Free The Mistress of Spices by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

almost no color at all. They nod at the chauffeur and he picks up another two pounds.
    I hide my smile.
    The rich Indians crane their necks and lift their chins high because they have to be more always than other people, taller, handsomer, better dressed. Or at least richer. They heave theirbodies like moneybags out the door and into their satin cars, leaving the crumbly odor of old banknotes behind.
    Other rich people send lists instead, because being a rich person is a busy job. Golf cruises charity luncheons in the Cornelian Room shopping for new Lamborghinis and cigar cases inlaid with lapis lazuli.
    Still others have forgotten to be Indian and eat caviar only.
    For all of them in the evening I burn
tulsi
, basil which is the plant of humility, curber of ego. The sweet smoke of basil whose taste I know on my own tongue, for many times the Old One has burned it for me too. Basil sacred to Sri Ram, which slakes the craving for power, which turns the thoughts inward, away from worldliness.
    Because inward even rich people are people only.
    I must tell this to myself over and over. And also what the Old One taught us: “Not for you to pick and choose your compassion. The ones who anger you most, you must bend most to help.”
    There is something else that I must tell you.
    When I look deep into the lives of rich people, sometimes I am forced to humility, to say Who would have thought. For instance. Anant Soni who at the end of a day of corporate video conferences sits by his mother’s bedside to rub her arthritic hands. And Dr. Lalchandani’s wife who stares unseeing out the bedroom window of her designer home because across town her husband is in bed with another woman. And Prameela Vijh who sells million-dollar houses and sends money to her sister in a battered women’s shelter. And Rajesh whose company went public the same day the doctor pushed the biopsy report across the table at him and said
chemo
.
    And right now in front of me a woman in oversize Bill Blassjeans and Gucci shoes is buying stacks and stacks of Naans for a party tonight, is drumming rubyflash fingers on the counter as I ring up the flat brown bread, is saying shrill as tin “Come
on
I’m in a hurry.” But inside she is thinking of her teenage son. He’s been acting so strange lately, hanging out with boys who frighten her with their razor earrings and biker jackets and heavy boots as though for war, their cold, cold eyes and slits of mouths that are becoming
his
eyes,
his
mouth. Could he be taking—. Her mind shudders away from the word she cannot say even inside her clamped lips, and under the layers, foundation and concealer and rouge and thick fuchsia eyeshadow, her face grows bruised with love.
    Rich woman I thank you for reminding me. Beneath the shiniest armor, gold-plated or diamond, the beat of the vulnerable flesh.
    Into a corner of her matching Gucci purse I place hartuki, shriveled seed in the shape of a womb, which has no American name.
Hartuki
to help mothers bear the pain that starts with the birthing and continues forever, the pain and joy both, tangled dark and blue as an umbilical cord around an infant’s throat.

     
    Saturday comes upon me like the unexpected flash of rainbow under a bird’s black wing, like the swirl-spread skirt of a
kathak
dancer, fast and then faster. Saturday is drums bursting from the stereos of the young men who drive by dangerous-slow, and what are they looking for. Saturday takes my breath. For Saturday I putup signs: FRESH-FRESH METHI. HOME GROWN; DIWALI SALE LOWEST PRICES; LATEST MOVIES BEST ACTORS, JUHI CHAWLA-AMIR KHAN, RENT 2 DAYS FOR COST OF ONE. And even, daringly, ASK IF YOU CANNOT FIND.
    So many people on Saturday, it seems the walls must take a deep breath just to hold them in. All those voices, Hindi Oriya Assamese Urdu Tamil English, layered one on the other like notes from a
tanpura
, all those voices asking for more than their words, asking for happiness except no one seems to know