance.
Sitting at a table, Rachel downed a glass of Old Monk, an Indian rum, quickly, before gesturing for another.
“Long day?” chirped a voice behind her. Rachel turned and saw Fifi in business casual smiling next to her.
“Fifi! It was! But a good one. How are you?” Rachel said, resisting the urge to twirl her hair or do something equally inane. She felt like she was trying to attract a man, not talking to a new friend.
“I only have an hour, but I couldn’t bear to cancel. I wanted to see how you were holding up!” Fifi said, sitting down and gesturing for the waiter.
“Oh, big plans?” Rachel asked, keeping her voice light to try to mask her disappointment. She had hoped this might be a nice long get-to-know-you thing. She needed a friend, someone who understood the experience of being an outsider in India the way she did.
“Rakesh has surprised me with dinner at a new place, Go Goa, have you heard of it?”
Rachel shook her head and listened, draining her rum twice over as Fifi sipped on a gin and tonic—It’s so cliché, but one must drink what one likes, darling, mustn’t one?—and talked about her life in Mumbai.
It could not have been more different from Rachel’s own. Fifi’s description revealed a world of excitement, opportunity, a buzzing city of events and things to do and energy, all of which Fifi and her husband and other friends seemed to take an active part in. It was like hearing about New York or London, and it was nothing like the Mumbai Rachel knew. She had thought that it was the city’s fault, that there was something about India that had stagnated her life. But if Fifi could do this, could be happy here, why couldn’t she?
As she listened to Fifi describe her rich and full life, Rachel was aware of a deep pit of envy opening up in her stomach. The contrast between her own self and the person in front of her loomed. Fifi didn’t have the kind of anxieties that she did. When Rachel described the way she thought about India, Fifi looked at her like she was speaking another language. Servitude didn’t make her skin itch, the labor hierarchy didn’t boil her blood. She wasn’t worried by her own hypocrisy or troubled by being a white person in India who judged the country and benefited from it in equal measure, like Rachel did. Fifi found it charming, relaxing, even. Or maybe beyond that, she just couldn’t be bothered, as she kept saying. How nice it would be to not be bothered by things.
Rachel didn’t know if she could ever really like anyone who wasn’t bothered by things. Who didn’t worry the way she did, who didn’t obsess over what she was doing. She admired Fifi’s attitude, longed for it, but couldn’t share it.
“I told Rakesh about your mother-in-law situation,” Fifi said, her voice cutting through Rachel’s envy.
“Oh? What did he say?” Rachel asked.
“He pointed out that it’s fairly standard practice here. No wonder she thought nothing of it. Then we talked about what I would do if his mother came to live with us. She’s a dear thing, but I might murder her,” Fifi confided cheerfully.
“Really?”
“Well, she barely speaks English, so communication is difficult. But she’s always trying to feed me. She makes all my favorite dishes, I become a total cow around her,” Fifi said.
“My mother-in-law never cooks. She hired someone for that.”
“You don’t seem thrilled.”
“I hate it,” Rachel said without heat. It was just a fact. She wanted to talk the way Fifi did, with acceptance. Things were just what they were, they weren’t going to change for her. The very country wasn’t going to change for her. She felt like she had been hitting her head against a brick wall over and over again, and Fifi simply accepted that the wall was a reality. She wanted to do that. And with the rum, which was doing a nice job of numbing her, she thought maybe she could try.
“Have you told her?”
“She knows. Dhruv knows. Everyone knows how I feel. And the cook remains.”
“Ah.”
“What?”
“He didn’t stand up for you. Your husband. That’s not great.”
“No. It’s not,” Rachel said, frowning.
“Sorry, I just—”
“No, it’s fine. I mean, he’s always been the decision maker for us, I mean, in a way. Like, he has so much more of a sense of what he wants from his life than I do, and we got married rather quickly, actually, so maybe, I don’t know. Maybe he feels that my opinion isn’t as important as his. Maybe he feels like I should just get used to things, put up and shut it.” Rachel’s voice had risen in pitch, betraying her agitation. Fifi smiled weakly, uncomfortable with Rachel’s emotional response.
“Maybe it’s just Indian men and their mothers. Nothing you can do about it. I’m sure that’s all it is.”
“Looks like a bright future for me, then,” Rachel said.
“Don’t be cross! She can’t live forever.”
Rachel smiled despite herself. But that wasn’t what she wanted, to be waiting for Swati’s passing. She wanted Swati to have her own life. She wanted Swati to want her own life. She wanted Swati to want the things that Rachel thought were good and valuable. Isn’t that what she wants, for you?
Living with Swati brought everything about India that was hard for Rachel, that was foreign and strange and fundamentally different, paradigms of life, and what was good and bad and valuable and useless, all of it, into her home. She couldn’t shut it out. She couldn’t escape it for a moment. Swati was it. Everything Rachel hated, didn’t understand, worried about, in India, was living in her bedroom.
“Does any of this bother you?” she asked Fifi, curious. “Any of this stuff that clearly drives me nuts?”
“Does India bother me? Hmm, where do I start?” Fifi said, smiling. “For one thing, it’s bloody hot.”
