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

“Here!” A helpful auntie raised my sister’s hand high in the air. Prachi yelped, because said auntie’s hand was done up with still-wet mehendi. The fecal henna oozed down Prachi’s arm. “Go on, go on,” the auntie said, and up Prachi went. There, Anita held Prachi’s new deep red Manish Motilal lehenga. It was enormous, with enough fabric to be fitted to the body type of any possible winner. The blouse was silk starred with golden pricks; muslin overlaid the shoulders. It culminated in a huge fanned skirt.

Behind me, someone said, “Look at that girl. Too-too skinny.”

“Stop telling me to lose weight then, hanh, Mummy?”

“There’s curves, then there’s fat, Rupali.”

Prachi’s limbs buckled when the dress made contact with her arms.

•   •   •

“Congrats, wow, that’s some dress, huh—sorry, not dress, lehenga—are you going to wear it? Do you think Mom will like it?” I said to the bundle of fabric blocking Prachi’s face.

We followed Anita to the tailor, a bespectacled uncle wearing pleated brown pants and a half-sleeve collared shirt, relic of a closet-sized Bangalore shop. “This is Mr. Harsh,” Anita said. We absconded to a cluster of conference rooms at the west side. Feet away: two staircases. Exits sans metal detectors. The highway coiling toward the sea.

Prachi deposited the Manish Motilal on the table and Mr. Harsh, tape measure round his neck like a garland, beckoned Prachi to stand before a three-sided mirror. Anita dragged out a bamboo room divider to hide Prachi from my view, and more important, me from hers.

“I’ll just be over here,” I called unnecessarily. “I’ll just be over here while you guys do your girl thing over there, don’t worry.”

I fingered the lehenga, laid out on the conference table. It was surprisingly rough.

“It’s amazing, don’t get me wrong, but I’m not sure it’s totally my style, Anita,” Prachi said. “And it’s a summer wedding, in Georgia—it’ll be so hot.”

“Give yourself a chance to get it altered,” Anita said. “You’ll fall in love with it when Mr. Harsh sizes it perfectly. Trust me, I’ve seen Deepika Padukone in this, you two have the same figure, and it looks like a lot, yes, but when it hangs on you, ooh, it’s stunning. If you hate it, give it to a cousin or something. Mr. Harsh will leave space for a few sizes, right?”

I began to pull the Jhaveri gold from my pockets and the Screwvala and Mehta pieces from the bag; felt inside the skirt for the trick pockets, each one sewn into the middle liner . . . there, there was the first one. I grabbed at the loose thread and felt something give way. I shoved the first bangles in, then retied the string.

It was so much less gold than we’d planned on. What if I didn’t bother with smuggling it in the lehenga, just carried it out on me? But then came Anita’s determined eyes, peering round the bamboo. She didn’t know how little I’d gathered. And besides, what if someone—what if Minkus Jhaveri, or the single security guard—demanded I empty my bag? No one would guess about these trick pockets. I kept at it. I tried to work without the awareness of Anita’s gaze on me. Leave you, she’d made me recite how many times. If something goes wrong, I leave you, and I take everything to Anjali Auntie.

You know I’d have to leave you, too, right, Neil? she’d said to me. You understand that if something goes wrong, I will get to my mom first?

“Turn. Arms up.”

“I hate to ask, Anita, but . . .” Prachi was saying on the other side of the divider.

“Arms down.”

“It was all . . . fair and square, wasn’t it? I mean, I don’t want you to do something, like, to get me to like you. Because you feel you need approval from our family?”

“Of course it isn’t that.”

I finished tying up the gold in the skirt. I smoothed the lehenga. I stepped back and saw Mr. Harsh gripping my sister’s hips like they were flanks of meat.

The tailor drew a datebook from his breast pocket. “Thursday after next,” he said, head waggling, that indeterminate promise.

Anita removed the bamboo divider to see what was happening on the other side: I was lifting the lehenga, gathering it up to me. Her eyes landed on mine, and I saw some comprehension dawn on her.

“You all good with that, Neil?” she said.

“Neil, what are you doing, be careful!” Prachi cried.

“I thought,” I said, stealing the line in the script that was supposed to belong to Anita, “I thought I might take it to Mr. Harsh’s; didn’t one of you say it’s on my way back up to Berkeley? I’m actually pretty tired of all this, Prachi, it’s very girly, and I’m exhausted, I have to get home and do a whole lot of work on my dissertation, and if I just drop this off, I’ll just zip over to Berkeley, and—”

Anita reached for the lehenga. “Neil,” she said. And I could tell that now she didn’t want to abide by that original plan; she didn’t want me to be alone with the goods. Her fingers closed around the silk, but they were so small, and I was stronger than she was. “Why don’t you let me take the lehenga to Mr. Harsh’s shop? And he and I should talk more about, as you say, girly design issues.”

“I wish I had you guys fighting to run my errands all the time!” Prachi said, mildly bewildered.

“No,” I said. “Really, it’s no trouble. It’s no trouble at all.” I reached for Mr. Harsh’s card, which he’d left on the table for Prachi, and in the same movement, I hugged Prachi with one arm. My sister was looking strangely at me and Anita, and I rolled my eyes, hoping to signify that it was just an innocent romantic spat. And then I turned, pulling the lehenga from Anita’s grasp with ease. I pushed the conference room door open, and the last thing I saw behind me was