Happy Birthday!: And Other Stories (2 page)

As we rise higher, I spot Kaka, still sitting at that corner. I concentrate on him, watching as he becomes a minute object, fades into oblivion. I feel a little less fear.

I should tell my son that this is my old school and there is my old friend, show him where I'm from so he understands how far I've come. But I see my bygone days reflected in Mirchandani's gold-filled cavities, in Devna's diamond pendant, and lose my courage. These are not the kind of people who will take fondly to a shabby past.

The minute the lift stops I jump out, onto the blessed solidity of the concrete floor, with a new resolve to go back down by the stairs. But while catching my breath, I realize that there are still dangers all around us. There are doorless apartments everywhere, without walls or railings, simply hanging over the edge of emptiness. In place of the lifts are gaping voids, uncovered, and to look down their hollow shafts is a dizzying experience. The stairs too are only partially built, grey with cement and treacherous with no banisters. There's a huge cavity between them—with one misstep, a person can plummet straight down twenty floors to the bottom. Yet, we climb up these stairs, me following the rest of the group quietly, concentrating on placing each foot solidly in the middle of each step, not daring to even glance at the death trap below.

Finally, huffing and puffing, we reach the thirtieth floor—despite myself, I pause with the others to admire the view. Seeing Mumbai like this, with bells of clouds hanging over it, the indigo sea at its doorstep and frenzied lines of activity at the foot of its ebbing and rising buildings, a mad, jumbled, beautiful place, makes me nostalgic for this city I've left behind.

‘Very nice, no, sir?' Bhaskar says.

‘Yes, yes,' Mirchandani acknowledges gruffly. ‘Praise later, show the place first.'

Bhaskar points to the cement walls and starts triumphantly. ‘This is apartment, sir. It is the only one on this floor and it open into lift, very much like having your very own private house.'

‘Nice,' Sanjay says, smiling brightly at his soon-to-be father-in-law.

I look at my son, fawning, becoming the type of man I can't recognize. Ever since he was a child, Sanjay has been proud and correct about things, responsible, an excellent student who studied software engineering at Georgia Tech and worked at the Google headquarters in San Francisco. He never faced the crisis of second-generation immigrants and mingled unselfconsciously with everyone, making both American and Indian friends, girlfriends even, his mother Pam told me. He met Devna through a common friend when she'd come to visit California, and after driving around Napa Valley, the Golden Gate Bridge and Lombard Street, they decided to get married. That would not have mattered to Pam or me. But then our son told us that Devna was the only child of a leading stockbroker in India, who wanted Sanjay to take over the family business. ‘The money that's to be made in India—it's unbelievable,' Sanjay said on his weekly phone call to us. Pam and I looked at each other; Sanjay had never spoken like this before.

‘India is the place to be right now,' he added. ‘America is dead.'

I didn't think that America was dead or India so alive, finding it difficult to accept that I'd left my place of birth, worked hard to achieve a foreign dream so that my child, my son, could have a better life, only to have him forsake it all and go back to what I'd left behind. What was the point of my sacrifices, my successes, my hopes?

But Pam and I didn't fight Sanjay's decision. Things had deteriorated between us after Sanjay had left home for college. Pam had an affair with another professor from Baruch College, where she taught industrial psychology, and—even though I was willing to look past her ‘slip'—she didn't want to stay married any more. She let Sanjay proceed with his plans to get married, work for his father-in-law and settle in India, so that when she told him what she wanted from her life, her son wouldn't be able to refuse.

Either way, it was not like Sanjay had asked for our permission.

Sanjay has been in Mumbai for six months now, living in a rented one-bedroom apartment paid for by his father-in-law under the guise of ‘corporate housing'. Like Mirchandani, my son wears only suits now, even if we're going out for a family dinner. He speaks endlessly about the stock market—which share to short, long, strangle and straddle in a zero-sum game—and money—how to invest it, save it, take it from an undeserving nincompoop.

