Miss New India

So long as she'd been in Bagehot House, Anjali had felt in control. Surely there was someone around to vouch for her, a Tookie to say 'Hi, girlfriend.' She was a Bagehot Girl, after all, but in the back of the police car, handcuffed to a grille behind the driver's seat, she realized there was no one in the world she could reach who knew who the hell she was.

In an interview room in the Central Bangalore Police Station, as she sat across a table from a square-jawed, sari-clad policewoman, waiting to be interrogated by a senior detective, Anjali Bose finally broke down. On the ride to the station in the police cruiser, she had acted composed, almost cocky, demanding to know the charges against her. But in that small windowless room, guarded by two uniformed women, one of them about her mother's age, she started to cry, and in crying, started great body-shaking heaves. There were no actual charges, hence nothing to defend herself against. She was being accused of who she was, not what she'd done. The policewoman was someone's wife, since she was wearing a mangalsutra wedding necklace, and probably someone's mother. But in her midriff-covering, four-button khaki-cotton regulation blouse and khaki teri-cotton regulation sari secured on the left shoulder with an Indian Police Service metal badge, she looked merely brutal.

The younger policewoman threatened in broken English to shut Anjali up with 'tight slaps.' She had a thin, mean face, a stout, muscular body squeezed into a khaki shirt and unpleated khaki pants, and huge, wide feet, judging from the size of her Derby brown leather shoes. Anjali feared the woman was itching to carry out her threat, but she couldn't choke back her dry heaves and grunts, not even when she heard the squeaky leather shoes stride across the room toward her. She steeled herself for the blows. What the policewoman did instead was grab her shoulders in a hold painful enough to make her shriek. Pleased, the policewoman relaxed her grip, thrust her fist down the back of Anjali's kameez, and pulled up its designer label. 'Dubai,' she sneered. Then in Kannada she launched into what sounded like mocking insults.

She recognized what had unleashed their taunts: her expensive silk salwar-kameez. It didn't seem to matter to her guards that her clothes were wrinkled and sweat-stained from day-long stress. In one day, that day, she had flunked out of CCI, witnessed mob fury, been accused of murder, and hauled off in handcuffs. She read her guards' minds: How did an unemployed working girl afford such a fancy wardrobe? Drugs? Who but loose women flaunt their bosoms and hips in tight, attentiongetting clothes? Whores! She sat as still as she could while the excitable younger policewoman patted her down with palms that felt as large, flat, and hard as Ping-Pong paddles, first up and down the length and width of the back, then over the front. Thick fingers pressed into her collarbone, swatted her breasts, rested on her nipples, and flicked them as though turning light switches off and on and off and on, flic-flic, and when they hardened, both policewomen burst into giggles. Without her cell phone, Anjali felt totally cut off. No one knew what was happening to her. Worse, no one would care that she had disappeared. They would assume that she had raced into new adventures. Helpless, hopeless, she prayed for the detective to enter the interview room. He would admit that the police had made a mistake-or a mistake had been made-and let her go. But where could she go when freed? She had no Bagehot House to shelter her, no mother and sister to console her, no lover to embrace her.

The door lock clicked behind her. She knew, from the guards' abrupt halting of their game, that a senior officer had just entered. Finally she felt safe. Her worry that she would just disappear when Bangalore had had its fun with her, that she would be just another anonymous body buried under the building boom, was over. She twisted around in her chair to flash her signature smile at the man come to deliver her. The man was good-looking in a jowly, hirsute way, about the same age as Mr. GG but taller and thinner. He wore a dark suit with a pink shirt and a paisley-patterned silk tie instead of a uniform.

The man took his time approaching the table and taking his seat across from Anjali. He took more time tugging his watch off his wrist and placing it on the table, and still more time lining up two identical ballpoint pens on either side of a notepad and a slim folder. To make room just where he wanted to put his things, he had to push away a cracked plastic tray that held a small glass carafe of stale-looking yellowish water and a plastic glass. When he was finally ready, he announced, 'Very-very serious offense, Miss Anjali Bose.'

'What offense? I don't know what you're talking about!'

