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

My Fitbit says I need six thousand more steps before it gets dark. I do not walk my usual route. Instead, I walk to the side of Malliga Homes where the smaller flats are. Where Renuka's flat is. When I get there, I see that her gauzy yellow curtains are open. I look inside.

Empty.

She must have been so eager to leave. I turn the doorknob and find it unlocked.

I hear someone behind me, and turn around to find Renuka.

"I was just looking for you," I say. I quickly step out of her flat and shut the door, feeling guilty for the intrusion. "You must be leaving soon."

I watch her lift out a piece of green bean lodged between two teeth with her tongue. For a second, I wonder if her children changed their minds. They would remain abroad, and she with us, alone.

"Tonight," she says.

"I had made you a sweater for Australia, but I fear it will be of no use to you anymore."

"It was all so unexpected," she says. "I've always believed we must expect nothing from our children."

"My daughter is visiting next month," I say. "She plans to remodel our old flat in Chennai and live there. Perhaps you and I can walk along Elliot's Beach together one day."

"Oh!" Renuka says. She hugs me. "Children these days. They surprise me!"

I am shocked by her hug, and by my lie. I try to correct what I've said.

"You misunderstood," I say. "She is doing well in America. She just plans to visit often."

"I came to lock up," Renuka says pleasantly. "We need to sell this place so we can afford the new flats in Chennai."

"Do come by and pick up that sweater before you leave," I say. "Maybe you can use it after all, if you plan to go to the beach in the evenings."

"How I've missed it," she says. "That sea breeze."


I walk all around Malliga Homes until I reach eight thousand steps. I do not know why I lied to Renuka. Renuka, who lived in the smallest flat that Malliga Homes offers. Renuka, whose son is an ordinary movie theater manager. But she believed me. I imagine repeating the lie. To the Venugopals. To the Sharmas. To the chap who presses our clothes.

For some reason, I am reminded of my own father, who spent his final days in our flat in Chennai when Kamala was just a child. Toothless, he would sip his bland rice porridge and mutter an old Tamil proverb. "This is stranger than that, and that is stranger than this," he would say, as bits of the porridge dribbled down his chin.

It is dusk now at Malliga Homes. In that darkest part of twilight, that ungraspable moment before day turns fully to night, I pause to admire the oleander shrubs. Their white flowers, glowing at their yellow centers. The thick bougainvillea vines, in brilliant deep magenta, are creeping over the Malliga Homes compound wall. Some of the flowers are stuck on one side while others, by sheer luck, fall to the other.

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.