“Next Monday is only five days away, not one week,” reminded Usha.
Mohan ran his fingers through his hair yet again. What little hair had been lying flat now stood at attention. “Jeevan-bhai is family. Why are you getting so upset?”
Usha’s look of annoyance turned to disbelief. “Your brother is not some ordinary family member like the others; he is a god. Once he descends from his chariot he wants everything perfect, from homemade vegetarian food cooked in clarified butter and spotless white sheets to his newspaper available at a precise time every morning. And don’t forget hot masala chai five times a day. I’ll have to dedicate myself to serving him hand and foot.”
If there was one thing Anjali couldn’t picture her mother doing, it was waiting on someone hand and foot. Raised in indulged affluence in the city of Ahmedabad, and being the only girl in a family with four boys, she was a prima donna. Her brothers doted on her.
Though Usha was a good cook, she preferred working in the store and depended on restaurant food to feed the family most of the time. It was the simplest and most efficient thing to do, anyway, with literally dozens of Indian restaurants serving any kind of reasonably priced multiregional cuisine, literally within walking distance from their store.
Every night, after locking up, Anjali and her parents, too exhausted to worry about cooking, bought restaurant food and toted it home. After eating, they barely had energy left to get changed and head for their beds in their modest house in neighboring Iselin. Despite keeping the store closed on Mondays, the boutique was a 24/7 commitment for the three of them. It was their whole life.
Anjali couldn’t bear to think of any other way of life. She’d had her own home and a career separate from her parents many moons ago, while she’d been married to Vikram Gandhi. But after Vik’s death, heartbroken and depressed, she’d decided to pool all her savings with her parents’ and upgrade their struggling sari shop in Edison.
Now the boutique was everything to her, a place where she’d buried her grief and more or less resurrected herself. It had helped to have a challenging business to keep her mind occupied, the best kind of therapy for a grieving young widow.
Her brother, Nilesh, a sophomore at Rutgers University, had always distanced himself from the clothing business. Nearly eighteen years younger than she, and an unexpected late-life baby for her parents, he could be a joy as well as an annoyance.
Nilesh was both her brother and her baby in so many ways. She’d babysat him, changed his diapers, held him when he’d been sick, and bottle-fed him. And yet she and Nilesh argued and snarled and threw barbs at each other like any other siblings. She loved him to pieces. She’d never had children of her own, so he was still her baby. Of course, there’d been no opportunity for Anjali to think about having babies, not when Vik had died of a brain aneurysm within two years of their marriage.
“Anju.” Usha’s voice forced her thoughts back to the cold reality of their present situation. “Could you come here and finish this display for me? I have to get busy cleaning up the house.” She threw her husband a meaningful look. “Since Jeevan-bhai is arriving in five…no…four and a half days,” she said with a glance at her wristwatch, “I have to clean, shop, cook, and launder…and iron.”
Anjali noticed her father’s harried expression. Poor Dad.
Usha strode away in a huff to the back of the store, then returned a minute later with her pocketbook on her arm and the car keys jangling in her hand. Putting on her driving glasses, she swept out the front door. Anjali and her father watched her disappear into the parking lot, then exchanged a troubled glance.
In about two hours her mother would have shopped for the essentials, stored them away in the kitchen, cleaned and vacuumed the house, and aired the guest room mattress. Usha Kapadia was like a tornado when she was on a mission, especially when she was upset or angry. And Jeevan’s visit definitely qualified as both upsetting and annoying. Besides, Anjali knew exactly how her mother felt; she felt the same way herself. The last time Jeevan had visited some five years ago, her mother, just recovering from a hysterectomy, had nearly suffered a mental breakdown.
After a four-week visit, it had been the most blessed relief to put the chubby Jeevan and his wife on a jet bound for India.
Anjali observed her father pull up a stool and sit down with his elbows parked on the counter. “So, Dad, what exactly is Jeevan-kaka coming all the way to the U.S. to do?” she asked.
Mohan’s expression was one of tired resignation. His messy hair tugged gently at Anjali’s heart. “He’s going to take a look at the boutique, then decide what we should do. He promised he’ll help us financially, too.”
“His fortune’s in rupees, so how’s he going to help in dollars?”
“Rupees can easily be converted to any foreign currency these days.”
Anjali’s chin instinctively snapped up. “We’re not going to accept his charity, I hope?”
Mohan gave a wry laugh. “Jeevan-bhai believes in loans, not charitable contributions. He’s a businessman, Anju, not a philanthropist.”
“So do you think we might be able to save the store?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I really hope so. This store is all I have. All we have.”
“I’m sorry, Dad. Until last year, things had looked pretty good. Our profit margin wasn’t great, but it wasn’t critical.”
Rising from his stool, Mohan went to the open display case where his wife had been working and started emptying out the small jewelry boxes onto the counter. “Too much competition in the immediate area. Other stores have started to copy our boutique concept and exclusive designs. The trouble is they get both their materials and manufacturing much cheaper from India.”
“I know.” Anjali and her parents got their goods from Bangkok, the U.S., and Hong Kong. It made a huge difference in pricing. “But their quality and style are nowhere near ours, Dad. Their stores are merely gaudy imitations. It’s like comparing a diamond to rhinestones.”
“Even then—”
“Wasn’t it just the other day that a customer was complaining that something she bought from one of our competitors lost its color and most of its beads after a single cleaning?”
“But most customers go for surface looks. When they can pay $500 instead of $1,500 for an outfit, the last thing they think of is color loss or the beads falling off. How many times do people take such fancy garments to the cleaners anyway?” He positioned the last diamond ring in between a necklace and its matching bracelet, then shut the glass door and locked it.
Her father was right. Even before he’d explained it, she knew what the problem was. She just didn’t want to admit it. They’d overextended themselves with the present year’s inventory, too. The store was packed with beautiful things, but not enough customers to buy them. Most of it was her fault. On seeing the striking new silks in Thailand, she’d gone a bit overboard with her orders for chania-choli outfits. Long flowing skirts with matching blouses. Then she’d requested her uncles in India to craft jewelry to match those ensembles.
Despite her training, she’d made the grave mistake of neglecting the financial end of the business and left it entirely to her father. He was a smart businessman but she still should have kept her eye on the bottom line.
Unfortunately, her heart was in creating pretty things and not in finances. But no matter what her reasons, it was still partly her fault. It wasn’t fair to let her father take the blame.
Mohan returned to his bookkeeping chores, so Anjali moved to the sari section and started to unpack the new boxes of Benaresi silk saris that had arrived that morning. Even before she could slit the carton with a box-cutter, she knew the goods would be beautiful. She’d hand-picked every one of them during her recent trip to India and supervised the packaging herself.
Reverently