Karma Gone Bad

by Jenny Feldon

  Jay came home from work and asked if the laundry had come back. “Yes, honey,” I said, all cheerful and housewifely. I showed him the clean clothes put away in his cubby.

  He lifted up a sock.

  “Um.”

  “Yes, dear?” I asked. Always the concerned, supportive spouse.

  “Notice anything funny about this sock?” he asked. I took a closer look.

  The sock was three feet long.

  Literally.

  Jay’s feet were NOT three feet long.

  It was very Rudyard Kipling. I tried to remember if the Limpopo River was in India or Africa, and what the chances were of Jay’s socks having somehow fallen into it.

  I called Subu.

  “Subu, why are Jay’s socks long?”

  “Long, Madam?”

  “Yes, Subu. Long. Taller. Stretched? Much longer than they were when we sent them to you.”

  There was a pause.

  “Well, sometimes, Madam, the socks will be getting longer after ironing is finished.”

  “You’re IRONING his socks? Thanks, but it’s really OK. No ironing, please. Just wash.”

  “Sorry, Madam. Everything must be ironed. That is the way good laundry is being done in India, Madam.”

  Since I had no idea how to do “good laundry” in India or anywhere else, I was out of talking points. I hung up and shut the door to Jay’s cubby before he noticed the newspaper smudges all over his white undershirts.

  Jay took a shower and I put the rest of the clothes away. I slipped a tank top over my head and prepared to luxuriate in the cozy feeling of freshness.

  But the shirt was stiff as a board and smelled horrible. Burnt. Smoky. Like…

  Barbecue. My tank top smelled like barbecue. That smudgy, mesquite stench that clung to you after you spent hours flipping burgers over a charcoal grill.

  Ugh. I ripped the shirt off and threw it back in the laundry basket. Maybe that one hadn’t made it in the wash or something. I tried another.

  Barbecue again.

  Jay came out of the bathroom, dripping wet, his nose wrinkled in disgust.

  “My towel smells like it’s on fire,” he said. “Can you get me a new one?”

  Subu was now number-one on my speed-dial.

  “Subu? There’s something wrong with our laundry. It smells like barbecue.”

  “Barbecue, Madam? I am not sure of what is ‘barbecue.’”

  “Smoke? Coal? Fire?”

  “Oh yes, Madam, coal. That would be from the ironing, Madam.”

  “Why would ironing make our clothes smell like coal?”

  “Well, Madam, it is owing to the irons. They are being heated in pits of coal. That is how good laundry is being done in India, Madam.” He muttered something under his breath. Probably Telugu for you idiot.

  Jesus freaking Christ.

  I’d failed at the groceries. Failed at the laundry. But there was one last thing I could try, something that would ease the sting of my less-than-victorious attempts and make Jay forget all about peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and coal-pressed undershirts. I found one last clean pair of Hanky Pankys and slipped them on, tucking myself behind him and rubbing my hands along his shoulder blades. I kneaded my fingers into his skin, trying to release the stiff tension there. “Can’t I make you forget about the laundry?”

  Jay shrugged out of my embrace and grabbed his toothbrush.

  “Forget it, Jen. I’m beat.” He smiled his lopsided smile. It wasn’t enough to take the sting away.

  India. The birthplace of romance. Wasn’t Tantra invented here? We were practically in the shadow of the Taj Mahal, the most stunning physical tribute to eternal love ever built. We were on an adventure. We were newlyweds. But already, we were fading from each other, trapped beneath our disappointments, paralyzed by the unspoken fear that we’d made a mistake we could never take back.

  I tossed the underwear in a corner and changed into an old sorority T-shirt that came down to my knees. Trying to shrug off the sting of rejection, I closed my eyes and pictured the New York skyline the way it had looked from our bedroom window on the twenty-second floor. Twinkling lights and tall buildings, a whole world of possibility small enough to hold in the palm of my hand. I remembered the promise we’d made to each other, that one of us would always have to stay positive, and wondered whose turn it was now.

  We got into bed, tucked beneath sheets that smelled like the backyard on the Fourth of July. Jay pulled his sleeping hat down over his nose. Just looking at the stupid thing made me even hotter.

