Miss New India - Bharati Mukherjee [25]
Her father tried to read between the lines of Subodh Mitra's CV. "The boy did engineering to please his father, but his heart wasn't in it. When he got a chance to study business, he shone like the sun!"
Anjali had never heard of his Kolkata business school. Probably hundreds of "business schools" and "colleges" were run out of the back rooms of hot little apartments, all advertising First-Class MBA degrees the equivalent of those from Delhi, LSE, and Wharton. She was tempted to argue but kept her silence.
"This is a golden boy." Her father persisted. "His parents are very reasonable. They want this marriage as much as we do. I have counteroffered more than they asked."
Subodh Mitra, the intended, the all-but-fiancé, arrived from Asansol in a red Suzuki, an eight-hour drive on the clogged, narrow national highway, in the first week of the monsoon rains. A red Suzuki! Mr. Bose still negotiated the streets of Gauripur by scooter, just as he had in college—another humiliation for which Anjali and her mother and sister were somehow to blame.
The young man swept into their apartment, bearing flowers and sweets. The photo hadn't lied: he was tall, athletic, and handsome, with real dimples. He was attentive to both parents and showed the proper deference to Mr. Bose. He barely looked at Anjali, fulfilling the etiquette demands of the marriage market.
"Oh, and this must be your daughter, the lovely Anjali. I was enjoying our conversation so much, I nearly forgot..." Anjali then allowed herself to be pushed into the conversation.
He complimented her on her white cotton dhoni-khali sari, with its yellow and green stripes: "A very nice selection for the occasion." He went on. "I must compliment the feminine sensibility of the Bose household. Unexpectedly simple, not a showy tangail or fussy kanjeevaram."
She was impressed; a man who knows his sari styles is refined indeed.
He must have been through many such interviews, Angie thought. She had worn her lone kanjeevaram for the day in Shaky's studio. She would wear a red brocaded Benarasi for the actual wedding.
"Anjali is very artistic," said Mr. Bose.
"I can see that. Taste is a rare quality these days. Taste in such matters speaks well of her parents' example."
"Our daughter has graduated from Vasco da Gama, with honors..."
The "boy" had to feign surprise and interest, as if he hadn't known all along, and Anjali had to deny, modestly, any great intelligence or motivation. He declared himself passionately devoted to his parents in Asansol, but his ambition was to move to Kolkata and convince his parents to settle nearby. Even Gauripur was preferable to Asansol, Subodh readily admitted. He spoke in elegant Sanskritized Bangla, the pinnacle of decorum. "Mr. Bose, I am myself looking for a post in international communications, hopefully in Kolkata, but failing that, I look with favor on Lucknow or Allahabad."
Lucknow? Angie thought, with horror. Allahabad? What modern girl would chain herself to a dreary place like that?
Her parents were impressed by his chaste, mellifluous Bangla, with no infiltration of Hindi, and they strained to meet its standard. This offered Angie the perfect out. She stumbled so badly in the language, half deliberately, that the unruffled, indulgent Subodh continually asked her to please repeat