Miss New India

Part Three

1

Bagehot House was staging its first durbar in sixty years.

By late afternoon of the day that Peter Champion called from Gauripur, a Wednesday, Asoke had recruited a small army of the compound's squatters to haul musty Raj-era furniture, mildewed velvet drapes, and a rat-gnawed Oriental rug out of a downstairs bedroom, scrub the cracked mosaic floor and water-stained walls with disinfectant, sweep cobwebs from the blades of the ceiling fan, and refurnish the room with lighter furniture from Minnie's private suite: a twin platform bed with a thick slab of foam instead of box spring and lumpy mattress, a dressing table with an oval mirror and upholstered stool, a three-drawer chest, a coat tree, a compact writing desk with hinged lid, and a chintz-covered overstuffed loveseat.

All-well, many-of Minnie's claims about Bagehot House's Raj-era opulence were true. There actually were stacks of silver trays and silver tea services, wooden chests of heavy silver cutlery, cut-glass decanters and goblets, gilt-edged champagne flutes, fine bone china bearing the Bagehot family crest, silver-capped elephant tusks and tiger-skin throw rugs stored on the premises in locations known only to Asoke. Live caparisoned elephants were beyond his powers. But he had the power to-and did-conscript scores of the squatters on the Bagehot compound to do the work that must have been done by liveried butlers, bearers, cooks, and sweepers in the heyday of durbars.

But who was paying for the delivery of live chickens and ducks and fresh-killed mutton, Anjali wondered. Baskets kept arriving: fruits, vegetables, sweets, a cake. And finally a case of French champagne. Champagne? Who could afford such gifts? None of her fellow boarders, not even nosy Tookie, offered a convincing guess. Minnie had mysterious purveyors.

On Friday morning Asoke had a half-dozen teenage boys chop down boughs from flowering trees, which he then stuck in umbrella stands made out of hollowed elephant feet. Minnie herself supervised as two garage-dwelling mother-and-daughter teams rinsed and dried stacks of dinner plates, soup plates, water goblets, punch bowls, and lemonade pitchers. Asoke trained a squatter girl, the one Anjali had seen straddling a window frame and combing her hair in the firelight, in the correct way to wait on tables, then sent her into the snake-infested jungle behind the main house to gather flowers. The girl must have been fearless; she sashayed barefoot into the dense vegetation and came back with two bucketfuls, which Husseina and Anjali had to arrange and rearrange in improvised vases- mainly lemonade pitchers, punch bowls, and old chamber pots-until the arrangements won Minnie's approval. Anjali remembered Peter's little joke: 'I have a way with older women.' The preparation for his visit was indeed monumental, an overturning of history itself. Out with the pewter-framed portraits of colonels with apoplectic pink complexions; in with brass-topped Indian tables and wall hangings of blue-skinned Krishna, the God of Love, at play with ivory-pale almond-eyed milkmaids. Watching as Minnie, giddy as an infatuated schoolgirl, fussed over plans to make Peter welcome, Anjali felt an odd sense of power. Minnie knew nothing of Ali; Anjali held that secret.

***

EARLY ON FRIDAY evening, as Anjali paced the cluttered floor of her alcove, trying to decide which of two tops to wear with her slinkiest pair of black cotton pants, Husseina poked her head in. 'Which do you think?' Anjali asked. 'I don't have a decent mirror in this rat hole. Minnie has some nerve charging me the rent she does!'

Husseina took the tops from Anjali. 'I was wondering if you would like to borrow one of my gharara sets. Minnie thinks of tonight as a dress-up night.' She managed a theatrical shudder. 'Who knows what sumptuous moldy gown she'll deck herself out in.'

Anjali thrilled at the chance of greeting Mr. GG in one of Husseina's elegant formal outfits. The one and only time they had met, they'd clicked. And what had she been wearing that first day of her new life in Bangalore? The sweaty, rumpled jeans and T-shirt in which she had finished her odyssey all the way from Gauripur. She coveted Husseina's look of effortless stylishness. But on her, Anjali was convinced, Husseina's expensive clothes would look seductive as well as sophisticated. How could Mr. GG not be overwhelmed?

Husseina's room was huge. Anjali envied the massive four-poster bed, the rosewood chests of drawers and cupboards with lion's-head brass pulls, the sun-bleached velvet curtains and the elaborately framed paintings: golden-haired little girls in frocks with frills and bows, kittens playing with balls of wool.

'Borrow what you like,' Husseina urged Anjali, as she unlocked the door to a ceiling-to-floor almirah. 'Sunita's ironing the salwar-kameez I'll be wearing tonight. That girl's so selfless, it's almost annoying.' The interior of Husseina's almirah glowed with a pastel rainbow of silk. 'Key lime, lemon chiffon, apricot, mango, raspberry sorbet. My just desserts, I call them. Go on, take your pick. I'll be in blueberry.'

'I couldn't,' Anjali said, without meaning it. She fingered the silks, georgettes and organzas.

'Don't you like them?' Husseina sounded hurt.

'They're beautiful.'

Husseina pulled two pistachio-green gharara sets out of the almirah. One was decorated with crystal beads, the other with sequins. 'Swarovski,' she said. 'That's what I wore on my first real date with my fiance after we were engaged. We had ice cream sundaes.' She shut the mirrored door of the almirah and pointed to their reflections. 'Pistachio matches your eyes.' She pulled Anjali closer to her, pressing her body hard against Anjali as if trying to fuse their flesh. 'The same greenish eyes, would you believe?'

Husseina's sudden intensity frightened Anjali, but she didn't want to risk losing the chance to borrow an expensive gharara that might inflame Mr. GG.

'We could be sisters,' Husseina continued. 'If we dressed alike, I bet we could pass for twins.' She laughed as she handed the crystalspeckled outfit to Anjali. 'I want you to have this. And not just for tonight.'

'Oh, I couldn't…' Anjali said, but she grabbed the top. Rich and mysterious Husseina could afford to be magnanimous, so why insult her by refusing her exquisite gift? As Tookie often remarked, there was no point in worrying about Husseina's motives: 'She's so rich, she lives on a different planet.'

Husseina draped the shimmery top over Anjali's navy stretch T-shirt. 'You're going to look very beautiful for your young man.'

My young man? She decided Husseina was referring to Peter Champion, not Mr. GG. 'He's not my young man.' She could take Husseina into partial confidence. 'Peter isn't young. You'll see tonight.'

'But you call your teacher by his first name?'

'It's an American thing. Actually, he's more like my father's age.'

Husseina arched a finely plucked eyebrow. 'What's twenty, twenty-five years in the giant scheme of things?'

'He may be older than my father… and he's got someone else.'

'Ah, the fatal hesitancy. That fatal someone else.'

Anjali couldn't tell if Husseina was consoling her or teasing her. 'I think Americans like to say, 'He has a partner.''

Husseina laid a maternal hand on Anjali's shoulder. 'It's all a business arrangement. You'll get used to it.'

'In the giant scheme of things.' Anjali repeated Husseina's phrase. It was a comforting notion. 'It's all a matter of light and angles, isn't it?'

2

Mr. GG, carrying a huge bouquet of flowers and a copy of Peter Champion's book, was the first to arrive. In the