  “Fine for you,” I grunted. “What am I supposed to do?”

  “Find somewhere else to do the laundry,” he said, turning away from me, already drifting off.

  Chapter 7

  With the exception of Alexis, Peter, Diana, and Kyle, we’d made little progress on the social front. Hyderabad was nothing like the elite jet-set scene I’d imagined it to be. The one Matwala Shayar party we’d gone to had been in a crowded living room full of twentysomething tax accountants, all male, playing beer pong and, as Alexis had warned me, consuming flaming shots of anise-flavored alcohol so potent it was illegal in the United States. Hip-hop blared too loudly on the stereo. Everyone wanted to get wasted. No one wanted to talk about ashrams or silent meditation retreats. No one had been to Dubai or taken a yacht around the coast of Bali. We stayed twenty minutes before ducking out, saying good-bye to no one, the pulsing bass following us back to our flat on a wafting plume of hash smoke.

  One morning, someone from Team Assist slipped the Hyderabad Expatriate Society newsletter under our door, the March edition even though it was August. The newsletter was faded and ironic on purple mimeograph. It stated new expats needed to apply for membership at the HES weekly gathering, an “informal cocktail hour” at the Walden Club on Tuesday nights.

  “I don’t want you to get your hopes up, Jen,” Jay said, watching me reapply lip gloss for the seventh time. “I don’t think this is exactly what you had in mind. Peter said no one our age ever goes to these things. We’re better off just hanging out with the tax guys.”

  “Let’s give it a try, at least,” I said, giving my makeup one last check in the mirror. “I love Alexis and Peter, but we need to broaden our horizons. They won’t be here much longer. I don’t want to end up with no one when they’re gone.”

  Alexis and Peter’s departure date was marked on the calendar in ominous red ink. I needed to find people who were here for the long haul, who could show us the true inner circle of expat society. For Peter and Alexis, three months in India wasn’t much more than an extended vacation. But for me, this was life. For two whole years.

  We arrived at the Walden Club almost an hour late. Traffic, combined with Venkat’s poor understanding of my directions, made a timely entrance impossible. I wore my highest heels and a pashmina, which I hoped would protect my bare shoulders from hungry mosquitoes looking to feed. Jay wore jeans and flip-flops. He rolled his eyes when I suggested he might have gotten a little more dressed up.

  “I’m not trying to impress anyone,” he said, glancing at his watch, ready to leave before we’d even walked in the door.

  A bow-tied attendant guided us up a narrow staircase to a rooftop deck strung with saggy, faltering Christmas lights. A dozen plastic folding chairs were arranged in a circle. Off to the side, there was a card table with a silver urn, a stack of miniature Styrofoam cups, and a crystal bowl filled with anise seeds. It looked like an AA meeting in a church basement. Except instead of coffee, stale doughnuts, and a microphone, there was a teapot, some Styrofoam cups, and a swarm of ravenous mosquitoes.

  No one looked up as we entered. I saw the woman from brunch at the Taj, clogged feet crossed delicately at her tanned, thin ankles. She spoke in rapid, American-accented French to a woman in a salwar suit with a sleek black bob. The silver-haired man, her
husband probably, smoked a pipe beside her. His pants were red now, with flamingos etched in Pepto pink.

  “Um, hi. I’m Jenny, and this is my husband Jay? We called about joining?” I hated how uncertain and childlike my voice sounded. I’d always been on the inside, always at the center of things. I didn’t know how to be the new girl.

  “Yes, of course.” The blond woman glanced at her watch, then rose from her chair, regal before a crowd of no one. She was old enough to be my mother. “My name is Carole. I’m the president. We’re almost through here, but won’t you join us for a few minutes?” Her smile started and ended with her thin, frosted lips, never reaching her eyes.

  A painful half-hour passed—literally painful, because Jay kicked me in the back of the shin every few minutes to express his desire to escape the plastic-chaired circle of hell. Carole and her husband Robert asked us a few perfunctory questions before turning their attention back to the French couple they’d been chatting with.

  Jay gave a final kick, and this time, I agreed. As we rose and said our thank-yous, Carole tapped my shoulder.

