Miss New India - Bharati Mukherjee [121]
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 Touré." 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