But it isn't just my son; I wish my daughter-in-law-to-be would behave more appropriately. God knows Pam is no traditional Indian woman, dropping her name (Parminder) the minute we reached America, and wearing saris only during family functions. But Devna clings to Sanjay like the hair on his back, her hand in his, not allowing father and son a moment alone. On meeting me for the first time she didn't touch my feet, something that even Pam wouldn't have dared to do with her elders, nor did she enquire after her future mother-in-law, who will be here next week. Pam is jeopardizing her job—and Devna knows this—by leaving in the middle of the college semester. Moreover, though I'll never be able to speak of this to anyone, Devna wears only short dresses and skirts, even when she knows she's meeting me, and even here in this windy open-air construction site.

I say none of this to Sanjay, and my son, he too says nothing.

Bhaskar is walking us through the many empty rooms, the five bathrooms that will be further fitted, he says, with 54-nozzle spray heads, a kitchen with chrome-plated shelves covered with plastic sheets and a vintage glass sink wrapped in newspapers. The apartment has five bedrooms and covers the entire floor, but it still feels small, with its low ceilings and several pillars, like the kind of apartments in New York City, a city I begrudge for all its media-led romanticization that masks its gritty realities. I like my spacious house on Mill Hill Road in Southport, Connecticut, with its high pre-war ceilings, rusty sinks and the large garden, which deer often visit in the early morning. I haven't lived in an apartment in over twenty years and can't imagine doing it again.

Mirchandani is inspecting the unfinished apartment. He runs his fingers around a pipe's wet seams, smells the air for a hint of mould, flushes the toilet in every bathroom, holds his hand under the full torrent of each tap, searches the cabinets for cockroaches.

‘So,' he turns to me suddenly and asks, ‘Like the place?'

‘It's nice, I suppose,' I say.

‘Nice? Just nice? Well, why should we old people decide when the children are here?' He turns to Sanjay and Devna. ‘Do you both like it?'

Sanjay and Devna look at each other and, like echoes, say ‘yes'.

‘Good, because you are the ones who have to live here,' Mirchandani says. ‘It's yours, kids. A gift from me to Sanjay.'

The two of them stare at each other in shock and suddenly they are upon Mirchandani, hugging him, kissing him. Sanjay even lifts him up.

Sanjay has never lifted me up.

‘Mirchandani, this is too much,' I say. ‘I don't think Sanjay should accept such a gift.'

Mirchandani looks at me evenly. ‘I dare say, Vora, you said not to give any dowry and I listened to you. But I have to give my damaad something or what face will I show to people?'

‘This is instead of a dowry?' I ask in a disbelieving voice.

‘Don't call it that. It's just a small wedding gift.'

My wedding gift is a five-thousand-dollar trust fund I've set up for the couple. And I thought I was being generous.

‘Shouldn't we gift them something together?' I blurt out.

Mirchandani eyes me for a moment. Then he wraps his right arm around my shoulder and shouts, ‘That is a good idea, Vora. We can both gift this apartment to the newlyweds.'

He thrusts a sheet of paper into my hand. ‘Read this, we got a special rate, good discount.' I turn it over—it's the property brochure with the cost of the apartment. Thirteen crores! How can an apartment cost so much? I must have added a zero by mistake. I count again. No, there are seven zeroes after the thirteen. Thirteen crores? That's almost three million dollars. And this is after a discount?

Do you think I'm made of money, I almost exclaim in fright.

‘Good price we are getting. Best deal. But you rich NRIs will not have a problem even without the discount.' Mirchandani laughs and winks at Sanjay and Devna.

Already the wedding expenses are mounting. I'd insisted on splitting the cost for the six-day-long festivities at the Taj Mahal Hotel, but Mirchandani had protested, and finally, thankfully, told me to pay only for the wedding reception. Still, it's a big sum. This wedding would've been cheaper in the States but Mirchandani vetoed this idea, saying that he went to America only on business, to take money from the Americans, not to give them his.

‘I,' I stammer. Pam wants alimony. I'll have to break my 401 (k), my savings account and—I realize with horror—sell my house. Even after that, I'll be left short, bankrupt.

I'm a banker, I want to shout, not a bank.

Sanjay is looking at me for the first time that day.

He says, ‘Thank you, to both of you, for being so generous and kind. But I think we've taken enough from you guys. We cannot accept this gift. But thank you, really.'

