The Windfall by Diksha Basu

Author:Diksha Basu
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crown/Archetype
Published: 2017-06-26T16:00:00+00:00

In Gurgaon, it was finally the day Mr. Chopra had been planning for. It was time to sit down and get to know the new neighbors.

“Is Johnny going to be home this evening?” Mr. Chopra asked his wife. “And did you have pastries picked up from the club?”

“Who knows when Johnny will come home? Who told you to buy him a new car? Now he will be even more useless,” Mrs. Chopra said.

She went back to playing Angry Birds on her iPad. She wasn’t as excited about the new neighbors as her husband was, but she was looking forward to having new friends. She went to the LRC on occasion, but those evenings were just an opportunity for their friends and neighbors to get drunk and flirt with each other. She had heard whispers of a few couples trading partners, and it sounded mad to her. Most of them were nearing sixty—they were trading partners for what? Rubbing Icy Hot on each other’s backs at the end of the day? All those women huffing and puffing on the treadmills, trying to be young women in old women’s bodies. After the gym, they would stop by the bar to see their husbands and have a drink, and they would laugh and shake their ponytails around like the young girls Johnny chased after. She was glad her husband had lost interest in those women with age. At least that was one thing he was sensible about.

“Have you checked the maids’ uniforms? And told them to put out the crystal glasses?” Mr. Chopra asked his wife.

“I’m sure it’s all fine. Why are you creating such a fuss? It’s a weeknight. They won’t stay that long. Will Upen be joining us?”

“No, he’s gone out for dinner with some college friends. Geeta, do you ever worry about the future?” Mr. Chopra asked.

“About getting old?” Mrs. Chopra asked.

“Worse—getting poor,” Mr. Chopra said.

“No, I don’t waste time thinking about that. And neither should you. Things are good.”

“For now. But what happens if the mine crumbles? Or I lose control of the management?”

Mrs. Chopra put her iPad down.

“That is why we bought property and jewelry and gold. What is wrong with you today?”

“What if everyone else in Delhi becomes rich and the people who are poor now move in next door and suddenly we are one of the poor. What then?”

“Then nothing,” Mrs. Chopra said. She knew her husband was impossible to talk to when he got in one of these moods. “You think about it all too much. We will be fine. Things don’t just fall apart all the time and economies don’t change overnight. Because of your hard work, Johnny will also always live well. Look at him, driving around all day, getting better and better at tennis. Not all fathers can provide that for their sons. Didn’t you say the next-door boy is studying in America? Poor fellow.”

“That is true. At least Johnny will not have to go in for postgraduate studies, thank God,” Mr. Chopra said.

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