Miss New India

heartfelt, or profound, but she was a girl with a bright smile and nothing else. She dredged up Peter's words again, hoping she'd got them right. 'Innocence is attractive in a girl,' Anjali said. 'But I suppose blindness isn't.'

Husseina stared. At last she said, 'I almost misjudged you. You're not a vulgar little bore like Tookie. Or a cunning little mouse like Sunita. You see through things, don't you? And you keep quiet. It's important to keep quiet.'

'I'm just repeating nonsense. Forget anything I say.' She didn't like the way Husseina had stared. She didn't like Husseina's tone, the nakedness of her disregard for their fellow Bagehot Girls. Anjali had tried to act smarter than she was, remembering phrases from smarter people, and Husseina had caught on and given her credit and now she knew some kind of uncomfortable secret about Husseina that she shouldn't.

When Husseina spoke again, it was woman to woman, her hand on Anjali's shoulder, her face up close. 'Frankly, I don't know where I'm going. Bobby said, 'Trust me and don't tell anyone you're leaving,' but he doesn't trust me. He's sending a car and driver, that's all I know. Life is very strange, isn't it?'

'Nothing is the way it seems,' Anjali replied. 'It's all light and angles.'

'Yes, light and angles. May I quote you?' asked Husseina.

And I must remember truth is more shocking than lies, Anjali counseled herself as she went back to her alcove. That was the only lesson she could extract from Husseina's unforced revelation. She left the door curtains parted slightly and sat cross-legged on her cot in the dark until Husseina-sexy in her T-shirt and jeans, tiptoeing with a suitcase, unlit cigarette in her lips-slipped past.

She couldn't wait for morning to usurp Queen Husseina's room and role in Bagehot House. As soon as she was certain that Husseina had fled, and even imagined a car slowing down and a car door's muffled slamming-one of Minnie Bagehot's fantasy Duesenbergs pulling up to the curb with the lights dimmed-she went into the master bedroom, trying on one luxurious silk kameez after another and admiring her new silk-enhanced curves in the cracked full-length mirror. And then she stretched out, for the first night in her life, alone on a full-size mattress. Husseina's room was dark, private, and silent.

It was accidental that she awoke early, at six A.M.,, in that unfamiliar room. Perhaps Tookie had come back late from work and brushed against the door. Or dogs had barked, crows had cawed, or it was something internal, a sense that something was wrong. Maybe Husseina had never left, no driver had turned up, she was lying, or she was crazy. Women didn't give up a closet of silk for a handful of unwashed cotton. She didn't need an alien rainbow of expensive silks in exchange for her faithful Gauripur T-shirts and well-worn jeans. She would miss the umlauts of Panzer Delight. The umlauts, not a handful of passports, were the true sign of a wider world.

And so she got up, straightened the bed cover, grabbed a white salwar and kameez-the closest thing in the closet to a sleeping suit-and went back to her old room for one last nap. Her old room might be loud and dusty, but at least she'd earned it. Husseina might still come back. It might all have been a dream. She again fell asleep, but almost immediately, it seemed, there came a light shaking of her curtain, and then it opened. Minnie Bagehot invited herself in. It was seven o'clock.

'What are you doing here?' Minnie demanded. 'I watched you leave.'

'I would certainly have given you proper notice, madam.'

'But I distinctly saw you sneak out of the house with bag and baggage in the middle of the night. And smoking a cigarette, no less. Smoking on the public street!'

So, it's true: Minnie never sleeps and never forgets. She marks little demerits on a piece of paper, adding up to a dump. 'Madam, I have never smoked a cigarette in my life. It must have been Husseina.'

Minnie grabbed Anjali by the shoulders. 'You have the audacity to lie to me? You think I'm a blind and cuckoo- in-the head old lady you can cheat? I recognized your clothes. Husseina would never dress like you or that Goanese.' She let go of Anjali and shoved her down hard on the cot. 'It's a matter of breeding, simple breeding. You are the sad outcome.'

