Miss New India

by Bharati Mukherjee

  "Your good friend Miss Husseina Shiraz. You are being bosom buddies, isn't it? You are exchanging clothes, discussing secrets, and whatnot. Very expensive silk clothes from Gulf." The detective picked at flaking dry skin on his upper lip. Blood beaded where he had gouged rather than picked. The tip of his tongue chased the tawny red beads. "You are being in communication and whatnot with this bosom buddy?"

  His questions were baffling. Haughty Husseina would sneer if she heard any of the Bagehot Girls claim her as a bosom buddy. "We roomed and boarded at the same time. We crossed paths in the bathroom, and we chatted at mealtimes. Just small talk, I can't even remember about what." With Minnie dead, it wouldn't be prudent to admit the Bagehot Girls mostly grumbled and gossiped about her.

  The detective threw his head back and made loud clucking noises as though he was scratching an itch deep down in his throat. The older policewoman snapped a command, and the younger one poured water from the carafe into the glass. After several noisy gulps of water, the detective returned his attention to Anjali. "Miss Bose, you are committing stupidity. I already have answers to all questions I am asking." He slapped the folder with his right palm. "Commencing again, Miss Bose. What all you are knowing about your good friend's other life?" He flicked the folder open and extracted an Indian passport. "Not informing on terror plot is heinous offense. Conspirator, co-conspirator, abettor, enabler andsoforth. You are understanding that hard-labor category of long jail time is awaiting such criminal acts, no?"

  He wet his right index finger, opened the passport to its front page, and shoved it in Anjali's face. She jerked her head back enough to make out a passport headshot of Husseina wearing the Panzer Delight T-shirt she had traded with Husseina. "You are seeing name of holder, isn't it? Your good name but not face?"

  How gullible she had been when she had given up her favorite T-shirt! "We could be sisters," Husseina had gushed, and Anjali had been flattered. No wonder Husseina had asked her friendly questions about her birthday and place of birth.

  "What place of service she was in when you were her dear friend?"

  "I don't know, I can't remember. She talked about house loans. I don't know what you're getting at."

  "Your situation is very much compromised. Your stupidity is compounding already compromised situation."

  "I think I'm going to throw up, sir. Please, please, I need a bucket."

  He totally ignored her. He swatted the top of her head with the open passport. "Why you sell terrorist whore your good name and your clothes? Who is paying you? You will confess everything. Now!"

  "Nobody paid me. We swapped clothes!"

  "No money changing hands? Then how you are living? Bangalore is eks-pensive city, isn't it? Vhayr you are vark-hing? Per diem how much you are earning?" The older policewoman cracked a joke in Kannada, which broke up the detective. He lowered his voice to a lewd whisper. "Your hourly wage is being how much?"

  "I'm still looking for work."

  He caressed the passport photo with a pensive thumb. "Your name, but your friend's face. Very professional forgery. How that is happening? Where you are coming?"

  Where do I come from? It was the question she most dreaded. He was really asking if she had parents or relatives or powerful friends in Bangalore who might intervene if she disappeared or if they attacked her. Had she really ever been in bed with a rich young man in his luxury apartment overlooking Cubbon Park? Otherwise, she was just another dog on the street. "Kolkata," she said.

  "Why you are concealing true facts? You think senior detectives are dunderheads?" He reconsulted her slim case file. "Place of birth and previous residence. Gauripur, Bihar State. Detainee trying to pull wool on senior rank officer! Admit please, POB is Gauripur."

  "Yes," she said.

  "Name of father?"

  "Prafulla Kumar Bose. Recently deceased."

  He shuffled his papers. "No record of Anjali Bose. One daughter only, living in Patna."

  Anjali tasted bile. She was stuck in the flypaper of her past. He popped his next question. "Why Bihar girl coming to Bangalore?"

  "To find work," she said. It sounded lame even to her.

  "You paid by mens? You prostitute?" Now he was leering. "I think yes. I think you prostitute."

  There were no correct answers in this harrowing game of riddles. Of course not! she wanted to say, but honesty would be a trap. Saying nothing was a trap, as was saying anything. I will not scream. I will not cry. She swallowed back the vomit rising in her throat.

