by Jenny Feldon
Every day, somebody was electrocuted or run over or drowned. Venkat reported the monsoon casualties every morning with detached enthusiasm, like he was filling me in on the details of a particularly good football game he’d watched on television. When he wasn’t giving us damage reports, Venkat was preoccupied and anxious. The roads that led to his tiny village eighty kilometers away had been impassable for weeks. There was no news of his family. Venkat lived with his sister and her husband in a different part of Hyderabad, sleeping on the floor of their tiny flat. We gave him Sundays off, an unheard-of luxury for drivers who were usually made to work twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Some Sundays he would stay in the city to see a movie or hang out with his friends. But mostly he hitched a ride on the back of someone’s motorcycle and made the journey home, to bring money and supplies and be treated like a returning hero. Now the rains made those visits impossible.
“Are you homesick, Venkat?” I asked.
“No sick, Madam, much good health,” Venkat said, offended.
“No, ‘homesick’…are you missing your village, your home?”
“Oh, mine village.” Venkat’s eyes glazed over like they did when I stepped too far into the personal landscape of his mind. “I am happy working for you and Sir. I am liking Hyderabad. But mine village always missing, yes. Home is being nowhere else.”
I knew the feeling.
He flicked on the music, another movie soundtrack. Venkat was obsessed with Bollywood. “What is your home like, Madam?”
It was the first time he’d asked. Knowing about the West was a badge of pride for Venkat; he didn’t ask a lot of questions because he liked to impress us with knowledge he already had, mostly accumulated from movie posters and commercials for toothpaste—his sister had recently acquired a television. So I told him. About airplanes and subways and storm drains that took all the water away when it rained.
“Where is the water going, Madam?” Venkat asked, fascinated.
Good question. I made a mental note to google the answer later. We took infrastructure for granted in the West in a way I could no longer even wrap my head around. Skyscrapers and ambulances, sidewalks and electricity and 911. All there for us to use and ignore, never appreciating the planning, engineering, and funding that preceded their existence. Venkat was particularly interested in airplanes. He’d never even been on a train. The eighty kilometers of dirt road between his tiny village and the city of Hyderabad were the extent of his travels, though he’d clocked enough miles between the two to have gone anywhere: Delhi, Mumbai, Istanbul.
“How many kilometers before your home, Madam?”
“Eight thousand miles.” 8,054 to be exact. Not that I was counting.
“In kilometers?”
I did the math on my phone. “Thirteen thousand.”
“Too big number, Madam. Mine home could never be so far away.”
We were on the way to yet another rental house. Our sea shipment had finally arrived at Hyderabad customs and we needed someplace to put all the stuff we’d sent…beds and appliances, sheets and towels, the rest of my wardrobe. I couldn’t wait to be with my own belongings again. If I could only make India feel just a little bit like home, everything might turn out better.
So far, the houses we’d seen made Matwala Shayar, with its faulty elevators and all-night poker parties, look like luxury accommodations. One was in a development so mosquito-infested I refused to get out of the car without swaddling myself in mosquito net and spraying a layer of OFF! on top of that. Another had tiny, windowless rooms that looked more like jail cells than living spaces. Still another was so far out of town, Venkat had to stop and ask for directions twice. It was bad enough being stuck in the Indian city…being in the Indian suburbs would be flat-out torture.
Jasmine Heights was a gated community just five minutes from Matwala Shayar on the outskirts of Madhapur, next to the newly constructed Novotel hotel and Hyderabad Convention Center. Still months away from completion itself, the development consisted of three dozen houses on tree-lined streets, clustered around a half-built swimming pool, a tiny park, and a community building that would one day boast a gym and a rec room. Jasmine Heights had been developed with the wealthiest Indians in mind, the top 1 percent, and boasted the luxuries of elite living: twenty-four-hour security, servant’s quarters, two-car driveways, and bright, spacious puja rooms. Which were all nice features, of course, but I was really looking for the holy grail of Indian residences: a washing machine.
Venkat pulled up to the security gate. Jasmine Heights was very much still a construction site; only four or five of the homes were complete. Evidence of building-in-progress was everywhere. There were metal-framed wooden wheelbarrows filled with bricks and bamboo poles piled six feet high, ready to be turned into makeshift scaffolding with bundles of heavy twine. There was a tent camp, bustling with activity, near the gate—women cooking, children hanging laundry on clotheslines or chasing chickens away from the blue tarp-covered shanties. The security guards, armed with two-foot-long wooden clubs, shooed people away as they began to swarm the Scorpio, curious and eager for a peek inside the black-tinted windows. A goat ran by. Venkat smiled.
Most Indian homes were comprised of all the things I hated in architecture—small rooms, narrow passageways, a total absence of windows and light. The darker the home, the cooler it would be in the blazing Indian heat—so windows were small and used sparingly. In houses like these, it was likely to be more than just the nuclear family: there were in-laws and cousins and servants all under one roof, so the more rooms, the better. And all those cubbies without a closet in sight? Indian clothes were made to be folded. Mine, however, were not. I closed my eyes as we crossed the threshold of Plot 39 and prayed for a full-length closet.
