Free The Cambridge Curry Club by Saumya Balsari

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    Her desire to work in the charity shop was applauded by him as a noble, altruistic effort. The impulse purchases were another matter; he was somewhat unhappy with her gift of a grey Marks & Spencer cardigan from the charity shop. Englishmen appeared to be of an entirely different build, even if the size was S. It was difficult to ascertain whether it was the shoulders or the chest or the sleeves that were the problem, for no full-length mirrors were to be found in the Chatterjee household, a move initiated by Swarnakumari after she had read Guru Ma’s homily on vanity. A mirror reflection , decided Swarnakumari, was merely an illusion, not reality.
    They did not need any more bone china cups, saucers, plates and bowls, egg slicers, rattan magazineracks, vases, recycled pencils or lampshades from the shop, thought Mr Chatterjee. The small television set she acquired for the bedroom had, however, been useful , and after Swarnakumari fell asleep he turned down the volume and watched until late into the night. His dreams were lurid, and, feeling revulsion and distaste, he wrote letters of complaint to the television watchdog protesting against explicit programme content.
    Swarnakumari was garrulous every Thursday evening as she recounted the day’s events, described the customers and the arrival of new items. Mrs Wellington-Smythe was a fine, aristocratic woman, with a strong sense of authority and command, decided Mr Chatterjee. He mentioned her name several times in conversation on his walks with Banerjee, who in turn narrated Heinz’s stories of barbecues in the San Ramon backyard and a trip with Madhumita to Yellowstone National Park in their black BMW five series car. Banerjee had somehow formed the impression that Swarnakumari and Mrs Wellington-Smythe were good friends.
    Mr Chatterjee had noticed an increasing yearning in Swarnakumari for India, for Kolkata and for her relatives , but he deliberately refrained from comment. He was of the view that the past should remain the past. There was no future in the past, and as for the tense, it was present perfect. At an early age, Mr Chatterjee had learned the wisdom of the haiku he had read:
When sitting sit/When standing stand/Above all, don’t wobble.
    Mr Chatterjee never wobbled, although the breasts of the woman in No. 32 opposite the quiet square did. He had noticed them and their owner from the moment she had moved into the house with the blue door on 24 June 1997. She lived alone with two cats that wereentirely house-trained and remained indoors. Two days after her arrival at Newton Square one of the cats had leaped out of the window and was seen wandering disoriented and distraught over the lawn like a blindfolded inmate released at midnight from a high-security prison. By a happy coincidence, Mr Chatterjee was tweaking the net curtains at the time. Despite a strong aversion to cats, he gallantly gave chase. Rachel Chesterton explained that she had lived in a London flat and was obliged to relocate after her divorce. She expressed her gratitude with an offer of tea, patting his arm gently with rose-pink nails to propel him into her kitchen. He had stared in wonder at the wooden flooring, the cosy bright curtains and the cheerful furniture of an IKEA world.
    Rachel was lonely; she had recovered from skin cancer three years ago, but it was her divorce that was her undoing. Her chronic alcoholism led to a court decision awarding custody of the child to the father. She found Cambridge provincial and dull, as dull as her little Indian neighbour, who looked at her with inscrutable eyes and transparent thoughts. Conscious of the proprieties, he had declined further offers of tea, choosing instead to chat on the street. If he passed her in the company of Banerjee, he merely nodded briskly from afar.
    On his Neighbourhood Watch rounds one winter’s evening he saw a twisted bicycle abandoned near Rachel’s house. He knocked on her door, noticed it was unlatched and