  “If you’re available for lunch tomorrow, I’d like to take you out and show you around,” she said. “Shall we say Waterfront on Necklace Road, around one?” She handed me a smooth ivory card with her name followed by a long string of numbers. “My India mobile. Call me if your driver needs directions.”

  In the car, Jay snatched the card away from me.

  “Well, that was a waste of time. You’re not really going to go out with her, are you? She’s like a hundred. And she’s awful.”

  “She’s the queen bee around here, Jay. If anyone knows how to get into the expat scene, it has to be her. So yes, I’m going. As long as it’s not too long to leave Tucker alone.”

  ***

  When BKC first asked us to move to India, I’d had one steadfast condition: the dog went too. I made them put it in the contract, business class dog airfare and all. Tucker was my child; I wasn’t going anywhere without him.

  “But he’ll get eaten,” wailed my mother. And my cleaning lady. And the man behind the counter at the bodega on Seventy-Second Street where I bought my coffee in the morning.

  “I’m not going without him,” I told them, rolling my eyes. “And they don’t eat dogs in India.”

  By general standards, Tucker was…indulged. He slept in our bed every night, was never left alone for more than a few hours, ate only organic free-range dog food. Jay liked to comment that our future children were doomed if the way I treated the dog was any indication of how overindulged my kids would be. “They’ll be spoiled rotten,” he said. “We’ll be shelling out thousands of dollars for therapy before they hit third grade.” I wasn’t amused. I wasn’t trying to spoil him. I just treated him like…well, a child.

  The absence of sidewalks and the deadly traffic along Madhapur Road meant that Tucker’s daily walks were limited to aimless loops around the Matwala Shayar parking lot, often with a band of Indian children following in our wake. They giggled and whispered when they saw us coming, Tucker in his Red Sox leash and harness, me in my rubber Havaiana flip-flops. Sometimes they asked questions: “Does he bite?” “What does he eat?” “Will he get any bigger?” But mostly the kids just stared, pointing and following us, until their parents called them inside again, or until Tucker couldn’t stand it anymore and snarled in their direction, scattering them, shrieking, like a flock of pigeons.

  Every Indian person who came into our apartment was terrified of him: the cleaning women; the tech support guy who endlessly, unsuccessfully tried to supply us with Internet; Subu and Ritu. Subu made me lock Tucker into the spare bedroom when anyone came into the apartment. Every time I left the flat, someone from Team Assist let themselves in to perform some task or another. Usually a task I hadn’t requested in the first place.

  In the United States, such a thing would be unthinkable, a total violation of privacy and tenancy laws. But in India, the parameters of privacy were blurry. Servants—drivers, housekeepers, security guards—were everywhere and knew everything. Our belongings were subject to scrutiny and scavenging: garbage cans, cabinets…the maids even cleaned my hairbrush daily, collecting the stray hairs to sell to wig-makers for an astounding price. My long brown hair was inexplicably falling out by the fistful, a fact I found disturbing. The Indian women who cleaned our flat, however, were thrilled.

  At nine pounds, floppy-eared and brown-eyed, Tucker’s unfailing ability to provoke fear and panic among Indians was perplexing to me. The street dogs that prowled the perimeter of Matwala Shayar in packs, mean and starving, pawing through garbage with emaciated limbs, seemed truly menacing. But those dogs were just part of the landscape, while Tucker stood out, a canine spectacle in furry white bas relief.

  Subu regarded Tucker with a combination of horror and absolute fascination. One afternoon, he noticed me on the sofa brushing through Tucker’s fur with a fine-toothed comb, detangling the tougher knots with my fingers, cooing to him soothingly when he started to get wriggly.

  “That animal, it is being like your child,” Subu said, part question, part statement. “You are treating it like Indian people are treating their childrens.”

  I laughed. It wasn’t the first time I’d been accused of treating Tucker like a human. It was just that in Manhattan, home of doggie day cares and canine day spas and pet taxis, the behavior wasn’t unusual. In India, simply owning a pet was uncommon. Loving one like a family member seemed to be downright unheard of.

