Imaginary Men

by Anjali Banerjee

  “So now, how long will you be here?” I ask.

  “Just a few weeks. This is my last stop before returning home. I’ve been trying to bring my mother over for a visit. She wants to see where Dev goes to university. She’s been to the East Coast. This time, we’ve hit a snag with her visa. New security regulations. I’m working on it.”

  I regard Raja in a new way. The loyal son. If I were a mother, I’d love to have a son like him. I wonder, have I done all I can to support my parents? I touch the gold brooch pinned to my shirt. I’ve been wearing it on all my dates. I can’t let Ma down.

  “Will you have time to show your mother around?” I ask. “I mean, with your work and all?”

  “Actually, I’m fund-raising for my charitable projects. I run two orphanages outside Kolkata.”

  “You what?” I plunk down my glass, splashing merlot on the white linen tablecloth. The blushing stain spreads.

  Raja reaches over to dab at the spill with his napkin. “We give girls a chance at an education, a life of independence. Unfortunately, many Indian families still value boys more than girls.”

  My mind stretches to absorb this new information. Kali mentioned that his family financed orphanages, but I never dreamed that Raja was so personally involved in the charitable work. Raja Prasad, Mr. Playboy of the Far Pavilions, helping orphaned girls achieve independence? My fingers itch to touch his sleeve, make sure he’s real.

  I glance down at my plate. The time has passed so quickly. We’ve already had dessert, and I barely noticed. I’m Cinderella dancing with the prince.

  On the drive home, my magical carriage becomes a pumpkin again when Raja turns to me, his voice all business. “I’ve brought the files from Donna. Where shall we go to study them?”

  Twenty-one

  I curl my fingers over the door handle. “Would you like to come up to my place?”

  He nods. I can’t read his expression in the darkness.

  At my apartment, my fingers tremble as I unlock the door. What will he think of my modest abode? Its greatest assets are large bay windows and hardwood floors. I’ve returned most of Harry’s things. No telltale signs linger. At least, I hope not, and I’m glad my bedroom door is closed, so Raja can’t see my bras hanging over the bedpost, my underwear atop piles of dirty clothes.

  “You have a lovely flat.” He steps inside.

  “Would you like coffee, tea?”

  “Tea.”

  A man after my own heart.

  I set the kettle to boil, and we sit on the couch.

  “Raja, I—” My body tenses. Better to be out with it now. “I’d like Dev to meet my sister, Kali.”

  He raises an eyebrow. “Ah, Kali. Dev mentioned her. I have not discounted her.”

  I let out a long breath of relief. He knows. Okay, that’s a start. I sit back. Play it cool. Don’t say, What about what Kali and Dev want? Don’t push. Not yet. “So you’re willing to meet her?”

  “Perhaps. We’ll look at these files.”

  “She’s smart, sincere, and beautiful. She has a great job.” I nearly say, She and Dev have cross-mojonation.

  Raja opens the first file and pulls out a photograph of a fair-skinned, sultry young thing with longish hair. He reads, “Shree, eighteen, wants a career in computers. Subcaste Kayastha, non-vegetarian. She wants to be financially independent and establish herself professionally.” He pauses. “She’s not appropriate.”

  “Because she’s not Brahmin? You still worry about caste?”

  “In the modern world, such affiliations matter less, nah?” He frowns, as if he disapproves of this trend.

  “I rarely think about caste, Raja. My only indication of caste is my surname, Ray. Otherwise”—I wave my arm to encompass all of America—“caste doesn’t matter here.”

  “Every culture labels strata and ethnic groups, and yet scholars focus undue attention on India.”

  “Are you saying you approve of caste structure?” My fingernails dig into the couch.

  “Not in the least.” His eyes twinkle with amusement. “I’m merely playing devil’s advocate. My family also became Brahmo Samaj. We reject the caste system.”

  My fingers relax. “Why didn’t you say so? Brahmo Samaj. That’s great. I didn’t know. But … can princes be Brahmo Samaj?”

  “We can be anything we want.” He gives me a penetrating look.

  “Then why isn’t this pretty girl, Shree, appropriate?” My fingers play with a loose thread of fabric on the couch.

