Miss New India

she might catch a stick, or the ball, and scar her face and not be top-class marriageable. The stick felt lighter than ever. All those mutton stews at Bagehot House must have put some muscle on her.

The first few days in Dollar Colony passed in a daze. The Banerjis were generous, laid-back hosts. They made no demands. They treated her like the victim of a quasi-mental wasting disease. Maybe she'd make it back, maybe she wouldn't. She accepted her role of patient in the Banerjis' care. She spoke little, ate less. The one time that words surged out of her mouth, it was to ask Parvati-to demand more than ask-why Parvati had 'deselected' her from CCI. A judgment call, Parvati explained at once, as to how best to allocate resources. Anjali obviously had different, if unspecified, talents. She was a mirror talent; strangers could read themselves in her-just not on a telephone. Talent or not, she had no money, so she never left the premises. She slept too many hours during the day and stayed awake too many hours during the night. Evenings she sat mute, unengaged with the family or their friends, who tended to drop by unannounced and usually stayed on for dinner.

Rabi tried to get her to jog with him in the postdawn coolness of the community's private park, but each time she begged off. Parvati and Auro had their leisure obsessions: Parvati gardening, Auro origami. Auro offered to teach Anjali how to make birds and animals from sheets of paper. Therapy? she wondered. She watched his large-knuckled fingers birth tiny hummingbirds, storks, and flamingoes, as well as mice, leopards and hippos. He was her father's age. She couldn't imagine her father wasting his time creating a paper menagerie. Hobbies, like stamp collecting, were for young boys, handicraft for young women on the marriage market. Her father dreaded-had dreaded-looking foolish.

Some evenings she let Parvati persuade her to step across the threshold of the front door, stand on the porch steps, and breathe in the fragrance of her prized frangipani and gardenia. Parvati, comical in a floppy hat, mud- smeared apron, and gardening gloves, vigorously weeded, raked, and pruned her teeming empire. Anjali claimed she had no energy to join in. No will to get well, she could have added, no curiosity about her present, no goals for the future. She had no future. She didn't want a future. The past hadn't happened. The present was on hold. The Movado watch on her wrist was a traitor.

Girish Gujral visited four times during the first two weeks of her stay, but more in the role of solicitous rescuer than fevered lover. Auro, Parvati, and Rabi welcomed him as their newest favorite family friend. He talked animated local politics with Auro, brought artfully wrapped gifts of imported ikebana vases and clippers for Parvati, limited- edition CDs of music from Mali and Sierra Leone for Rabi. Mr. GG was a man of magical connections. For Anjali he left off his office copies of Newsweek and Time and, from Voice, Dynamo's most recent column.

She read each Newsweek and Time from cover to cover, including the lists of names of publishers, managing editors, executive editors, editors, deputy editors, editors-at- large, staff writers, reporters and contributing photographers, but she absorbed no information. She was reading for language skills, not content. She was numb to world events. She nurtured her apathy. Wars, fortunes, reputations were won or lost out there. She was a ghost floating over alien terrain, as much a ghost as her father.

The clipping from Voice was different, though. Like an animal sensing danger in the air, Anjali sniffed peril in the title of Dynamo's latest column, titled 'Tyger! Tyger!' She squirreled the clipping away in her room, face-down in her nearly empty lingerie drawer. She kept opening and closing that drawer, running her fingertips over the newsprint until they were smudgy gray and had to be soaped clean. The Mr. GG who paid social calls on the Banerjis and sipped single malt was a polite pillar of Bangalore society; the Girish Gujral who stalked the city as Dynamo was radar capable of registering the slightest stirring. She felt simultaneously excited and anxious. Could ghosts who had crossed over, cross back? Once again, she tugged open the lingerie drawer. She groped under the bras and panties that Parvati had thoughtfully bought for her the morning after she had moved in. That thoughtfulness was another reason to feel ungrateful and to resent Parvati. Her fingers scraped the rough, cheap newsprint. No, she wasn't ready.

AT SIX-THIRTY one weekday morning, instead of the younger of the two maids, Rabi knocked on Anjali's bedroom door and carried in the tray of toast and bed tea.

'Something wrong?' she asked, startled.

'It's time,' he said.

Rabi set the tray down on the bed. He perched, lotus-position, on the quilt by her feet. 'Glowing with health, as you can see. You should give jogging a try, Angie.' He poured tea for her and for himself, added two lumps of sugar and hot milk from a pitcher to each cup. 'You should give something a try. Anything.'

'I'm not Angie,' she mumbled, scrambling to a half-sitting position. 'I guess I never was.' Tell me my name. Don't as me, don't as me anything.

'Well, Angie wanted to get to Bangalore. I told you you'd get here if you really wanted it. And now you are in Bangalore.'

The next-door neighbor was chanting a morning hymn at the top of his voice. 'There are mistakes,' Anjali mumbled, 'but no pardons.' She burrowed her head under her pillow.

'At least Mr. Srinivasan has a decent voice. Otherwise, I'd send him a blast of Farka Toure.' He shook her hip, which was covered by a blanket. 'Hey, Angie, I don't like talking to a pillow.'

'Is your auntie worried how much longer I intend to sponge from the family?'

'I told you, she has patience. She can imagine what you've been through. She knows you have issues- repressions, she calls them-and my aunt and uncle want to help. Not only that, they're able to help.' He sprang off the bed. 'Actually, I came up to your room to share, not evict.'

'I'm predeceased. I don't even have a name anymore.' She could feel his hand on her hip, over the cover.

'Actually, you do. That's what I came up to share. Remember the shot I took of you in the ice cream store, way back when? It's become a gallery sensation. 'Mona Lisa of the Mofussils.' That's you. You've made this photographer famous.'

She felt cool fingertips over her warm eyelids. She wanted the moment to last. But Rabi was all energy. Stories about what he called 'the Mona Lisa of the Mofussils Phenomenon' tumbled out. When his first set of Indian portraits were exhibited at a chic new gallery in Mumbai, the one that had gathered the most praise was 'Small- Town Girl.' Reviewers had rhapsodized over the subject's face, a face both beautiful and vulnerable. Why is she sad? Or is she happy? One of the reviewers had christened her 'Mona Lisa of the Mofussils,' and the tag had stuck. An art critic for a Kolkata newspaper had retraced the Indo-American photographer's steps back to Bihar and even tipped a waiter at the Alps Palace to seat him at the table where the Mona Lisa had posed. An emergent class of Indian entrepreneurs had bought out the entire exhibit.

He ended his stories with a plea. 'Do me a favor? Join me for a pre-bed-tea run tomorrow? You don't have to run. We can just walk. Please?'

'I don't own running shoes.' Her last resort.

He responded, 'I guess my next task, then, is to drive you to the mall.'

2

Late that night she steeled herself to read the clipping Mr. GG had given her.

TYGER, TYGER

By Dynamo

Over the years, Dynamo has had the privilege-some would describe it as the challenge, and they would not be unjustified-of knowing Mrs. Maxfield Trevor Douglas Bagehot, who is addressed affectionately by her close friends as Minnie and universally referred to by the respectful as 'Madam.'

'Madam' passed away in her eponymous Kent Town home under tragic circumstances Friday last. In the spirit of full disclosure, Dynamo acknowledges that he has contributed funds for the upkeep of the Bagehot property, which is comprised of the structure of Bagehot House and its extensive compound. Dynamo further concedes that