Sanjay Patel of Palo Alto California

His name was Sanjay Patel.

According to Google, there were 7,452 people called Sanjay Patel in the United States.

‘And probably about 7 million in India,’ said his sister, who had changed her name to Miley at the first opportunity. ‘No girl would ever marry you. Who’d want to be Mrs Sanjay Patel? It’s like being Mrs John Doe!’

Sanjay was born in Gujarat, India but his sister, who was much younger, was born in Palo Alto, California. He went to a top American university. There were 23 Sanjay Patels in the school directory. He graduated with honours in Computer Science and was offered a job at a multi-billion-dollar software company. Within a year he was laid off, together with hundreds of other bright young engineers who had flocked from all over the world to work in Silicon Valley. It was not their fault: it was the recession. He lived at home for another year, playing video games and being depressed and enduring his sister, until his mother came into his room one day with a web printout.

‘It’s that new strip mall at the corner of Walnut and Crest. My Vietnamese pedicurist is opening a second nail salon. She says the landlord wants tenants.’

Sanjay carefully saved his videogame and looked at the printout.

‘Dad wants something simple for his retirement,’ said his mother. ‘He’s thinking of taking out a franchise on a UPS Store. His friend just did it in Sunnyvale, says it’s a good, simple business. Everyone sends packages. Even if there’s a recession. And you can be the store manager. Why not. Don’t give me that look! I know you didn’t go to Stanford just to be a UPS Store manager. But it’s just something to pass the time while you’re looking for jobs. What else are you going to do? Nobody is hiring computer engineers: there are thousands of unemployed engineers now in Silicon Valley.’

Sanjay scowled. ‘Dad and his ideas! It was Dad’s idea that I study Computer Science, remember? He said it was recession-proof! I wanted to be a poet!’

‘But where else can you get a job these days?’ said his mother, looking out the window wistfully. A Mexican gardener with a big straw hat was blowing leaves off the pavement, making a terrific sound. The smell of diesel came through the window. ‘Maybe they’re hiring engineers in Bangalore?’

Sanjay was a very good UPS Store manager. He was extremely courteous and honest to a fault. He emailed every single customer to follow-up on their mailbox applications, informed them when they received mail in their mailboxes, and even sorted out the junk mail for them so that they did not have to pay for forwarding the rubbish. The customers grew to trust the tall, handsome boy behind the counter with their most important mail, their small businesses, even their personal belongings which he packed for them in cartons and shipped to other parts of the country. Sometimes moms left their kids in his store while they went to the nail salon next door for treatments. He gave them handheld videogames to play.

Sanjay’s father often stopped by in the afternoons after having tea with his friends at the nearby Starbucks.

‘Your grandfather, Sanjay Patel, was a letter writer in Ahmedabad,’ said Dad. ‘At the central train station. He was the only literate guy in his village and went to the big city to seek his fortune. He thought he would become a teacher, but they didn’t need any more teachers.’

‘Sounds familiar,’ said Sanjay, making bubble wrap. It came in a roll of sheet plastic. He fed the plastic through the machine which blew it up into airy pockets. It was magical. It was his favorite thing to do in the store.

 ‘He wrote letters sitting on a wooden carton. Under a tree outside the train station. Love letters, letters from mothers to sons, letters to relatives asking for money. Sometimes people didn’t show up for their letters, and never paid him, so he saved them. When he died he left behind a biscuit tin of them — the more interesting ones. I have them somewhere. We should take them out to read sometime.’ His dad looked around the small shop with its brown corporate carpeting and neat shelves of manila envelopes and rolls of packing tape. ‘I thought we could serve tea here, you know. Have people come in and sit for a chat. Then I don’t have to go to Starbucks. Mom said she would make little desserts. It would be like India. But the landlord says that would be violating the lease terms. That man has no imagination.’

His father got up abruptly when the bell jingled and a young white woman walked in.

‘Good afternoon,’ said father and son. They saw right away that she had been crying. She pulled down her sunglasses hurriedly and walked to her mailbox. Mailbox 463. Her name was Eeuwke van Westrenen. She had just moved to Palo Alto to go to grad school. She was from Rotterdam. All her mail had interesting stamps.

‘Well, I’m off,’ said Dad formally. ‘Get about your business, Mr. Patel.’

‘Yes, Mr. Patel,’ said Sanjay, rolling his eyes. He continued making bubble wrap, but watched Eeuwke from the corner of his vision, a little concerned. She trembled as she removed a stack of mail from her mailbox and looked through them fearfully, parting the envelopes as if they were tarot cards spelling out disaster.

‘Did you get your fellowship?’ he asked. He had put the envelope in her mailbox himself — he put it on the very top of her stack. He tried to respect people’s privacy, but he had to read the envelopes in order to see which mailbox they went in. Sometimes it was just obvious what was inside the envelopes.

She waved an envelope and smiled wanly. ‘I think so. If it’s a small envelope, with just one piece of paper in it, it means rejection, right? This one is thick and big and has a catalog inside.’

‘Congratulations!’ he handed her a letter opener.

She cut open the envelope and shared the moment with him. They always did. A surprising amount of important news still came by real mail instead of e-mail. He was always the first to hear about the results of grant applications, university applications; the

first to share the births, deaths, weddings. It was the best part of his job. The long Palo Alto weekday afternoons could be interminable.