  It was not happening to her. This is not happening to me; it is happening to Angie. I am a ghost.

  Now the ghost had an answer to Angie's first Bangalore question: Yes, if crores are the new lakhs, a girl can fall ten thousand times faster and deeper than she could in Gauripur. In some new, undefined sense, they were right. She was a prostitute; she was living off men, using skills she didn't know she had in order to manipulate them, and she didn't see any other way of getting what she wanted. Marriage equated to servitude, like her mother's and sister's. But if not in marriage, how did a woman in Bangalore live?

  If she'd had access to a radio or a television over the past twelve hours, she would have learned that the London-based husband of a Hyderabad-born Bangalore resident was being sought in Holland, Germany and Malta for plotting a grenade attack on the Heathrow ticket counters of Air-India and five other international airlines all serving Indian cities. The Indian press immediately learned his name and address in Bradford and his wife's in Bangalore. Investigative journalists of two Hindi-language papers, a Kannada paper, and Voice of the South reported that the Hyderabad residence, though deserted, had yielded significant evidence in the form of an abandoned laptop. The wife's supervisor in Citibank's outsourced mortgage-consolidation department confirmed to reporters that she had been questioned by authorities. The employee being investigated, the supervisor stated, had quit work an hour into her shift, complaining of dizziness, and had not reported since. The whereabouts of the missing employee were not known or had not been divulged by authorities. According to several reliable sources, the woman had not returned to her rented room in her Bangalore residence, historic Bagehot House, Number One, Kew Gardens, to collect her personal belongings.

  A small-scale riot had broken out at Bagehot House. Aroused youth, Hindu nationalists, common criminals, sacked the ancient landmark and carried off much of its furnishings. The venerable owner, Minnie Bagehot, died in the encounter.

  That evening, after Anjali had been booked and then shoved into a crowded, foul-smelling holding cell, she convinced herself that she was being justly punished. Her crime was that of constant, heedless wanting; wanting too much; wanting more of everything, especially happiness. Her greed and restlessness had fatal consequences. Her father had died to protect her.

  She dropped to a crouch, back pressed into a wall splotchy with dull red, still-wet stains of paan juice and maybe blood, and hoped she blended into the crowd of drunks and addicts unsteady on their feet. But gaunt-bodied, wily-eyed, bawdy-mouthed women swarmed around her, sizing her up. Several signaled obscene messages to her with their tongues. A half dozen looked so young that they reminded her of the light-fingered boys she had guarded her cash from on interstate buses. A big-boned mannish woman, wearing a gaudy sari hiked halfway up her hairy calves, blew Anjali lewd kisses. Anjali, more terrified in the lockup cell than she had been in the interrogation room, tried to shrink into a tiny ball. Egged on by the large woman with the rubbery lips, others closed around her and poked and prodded her with their grimy sandals. Two of them grabbed her by her armpits and pulled her to her feet. In her new penitential mood, she accepted their slaps and punches.

  Only the older detainees who squatted or lay on the grimy floor, some coughing blood, ignored her. This hellhole was where she belonged; the apartment in Gauripur had been a mirage of home. But how had she gotten here? She had been told by the two people she was most eager to believe—Mr. Champion and Rabi Chatterjee—that she was special, and i
n her mind being special had meant she deserved better, deserved the best. Ambition had ruined her; worse, it had disgraced her family. At least her father had had the self-respect to commit suicide. His obituary in The Gauripur Standard had omitted the cause of death out of respect for him, but Peter had let it slip. Mr. Champion had begged her not to blame herself for her father's death, which meant he blamed her. She had so distanced herself from the innocent hoping and longing of her Gauripur adolescence that she could no longer call him Peter, not even in her thoughts. How had "Railways Bose" taken his own life? She pictured him hanging from the ceiling fan in the front room. She envied the corpse.

  To a trust-fund Californian photographer who played at slumming, life in India might be all light and angle, but if you are an overreaching penniless Bihari, the light is murky, the angles knife sharp. Just last night she'd thought herself one of Bangalore's blessed, a Bagehot Girl. Knowledge, even self-knowledge, was cruel. Tookie was a prostie, Husseina a terrorist, and she a felon. She felt herself drifting to sleep, the willful shutting down of where she was and what she had become.

