Miss New India

Eventually, even in America, she thought, though she dared not say it for fear of inviting the evil eye.

'Bombay?' He laughed. 'You've been seeing too many bad movies. Bombay is yesterday. It's a hustler's city. Bangalore's the place for a young woman like you.'

She wondered, Is that where he's taking me? Why not? I'll go. Then: What kind of girl am I?

She knew nothing of Bangalore, a southern city as alien to her as the snows of Kashmir. Mr. Champion was back in teaching mode. He explained that for two hundred years Bangalore had been a British army base, a cantonment, and the Britishers had left a few scars-golf courses and racetracks and private gymkhanas-that moneyed Indians adopted a little too enthusiastically. But now it's a hopping place. And he had contacts in Bangalore, people who would listen to his recommendations. The call centers, luring thousands of young people from all over the country, people like her, the new people.

Ali returned with a box of sweets.

'In Bangalore,' Mr. Champion said, 'if you've got the talent, there's a market.'

This time she asked the question that was always on her mind. 'And what is my talent, Mr. Champion?'

'Peter, please. Don't you know what your talent is?'

'I haven't the p'oggiest.'

'Foggiest, Angie. Initial f-sound, not p. Initial w-sound, not v, and vice versa. Wedding, not vedding. Vagaries, not wagaries. Not wice wersa. Develop, not dewellup. Keep practicing.'

She could cry. They'll always find you out.

'Your talent, Angie? You have the passion. You're not satisfied. But you're still very innocent. Innocence is appealing in a young girl, but not blindness, not ignorance. Look at us.' She smiled at his way of including her, but then he said,-'Look closely at us, Angie, take a long look at Ali and me.'

At the mention of his name, Ali smiled and began to dance. The boy was a good dancer; he must have seen a hundred movies. And then Peter stood and put his arm over Ali's shoulder, and Ali nestled his head against Peter's cheek.

A clash of emotions met the dawn of consciousness: she could have screamed, but instead she whimpered, barely above a breath, 'Oh.'

Peter went on about places in Bangalore where she could stay. He knew old women from the British days who let out rooms in old mansions in the middle of the city, houses that could have been sold for crores of rupees (and leveled, their tangled gardens hacked down for parking lots and swimming pools), but where would the old women go? Old Anglo-Indian women whose children had fled to Australia or Canada, whose grandchildren would never see India, dotty old women whose sense of decorum reached back to pre-Independence days and who ('Believe me!' he laughed) would never be sympathetic to India's freedom fighters and Independence, but who nevertheless offered rooms and breakfasts of tea and toast and suppers of mutton stew at 1970s prices. Much was forgivable in such women. A place in Kew Gardens or Kent Town, that's what Angie needed. And he knew the women who ran the new money-spinning call centers were always looking for girls with good English and soothing voices who could fool American callers (I can do that? she was about to ask.I'm good enough to fool Americans?) into thinking they're talking to a girl in Boston or Chicago.

'Finally, a chance to use those regional accents I taught you,' he said. 'You're very good, Angie, you're the best student I ever had.'

'That'll be five dallars,' she said, remembering.

Chicago o's sound like a's. So do Boston r's.

'I told you at graduation you had to leave this place before you got trapped in a rotten marriage. I'm telling you again, let that happen and you're as good as dead.'

Why do they say as good as dead? Why not as bad? But this was not the time to ask. He seemed about to put his hand on her arm and she felt excited. 'I have dreams for you. You get married to some boy from here, and the dream dies. You'll never see the world.' He studied her T- shirt. 'No… Dortmund, no Bratislava. You'll have kids and a husband who's jealous of your intelligence and your English and won't let you out of the house, and that would break my heart.' This time, he did put his hand on her arm-'You understand?'

Ali snapped up the plate of sweet crumbs as though it was crawling with ants and noisily dumped it into a bowl of soapy water. He was jealous of her! He was just a child. He lifted his dripping fingers to eye level and glared at a chip on a painted fingernail.

'All I've done is give you a start. The rest is up to you.'

In the movies, there was a moment of accounting. She wouldn't be allowed to leave her benefactor's house, not without a favor, or worse. The rest is up to me? The door would be blocked. He'd reach for her hand, then close in on it, like a trap. But Peter was her teacher and a teacher's help had purity and noble intentions behind it. It came from his heart because she had earned it honorably. Peter was smiling and even Ali was smiling, and Peter held out his hand to her and said, 'Good luck, Angie.'

She took his hand. Ali thrust out his, which confused her: shake a servant's hand? Up close, she could see a fine line of kohl limning his eyes. In that moment of confusion she saw Peter's arm reach around Ali's waist and pull him close. 'I hope you'll find happiness too,' he said.

More words followed, in Urdu, and Ali laughed and said in English, 'Good luck, Anjali.'

Then he walked her to the bus stop.

2

If a girl is sufficiently motivated, she can distill ten years' worth of Western dating experience-though maybe not all the sex and heartbreak-from a few months of dedicated attention to the photos, backgrounds, and brief meetings with the 'boys' her father selects. She can enjoy the illusion of popularity, glamour, and sophistication. She can fabricate 'relationships' and fantasize about new cities, new families, and new worlds opening up, without the terror of leaving home and sneaking off to Bangalore. Even in the heavily chaperoned world of the arranged marriage market, a girl can fabricate passion and lose her innocence. Anjali was tuned in to her culture's consolations for the denial of autonomy.

She was nearly twenty, a few months into her bachelor of commerce studies. But why, her father wanted to know, delay groom-hunting for two more years until she received her B. Comm.? It was therefore decided that while he wore himself out in search of a worthy 'boy,' she was to resume attending the English conversation classes the American held in his apartment on weekends. Good English equals good match. He was willing to dig into his savings to pay the American's fees because if any misfortune was to befall her mythical husband, she could help out by tutoring school pupils. English-language skills would always be in demand.

'What husband, Baba?' Anjali protested, though she was pleased to have his blessing to attend the weekend classes. 'You haven't even started looking, and you're worrying he'll be disabled or destitute!' This was as close as her father could come to admitting the horrible mistake he had made in hand-picking Sonali's husband. In the Bose family, a married woman forced by circumstances to hold a job to make ends meet was a tragedy. A divorced single mother supporting herself and her four-year-old daughter by working long days as an office typist was a catastrophe.

Mr. Bose went back to his nightly pegs of whiskey, ignoring her. Anjali toted up her assets and liabilities in the marriage market. Unlike Sonali, she was tall and slim, and under favorable light and clothing, pleasant looking-no, make that passably good looking. On the minus side, she lacked accomplishments such as singing, dancing, and sewing, traditionally expected of bridal candidates. She was also stubborn, headstrong, and impulsive, and by middle-class Gauripur standards, inappropriately outgoing. Those were correctible or at least concealable failures. The one flaw that couldn't be overcome was her eye color: greenish hazel. Her mother prayed for her pale eyes to turn black. Black hair, black eyes, fair complexion, sharp nose, and thin lips were unassailable proof of ethnic purity, whereas brownish hair and light eyes hinted at hanky-panky with a European in some long-ago time and place.