Anjali's first impulse was to throttle Mad Minnie and stuff her Raj-era vocabulary back down her gullet. Her fingers itched to circle the scrawny throat, its papery wrinkles caked with pink foundation. Anjali's father died because she had brought dishonor to the family. Guilt reheated itself into rage against everything that Bagehot House stood for.

'Breeding?' She could feel her voice rising. 'You want to talk about breeding? You stupid old cow! You are not God. You are not even British-ha! You are one of us, and you are living on Indian goodwill!'

Minnie backed away, perhaps startled by the sudden increase in volume. She lived inside a bubble and had selective hearing. She didn't respond to words, to insult, or to anger. 'I haven't the slightest idea of what that little outburst was about. What are you trying to tell me? A rich Mohammedan stole your clothes and ran off without paying her bill?'

Anjali could hear the unspoken implication:stole from the likes of you? 'I haven't the p'oggiest notion why, but she wanted to trade clothes.'

'Preposterous!' But for the first time, Minnie looked perplexed. She shuffled toward the door curtain. 'I'm sure there's a simple explanation.'

'Things like that are never simple. It is just a mystery.' Let it go at that, for now.

Minnie dismissed complications with a wave of her hand, like a spoiled child. Or like self-appointed royalty with severe memory loss. Her self-confidence bounced back. 'Perhaps I misidentified the culprit.'

'Culprit, madam? What is the crime? She left without saying good-bye? We pay you a month's rent in advance.'

Minnie's voice dropped to a soft, conspiratorial mumble. 'Just yesterday, I came to a very difficult decision. It's that prostie, that Goanese. I should never have let her in. I'm sure she's conspiring with dark forces. She has to go.' Then Minnie explained that since Anjali was the protegee of that dear boy Peter, she was willing to hold off on collecting rent until she'd found a suitable position. ('I do hope you're looking. There was a time when I could call on governors and ministers for favors, but they've all…') Anjali could pay all that was owed from her first paycheck.

That fabled first paycheck already bore unrealistic burdens, so why not add a few more?

Strange negotiations first with Husseina, next with Mad Minnie, but in both cases Anjali was coming through the winner.

'You don't have to thank me,' the landlady continued. 'I too was once a young woman of modest means on my own in an unfamiliar town. I too have been the beneficiary of kindness.' It was her Christian duty to repay the grace she'd once received.

'Christian duty' was a concept alien to Anjali. Duty meant dharma and a host of caste and social restrictions she'd never seriously observed. Squatting in a cracked, dingy bathtub used by generations of Christians and Muslims, then submitting to Subodh Mitra and not resisting with her life, had wiped the slate clean of any remaining dharmic duties.

'Bangalore's become an evil place. Remember the way it used to be when Maxie and Bunty were in charge?'

Bunty-wasn't that the widow Philpott's husband? Mad Minnie really had lost her marbles. Or was retreating into the past another one of her tricks of survival? 'Gone to the dogs,' Anjali snickered, in the best All-India Radio news-anchor Britishy accent she could manage. 'My Bunty would go bonkers if he were still around.'

'There are goondahs resident on the property,' Minnie fumed. 'I'm a prisoner in my own house. I don't dare shut my eyes in my own bed.' From inside the soiled lace glove on her left hand, she extracted a sheer white handkerchief embroidered with a pink B inside a lilac floral ring, and blotted her anxious, watery eyes. 'Forces are gathering,' she warned. 'It's no use, Opal. We're doomed.'

Cut the melodrama, Minnie. All you are is a cobweb about to be swept away! One good housecleaning and you're gone!

But Minnie babbled on. 'You've seen what the vermin have done to my rose garden. It's a jungle! And to think that the Prince of Wales himself brought me cuttings from England! The vermin have taken over the compound. I see their lights from my window. I call the police, but they do nothing. They won't, or can't, who knows? No good Christian deed goes unpunished. A long time ago Asoke begged me to let some of his village brothers rest up for a night or two. Those peasants were making their way on foot to Madras, walking, can you believe, with their women and children and bundles and body lice and oozy sores. Now they think they own my compound. The Bagehot name