‘Where will you stay then, bacche?' Mirchandani asks. ‘My daughter can't live anywhere but in South Bombay. She has good but expensive taste, you know that. Even with your salary, which is a lot I assure you, it will take years for you to save up and afford an apartment of your own.'

They all look at each other.

‘It was my idea to gift this flat to you and I will,' Mirchandani says. He looks at me, ‘Vora, I insist that you let the girl's side do this little thing.'

I make a sheepish face, and shrug my shoulders. ‘Only because you insist,' I mumble, hoping he doesn't change his mind again.

‘My only condition is that the house must be bought in Devna's name. In our family, all property is kept in the woman's name, so that Maa Lakshmi feels welcome in our homes.
Sarvadukhaharay Devi Mahalakshmi Namostutay
.'

I join my hands in prayer, not saying anything. I haven't felt like the boy's side from the beginning. What's left to salvage now?

Mirchandani rips the brochure in half, the cleanest of sounds, and lets it fall to the ground. I realize then that he intended to buy the flat alone the whole time. The brochure was his way of letting me know how much he's paying for my son. And keeping the property in his daughter's name is a way to remind my son what he's being paid for.

‘How much time till the completion of this flat?' Mirchandani asks Bhaskar, whose large smile is finally reaching his eyes.

‘Sir, plumbing and flooring have started. We are working very fast and in six month it will be fully ready.'

‘Six months? That means a year at least.' Mirchandani scoffs.

‘Why not buy a ready-to-move-in place?' I ask.

‘That will be thirty-forty percent more expensive, Vora. And, as you know, I only invest in good deals or no deals. I would've looked elsewhere, but my bacchi can only live here in Worli, close to her Mummy-Daddy.'

‘Too good choice you have, sir,' Bhaskar adds, as if Mirchandani has just handed him a cheque for thirteen crores.

Mirchandani looks at him coolly. ‘I am still considering Lakhandwala.'

‘So will they stay at Sanjay's apartment till this is ready?' I ask.

‘My bacchi has never lived in a one-bedroom flat, Vora. They will stay with me. Let me also enjoy having a son around for a little while,' Mirchandani says.

Sanjay grins. ‘Great idea, Dad.'

Dad? I look at Sanjay like he's someone else's son; not Mirchandani's—for that would be unfathomable—but definitely not mine.

Devna runs up to her father and hugs him. He pats her gruffly on the back though his face is beaming. This is the first time I've seen her leave Sanjay's side. I look at her as she steps back; her heels are about to enter a crevice, below which is a sheer drop.

I pull her towards me. ‘Be careful, beta. This place is dangerous.'

‘Give my dad a hug too, Devna,' Sanjay teases. ‘He's feeling left out.'

Devna tilts her head, sticks her tongue out at Sanjay and then—after giving me a two-second side hug—marches straight back to him.

‘You should call me Papa, beta,' I tell Devna.

There is incomprehension in Devna's face as she looks helplessly at Sanjay.

‘She will, Dad,' Sanjay says. ‘Give her some time.'

He smiles down at her.

They walk on, whispering to one another, down the stairs, followed by Mirchandani and Bhaskar who are in an intense discussion about how much this apartment's rate per square foot could rise.

On the way down in the lift, I no longer feel any fear or foreboding.

I wait till we're on the ground again, remove my helmet, hand it to Bhaskar and walk out of the building, past the mounds of dirt, the gates, not noticing anyone. I march straight to where Kaka is sitting.

~

When I was a little boy and Baba was late to pick me up from school, which happened often after Maa died, it was Kaka who used to let me wait with him. I spent hours watching him in fascination, as his burly hands shaved the big blocks of ice on a grater, moulded the ice around the bamboo stick, and poured colourful syrups—kala khatta, rooh afza, green kokum, kesar pista—into glasses. He often made golas for me, using a special blend of different syrups. Putting the enchanted gola stick in my hand, he'd watch with a smile as I slurped and smudged my face with the colours of the rainbow. He was my hero.

Many times I've tried to revive Kaka's gola magic at home in the States, crushing the ice with a hammer, buying ice-lolly-making cups, using shaved coconut and the priciest fruit syrups, but nothing ever captured the flavour of Kaka's golas.