  But her father wouldn't let her. He entered the holding cell, stepping over sleeping, moaning bodies as he approached her. He was dressed in the tawny cotton jacket he wore to work every weekday, crusty ridges of dried sweat radiating from the armpits. In place of his only wilted silk tie, he had a bed sheet knotted around his neck. He beamed when he reached her in her corner and, in a ritual gesture of blessing, touched the top of her bowed head.

  The touch felt real because it was real. A policewoman was rapping Anjali's head with her knuckles. "Stir yourself and follow me!"

  12

  Anjali was escorted out of the lockup cell and into the booking area where, looking conspicuously relaxed among curt constables and manacled prisoners, stood a Hawaiian-shirted Mr. GG. Seated next to Mr. GG on the only bench for visitors and joking with him in what, to Anjali, sounded like Punjabi was the detective who had accused her of "abetting terror." Mr. GG stopped in midlaugh and sprang to his feet as soon as he noticed her shuffling behind her uniformed escort. "Miss Bose, rescuing you is becoming a full-time job!" he exclaimed, his voice upbeat, almost chirpy.

  The policewoman shoved her toward the two men, relinquishing her authority to the detective. She peered at the men as though viewing them through dirty glass.

  "Miss Bose!" Mr. GG held both his arms out. He would catch her if she fainted, as she had that first time in Barista. "It's all right now. It's over."

  But she didn't lean into him. In a low, dry whisper, she said, "Just let me die."

  "I have less gloomy plans for your future," Mr. GG bantered, "the most immediate plan being to get you out of the police thana." He patted his briefcase. "Release papers in triplicate."

  The detective smiled at Mr. GG. "Gujral-sahib has rendered at length satisfactory explanations," he announced, without looking at her. "Why you are not informing authorities from beginning of your connections and whatnot?"

  "Just let me die," she cried.

  "I suggest instead that we attend to necessary business at hand." Mr. GG snapped his briefcase open and held it up to her. Her Gucci pocketbook and Movado watch lay on top of a stack of folders, manila envelopes, and forms stamped with official seals.

  "Please to verify contents of lady's handbag," the detective urged her. And when she did not do so, he plucked the item from the upheld briefcase and dumped its contents on the visitors' bench. A Shantiniketan leather wallet stamped with a red-and-black paisley pattern; a key ring with a heavy metal key for the padlock on her bedroom door, a small flat key for the safety-deposit drawer in Husseina's almirah, and a smaller, flimsier one for the tiny wooden chest in which she hid what was left of Mr. Champion's cash; a cotton coin-purse; a CCI trainee badge; two Lakmé lipsticks and a tube of "whitening and brightening" face lotion; a comb; a purse-size pack of paper tissues; two ballpoint pens; four safety pins; a strip of aspirin tablets; a couple of green cardamom pods. "Please to report items missing, if any." He flashed a toothy, superior smile to indicate he was daring her to.

  Mr. GG scooped the items back into her pocketbook. He snapped the briefcase shut. "We'll just take our leave straightway, sir," he said to the detective, who was still smiling. "No need to waste more of your urgent time chasing this red herring. Thank you very, very much, sir." He hustled Anjali toward the exit, promising to replace any item pilfered or lost.

  Her cell phone was missing. Getting a replacement wasn't the same. A replacement will be a copy. All the names on speed dial will be copies. I am just a copy. In that hellhole I wanted to talk to Baba. I wanted to hear Ma's and Mr. Champion's voices.

  In the parking lot, Mr. GG announced, "I have a surprise for you."

  "No more surprises."

  "Okay, I won't spoil the surprise." He gripped her right elbow and guided her toward his car. "You know, until this morning, I never noticed how green your eyes are."

  "I hate my eyes."

  "That's why Husseina targeted you! She must have taken your picture, then she learned your birthday, but it's your light eyes that did you in."

  My sister. My generous benefactor. The mysteries of Hyderabad. The mysteries of Bangalore, the mysteries of everywhere and everyone. You think you're moving forward, you think you're beginning to figure things out, and it's all a trap. My parents were right: everyone is corrupt. There are conspiracies everywhere. But she said only, "I hate everything about me."