  “She’s simply too young.”

  The kettle whistles in the kitchen. I leap to my feet and rush off to pour the tea. I arrange the teapot, cups, milk, and sugar on my only tray. I tuck my hair behind my ears and take several deep breaths. Raja Prasad throws off my center of gravity. I’ll have to do yoga nonstop for a month to recover.

  I return to the living room and sit a little farther from him on the couch. He brings out the next file, with a photograph of a demure woman in a deep red churidar kurta and white shawl, her hair tied back, bindi on her forehead. “It’s a faraway shot. What does she have to hide?” he asks.

  “A scar?”

  “She’s coming here for studies. She already has her master’s in Bengali from the University of West Bengal. She’s too old.”

  “Kali’s already twenty-five,” I say.

  “Acha.” He takes one spoon of sugar and loads of milk, and brings out file after file. “This one is beautiful. Uma. Her parents say she’s soft-spoken, sings, and recites well. Likes to watch movies and listen to Rabindrasangeet. Confident, fun-loving.” His right eyebrow rises. “Confidence is good. Shall we set up a meeting?”

  Tension scrapes the air between us. “Look, Raja. Donna accepted your offer. She’s my colleague. She’s a pro. She worked at another agency in Seattle before coming to us three years ago. You should work with her.”

  “I prefer to work with you.”

  “I rarely decline such challenging assignments, but this time, I can’t do it.”

  “Why not? I need your keen eye. Your judgment. You’ve successfully matched many other couples.”

  “I’m Kali’s sister. It’s a conflict of interest.”

  “Please, you must do this.”

  I stare at Raja for a long moment. He said “please.” “My sister likes Dev, and yet you’d have me arrange a meeting between Uma and Dev?”

  “Not immediately. You and I can meet Uma and her parents. We’ll also arrange a meeting between Dev and Kali. If they’re meant to be, they’re meant to be. If not, we’ll consider Uma. Not very mathematical.”

  “No,” I say, “but then love can’t be quantified, can it?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Okay,” I say against my better judgment, against every sane, rational argument I can muster. “I’ll do it.”

  “Good, good.” Raja kisses the back of my hand, and my skin tingles at the touch of his lips. “Call me when you’ve arranged the meeting with Uma’s parents.”

  Then he leaves.

  I peel off the suit and the red teddy. How could the night have thrown me for such a curve? Raja seemed opaque, old world, when I first met him. Now I’ve scraped away the surface to reveal complex depths. Okay, so he doesn’t believe in the caste system. He still employs a servant to cook and clean. He still has an ayah. He’s still traditional, still a prince, and he’s nearly engaged to someone else.

  Twenty-two

  Well, that was a slam-bang success. My imaginary man shows up in my office wearing a white suit to match the sunshine and breeze outside. You sure you want to go through with this?

  I set my jaw as I peruse Uma’s personality profile. “It’s perfectly safe. Raja Prasad and I are meeting Uma’s parents at their home this afternoon—”

  You’re going with Raja Prasad? Let him go alone. You have to find your own fiancé. You shouldn’t be working on Saturday, anyway.

  “That’s none of your business.” Mr. Sen wants to see me. Says it’s urgent.

>   I’m merely concerned. Where was I last night? I disappeared. He paces in front of my desk. His image has morphed. He’s a few inches taller, his shoulders a little wider, and he walks with a slight swagger. His skin darkens to an edgy tan. He’s no longer Nathu. His physique is beginning to resemble Raja Prasad’s. “You look … different,” I say. “And your hair. You’re combing it on the left now.”

  He shrugs. Wasn’t my idea. You altered me in your journal last night.

  “I did no such thing. I wrote about Raja Prasad.”

  Exactly. Why are you giving him so much space? Dr. Dutta left a message, and you never called him back.

  “He doesn’t have time to date. What he needs is sleep. Go away.”

  My imaginary man begins to fade.

  Mr. Sen waltzes in, radiating confidence in his too-tight gray slacks and a casual sweater with a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge sewn into the front.

  “I’m most pleased with my latest date, Miss Chatterjee.” He sits and taps the arms of the chair.

