The Windfall

Whenever the weather turns hot all I want to do is read gossipy, effervescent novels about people surfing precarious social tides and trying to make it to dry land in one piece. The Windfall quenches just that thirst: a bubbly, fun, witty comedy of manners about a family attempting a lifestyle upgrade in Delhi. It’s a story about ambition, family secrets, and the pride before the fall.

When Mr. Jha, the family patriarch, sells his website for a fortune, he finds himself suddenly able to relocate—out of the cramped Mayur Palli Housing Complex, where he has lived with his wife for over twenty years, and into Gurgaon, one of the toniest neighborhoods in all of Delhi. Suddenly free of the prying neighbors and tight living spaces of middle class India, the Jhas are like a modern day update on The Jeffersons, endeavoring to fit into their new surroundings and the accompanying social pressures—they learn how to use dimmer switches, Mr. Jha buys a corporate-grade shoe polisher for their home. But of course, along with new material things come brand-new problems. Soon, the Jhas are enmeshed in a complex game of humblebrag one-upmanship with their neighbors, who casually drop references to Harrods and luxurious recreation clubs and new Jaguars. It seems that once you’re rich, only being richer will do.

Meanwhile, the Jhas' son, who left for business school in America shortly after his parents’ windfall, has fallen in love with a woman named Elizabeth, spending profligately, and almost flunking out of his MBA program. He starts to become enchanted with the trappings of his fathers’ bank account and romanticizing his new surroundings: 'œHe bought an iPhone and an iPad and a GoPro camera and he downloaded Final Cut Pro and he spent his time filming his life in America and creating his own mini film versions of the shows and movies he had grown up watching.' He falls into a melancholic state, knowing that back home, his parents still want him to marry an Indian girl, and that if he cannot succeed in business, he will never be able to have the independence he craves.

Money changes everything—and in the case of the Jhas, it puts stressors on all aspects of their lives: marriage, parenthood, friendship, sanity. Watching the Jhas deal with their new circumstances is a joy, even when they’re not having much fun. If you want to read a novel that fizzles in the back of your throat like a cold glass of champagne, full of evocative details and sparkly trappings of modern Indian high society, then lay out on a towel and take in Diksha Basu’s debut.