“Also on the doctored receipts.”
She sets the telegram on the Agarwals’ coffee table.
“The more I think about it, Malik, the less I think Samir initiated the fraud. He’s involved in it, but I think it started with someone else. It didn’t take a great deal of effort for you to identify the discrepancy. Samir has been in business a long time, and he has a lot to lose. He’s not an amateur. The palace is not his only client. His company has taken on several contracts outside of Rajasthan. Why would he risk ruining his reputation?”
I agree. I think back to Ravi telling me how his father is old-school. Ravi has grander plans for his future. He told me he doesn’t want to keep doing things the same way his father has always done them. What does he consider to be a more innovative way of doing business? Substituting inferior materials but charging full price and pocketing the difference? The palace pays well, but Ravi isn’t satisfied? He already lives in a mansion. He has a beautiful, clever wife who adores him. What more could he want?
Lakshmi sighs. “Let me take it from here.” I hear the resignation in her voice when she says, “Can you get word to Samir that I need to see him? As soon as possible.”
23
LAKSHMI
Jaipur
I’m standing in front of my old house in Jaipur—the one I built with money I earned from thousands of henna applications, my herbal lotions and healing oils. Parvati Singh bought my house from me when I left Jaipur—an apology of sorts for destroying my livelihood.
The hibiscus bushes that line the edge of the property are neatly trimmed, the grass in the tiny front yard freshly mowed and dewy. The windows sparkle in the evening light as if they’ve recently been washed. Parvati might have let the house to renters, but somehow I think not. It has a cared-for look—like a museum piece, ready to be displayed before admiring eyes.
Earlier today, Samir sent a messenger to the Agarwals asking me to meet him here. He wouldn’t have had time, since then, to make the house presentable, or spruce it, and so I wonder who’s been taking care of it. The tiny, single-story building is nothing special on the outside. It’s what’s inside that matters; that’s what persuaded Parvati to buy the house from me.
“So glad you’ve come.”
I turn at the sound of a woman’s voice.
“I know you planned on meeting Samir, but it’s me you really want to talk to,” Parvati says, brushing past me to the side corridor that leads to the threshold.
I’m so stunned to see her, here, that I can’t move.
Parvati has the front door unlocked now and turns to me. “Come,” she says.
I dumbly follow Samir’s wife inside. She goes around the room, turning on overhead lights and table lamps. I didn’t have the money, when I owned the house, to pay for electricity. To the left of the front door I see the entrance to a privy—the Western bathroom that I’d wanted but couldn’t afford.
Now that the lights are on, my handiwork, my crowning achievement, shines: the mandala on the floor, made of terrazzo, a fusion of Indian, Moroccan, Persian, Afghani and Egyptian henna designs that mean as much to me, today, as they did then. The Ashoka lion, symbol of my ambition—an ambition that led me from the village of my birth to the heights of Jaipur society, where I used my henna reed to help wealthy women realize their desires. And there!—baskets of saffron flowers, a sterile plant and symbol of my choice to remain childless. Jay and I talked about it, well before we married. We both love what we do, and given our long hours at the hospital, the clinic and the Healing Garden, we have little time for our own children. We’ve nurtured them in other ways: tended to their cuts, soothed their hurts, brought them into this world or coaxed them back to health.
Hidden in the mandala among the swirls, and loops, and whorls is also my name. I’m looking at it now. Does Parvati know it’s there?
“I’ve taken good care of your masterpiece,” she says, and gestures to the floor. “I hope you approve.”
I keep my expression blank and brace myself for what’s coming. I’m never sure what Parvati has in store for me.
Since I saw her last, a dozen years ago, she’s put on weight; the sleeves of her coral blouse are tight around her arms and upper back, the flesh squeezed out, like toothpaste coming from a tube. She’ll need to have the seams taken out. Again.
But the elaborate gold pallu of her sari cascades gracefully from her shoulder down her back. She’s still a handsome woman with distinctive features, like her full lips, painted a bright pink to offset her royal blue sari. The kohl around her black eyes makes them appear to be wider, more appealing, more alert. Her cheeks have filled out and there’s the hint of a double chin, but these things are her birthright; symbols of a well-tended Indian woman of a certain age.
“I heard you married Jay Kumar. Quite a catch.” She’s smiling, but she sounds annoyed. “Still, it seems you just can’t stay away from Samir, can you?”
She’s alluding to a single night of passion years ago between Samir and me. Brief enough, but long in coming. Samir and I had danced around our attraction for ten years. I knew it would destroy my reputation if I ever acted on it, but Samir was patient. Eventually a night came when everything around me crumbled, and I needed to be comforted, desired and loved.
Parvati found out soon enough, and then the life I’d built in Jaipur, the financial independence I’d gained, fell apart.
Strange enough, remembering all of this, I find my voice. “You won’t like what I’m about to tell you, Parvati.”
The fact that I’ve dropped the respectful Ji is not lost on her.
She blinks. “Try me.”
“It’s about the Royal Jewel Cinema.”
She waves a hand, dismissive. “An accident. Unfortunate, but unforeseeable.”
Exactly what the newspapers and radio are calling it. It isn’t true, and I’m tired of it. “It could have been avoided.”
Now she rolls her eyes. “Every accident can be avoided, Lakshmi. That’s why we call them accidents. If everything had gone as planned, there would have been no mishap.”
“Except this ‘mishap’ is the consequence of something Samir’s company appears to have set in motion.”
Her mouth is set in a firm line. “What does any of this have to do with you? I understood that you are now a garden tender somewhere up there in the Himalayas. I can only guess that you want to bring our family down. Exactly like your sister.”
The mention of my sister makes me bristle, but I keep myself in check. “It isn’t personal, Parvati. An honest man is being falsely accused for what Singh-Sharma should have known about and could have prevented. I won’t let that happen. Manu Agarwal shouldn’t lose his job and his reputation for something he didn’t do.”