  “That’s nice.” I mentally search my files. Oh, yes. Donna left a note. Miss Chatterjee called to say she wasn’t interested. How easy it is to dump someone if you don’t have to face him or her. You can leave the dirty work to me.

  “Will you set me up on another date? Or may I ring her myself?”

  “Mr. Sen. I. Uh.” I tap my pencil on the desk in time to his tapping. Together we make a symphony. “I don’t know how to say this.” I search for words that won’t disappoint him. Ms. Chatterjee died. Went bungee jumping. Moved to Taiwan. It’s the first time I’ve seen his eyes shine, and he didn’t use as much oil in his hair today.

  “What is it?” He taps faster.

  I stare out at the dazzling day. “Miss Chatterjee wants time to think. She says you’re not right for her.”

  The happy sunlight leaks from his face. “She wants a husband with hundred thousand or two hundred thousand salary.”

  “She doesn’t care about money.” She says the spark isn’t there. “According to Vedic astrology, your charts don’t match. There’s no connection between the two of you.”

  “Astrology? Connection? What’s this you’re saying?”

  I don’t see the silver thread, but I see the disappointment in his eyes. “The two of you aren’t a match.”

  Mr. Sen raises his arms in frustration. “Who cares about the damned alignment of stars and all that ridiculous, hocus-pocus hogwash? I want to see Ms. Chatterjee, and no quack astrologer will keep her from me.”

  I sit back, stunned at the determination flaring in his eyes. I clear my throat. “Well, if you insist—”

  “She does not give me a chance.”

  “I can’t give you a date unless she agrees to it.”

  “Then I’ll call her myself.” He shoves his chair back and leaps to his feet.

  “Mr. Sen—”

  “I’ll get back to you.” He strides out, shoulders squared against the world. Where did this new man come from? His personality profile gives his height, weight, skin color, preferences, and income. His measurements and stats are disembodied numbers on paper, but together, they make up an entirely different whole. There’s a new energy in Mr. Sen that can’t fit into a pen and be written in ink or snapped as a digital photograph. Mr. Sen is a warrior.

  I open the file and look at the glossy photograph of Dev Prasad sitting beside Raja on the balcony of a Kolkata flat. Dev is a slimmer, darker, long-haired version of Raja. Raja is wearing khaki, and he has one foot up on the iron railing, a cigar between thumb and forefinger. What type of man is he, really?

  Twenty-three

  My brother is still in India, so we’ve come in his stead.” Raja Prasad and I sit across from Uma Dewan’s parents in their split-level home in the Sunset District, along the city’s western edge.

  “Thank you for coming. We are very concerned about our daughter finding a good husband.” Mr. Dewan took the day off work for this momentous occasion.

  “She must’ve hit traffic,” Mrs. Dewan says, pouring four cups of tea on a brass platter on the coffee table.

  I imagine Uma Dewan hurtling through the air, bouncing from car to car, hitting traffic. I peer through a narrow opening in the heavy curtains. Faint light seeps into the room. Out here in the avenues, trees are sparse, concrete stretches to the horizon, and the wind whips in from the Pacific Ocean. This edge of San Francisco has a washed-out, forgotten feeling.

  Mrs. Dewan purses her lips and hands me a cup of steaming tea. She’s traditional in a sari, hair tied back, face an unremarkable lump of dough. She sits primly, right next to Mr. Dewan, who wears a hand-knit sweater and slacks. Both are gray-haired, with dark rings under their eyes.

  I try to imagine what their life was like in India. “You’re both from Chennai?” I ask.

  “Beautiful place.” Mr. Dewan stares at a spot above my head. “On the Coromandel Coast. White sand beaches, sunshine so bright and hot. A different quality to the light. You’ve been there?”

  “No, but I’ve seen pictures of palm trees and the ancient temples.” I glance down at my hands, clasped in my lap. The faint odors of mold and mothballs pervade the air. I imagine dusty memories of Chennai tucked into shoe boxes in the Dewans’ closets.

  Raja clears his throat. “How long have you both lived in the States?”

