Excerpt from Seeking Fortune Elsewhere by Sindya Bhanoo, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Malliga Homes

Mr. Swaminathan died as he was walking back to his flat from the Veg dining hall after dinner. He was ahead of me on the path, and I saw him slow down. His gait changed from a fast stride to a slower, hunched walk. His left arm went limp. He lost his footing and crumpled to the ground. If I had not been swift, I imagine, he would have hit his head on the concrete. There would have been blood. But I caught up with him. Before he fell, I squatted to the ground and put my hands out, and his head fell directly into my open palms. Carefully, I slipped my hands out, set his head gently on the concrete, and sat at his side talking to him. His left eye looked lower than his right. His left cheek sagged, as if it might slide off.

I held his hand until the ambulance arrived. It was the first time that I had held a man's hand since my husband died. The rectangular diamond on Mr. Swaminathan's gold ring was hard and cold in contrast to his warm skin. Before they loaded his body onto the gurney, he opened his eyes, looked at me, and said, "Renuka." Then he squeezed my hand. Whether he was asking me to summon his wife, or whether he thought I was his wife, I cannot say. He died before he reached the hospital. He was seventy-five years old, the same age my husband would be if he were alive today.

His death was our first. Hard to believe, since this is a place for old people. But Malliga Homes is a new facility, and the first residents, myself included, moved in just two years ago.

The other day, I spoke to my daughter, Kamala, on the phone, and told her how expertly the personnel handled the whole Swaminathan matter. They were prompt in calling for help. The area was cleared immediately, and the ambulance rolled right onto the freshly trimmed landscaping, crushing a row of golden dewdrop shrubs that took a year to grow.

"I am so glad to hear that," Kamala said.

Malliga Homes is not a bad place. It is a rather nice place, in fact. Just a bit isolated for city people like me, coming from places like Chennai and Bangalore. The facility sits at the intersection of Thambur Road and NH-181, just outside of Coimbatore. Going to the outskirts of a mid-sized city gave the developers more space, and allowed them to invest in luxuries that we all appreciate. We have stone tiles in the bathrooms, Thermofoil cabinets, those wood laminate floors that are in style now, picturesque landscaping, and Honda inverter generators with eight hours of run time for when the power goes out, which it does daily.

I am lucky to be here, my Kamala likes to remind me. It is only the second place of its kind in South India, and the units sold out quickly. Still, no amount of expensive stone or carefully worded praise from my daughter can change what Malliga Homes is: a place for those who have nowhere else to go.

We are of the upper middle class, here. We do not come from families who own hospitals or factories, or vast tracts of land. We work for those people—worked for those people. Those people belong to a different cut entirely, and will never move here, no matter how beautifully our gardeners maintain the bougainvillea vines and the oleander shrubs. Those people will stay in their posh city flats with their many servants, with their children nearby. The offspring of the rich are rich, and they do not seek their fortunes elsewhere.

Like me, nearly every resident of Malliga Homes has lost sons and daughters to Foreign. That is the reason we live in a retirement-community-cum-old-age-home, rather than with our families. My Kamala left India twenty-five years ago. She is deputy managing director of a company called Synchros Systems, in the Atlanta area.

Renuka Swaminathan also has two children living abroad, one in Germany and one in Australia. They must have arrived already, to help with Mr. Swaminathan's kariyam preparations.

From Seeking Fortune Elsewhere by Sindya Bhanoo. Used with permission of Catapult. Copyright © 2022 by Sindya Bhanoo.

This story was originally published in Granta magazine.