“No, I mean, doesn’t it ever feel, I don’t know, wrong to you? To be here, where it’s so cheap, and, I mean, we have these lives that are, like, not real. Not what most people here have. Doesn’t it feel—”
“It’s all real,” Fifi said, her face hardening. “There are people here with more than we will ever have, and people with much less, but all of it is India. It’s condescending to think otherwise, I think.”
Rachel flushed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”
“I think it challenges us. It challenges the parts of me that thought all this was in the movies. That watched docs about India and thought, Oh, how odd, how dreadful, and then just put it all out of my mind. I can’t put it out of my mind, but I’m still watching it, because my conditions are still good, better, even, than back in London. But just because I’m not living in Dharavi doesn’t mean life isn’t real.”
“Of course.” Rachel didn’t know what to say. She decided to be honest. “I think I’m a bit jealous of you. You have a contentment I envy.”
“It’s cultivated,” Fifi said, smiling.
“I don’t know if I can get there,” Rachel confessed.
“I think you have to want to,” Fifi offered. Rachel thought about it. It made sense to her, but she didn’t know if she could make herself do it. Make herself. For that was what it would be. She took a sip of her rum, but it tasted bitter.
Fifi smiled and grabbed her purse. “I best be off, but this was fun! Let’s do it again, soon!” Fifi said breezily.
“Yes, that sounds wonderful,” Rachel said, with a sinking feeling that she had been too honest, too open, with the woman in front of her. A friend date was the same as a romantic one, and it was a mistake to be completely truthful with either, a mistake Rache
l knew she had made. She was out of practice.
She walked Fifi out of the bar, putting her napkin over her drink as she saw other people doing before heading outside. It was already seven fifteen but Richard was clearly, as most Mumbaikars were, late, and she figured she had time for a smoke before he arrived.
Leaning against the wall, after waving goodbye to Fifi, she lit up a cigarette and looked out onto the crowded street, teeming with flower sellers, pani puri hawkers, commuters, and college students, all negotiating the minimal sidewalk with one another. Mumbai was claustrophobic. Most of the massive population lived on mere square inches, while someone like her had a relatively spacious apartment, palatial by many standards. In New York she had been in the same pool as so many, and here she was one of a handful. The numbers were always against you in India. There were just so many people, everywhere you looked.
But it was all real. Fifi was right. Rachel looked at India with pity, sure the people around her were looking at her with envy. How condescending of her, how simplistic, to think she, her life, was the object of envy, the center of other people’s thoughts.
She finished her cigarette, stubbing it out against the pavement and depositing it in the ashtray, a single rule follower in a sea of butts littering the ground, and contemplated going back to the bar. She supposed that among Richard’s many affectations, he had adopted the habit of being at least an hour late to anything, which in Mumbai usually counted as being punctual, so she probably had some more time.
She took out her phone and called Dhruv. She was sure she would get his voice mail. She planned to leave an upbeat message about making friends, how they would have to get together with Fifi and her husband sometime, swap notes about mixed marriages and moving to India. But he surprised her by actually answering the phone.
“Bolo,” he said. Speak in Hindi. He must not have noticed who the caller was.
“It’s me. What are you up to?” There was noise in the background.
“Darling! I’m at the club with Dad.” Dhruv didn’t usually call her by pet names, unless he was in a wonderful mood or had been drinking. The ease in his voice when he said Dad was nice to Rachel; he had been so upset with his father that he sounded like he was cursing him when he talked about him. It seemed positive that he was more jovial in his father’s presence. “We’re celebrating. We have a new plan for him and Mum. It’s a great idea, I think it will fix everything.”
“Oh, what is it—”
“I’m busy, darling, can I call you back?” And he was gone. Rachel shook her head, bemused. She supposed this was positive, it would be good for Swati and Vinod to have some kind of closure, but she wondered what this magical new plan was and how much of it was Dhruv’s optimism, his joy at himself as a problem-solver, fixing his parents the way he liked to think he fixed the companies he was hired to consult for. His recommendations usually meant huge layoffs for his clients. Rachel wondered how much of fixing was purging, then scolded herself for disloyalty as she stepped into the bar. She decided to put them aside, the thoughts of Dhruv’s plan; she was sure she would learn more about it soon enough.
She was buzzing from the previous rum, and she asked for a glass of water, sipping it as she thought about Swati, alone for the first time in her life. Rachel could not remember the first time she had felt truly alone.
“Sooooo sorry, exhausting recording! We did almost four whole episodes. Can you imagine?” Richard sat next to her, throwing his arm around her shoulders in a bizarre half hug that Rachel held herself away from, as stiff as Swati had been.
“Do you have any masala soda?” Richard asked, his accent subtly changing to become faintly Indian. “I like to try and speak in an accent I know he can understand,” he confided to Rachel, turning back to her. “I don’t really drink, it really interferes with my spiritual practice. Don’t you think India is just so spiritually enlightening? It’s like, I never understood the concept of chakras and then here you are and it’s just, bam, you know? Enlightenment!”