  "You'll get over it. Time heals all wounds."

  "The things that happened, happened to me, don't you understand? My father came to my cell with a bed sheet around his neck, my dead father who killed himself because I ran away to Bangalore. I'm in hell."

  He jerked her by the elbow to stop her. "Maybe I don't understand. Maybe I can't. But understand this: You're lucky I have connections with the police. You're lucky I'm not off in Mexico right now. Shit happens, but you are very, very lucky, period. You have friends you don't even know, but you can't just float around Bangalore like a kite—someone will cut the string."

  Her kite string had already been slashed. She had no phone and no one to call. Not that she cared. What friends? There was no longer a Bagehot House room to go back to. "Where are you taking me?"

  "Patience," he counseled. "You'll find out."

  She steeled herself for the next favor Mr. GG was about to bestow. He would insist she move in with him in the flat overlooking Cubbon Park. In the police thana, she had been called a prostitute. What choice did a woman like her, homeless, jobless, skill-less, have? The police were right: she was a prostitute. What other name is there for a young woman without a job or means of support? "All right," she said. "I'm very lucky I know you."

  They neared Mr. GG's car. She made out a shape in the back seat. "Don't get ahead of yourself, Miss Bose. You haven't heard me invite you, have you?" He unlocked the trunk of his Daewoo. "Don't take me for granted."

  "I'm hallucinating!" she gasped. Her red Samsonite was in the trunk.

  The back-seat passenger scrambled out of the car. "Hey! Whazzup?" He grinned. Tall and skinny, his hair grown out and standing on end. He moved the red Samsonite suitcase to make room for the briefcase. Then he gave her a bear hug.

  Mr. GG banged the trunk shut. "Let's just say you've completed a reality TV episode."

  "And survived the final round," the passenger joked. "Girish activated his local network and the vast Peter Champion network. You can't imagine how many thousands of activists are working night and day for you! Parvati-Auntie's sorry she couldn't come to the thana herself, but her driver's wife's in surgery, so she's keeping vigil in the hospital. Anyway, she said to tell you her home is your home."

  "But I've let her down."

  "She's an incurable do-gooder. A one-time call agent might not interest her, but an unjustly accused prisoner is right up her alley. But as aunties go, she rocks."

  Anjali rested her head on the skinny chest of the young photographer she had met—it seemed i
ncarnations ago—and succumbed to tears of shame.

  Part Four

  1

  Aurobindo and Parvati Banerji's three-story home in Dollar Colony—so named for the area's preponderance of foreign-returned executives and entrepreneurs—had four master-bedroom suites of equal size, each with its sitting area, dressing room, spa bath with separate shower, and small private porch. Two of the four suites were located on the ground floor, one occupied by Auro and Parvati, the other kept in move-in condition for long visits by Auro's elderly parents. "It was in-laws on the ground floor with us, or install an elevator," Parvati liked to joke, "and this was the cheaper solution." An efficient live-in staff of six ran the house and adjacent grounds.

  The public rooms—formal drawing room, dining room, an office for Auro, a puja room, and a granite-lavished kitchen—were also on the main floor. The other two suites, fully furnished, were on the upper floor and separated by a second sitting room. They were intended for the Banerji sons, Dinesh, a senior at Harvard, and Bhupesh, a junior at MIT, and their future wives and children. That still left two small rooms with a shared bathroom and shower stall on the third floor for summer visits by Dinesh's and Bhupesh's college friends.

  Anjali had been given Dinesh's suite. Cricket bats and field hockey sticks were bracketed to the walls. One wall was devoted to cricket posters and shelves for Dinesh's debate and tennis trophies. He was a well-rounded boy, the ideal of upper-class parents. Even in his absence the boy exerted a force she found shaming. He would bring a perfect bride back to this perfect house, and he would have a perfect American degree and a guaranteed lifetime of higher and higher achievement.

  She lifted a field hockey stick. Memories of da Gama's girls' field hockey team. Such simple times. Worries that she might catch a stick, or the ball, and scar her face and not be top-class marriageable. The stick felt lighter than ever. All those mutton stews at Bagehot House must have put some muscle on her.