Chapter 9: Ashok
Ashok had what amounted to his own little apartment in the basement. When the Rai kids had shared the space growing up, Parvinder and a couple buddies had thrown up some drywall at what seemed like random intervals, walling off three corners of a great rumpus room and calling them “bedrooms,” of which Ashok’s had, naturally, been the smallest. Eventually, Monica had succeeded in emptying her basement both of children and of arbitrary drywall and had mirrored the walls of what she insisted on calling The Pilates Studio of Her Dreams, although she had scarcely bought a workout outfit, much less learned anything about Pilates, when Ammaji had come a-knockin in search of new Santa Fe digs. Monica bravely sacrificed her subterranean studio, preferring to have her husband’s mot