  Tucker had been a favorite recurring character on my New York blog, and now my blog readers were eager for stories of Tucker’s Indian misadventures. I tried to oblige, using my Blackberry to post blogs written from his perspective and pictures of him in unusual places—lying on his camouflage-print dog bed surrounded by Hindu idols in the puja room; teetering on top of the elephant swing. At least Tucker was still appreciated back at home, no matter how misunderstood he was in ’Bad.

  My biggest fear living at Matwala Shayar was that someone would let Tucker escape and he’d be lost forever. If he got as far as the street, he’d be toast. The wild dogs, the murderous traffic, the so-called canine-eating culture…it kept me up at night with terrible dreams. I’d wake up sweating, only to find Tucker curled safely between us, Nestléd in his blanket like a little white bird, fur sticking up everywhere.

  With so much change, Tucker was my silent, furry rock. His company got me through the long, lonely hours while Jay was at work. Tending to his needs—his walks, his meals, combing his tangled fur—gave structure to days that were otherwise mindless and endless. So much had been taken from me—my job, my friends, my love affair with Starbucks—but Tucker remained, loyal and comforting, a familiar face in a country full of strangers. But worrying about him was keeping me tied to Matwala Shayar. I’d promised Jay I’d try harder: be more adventurous, do some exploring, find some friends. But with Subu entering the apartment at will and the dangers that lurked beyond the door of Alpha 112, I was reluctant to leave Tucker alone for long.

  Before I left for my lunch with Carole, I sequestered him in the spare bedroom with his bed, food and water, his blanket, and Bear. He whimpered at me through the closed door, sticking his black nose beneath the frame and the marble floor, sniffing wildly, furious with his captivity.

  “Sorry, buddy, but I’m trying to keep you safe. And Mommy needs to make some new friends, OK? Maybe one of them will even have a dog for you to play with.” Doubtful, but I had to try and make it sound like I was abandoning him for both our sakes.

  ***

  The restaurant was lovely. Waterfront sat directly on Lake Hussain Sagar, Hyderabad’s manmade lake. We sat eating Thai food and sipping watery glasses of Sula chardonnay. Through floor-to-ceilings windows we had a perfect view of the eight-foot Buddha statue floating in the middle of the water. Hyderabad, for the most part, was a “dry” city, which made imported wine nearly impossible to c
ome by. The Indian-made Sula, with its notes of dishwater and rubbing alcohol, was an acquired taste. Carole, icy beneath her Goa tan, was on her second glass, deep into a story about her chef’s mulligatawny soup (“You can’t find a decent one anywhere else south of Mumbai”) when my mobile rang. Subu.

  “Sorry,” I murmured when Carole paused, eyeing my phone with disdain. “It’s the apartment manager. I don’t know why he’d be calling right now.” I hit “end” and shoved it back in my bag.

  Carole raised a well-groomed eyebrow. “Is that Yves Saint Laurent? The Muse?”

  I smiled, pleased she’d noticed. “It is. It was a graduation gift. My pride and joy.” I added a conspiratorial wink. Finally, someone who appreciated my taste in fashion.

  “Hardly appropriate for your situation, though, is it? I prefer to use something a little more…functional, myself.” She patted the black floral LeSportsac hanging from her chair. “Much less ostentatious. And it holds up well with all the dust, and the rain.”

  “Oh.”

  “Well, anyway. I suppose we should go into the things you need to know about living here. It would appear,” she said with a pointed look at my ripped jeans and lace camisole, “you still have a great deal to learn about navigating the expatriate waters. After lunch, we should do a little shopping.” She drummed her polished fingernails on the tablecloth, swishing her wineglass with her other hand, consulting some inner checklist on my expat shortcomings.

  “I’d really love to know where I can get a good manicure,” I said. I missed my weekly manicures almost as much as I missed Starbucks.

  “Why, the Taj, of course. It’s the only place to get a good anything¸ really, unless it’s my Bookhur’s mulligatawny. Which reminds me, do you have a cook? A housemaid? Because I’m happy to assist you if you’re having trouble finding appropriate help. As president of TEA, I like to make sure everyone is well situated with reliable servants.”