Gold Diggers by Sanjena Sathian (best short books to read TXT) 📕

homesick for proper food. She held on to them as her parents began to trot grooms through the living room, each one promising her a smaller life than the last. Finally, she announced the fact of Pranesh and his correspondence. A love match to a foreign-dwelling boy was a surprise, but acceptable. There was little to arrange between families, given that Pranesh was an orphan. He came to marry and collect her. As they circled the wedding fire, she watched smoke obscure the back of his head and imagined there was more inside him she did not know.

It turned out that behind Pranesh Dayal’s plump belly and thinning hair there was no secretly compassionate man. Anjali decided the remedy was a daughter. She learned to drive so she could take herself to the Hindu temple in Riverdale and make offerings of fruit and flowers. Kneeling before the stone Venkateshwara, she named Anita long before she was conceived. She would have had three, five more children if she could have—yes, she wanted a son, too, whom she imagined naming Vivek. But Pranesh got a vasectomy one summer when Anjali took Anita back to Bombay, telling her later that he did not plan on funneling his money to support a whole brood.

On the occasions Anjali considered her domestic situation, she developed a castor oil taste in her mouth. America: once metonymy for more. Here, was there more? She possessed a life of her own. Her husband left for California and she could breathe. It was something. She wanted more—infinitely more—for her daughter. She would do anything to give it to her.

•   •   •

About a year before this reunion at the Sonora, Anjali’s father died. She and her brother Dhruv had, over the years, remitted enough money that their parents could shift to be near some better-off relatives in Navi Mumbai. But after Mr. Joshi’s death, the relatives whispered at how Lakshmi’s wealthy children neglected the old woman, whispering of the disloyalty America bred. Anjali and Dhruv discussed things. Dhruv’s wife did not want to take in Lakshmi. “You have much more than we do,” the sister-in-law told Anjali—which was true, because Pranesh had recently sold his company for, as Chidi said, a fuckload. (Anjali did not contribute financially; she’d never restarted her catering business out west and struggled to hold jobs. She was an unreliable employee, forgetful and scattered.)

At any rate, the domino effect of family obligations and rivalries began, and Lakshmi came to live in Sunnyvale. How ironic to find that a doted-upon son would, in adulthood, kowtow to a cold wife. But the daughter didn’t dwell on ugly history. Daughters had forgiveness in their bones. Up into the dry California sky went the resentments that might have been spoken about Dadar, about Parag the neighbor, about Vivek, about how Lakshmi had allocated love.

Lakshmi arrived in California just as Pranesh instigated divorce proceedings. Over the years, Anita’s father had grown angry with Anjali for doing too little domestically, for why should a man like him be married to a woman like her, except for the sake of the household? But these days, she was not cooking, she did not work, they had nothing to say to each other. And sufficient money had led Pranesh to a conclusion that would have been unheard of some years earlier: he could afford now to exit the inconvenience of his marriage.

He nabbed the best lawyer in the region and met with many others, barring them from working with Anjali. Pranesh’s attorney was arguing Anjali’s irrelevance to her husband’s company, litigating her out of a decent settlement. And the stress was taking its toll—“as you might have noticed,” Anita said.

Anjali initially tried to pass off the fact that Pranesh was living in Portola Valley as temporary—she told Lakshmi that he wanted a retreat up in the hills, with fewer distractions, to begin ideating a new company. Lakshmi knew better. “I have seen things change in Bombay,” she informed Anjali. The relatives in Navi Mumbai had a divorced son; the daughter was not even married to the man she lived with. Lakshmi was not unwise to the changing of the times. Perhaps she surprised herself with the expandable scope of her motherhood, how it swelled to make space for things previously unacceptable.

Lakshmi summoned her granddaughter to Sunnyvale, where Anjali had remained. (Anita’s mother’s sole victory in the divorce would be getting to keep the house she’d never wanted, in the suburb she’d always hated.) Anjali was asleep when Anita arrived. She poked her head in to see her mother breathing shallowly, her sharp wristbones and vertebrae visible through her oddly papery skin.

“There is something very wrong with your aiyee,” Lakshmi said sternly, bustling over the stove. Anita tried to make the chai, but her grandmother scorned her attempts.

“She’s depressed,” Anita said, taking her tea.

Lakshmi clicked her tongue to dismiss the Western psychobabble. “What is wrong, see, is this. I made a very big mistake. I fixed up your uncles’ lives. Got all their studies in order. Gave your uncle Vivek all kinds of special boosts. All this you know.” Anita nodded. “But I did not arrange anything proper for your mother. She needed some kind of boost, too. Understand?”

“Ajji,” Anita said. “Isn’t that all in the past? You can’t fix it now.”

They were quiet for a while, drinking their chai, and then Anita began to wash their emptied mugs. From behind the sink, she could see the Sunnyvale cul-de-sac, cousin to the Hammond Creek cul-de-sac, only with squatter houses and more citrus trees. The sight gave her hot pangs between her ribs. Her mother had spent so many years here, in this place meant for certain types of families, certain types of lives. Was there no way out for Anjali Dayal—no, Anjali Joshi? No other way of being on offer?

“What could you do now, Ajji?” she said.

“I would not have given your mother the same-same kind of gold drink I gave your uncle,” Lakshmi said. She came to