Miss New India

by Bharati Mukherjee

  Were they already lovers? she wondered. A year ago, such a question would not have entered her mind. Unthinkable! Even for Parvati and Auro, it was impossible. But she could read body language, she could read a girl's gaze.

  Several times, as she collected her bras and panties from the clothesline on the roof, Anjali heard the TV going in the sisters' room and envied the laughing couple on the narrow cot, sitting so close, their thighs touched. Parvati's unspoken expectations of decorum required that the unmarried kitchen sisters keep their door open while watching TV with a male. As if, Anjali thought. The sisters' parents had entrusted their care and chastity to Parvati while they looked for suitable sons-in-law. So had mine, she thought. Anjali fantasized about changing identities with the girl so overtly happy with the chance perks of her job: a room she wouldn't be evicted from, a suitor in the house, and a sister to share her secrets with. The sisters had jobs. They had earned their room on the roof. Anjali was a freeloader.

  Rabi was her only confidant, but he and she had traveled to Dollar Colony from different planets. He might sneer at the oversize houses in Dollar Colony, but she could admire them as monuments of self-made men to their epic struggle. Auro, she knew from his cocktail-hour chatter, had slogged his way up from the rented apartment of his Kolkata boyhood. Her curiosity was coming alive. She decided to tease out of Auro why he had chosen Dollar Colony for a permanent home.

  "You really want to know?" He poured himself the first of his two nightly Johnnie Walker Blues on the rocks. It was rare that only Auro, Parvati, and Anjali were dining at home. Rabi was away on a photo shoot for a travel magazine. The older of the "kitchen sisters" was listening to music on an old-fashioned portable disc player the size of a salad plate; the younger and the dog walker were watching TV; the watchman was on duty in his wooden kiosk at the top of the driveway. The two dogs gnawed lamb bones at Parvati's feet. "My personal reasons? Nobody's ever asked me that." Auro looked both startled and pleased. "You want the long answer or the short answer?"

  Parvati looked up from the thick paperback she was reading and smiled indulgently. "How about a medium-long answer that makes its point before dinner is served?"

  He helped himself from the hors d'oeuvre platter of mutton keema samosas. "Did Parvati tell you we were among the first batch to build here when it was still forestland? I bet not, since she was dead set against moving out of Bombay."

  Parvati slipped a filigreed ivory bookmark to keep her place in a thick American book, a prizewinner called The Echo Maker, sent by Tara from California. Every year, her writer-sister sent her the American and British prize-winning novels. Anjali had tried reading it, but it was too complicated. Still, she would not have understood two sentences just six months earlier. She would never even have opened it.

  "I still miss Bombay," said Parvati. "Well, I miss the company flat on Nepean Sea Road. I miss looking out on water." She left the room to instruct the older of the kitchen sisters to start frying the prawn cutlets and roll out the dough for roti. She would make the boiled rice herself. No matter how many world cities Auro had lived and worked in, his palate had remained Bengali, which meant that he devoured a heaping serving of boiled white rice at both lunch and dinner and insisted that only his wife could cook rice perfectly. Anjali heard the cook calling up to her sister from the stairwell and then Parvati worrying out loud, "I hope there's no hanky-panky going on. I don't want to have to confiscate the TV."

  It wouldn't be the end of the world, Anjali thought.

  Anjali couldn't remember being in a room with Auro and no one else before. She had not taken up Auro's offers to teach her origami. Now that she was his sole audience, she was forced to train her attention on him. He was a moon-faced man, sharp-nosed, thin-lipped, with close-shaven cheeks and a brush mustache that crept into his nostrils. He didn't seem to detect her awkwardness. Pouring himself a second Johnnie Walker Blue, he launched into his pioneer's version of the history of Dollar Colony.

  "This block was mostly unsold lots when I bought. There was one Mediterranean-style bungalow with a red-tiled roof on the corner lot, long gone now, and a half-finished California-style mansion across from it. Parvati took one look and said, 'Eesh, look at this, why did we ever leave San Diego?' Land was still affordable and available. I blame my beloved Bhattacharjee sisters: they're such snobs. Parvati and Rabi's mother ganged up on me. If I had been smart, I would have gobbled up two or three lots on either side. Now I have to put up with Citibank Srinivasan's all-night snoring and morning ragas to my left and Hewlett-Packard Gupta's tabla-thumping to my right."