When I opened them, I knew we’d found our place. The two-thousand-square-foot first floor had a wide kitchen with plenty of wooden cabinets, plus a modern-looking gas range with a hood. There was an open living room and dining area, plus a bedroom with a bathroom—toilet AND shower, on opposite sides. The shower, made of clear plastic panels, had four actual walls. Everything was covered in several inches of construction dust. Beneath it was the glitter of black marble.
Upstairs, there were three more bedrooms on two floors, all with their own baths. The floors and staircases were the same glittery, smooth black marble. The second and third floors had wraparound balconies as wide as the bedrooms themselves. And best of all, at the top of the very last staircase was a freestanding, electric washing machine, still wrapped in manufacturer’s plastic. I was home.
In front, there was a tiny, gated yard. We could plant a garden, with pomegranate trees. Tucker could run free. After months of being a housewife with no house of my own, I was finally about to become the mistress of my own domain.
We met Kyle and Diana at Fusion 9 for dinner to celebrate.
“What’s going on out there?” Kyle asked, sliding into his seat with a bewildered look. “There are like a million people dancing and banging drums in the street. Traffic is even worse than usual.” His shorts and T-shirt were wet with rain. I handed him a bottle of Kingfisher, which he accepted with a grin and an appreciative sigh.
“It’s Bonalu,” Diana informed him, signaling the waiter to ask for a glass of wine. “They’re honoring the Goddess. It’s a huge festival in Andhra Pradesh. People at work have been talking about it for weeks.”
“Isn’t every day a holiday in Andhra Pradesh?” Jay asked. “Every time I turn around, the guys at the office are asking for more time off. I keep telling them that’s not the way we operate in the U.S.”
“Ah, but you’re not in the U.S. anymore, remember?” Kyle said. “In India, there are plenty of reasons to relax and take time off. It’s one of my favorite things about this country. There’s always something to celebrate.”
“Our new house, for example,” I said. “Maybe the Goddess had som
ething to do with finding us Jasmine Heights Plot 39.”
“If she did, you better start leaving her offerings in your puja room,” Diana said wisely. “You don’t want to mess with that kind of divine intervention.”
“No way. Subu isn’t around to tell me what to do anymore. That puja room is all for Tucker.”
***
Summer turned into fall. The rains continued. Negotiating the lease took several more weeks; the application process seemed like it would never end. We had to prove our residency in India, our income, our previous income, our previous addresses and landlords dating back ten years, which was more time than we’d actually been living on our own—ten years ago, I’d been a high school senior. We had to state our father’s names and occupations, our religious preference, names and addresses of people who could provide character references in India. I sent in applications for a phone line, a bank account, a gas tank for the kitchen stove. I packed up the Matwala Shayar apartment and shopped for housewares at Shilparamam.
Finally, the paperwork was signed and we scheduled moving day. Venkat dropped me off at Plot 39 with the last of our Matwala Shayar belongings. Then he and Jay went to customs to claim our sea shipment. Anish went along to assist him; we’d been warned there might be delays. I sat in the empty house and watched Tucker sniff corners and skid across the empty marble floors. I waited.
Hours went by. I tried Jay’s mobile, but he wasn’t answering. I ordered Pizza Corner and waited two hours for the driver to figure out where the Jasmine Heights development was—the mere five-minute drive from Matwala Shayar may as well have been two cities away. The pizza came cold. I ate it straight from the box, offering some to the family who was living on our front porch: a husband and wife, plus another man—a brother? a nephew?—who was mentally disabled. They were migrant workers who had been living in the servant quarters in the back of the house, doing small jobs and keeping an eye on things during construction in exchange for a place to stay.
“Once you move in, you’ll be needing to remove them,” Anish had warned.
“Remove them how?” My first reaction was to want them gone immediately, but I’d gotten used to their presence. They’d been sleeping on the porch for days, waving at me cheerfully as I unpacked loads from the Scorpio. They were a motley crew for sure, but they made me feel less alone.
“It is no good for them to be here while you and Sir are residing,” Anish said, his eyebrows knit together in warning. “You must be hiring them for work or sending them on their way. Letting them stay for free will only lead to sorrow.”
“Sorrow for me? Or for them?” I asked.
Anish just laughed.
So far, the three porch people had been quite helpful, shooing away stray dogs, sweeping the porch and the main floor with their own brooms, opening the metal driveway gate for Venkat when they saw the Scorpio coming. I hadn’t the foggiest idea how to make them leave, and besides, where would they go? All of their belongings were in our shed. The covered porch was the only refuge they had from the rains.
Restless, I called Jay again, then Venkat, then Anish. No one answered. I began scrolling through a mental film vault of worst-case scenarios—traffic accidents, buffalo attacks, a freak live wire crashing into the road. The rains slowed. Outside, it was foggy and humid.
It was almost dusk when the trucks pulled down our street. I heard the rumble of the Scorpio, then a metallic clank as Venkat opened the manual driveway gate. I raced outside. Three barefoot movers were already loading boxes, assembly-line style, onto the front porch.