“I don’t know much about that, really,” Rachel said. She was trying to keep her voice calm, curious, happy. Trying not to judge him for being happier, knowing India better, than her. Trying to practice that contentment Fifi had cultivated. But it was really rather difficult. Especially with him.
“Oh, well, let me tell you, then!”
Rachel drank deeply. It was going to be a long night.
Seventeen
Sitting alone in Dhruv and Rachel’s apartment—hers, too, now, Swati reminded herself—her body might have been in Mumbai but her brain was in Kolkata.
Her phone rang, and she gasped. It was Bunny, as if she had summoned her with her mind. She thought about not answering, ignoring it, but even as she considered that possibility, her hand was reaching for the phone. She had always been compulsive about answering the phone. What if something terrible had happened? She could never take the risk.
“Bolo,” she said, trying to stop her voice from quivering. She wasn’t usually so informal when she answered the phone, saying Please speak, but she was trying to be casual, as if Bunny called her every day now, as if her last words weren’t still ringing in Swati’s ears.
“Arjun is coming to see you,” Bunny said, her words clipped.
“Who?” Swati’s mind was blank.
“My son,” Bunny hissed. “Or have you forgotten your life this quickly? He’s coming to see you, and he will bring you home.”
“I don’t understand—”
“Well, your son couldn’t be bothered, I suppose! He asked Arjun to help, too busy himself, he always was useless, your Dhruv,” Bunny said, her voice shrill in Swati’s ear. Swati reared back from the phone, pained. What had Dhruv been thinking? She was sure Bunny was lying and this had all been her idea. “You will meet Arjun, and he will take the flight home with you.”
“Bunny, this is very kind, but—” Then Swati stopped herself. Was it kind? Not really. She had no intention of going back to Kolkata, and even if she had, why would she want to be escorted back by Bunny’s philandering son? She had come to Mumbai on her own. Surely she could go back to Kolkata on her own, if that was what she wanted, she thought, conveniently forgetting her own recent terror at the idea of spending the evening alone without Rachel.
“He will meet you tomorrow at the Starbucks in Khar. He has told me your daughter-in-law will know where that is, Americans like such things. He will see you at one p.m., you bring your bags, Vinod has arranged a ticket for you. He will—”
“No,” Swati said firmly. There was silence.
“He will take you from there—” Bunny had, apparently, just decided to keep going.
“No,” Swati said again, almost amused this time.
“From there to the airport, and—”
“No,” Swati said, and this time she actually laughed out loud.
“What are you laughing at? I have arranged this for you, I am saving you from your own stupid dreadful plans; you want to live so shamefully forever, what?”
“I do appreciate your help, Bunny,” Swati said as sweetly as she could. “But I hardly think your son is the right person to lecture me on marital fidelity.” There was silence on the other end of the phone.
“You are an evil witch with no morals,” Bunny said in a leaden voice. “I am trying to save you, but you have been inhabited by some badness, some black magic is inside of you and it has made you act wrongly. I will not be a part of such a thing. Your husband is a good man. Your actions dishonor him.”
“I would imagine that you are actually quite pleased about my leaving Vinod, Bunny. After all, if everyone is talking about that, who will have time to talk about your own problem? Has Arjun’s wife returned? Maybe not, if he has the time to come to Mumbai and take his auntie home.” Swati couldn’t believe that she was saying such things, that they were pouring out of her like a fountain of acid. She felt powerful, invincible. “Or maybe he’s coming to find some other whore to—” The line went dead.
&
nbsp; So did Swati’s heart. How could she have been so awful? How could she have said those things? She didn’t even know how she had planned to finish that sentence. What word would she have used? She never spoke of such things.
Bunny’s words reverberated through Swati’s head, ringing in her ears, but it was her own words that she wanted to wash out of her mind. She almost wished she had taken Rachel up on her half-hearted offer of joining her at the bar. Swati had heard that alcohol could bring relief. Relief would be welcome. She had always been told that drinking was bad, good women didn’t drink. Well, good women didn’t leave their husbands, either. Perhaps those rules were no longer for her.
She went to bed but didn’t sleep. Instead, she thought about the idea of magic, of something entering her body and making her act differently than she was. She wished that were true, what Bunny had said, because a curse could be broken. But she knew there was no outside influence, no spell affecting her decision. There was just her, and what she wanted, and the feeling that, for the first time, such a thing mattered more than anything else.
When the sun rose and stood up in the sky, she gave up trying to sleep and dragged herself out of bed to make tea. Rachel had come in late the previous night. Swati wondered if her son minded that his wife had gone out, gone drinking, without him, with another man. She wondered if he even knew. But Rachel told him everything, she was American, they were different, everyone knew that, and besides, Dhruv trusted his wife.
More men trusted their wives these days, it seemed to Swati. They trusted that they were certain of things, able to take care of themselves, able to be complete as people without the constant protection and suspicion of the past. Swati saw it everywhere, women alone, moving through the world alone, without the monitoring that had been so much a part of her own life. There was so much worry, so much fear that had dictated her life. Fear for her virtue, that she would throw it away, that someone would take it. She had judged this from her comfortable position in Kolkata, judged the women for moving, the men for allowing it, but now she thought it might be a good thing. What had being monitored ever done for her?