  Mrs. Dewan glances at a crack in the ceiling, and her lips move, counting. The whites of her eyes are threaded with tiny red veins. “We came here twenty-five years back,” she says. The South Indian accent lingers in her throat. “Such a long time ago.” She places knobby fingers over her husband’s hairy hand. He nods in agreement.

  “Have you been back?” I ask. I focus on a painting mounted on the wall behind the couch—the blue Lord Krishna as a child, pudgy and playful.

  “We go back every few years,” Mr. Dewan says. “Always Chennai will be home, but we’ve been here in the States such a long time. It would be difficult to move back to India. There is such a difference to life here, more freedom to find good jobs, and yet—”

  “My whole family lives in Chennai,” Mrs. Dewan says, and pulls her hand back into her lap.

  “You must miss them,” I say.

  “Very much,” she whispers.

  And I, who was born there, can return only as a tourist to the country of my ancestry. In India, the languages, the temples, the colorful saris in a myriad of styles, the religions, the complex, ancient culture—it’s all as alien to me as it is to any American. And yet, there are things Indian about me, seeds my parents planted. The way we drank thick, sweet cha in bed in the morning on weekends, the curry and samosas we served on special occasions, the trips back to India, the Bengali my parents spoke to each other at home, their underlying assumptions—that all three girls would marry in our twentiesthe—India-ghosts haunting us, working their way into our subconscious minds.

  My life has been a mix of India and America, and yet I cannot extract one from the other. My mother cooked Campbell’s tomato soup as easily as she fried baigan and vindaloo. Which belongs to her? Where is home to her? To me? I’m not half-and-half. I’m something new altogether.

  Here in the dreary avenues, I sense the Dewans’ life force bleeding out onto the sidewalks, sliding into the storm drains. This home is a fortress to hold the West at bay.

  The longer I sit here, the more trapped I feel, the more I collapse upon myself. I sense reticence in Raja Prasad as well, but he still projects an air of arrogance in the sagging armchair next to me.

  Cups clink as we sip our tea in awkward silence, and then a car rumbles into the garage below us. The house shakes as if an earthquake has struck. Soon the woman in question bursts in, wearing jeans and a pullover, her long hair in tendrils around her face. She looks ten years younger than she did in her photograph.

  She squints at Raja and me. “Got stuck in traffic. Who are you?”

  “We’ve been waiting twenty minutes, Uma,” her father says.

  She shrugs. “Can I
control traffic? Can I? There was a fucking tanker overturned on the Bay Bridge. I hate coming home to the fifth degree.”

  Her mother flinches. “Uma, darling. We did mention the matchmaker would be coming this afternoon.”

  “Oh, right. Better get it over with. I’ll be right back.” Uma sighs, and I catch a whiff of stale smoke on her clothes. I thought she was a nonsmoker. She stomps off in a huff.

  “She is the same Uma in the photograph?” Raja asks.

  “No other.” Her father nods his head sideways.

  “This is why we’re worried,” Mrs. Dewan says. “We’re thinking a good marriage will take care of this problem.”

  I try not to look at Raja. My fingers curl around the teacup. A series of noises—doors slamming, music blaring, heavy objects dropping with thuds—emanates from upstairs, and then Uma emerges, physically transformed. How could she put on a sari and bindi so quickly?

  She slumps on the couch next to her parents and stares down Raja and me as if we’re rival outlaws at the OK Corral.

  “I can’t tell you how sick I am of living here. I can’t wait to get out of the house, so I might consider your offer.” She grabs the teapot, pours herself tea as if it’s whisky, and downs the whole cup in one noisy gulp.

  “You’re prepared to move back to India?” Raja asks, although we’ve not actually made an offer.

  She stops the cup in midair. “What?” She looks at her parents in horror. “I gotta go to India to marry this guy?”

  “To live.” Raja steeples his fingers, his elbows resting on the arms of his chair.

  “To live?” she parrots, her voice shrill.

  Her shock reverberates in my bones.

  “Your profile shows you’re adept at all household tasks. You’re prepared to clean, cook, and care for your mother-in-law?”

  I glance at Raja Prasad. Is he really asking those questions? Can’t he tell she’s not the one? I could be her, sitting awkwardly in that sari.