  When Auro first got in touch with Ideal Retirement Paradise Development Corporation of Bangalore, it was the early 1980s, and he was working in the Hong Kong office of his multinational company. IRPDC brochures didn't list the soon-to-be-constructed housing complex as Dollar Colony but pitched the complex to nonresident Indians, the NRIs, overseas-based Indian nationals amassing hard-currency wealth. Auro guessed that Dollar Colony, the name that stuck, was the genius shorthand of cabbies and auto-rickshaw drivers.

  Their generation of investors was made up of nostalgic expatriates planning far, far ahead for retirement. They knew that America, or anywhere other than the homeland, was no place for an elderly Indian. They dreamed of an enclave of fantasy retirement palaces for like-minded cosmopolitans. Their homes and their neighborhood would reflect the best of the West they'd grown rich in and the romanticized best of the country they'd abandoned as ambitious young men. They demanded mansions grander than the houses they could afford in Britain or Canada or America. And they rewarded themselves with all the luxuries they'd missed out on while growing up: the country clubs, the residents-only parks with jogging paths, the tennis courts, the fitness center and spa. High-end architects and contractors happily realized their fantasies in brick, granite, marble, steel and plate glass.

  "Parvati sacked two architects before she was satisfied! The Bhattacharjee sisters know what they want, and they don't quit till they get it. What's that American phrase CCI teaches students? Steel magnolia? Well, Parvati and Rabi's mother are titanium lotuses!"

  Parvati came back, carrying a bowl of tiny balls of minced fenugreek leaves and shredded coconut, which she had just fried. "Consider yourself lucky, Auro. Without your titanium lotus you would have been stuck with a white elephant. Did you tell Anjali how the NRI repatriates are becoming younger and younger, and Dollar Colony is looking dowdier and dowdier compared to the new communities?"

  "Infrastructure," Auro announced, before popping two of the fenugreek balls into his mouth. "That's the buzzword. Infrastructure."

  Grease glistened on his mustache. Parvati blotted the grease with a linen cocktail napkin. "Oh dear, I'm not helping you with your cholesterol problem, am I?"

  "We have the best doctors in the world in Bangalore, so why worry? American hospitals are outsourcing diagnoses to us, and I have instant access to the Mayo Clinic. Enjoy today, solve tomorrow. Anyway, these repats are cross-breeding brand-new East-West fruits in their gated Edens."

  "We oldies had to send Dinesh and Bhupesh to Britishy boarding schools in the hills," Parvati remembered. "Now the new colonies are setting up their own private schools. Learn yoga, recite the Vedas in Sanskrit, and prepare to ace the SATs. They have it all."

  "As I said, infrastructure. Medical, economic, educational, communication. I could go on."

  Honestly, Anjali didn't understand a word, even as she appreciated being included in the discussion.

  DOLLAR COLONY MAY have slipped from being the best address to merely something distinguished, but Anjali was still dazzled by the slightest luxuries, like the Instamatic hot water faucet in the Banerjis' kitchen. Even more than the comforts of the Banerji house—and was this a sign that she was coming out of her depression?—what she coveted as she listened to Auro was the Banerji family. Why couldn't she have been allotted Auro and Parvati as parents, Rabi as cousin? How different a person she might have been if...

  4
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  Rabi came back from his photo shoot in Bheemswari on the sacred Kaveri River, excited about mahseer fishing. He was full of stories and digital pictures of skimming the water in round buffalo-hide coracles, and, on his second-to-last night in the fishing camp, reeling in ("Okay, the local guide helped," he admitted) a ten-pounder. He scrolled down the shots from his little silver digital camera. Every note a symphony, Anjali thought. Is the most beautiful woman in Gauripur still inside? What about my pictures from Shaky's studio?

  Anjali had never bothered to learn the names of trees and flowers on her street in Gauripur and had never met anyone who fished for pleasure. Her father would never waste good money on something as dangerous as sport fishing. He couldn't swim, and she could not imagine him paddling a boat or standing in running water. She wasn't sure that before Rabi's Bheemswari trip, she'd ever thought of the mythic mahseer as actually existing. That mahseer was a fighting carp, an immense and magnificent river-dweller with shimmery gold sides, red-gold fins, and thick lips tipped with barbels. What was it Peter called it? Carpe diem. God's carp? To land a golden mahseer, the legendary forty-pounders in the Himalayan waters, was to know the challenge of a lifetime.

