Yoga Hotel

Rebound by Sagebrush

Chapter One

A Good Job in Delhi

The house where Hari worked was in the center of New Delhi, near a lot of government bungalows and embassy residences. Hari got the job through his fattier's cousin whose son-in-law was the driver. Every day Hari dusted the shelves, washed the floor, arranged whatever papers had accumulated on the tables. There wasn't much to do; his employers, the Calloways, never had parties. Hari had initially looked forward to wearing a white suit and proffering drinks on a silver tray, as did his cousin Ranjit who worked for the French consul general, but that never happened. Once in a great while two or three people came for dinner or drinks, and when they did the Calloways paid no attention to the servants' clothes.

Mrs. Calloway was a journalist for an English newspaper. She preferred Pakistan. She said people in Lahore gave better parties and "didn't talk from both sides of their mouths." Hari couldn't figure out what the husband did; he told dinner guests he was writing a book about the Punjab, but he never went up to the library, neither did he use his typewriter. Hari knew this because it was his job to dust the library, and the typewriter never came out from under its plastic dustcover and there was never any paper in the wastebasket. From what Hari observed, Mr. Calloway spent most of his time reading magazines and eating grilled cheese sandwiches on the bersati.

Hari lived in the dormitory behind the house with the other servants - a chowkidar, a dhobi, and Harmeet the cook. Over the years Harmeet had worked for various embassies and high commissions, and thus claimed to speak Italian, French, Danish, and "Brazilian," which he had putatively studied during his four-year tenure at the Brazilian Embassy. One night the Calloways had a Brazilian demographer to dinner. They summoned Harmeet from the kitchen so the two could have a conversation. Hari watched from the doorway. He knew Harmeet didn't understand what the man was saying, but Harmeet invented a story line which was well received by the guest. When Harmeet was finally released, he ran into the kitchen, sweat streaming down his forehead, and yelled at Hari to get the dessert trays ready.

Harmeet was willfully obsequious in the Calloways' presence, but when alone with the other servants, he recounted calumnious tales of Mr. Calloway's sexual habits. Hari consequently studied his employer with fierce curiosity, but the only noticeably peculiar thing Mr. Calloway ever did was to entertain a middle-aged Australian woman when Mrs. Calloway was out of town. Harmeet muttered about what they did when they were alone, but as far as Hari could see nothing much went on; they sat in the living room, smoked cigarettes, and drank whiskey sodas. The woman always left promptly at 12:30 P.M. Mr. Calloway turned out the lights in the living room, locked the front door, and went to bed. It was strange that the woman never came when Mrs. Calloway was there, but it was also strange that Mrs. Calloway was always traveling. Hari soon gave up speculating about Mr. Calloway's private life, and concentrated on pilfering chocolates and liqueurs, fishing European magazines out of the trash, and staying up late reading and eating in his room.

After Hari got the job in Delhi, his mother stopped pestering him about marriage. But when a year had passed she sent a photograph of her candidate. Hari was disappointed, the girl had huge eyebrows, a double chin, and bulbous cheeks sprinkled with acne. Hart calculated he could forestall the inevitable for another year and a half.

After two years Mrs. Calloway was transferred to Jakarta and a new tenant moved in. His name was Bob Thompson, and he worked for the World Bank. He was, Hari supposed, quite handsome, with thick blond hair, pink and white skin, and very pale blue eyes with long eyelashes. The staff under the Calloways had adjusted to a pleasantly dilatory routine: Hart hadn't bothered to clean behind the shelves and couches for over a year. But Bob wanted everything washed and polished and maintained at the highest level of cleanliness and order. He had the living room painted pale blue, the bedroom yellow, the bathrooms beige; he brought in a team of tailors to reupholster all the furniture; he bought curtains, rugs, paintings, lamps, deluxe air conditioners, tablecloths. He bought new uniforms for everyone, put Harmeet's son Balban on the staff, and gave Hari lessons in mixing drinks and setting the table.

Bob had at least three dinner parties a week, a large cocktail party every fortnight, and a dance party once a month. Harmeet boasted to Bob of having worked twice as hard at the German Embassy, but when Bob dismissed them on late nights, Harmeet moaned that keeping long hours hurt his eyes and how his uncle had always warned him that the English were terrible masters. Hari was also daunted by the amount of work Bob's social life exacted; he'd grown accustomed to going to the cinema, sleeping late, playing cards in the garden at Khan Market. Now he was up at 6:30 and in bed at midnight.

But by far the most perplexing aspect of Bob's routine was that he saw several women in the course of a single week. Hari soon discerned three regulars. The first was Gerta, a stewardess from Lufthansa who always arrived at two in the morning in her flight uniform, pulling her portable luggage cart. The second was Joan, an English journalist who smoked and drank a lot and was always rude to the servants. Hari didn't think she was attractive at all - she wore round glasses and short skirts, which exposed thin, unshaven legs. Hari fantasized about spilling oil on her dough-colored thighs when he bent down to hand her the specially prepared gin and tonic she demanded ...

Continues...

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Excerpted from Yoga Hotel by Maura Moynihan Copyright © 2003 by Maura Moynihan. Excerpted by permission.
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