THE NARAYANS

Mrs. Narayan was small, dark-skinned, oval-faced. She had a wonderful singsong voice.

- Akhil Sharma

She’d come up to you at temple on Holi or Diwali and offer congratulations so heartfelt you’d feel as if it were the first time the day had ever been celebrated. We all liked her. She was an immigrant, too, but she didn’t seem to have jangled nerves the way we did. She cooked for many of us and regularly tried to refuse payment. “This is from my side,” she’d say. “A horse can’t be friends with grass,” we might answer.

Mr. Narayan we didn’t like. He was short and squat. He spoke roughly to his wife. He owned a television-repair shop and described himself as an engineer, even though he hadn’t finished high school. Our kids would go over to his house to see his children, and he’d play Ping-Pong with them. When he won, he’d crow about it. He got into stupid arguments with the kids, over facts like the world’s population. If someone showed him an almanac that proved he was wrong, he’d grumble about the ignorance of American authors. We’d see him smoking in his car in the driveway of the high school, as he waited for his children, a shower cap on his head because he was dyeing his hair.

The Narayans had two children. The daughter, Madhu, was fourteen, two years younger than her brother. Mr. Narayan wouldn’t let her sit on the front porch, where she might be seen. He also wouldn’t let her wear shorts. She wore jeans in gym class.

Nehali, who was the same age, told her mother about this.

“Poor girl,” Dr. Shukla said. “Why do you sound happy talking about it?”

“I’m not happy,” Nehali said. She was standing beside her mother as Dr. Shukla rolled dough for parathas. “Why shouldn’t I talk about it?”

“Religious people can be conservative.”

“Mr. Narayan isn’t religious.”