“What happened? Where were you? I was really worried,” I said accusingly. “That took all day! I thought you were taking off the day so we could unpack everything together.”
“Sorry. My phone died. You have no idea what that was like,” Jay said, rubbing his temples. “First there was this dog. It had been hit by a car, and it was in bad shape.” He shuddered. “And these guys were just beating it with a stick, trying to make it die. It was the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen. So we chased them off and moved the dog out of the road. This other guy was there, an Indian guy, in a suit. He helped me. We called every number we could find for veterinarians, trying to make someone come and pick this thing up. It was just so helpless, you know?”
Behind us, the movers were carrying box after box up the slippery marble staircase. I raised my eyebrows at Jay, waiting for the end of the story.
“The dog? Was it OK?”
“I don’t know. I had to leave it. It was awful. I would have taken him home, except…well, we wouldn’t have been able to take care of its injuries, and with Tucker…” Jay put his head in his hands, cringing at the memory. “I gave these guys on the side of the road five hundred rupees and made them promise they’d wait until the people from animal rescue got there. I don’t know if they did. He didn’t have a whole lot of time left.”
I slipped my arms around his waist. He buried his nose in my hair. We stood there for a minute, watching the movers carry our furniture through the front door. I’d grown so accustomed to Indian-made things that our New York belongings looked like mirages, as incongruous as a bubbling fountain in the desert in their new Far East surroundings.
“I’m sure they got to the dog in time.” We both knew it was unlikely, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say. “Did customs go OK?”
“God, it was a nightmare. They almost arrested me. For all that wine we packed. I guess Hyderabad is stricter about alcohol than almost anywhere else in India. Somehow they knew it was in there—they found the right crate and everything. I had to pay the guy in charge eight thousand rupees to let me go. Thank god Anish was there, or I might have ended up in prison or something.” He produced a bottle of cabernet from behind his back and grinned. “Got to keep it all, though.” He looked around the kitchen at the array of soggy, dented boxes. “What are the chances of finding a bottle opener anytime tonight?”
At 2:00 a.m., the movers finally left. They’d dumped the contents of each and every box unceremoniously on the floor, insisting through frantic arm gestures and rapid-fire Telugu translated by Venkat that the relocation company would punish them if they didn’t take every inch of cardboard and every speck of packing material with them when they left. Jay gave them each a tip, several hundred rupees in cash, which seemed to surprise them. They bowed and nodded as they scuttled out of the house, collecting their rubber sandals from the front porch.
We sent Venkat home with the rest of the pizza and a cash bonus for the long day. Jay dug an opener from a pile on the kitchen counter. I poured wine into plastic cups with pictures of fruit on them, another Q-mart purchase. Orange slices for me, cherries for Jay. We sat down on our old blue couch, the one we bought for our first apartment in Boston. I chose my favorite spot, the short L part of the sectional, and draped the back of my knees over the arm like I’d done a million times before. Jay lay down the long way, so that our heads were touching, our feet pointing in opposite directions, in a position so familiar and so forgotten that it felt surreal. This still existed. We still existed.
“To our very own home.”
“To the nicest house we’ll probably ever live in,” Jay replied.
I swatted at him. “Don’t say that! I don’t want the nicest house we ever live in to be in a foreign country.”
“OK, to no more Subu. May he find new expats to torture.”
“Amen.”
“I can’t wait to finally get a good night’s sleep,” Jay said drowsily, his arm up over his head, playing with the fraying strings on the torn knees of my jeans. “God, that wooden bed. Never again.”
“No more loud parties. No more soaking wet toilet paper. The shower has actual walls, can you imagine? I might never get out of it.”
“You’ll get out. The water tank isn’t that big. This place might be brand new, but it’s not exactly modern. You know that, right?”
“It’s perfect. Tomorrow I’m going to set everything up, buy some furniture. Make it ours. We need curtains, and a clothesline, and an oven, and…”
“Easy.” Jay yawned and got up, pulling me up with him. “One thing at a time. Let’s go to bed.”
There was a knock on the door. Jay looked at me. I peered out the front window. The porch woman, standing there with a cup.
“She probably just wants water,” I explained, opening the door and taking the cup. I filled it at the kitchen sink. We still couldn’t drink the tap water ourselves, but for the migrant workers it was likely the cleanest water they’d seen in weeks.
“Wait,” Jay said as I started to close the door behind her. “Give them these.” He dug out a pile of old blankets and pillows from a pile on the floor and handed them to me. “It’s got to be so uncomfortable on that porch.”
The porch woman bobbled furiously in gratitude. She looked at Jay and me, sizing us up. Meeting my gaze, she pointed to him and then her heart.
“I know,” I said, understanding. And I did know. Even if lately I’d been forgetting.
We started up the marble stairs. I beckoned to Tucker, waiting for him to follow. He whimpered and stayed on the couch.
“Tucker, come on,” Jay said. “Bed time.”
Tucker shivered and flattened his ears against his head.
“I think he’s afraid to walk up the stairs,” I said. “Maybe they’re too slippery.”
“Like this dog could get any more spoiled.” Jay scooped him up with a sigh.