  The only carp she knew, and knew too well, were of modest size and wrapped in newspaper. Her father would drag her to the fish stalls most Sunday mornings, and while she blocked out the fish stench with her handkerchief, he would diligently peer into the gills of a particular specimen to check for freshness before haggling over the price with a fishmonger. Curried carp seven nights a week, except in hilsa season, and bhekti fry for very special occasions. The Boses, like every other Bengali on the block, were staunch fish-and-rice eaters. They bought their fish in a smelly market; they didn't catch them in the bosom of nature. She'd never connected carp with romance. Rabi's enthusiasm so infected her that she even asked what he'd used for bait. "Flies!" he said, which ruined the effect. How lucky the people like Rabi, who could throw themselves so totally into their work! Even if she had passed the CCI exam and found a job, it would have been just that: a job, not a calling.

  "Hey, you must be feeling better! A lot better, Anjali!" He didn't make fun of her questions or the sour face she'd made at the talk of flies and worms. "Freshwater crabs and cooked millet dumplings also worked."

  THEY WERE IN Parvati's prized garden in the early morning, Rabi setting up a tripod and focusing his Nikon on the showy, sticky heads of fruits and flowers; she sipping fresh watermelon juice with a straw. He smiled up from his equipment. As the sun rose higher, he had to take new readings on his light meter. This was not an assignment for pay. He, a B&W snob, was paying homage in color to Parvati-Auntie, the fanatic gardener. The post-monsoon flowers, the swarms of butterflies and occasional parrots, budgies and sunbirds: everything about her garden was overstated and overlush. Everyone in Dollar Colony was horticulturally competitive. Citibank Srinivasan had imported Siberian fruit trees. Hewlett-Packard Gupta had transplanted a mini Indonesian jungle. Parvati was an Indian chauvinist: wide avenues shaded by rain trees and flame of the forest, blue and purple jacaranda, scarlet gul mo-har, champak, jasmine, roses, gladioli, anthurium, gerbera ... it's never too late to learn, especially if you admire your teacher. Monet. Light and angles.

  "At least I got to Bangalore," Anjali said. I am trying to get over the heavy stuff. Not there yet, but I've made a start, thanks to your aunt.

  "I always knew you would. If that's what you wanted." Click! Click! Rabi went back to the hedges to reset his camera.

  She'd never felt so comfortable with a boy. Why can't we get what we most want in the world? When he came back, she asked, "When we met in Gauripur, did you think I didn't really want Bangalore?"

  "Did I sound skeptical? I didn't mean to. You were looking for a way out. Peter convinced you Bangalore was that." Click! Click! Click! A chameleon scuttled over the velvety grass.

  "I've gotten over wanting life enhancement. A job that pays for basic needs, that's my goal now."

  "Don't sell yourself short." He aimed his lens at a stray kitten circling the birdfeeder. "I happen to be one of a large chorus who think Anjali Bose is a child of destiny." He dodged the dripping straw she tossed at him. "Seriously."

  "Don't you dare stress me out with the destiny stuff!"

  "Sorry. No, I'm not really sorry. Anyway, changing subjects, have you found anybody yet? You can tell me."

  "I wouldn't want to make you jealous."

  "I'm jealous of anyone in love. Even more jealous of anyone loved back." He seemed about to confide in her.

  "If you think there's something going on between..."

  But Rabi wasn't listening. "Actually I met a guy in Mumbai—Christ, 'A Guy from Mumbai' sounds like a Noel Coward song." He did a fancy two-step. Then glided into a wicker chaise longue near her canvas chair.

  "Now I am jealous, Rabi."

  "Anyway, I met this Rutgers senior. He was visiting his grandparents. The last thing he expected was finding another Indo-American who ... what was cool was that we met in the gallery exhibiting my photos."

  Gauripur images flooded her, not the dreary small town of her memories, but the Gauripur she had glimpsed through Rabi's restless lens.

