Miss New India - Bharati Mukherjee [127]
Anjali had never bothered to learn the names of trees and flowers on her street in Gauripur and had never met anyone who fished for pleasure. Her father would never waste good money on something as dangerous as sport fishing. He couldn't swim, and she could not imagine him paddling a boat or standing in running water. She wasn't sure that before Rabi's Bheemswari trip, she'd ever thought of the mythic mahseer as actually existing. That mahseer was a fighting carp, an immense and magnificent river-dweller with shimmery gold sides, red-gold fins, and thick lips tipped with barbels. What was it Peter called it? Carpe diem. God's carp? To land a golden mahseer, the legendary forty-pounders in the Himalayan waters, was to know the challenge of a lifetime.
The only carp she knew, and knew too well, were of modest size and wrapped in newspaper. Her father would drag her to the fish stalls most Sunday mornings, and while she blocked out the fish stench with her handkerchief, he would diligently peer into the gills of a particular specimen to check for freshness before haggling over the price with a fishmonger. Curried carp seven nights a week, except in hilsa season, and bhekti fry for very special occasions. The Boses, like every other Bengali on the block, were staunch fish-and-rice eaters. They bought their fish in a smelly market; they didn't catch them in the bosom of nature. She'd never connected carp with romance. Rabi's enthusiasm so infected her that she even asked what he'd used for bait. "Flies!" he said, which ruined the effect. How lucky the people like Rabi, who could throw themselves so totally into their work! Even if she had passed the CCI exam and found a job, it would have been just that: a job, not a calling.
"Hey, you must be feeling better! A lot better, Anjali!" He didn't make fun of her questions or the sour face she'd made at the talk of flies and worms. "Freshwater crabs and cooked millet dumplings also worked."
THEY WERE IN Parvati's prized garden in the early morning, Rabi setting up a tripod and focusing his Nikon on the showy, sticky heads of fruits and flowers; she sipping fresh watermelon juice with a straw. He smiled up from his equipment. As the sun rose higher, he had to take new readings on his light meter. This was not an assignment for pay. He, a B&W snob, was paying homage in color to Parvati-Auntie, the fanatic gardener. The post-monsoon flowers, the swarms of butterflies and occasional parrots, budgies and sunbirds: everything about her garden was overstated and overlush. Everyone in Dollar Colony was horticulturally competitive. Citibank Srinivasan had imported Siberian fruit trees. Hewlett-Packard Gupta had transplanted a mini Indonesian jungle. Parvati was an Indian chauvinist: wide avenues shaded by rain trees and flame of the forest, blue and purple jacaranda, scarlet gul mo-har, champak, jasmine, roses, gladioli, anthurium, gerbera ... it's never too late to learn, especially if you admire your teacher. Monet. Light and angles.
"At least I got to Bangalore," Anjali said. I am trying to get over the heavy stuff. Not there yet, but I've made a start, thanks to your aunt.
"I always knew you would. If that's what you wanted." Click! Click! Rabi went back to the hedges to reset his camera.
She'd never felt so comfortable with a boy. Why can't we get what we most want in the world? When he came back, she asked, "When we met in Gauripur, did you think I didn't really want Bangalore?"
"Did I sound skeptical? I didn't mean to. You were looking for a way out. Peter convinced you Bangalore was