the
Wi n dfa l l
about that anger and so he worked. He studied and he worked hard to make sure he could give his mother a home that would be her own, and a reason to wear uncomfortable shoes again. And he had mostly succeeded. He had a nice wife, a son, and a stable job that gave him a small but reliable income every month and a domestic holiday every year. For years Mr. Jha had been the manager of a franchise of a Technological Training of India (TTI) center and supplemented his income by teaching specialized computer programming classes there on Saturdays. His mother saw all that, but she died before he managed to give her a full-length mirror to check the pleats of her sari. “How do you manage to tie your sari so well without a mirror?” Mr. Jha asked. “When you do it every day, it becomes the same as pulling on a pair of pants,” Mrs. Jha said. “But it’ll be better for you to have a full-length mirror, right?” “I suppose so, yes,” Mrs. Jha said. She knew what was going through her husband’s mind. “Are you thinking about Ma-ji?” “She would have enjoyed tonight’s dinner,” Mr. Jha said. He sat down at the edge of the bed, tired after the evening and the adrenaline and the performance of hosting a dinner party. He took his glasses off and placed them on his side table. This bedroom was less than half the size of the master bedroom in Gurgaon. In here, there was room only for the bed, the attached wooden side tables, and two metal cupboards in which they kept all their clothes. One of the metal cupboards had a small built-in safe that was big enough to hold all their valuables. In Gurgaon, he had had a safe the size of one of their cupboards built into the wall of the master bedroom, and he was determined to own enough valuables to fill the whole thing. He rubbed his eyes. “She would have really enjoyed the new house. Forget traveling outside India, she died without even seeing the fancy side of Delhi.” “A lot of people do,” Mrs. Jha said. “That’s not something you need to feel guilty about. You gave her a very good life.”
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– The Windfall: A Novel by Diksha Basu –
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