  "When you create things, like my mother with her books or a lowly photographer like me, or even origami like Auro-Uncle, you still dream of meeting someone who's fallen in love with you for something you've written or painted, something you've created. Well, he fell in love with my photos of Ali and Peter and you, Mona Lisa. That's how I knew we could be ... serious. Terrible word, serious, why can't we say what we mean? Serious is the last thing in the world ... never mind. Then he had to go back to Rutgers. Dum-diddle-dee, dum-diddle-day, they always go back to school, don't they? That's more Cole Porter than Coward, right?"

  Anjali didn't know those names, but she knew he needed her to agree. "Right," she whispered. No matter how brief their conversation, he would always leave her feeling inadequate; not humiliatingly inadequate, but eager for gaps to be filled in.

  "This time I'm a nature photographer, Angie," he announced. New mood, new tone of voice, new intensity, snappier delivery. "I'm going down to a nature preserve a week from Saturday. On the Kaveri again, near Mysore. Big crocs, little crocs. Bats, you love bats, right? The funky kind called flying foxes. Bugs by the ton. I'm staying overnight, maybe a couple of nights." He had reserved a cabin. "Want to give Nature a try? You could be my assistant. Hey, if there's someone you want to bring along, you'd have me as chaperone."

  "You mean, just call up someone I'd want to ... I couldn't do that, Rabi."

  "Send a message by carrier pigeon?"

  "Well, since it's all fantasy talk, there is a Bengali guy I wouldn't mind inviting." She still nurtured a crush on the Bengali Svengali. He hadn't called her since that one magical meeting in the rooftop cafeteria of Tookie D'Mello's office building. Without confessing to the crush, she gushed about her Photoshopped picture on the cover of the latest issue of his directory.

  "Oh, I can't tell you how much I adore Photoshop!" Rabi snickered. "It's revolutionized my art!" Then, conspiratorially, "We could always arrange his drowning. The crocs know their business."

  She leaned down and punched his shoulder lightly. There, in the lush heart of Parvati's garden, they shared their stories. Did Shaky Sengupta's bridal photo work out? Yes, she admitted, I think it did. But in a roundabout way.

  5

  A "high tea" for Anjali's friends was Parvati's idea. "You should spend more time with people your age," she said. Anjali suspected that Rabi had put the party idea into his aunt's head so that he could reunite Anjali and the Bengali Svengali under respectable chaperonage. Parvati asked Anjali to draw up a guest list. Anjali couldn't come up with any youngish friend's name other than Tookie D'Mello, who had been "dumped" by Minnie before Rajoo had sacked Bagehot House. Tookie wasn't the most appropriate ex—Bagehot Girl to introduce to the Banerjis; still, Anjali tracked her down at her work site. Tookie snapped up the invitation to Do
llar Colony. "That 'Gay India' photographer guy will be there? What a hoot! He's a YouTube sensation! Girlfriend, you landed on your feet, all right. Of course, we knew you would. All I can say is that the Bagehot bitch had it coming!" Tookie didn't explain who she meant by "we." It didn't include Reynaldo, since that relationship was in deep freeze for the moment. "Can I bring a friend or two?" Anjali shuddered; she didn't want Rajoo inside the Banerjis' home, where she was regaining her balance. But Tookie didn't mention Rajoo by name, not once. She went on and on instead about the two party-beast girlfriends she had started to hang out with.

  Parvati helped plump up the list by inviting two Dollar Colony families, and Rabi added two sets of recent acquaintances: the "faux-scruffy" and the "jock dilettante." Parvati translated the terms for Anjali as Rabi's artsy gallery friends and sport-fishing friends. She added Usha Desai's name, with the penciled note "depends on Mrs. Desai's health that P.M." Auro insisted on including Girish Gujral. "Forget the tea part of 'high tea,'" he announced. "Girish and I will hole up with our drinks in my office and talk politics."

  "No holing up," Parvati snapped. "We have opinions too."

  THE GUESTS DEVOURED platter after platter of hot, cold, tart, sweet-sour, spicy finger foods prepared all day by the kitchen sisters, and they sipped Assam or Darjeeling tea out of bone china cups, but the "high tea" didn't accomplish Parvati's goal of widening Anjali's network of friends.