Miss New India - Bharati Mukherjee [142]
PARVATI OFFERED TO coach Anjali for the upcoming interview. If the delinquent debtors were like Thelma Whitehead, her fictitious caller from Arkansas, they would probably resent being dunned by an agent with a detectable Indian accent. She sounded excited. "Thanks for alerting CCI to this brand-new outlet. Debt recovery, how exciting." Anjali would be her guinea pig for a training manual for pay-up-or-else phone specialists. For RecoverySys, Anjali's voice would have to project authority. Start with compassionate authority, shift to credit-score damage, then to legal intimidation. Parvati had met K. K. Jagtiani at a couple of fund-raisers, she added, but not his son or cousin or brother, D. K. Jagtiani. At the time of their meeting, Mr. K. K. Jagtiani had been exploring an intercontinental cremation-and-ash-scattering service for overseas Indians.
"I guess that Hindu NRI corpse-disposal scheme didn't get off the ground," Auro laughed. He too volunteered to help Anjali get interview-ready. "If you're going to be dealing with Sindhis, how about we watch some episodes of The Sopranos ?"
After dinner the next night, he sat Anjali and Parvati down on either side of him on the widest sofa in the living room and started playing the first of three seasons of The Sopranos. Dozens whacked, or were whacked. Young whacked old, brothers whacked brothers, cousins whacked cousins, bag guys whacked debtors, enforcers whacked snitches.
"Who needs the mafia," Auro joked, "when you've got an Indian extended family?"
"Is that a dig at the Bhattacharjees?" Parvati demanded. "Let me tell you, Anjali, Tony's mother reminds me of Auro's mother."
"That's totally out of bounds!" Auro fumed.
"Okay, okay, mother-in-law jokes are funny only on TV."
Anjali went to bed at dawn and dreamed of ducks bobbing in the swimming pool. It didn't matter that Anjali didn't know how to swim because in her dream she was Meadow Soprano.
RABI CUT SHORT his scouting trip for his next photo assignment by three days. "Orders from Baba, Parvati Auntie," he announced. "Ma, Baba, and Kallie will be here in two weeks, and I'm supposed to line up properties for Baba to view."
Auro faked exasperation. "Oh, oh, you know what that means, Anjali, don't you? Less time for us. Much less time for Carmela and Tony. Once the two sisters start their adda, there's no stopping. I'll need a vacation from them!"
Adda. Bangla talk-talk over endless tea. Or, in Dollar Colony, over white wine.
The comfort zone of make-believe family in the Banerjis' home collapsed suddenly. She wasn't Parvati's and Auro's daughter; she wasn't even their houseguest; she was their rescue project, like a street dog. Parvati's excitement swirled around her. "Rabi, do you think I should put your mother and the baby in Bhupesh's suite?" "Auro, remember to lay in a lot of beer. Bish likes his Kingfisher, but not warm the way we drink it." "I'll get the mali's wife to come in once a day and take care of the extra laundry." "Oh, I can't wait to have a baby in the house. It's a first for your graying auntie!"
Anjali didn't want to share Parvati and Auro. She begrudged Tara and her baby girl the sweet simplicity of Parvati's love for them. Parvati's sister-love had not been dipped in bile. Parvati hadn't killed her father nor predeceased him. Bitterness soured into dread. The brief, impossible friendship she had forged with Rabi in Gauripur was at stake. Monet, moray, light and angle. Restore mountain, please. But there were only a half-dozen pull-down props, and the Banerjis' living room was not among them. She would have to move on, again.
PARVATI SETTLED INTO a deck chair under a jasmine-covered pergola and waved to Anjali to join her. "Come, sit by me," she insisted when Anjali hesitated. "I need a break from this stuff." She pointed to the screen of her laptop. "Not quite Napa, but Doddaballapur will get there. Farmland to vineyard,