Miss New India - Bharati Mukherjee [122]
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 he may even benefit financially, in light of the undeniable fact that lucrative conversions of cantonment-era ruins by conglomerates have become standard. Dynamo withholds comment on the popular speculation that the majority of such lucrative conversions of dilapidated-beyond-repair single-family habitations are given unstoppable velocity by a select number of conglomerates with underworld connections. As the ditty goes, the times, they are changing. And yet ... Aye, there's the rub for entrepreneurs with conscience.
If Dynamo had his druthers, he would continue his charitable outlays ad infinitum rather than confront the saddest of all urban spectacles: the rape of relics. The ravaging and razing of things unique diminishes us all. And in a city like Bang-a-Buck, where gaudy architecture is spreading like invasive bacteria and choking what little remains of originals, we are losing signposts to our collective past.
Like many who dabble in the alchemic black art of urban architecture in this confused and confusing age of rapturous rupture, Dynamo has long fixed his gaze on Madam's Bagehot House. (Dynamo hastens to clarify to his readers that his interest in Madam's establishment is devoid of popular prurient fascination with the generations of delectable lady-lodgers, those iron-clad frigates known in popular parlance as Bagehot Girls.) It is the academic perfection of the house and its grounds that have merited Dynamo's affectionate admiration (that admiration having been sparked by his reading at an impressionable age of Mr. Peter Champion's Classic Indian Architecture: Public and Private).
Dynamo has it on irrefutable authority that at the time of Madam's sudden-but-not-precocious expiration, the board members of the Bagehot Trust, each of whom is a Bang-a-Buck VIP (no, make that a VVIP), were engaged in a bitter feud regarding financial plans for the immediate future of the rapidly deteriorating property. Dynamo's source, a trustee who has requested anonymity, has divulged to Dynamo that the trust was set up for the sole purpose of executing a legal contract with Madam, who had for two decades or more been afflicted with deep penury. Per said contract the board of trustees acquired the property deed from Madam in exchange for allowing her (1) to occupy the main residential structure gratis, and (2) to obtain and retain 100 percent of rents she collected from respectable migrant working ladies. As additional incentive they guaranteed the delivery of monthly gifts of provisions and liquor—Madam was partial to brandies. At the time of transfer of deed, the trustees, applying actuarial tables, had counted on Madam "to kick the bucket" within months, if not weeks, and by unanimous vote had nominated a committee to explore lucrative commercial development of the long-neglected property. Thanks to either the medicinal benefits of potent brandies or to the ironic string-pullings of the Big Puppeteer in the Skies, and much to the aggravation of the trustees, Madam bamboozled the actuaries. The consequence of Madam's stubborn longevity was loss of unanimity among the trustees. According to Dynamo's source, last month a minority faction on the board proposed the Bagehot property be designated a city or national