'Very-very serious,' he repeated before introducing himself as the detective in charge. She didn't catch his name and dared not ask him to repeat it. Her bright smile had failed her this time. 'What are the charges against me?'

'Treason against the Indian state. Terrorism. Abetting mass murder.' The detective glanced at the ceiling and turned his head from side to side as if to relieve soreness in his neck. 'Murder of Mrs. Minnie Bagehot, autopsy pending,' he added.

'Is the charge withholding rent money? We had an arrangement for that.'

'Not a joking matter, Miss Bose. Soon you will be weeping.'

'What, then?'

He massaged the sides of his neck with his knuckles. 'Miss Bose, we are not playing a guessing game.' He fingered the knot of his tie. He moved his watch from the right of the notepad to the left, then back again to the right. Finally, without looking at her, he announced, 'Let us talk about terrorism, Miss Bose.'

'I had no knowledge that goondahs were planning to wreck Bagehot House.' The absurdity of his accusation enraged her.

'Truths only, please. Cooperation is a better strategy than prevarication. This is my recommendation to all serious offenders.' But he didn't give her time to comprehend, let alone consider, his advice. In a swift, sudden show of anger, he whacked the table so hard with the notebook that she screamed as though he had hit flesh and not wood. 'Now,' he said, a smile twitching his mustache. 'Now please to tell'-he paused to realign the ballpoints that had rolled inches from her case file before he finished his sentence-'current habitation of your friend Miss Husseina Shiraz. I note her initials are on your purse. We can therefore assume you have stolen same. No need to waste time by sending us on wild goose chase to Hyderabad and whatnot.'

Husseina? Husseina had been nowhere near Bagehot House. Maybe she'd heard wrong. She could barely understand the detective's southern rhythms, the weird vowels and thudding consonants. In this topsy-turvy world of Bangalore, detectives extracting 'truths' from suspects in police stations probably earned less than honey-voiced customer-service agents in sleek call-center offices. She didn't want to risk offending him by asking him to repeat what he had just said. He was playing some kind of interrogation-room version of the cat-and-mouse game. He was poised to trap her in lies.

'What?' This time it was a whispered admission of anxiety, not an exclamation of outrage. One whack of his lathi across her ribs would crush her. One flick of a practiced wrist, directed against her skull, would spill her brains.

'Your good friend Miss Husseina Shiraz. You are being bosom buddies, isn't it? You are exchanging clothes, discussing secrets, and whatnot. Very expensive silk clothes from Gulf.' The detective picked at flaking dry skin on his upper lip. Blood beaded where he had gouged rather than picked. The tip of his tongue chased the tawny red beads. 'You are being in communication and whatnot with this bosom buddy?'

His questions were baffling. Haughty Husseina would sneer if she heard any of the Bagehot Girls claim her as a bosom buddy. 'We roomed and boarded at the same time. We crossed paths in the bathroom, and we chatted at mealtimes. Just small talk, I can't even remember about what.' With Minnie dead, it wouldn't be prudent to admit the Bagehot Girls mostly grumbled and gossiped about her.

The detective threw his head back and made loud clucking noises as though he was scratching an itch deep down in his throat. The older policewoman snapped a command, and the younger one poured water from the carafe into the glass. After several noisy gulps of water, the detective returned his attention to Anjali. 'Miss Bose, you are committing stupidity. I already have answers to all questions I am asking.' He slapped the folder with his right palm. 'Commencing again, Miss Bose. What all you are knowing about your good friend's other life?' He flicked the folder open and extracted an Indian passport. 'Not informing on terror plot is heinous offense. Conspirator, co- conspirator, abettor, enabler andsoforth. You are understanding that hard-labor category of long jail time is awaiting such criminal acts, no?'

He wet his right index finger, opened the passport to its front page, and shoved it in Anjali's face. She jerked her head back enough to make out a passport headshot of Husseina wearing the Panzer Delight T-shirt she had traded with Husseina. 'You are seeing name of holder, isn't it? Your good name but not face?'

How gullible she had been when she had given up her favorite T-shirt! 'We could be sisters,' Husseina had gushed, and Anjali had been flattered. No wonder Husseina had asked her friendly questions about her birthday and place of birth.