Despite getting the fellowship, Eeuwke still looked morose. He asked her what the fellowship was for.

‘Psychology.’ She heaved a huge sigh, pushing up her sunglasses, watching him make bubble wrap. ‘That’s really cool, that machine.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Can I have some? I like to pop them.’

He tore off a sheet. ‘Be my guest.’

‘I don’t think we have this kind of machine in the Netherlands.’ She snapped the bubble wrap carefully, one by one, between her thumb and forefinger.

‘That’s not how you do it, you do it like this!’ he took the sheet back and wrung it, so that all the bubbles splattered.

‘No!’ she snatched it back. ‘You’ve ruined it.’

‘Have another sheet. Have ten.’

Five quiet minutes passed, broken only by the sound of her careful, deliberate popping of tiny bubbles. No other customer came in. Finally, she said, ‘When I was little I used to beg the adults to save me the bubble wrap from cartons so I can pop them. I can’t believe you have a machine here that makes an unlimited amount.’

‘What do they say about your bubble-popping mania in Psychology class?’

‘It’s called self-soothing.’

He began rolling the yards of bubble wrap into a giant roll. He was aware of her watching him carefully. Finally, Eeuwke said, ‘His letter didn’t come.’

‘Whose?’

‘My fiancé’s.’

He felt a stab of hurt. He had never seen Eeuwke wear a ring. ‘Oh? Is he Dutch?’

‘Yes. He’s in Rotterdam. He is going to send me a letter to say that our wedding’s off.’

‘You’re getting married?’

‘Not anymore.’

‘If you already know this, why are you still dreading his letter?’

‘How do you know I’m dreading it?’

He shrugged.

She said, pulling down her sunglasses again. ‘He messaged me on Facebook and told me it was all over. He said to be polite, he wrote me a real letter calling off the wedding. Said I deserved to have a full explanation. Of why we’re incompatible. He’s always so rational.’ She broke off, hiccupping a little, sobbing. ‘He’s such an asshole.’

The bell jingled again. A man walked in, asking for a new mailbox application.

‘I better go,’ said Eeuwke hurriedly, and disappeared before Sanjay could say another word.

It is four years later.

There is a biscuit tin in Sanjay’s old bedroom. It is very rusty and worn, but you can still see that its original colour was a delicate blue — the colour of a robin’s egg. The advertisement outside is one of cream crackers. There is a bold picture of a golden sheaf of wheat, promising high nutritional value at low prices. On the cover, someone has written, with black marker, squiggly characters in an Indian language. If translated into English, it would say SANJAY PATEL OF AHMEDABAD GUJARAT. When you open the tin, it smells of what you think India smells like: dust, diesel, and a trace of strong disinfectant.

There are letters inside. They are in a flowing, foreign script that reminds you of worms floating in water, of runes carved on rock. It is the language of Mahatma Gandhi. The paper is tissue thin; the words in faded Biro. Although the letters are from different people, the handwriting in all of them is exactly the same. Except for one.

This is a recent addition: the paper is crisp and white. You know at once that this letter is not from India, but it is from a country on the other side of the world, far, far north. It is the only letter in the tin that has a stamp and a postmark. It was sent four years ago. It is from Rotterdam. It is in Dutch. The letter has been typed on someone’s laptop and printed out on a laser printer, in formal Times Roman font, as if the writer was writing an essay. It is addressed to a young woman and contains a long enumeration (over four pages) of all her flaws and faults.

Sanjay studies the letter, shaking his head. In many ways, the letter writer is correct. But in so many ways, he is wrong.

‘Sanjay! You’re going to be late for your own rehearsal dinner, you fool!’ cries his sister, barging into his room in a cloud of perfume.

‘Fuck, Miley! Do you ever knock?’

She is running around his room in excitement. ‘I just told Eeuwke she’s gonna enjoy being Mrs Sanjay Patel, ‘cos, like, if she ever goes to India, she’ll realize there are ten million -’

‘Get out of here.’

‘But we’re all in the car!’

‘Just give me thirty seconds.’

His sister holds out her fingers, counting away, ‘Twenty-nine. Twenty-eight. Twenty-seven —’

Sanjay shuts the door in her face. He hears her scampering off. He is left alone again with the letter. It is addressed to Eeuwke van Westrenen. But Eeuwke van Westrenen has never read this letter — in fact, never even knew of its existence until he confessed to her that night when he proposed.

‘You read it?’ she had asked, amazed.

‘Well, it is in Dutch, but I scanned it and ran it through Google Translator.’

‘Sanjay Patel, you are fucking insane.’

‘Will you marry me?’

Sanjay smiles at the memory. He pulls out his cellphone and speed dials his fiancée who is in the car sitting out on the driveway. ‘Hey. I have it. My only copy. I’ve definitely deleted the scanned copy. This is it. Really? You’re not even curious? Not even for old time’s sake? Okay.’

He hangs up and tears up the letter carefully, page by page, into tiny bits. He stuffs them into the trash.

Miley Patel is calling him. She is leaning on the horn of her new little Honda, in which the entire family is crammed. To emphasize her impatience, she sends him a text — several texts:

WTF SANJAY PATEL???

WOO-HOO!!!

LIKE, TODAY????

He puts away the biscuit tin, takes a final look around his old bedroom, and leaves, pulling the door shut quietly behind him.