Positions

We started the day with some shopping, primarily for my sisters and mother. Every time we go shopping, there’s a sort of dance we have to do with Mr Fixit. Often, after we’ve selected some items after carefully considering our budgets, when we go to pay he will swoop in, order the staff about in Tamil, then put our purchases on The Boss’ credit card. We will protest, he will protest, and eventually he may allow us to buy one or two smaller items ourselves, and pay for the rest.

If you are an unscrupulous person, you might be thinking, “Awesome! To the Lego store! Or the Prada store! Or whatever store has crates of Veuve Cliquot!” But that’s the trap of the dance. Every once in a while Mr Fixit will be hovering near the cashier desk, but then as purchases are finalised he suddenly has to take a call, or make a call, leaving you with an expectant cashier and a 5000 rupee bill. Whether this is by design or just a coincidence is unclear, but it nicely tempers the temptation to treat yourself on a demi-billionaire’s dime.

In the spirit of yesterday’s veiled comments about tigers, I bought a shirt block printed with little tigers. Or rather, Mr Fixit bought it for me. I am learning the dance.

After shopping, it was time to go to lunch at the home of The Boss’ sister, a quiet, gracious Indian lady in a matriarchal grey bun and a mustard yellow sari. We had biriyani in her old-fashioned dining room, where the chairs were arranged around the periphery with little inlaid tables between them. She proved herself to be a considerate hostess, and allowed us to serve our own portions; ah, the luxury of being able to eat what you want rather than engaging in a battle of wills with a servant hell-bent on drowning you in chicken tikka masala!

After lunch, we drove out to inspect The Boss’ racehorse stud, because are you even a demi-billionaire if you don’t own a racehorse stud? There we had coffee on the verandah while the staff paraded choice horses past, allowing my younger sister, the only one of us to inherit our father’s obsession with horses, to appraise them and make approving comments about their stances or temperaments.

While the racehorses are the stars of the show, the stud also raises dairy cattle, sheep, ducks, chickens, an army of incestuous white and ginger cats who keep the mice out of the horse feed, and a pack of rescued dogs – The Boss loves dogs and will pick up any abandoned puppy he finds and bring it to the staff to raise.

When I asked him how many staff were at the stud – including onsite horse vets, stablehands, trainers, gardeners, handymen, and gate guards – he shrugged slightly and said, “About 120.”

We returned late to the city, for pre-dinner drinks (best consumed slowly and carefully, to prevent overzealous servants from swooping in when your glass gets close to empty and replacing it with a brimming new one), and my mother caught up with The Boss’ sister-in-law, whom she befriended on previous visits. This sister-in-law is a forthright, modern woman who works in a male-dominated field (clinical psychology) and doesn’t tolerate the patriarchal expectations of Indian society for one second. And as she has wealth independent from The Boss’ companies, which is a rarity in their circles, she doesn’t have to compromise any of her attitudes.

From her, we got the Dark Side of Isha. The guru/swami who created it is a crook and possibly a murderer, they use psychological tricks and manipulation to lock people into their cult, and they steal people away from their families and empty their bank accounts. At least, according to her. Indians of a certain disposition do seem to run to hyperbole, so I took everything she said with a grain of salt, but it certainly meshed with the culty vibe I was getting from the place, not to mention the incongruity of a haven of spiritual enlightenment being so willing to shove pilgrims out of the way when our party splashed their rupees about.

We repaired to dinner in the formal dining room at around 10.30pm. I’ve loved every single thing I’ve eaten so far in this house, but I think I’ve already incurred the ire of the cook, who interprets my reluctance to carb load in the middle of the night as a calculated insult against his cooking.

As we were leaving dinner, The Boss, expressing concern that we might feel cold in the evenings, presented my mother and sisters with beautiful pashminas to wear. Then, archly noting that a pashmina wouldn’t be suitable for me, he gave me a thick, soft scarf with a very specific pattern.

“Wait, is this Burberry?” I asked in astonishment.

“Yes, do you like it?” Mr Fixit replied, beaming. “I selected it for you myself.”

“It’s amazing,” I said in wonder.

So yeah, now I have a Burberry scarf worth more than some of my suits. Nice.