Miss New India - Bharati Mukherjee [39]
In Bollywood films, the coolest stars casually meet in a Barista. Angie felt cool as she trundled her suitcase to the counter indoors. She would splurge on a tall iced coffee with a scoop of ice cream. In fan magazines, actresses were photographed while seductively licking strawberry-pink or saffron-yellow ice cream off a long-handled spoon. Hadn't she just saved maybe ninety rupees on the auto-rickshaw ride to nowhere? But when it was her turn to place her order, she asked for the cheapest, smallest hot coffee listed on the board above the counter. She blamed her Bose family training in frugality for the failure to splurge.
Really, why shouldn't she buy into the self-indulgence on display all around her? She knew her worth, and she had money—okay, borrowed, in a cookie tin in her tote bag. She'd shaken off the dust of Bihar and the mud and jungles in between, and now she was in Bangalore, where the towers are made of blue glass, but they could just as easily be gold. She'd done it entirely on her own. Next time in a Barista, she promised herself, she would order the most expensive coffee on the board.
"New in town?" asked a cappuccino drinker at an adjacent table, glancing down at Angie's Samsonite. She wore an I MUMBAI T-shirt.
"Just got off the train," Angie confessed, flashing her biggest smile. "I got in from Kolkata an hour ago." It's a new life, who's to know?
"Cool," said Mumbai Girl.
Angie put her coffee down on Mumbai Girl's cluttered table. A young man in a black muscle shirt that showcased his biceps gave up his chair for her. "Fresh Off the Train. F-O-T. Cool," he said.
"Now I've got to find Kew Gardens," Angie confided. "Do you know where it is?"
Mumbai Girl shouted over to the next table, "Any of you guys rooming in Kew Gardens?" Her English was perfect, better than Angie's. And the responses from the other tables were also in English: "Hell of a commute!" "Try Kent Town instead." "Isn't your ex looking for a roomie?" "Don't sign a long lease straightaway. Landlords are crooks." "And all landladies are bitches."
"Chill, F-O-T," Mumbai Girl counseled. She got on her cell phone. "Moni," she said, "Lalita here. Barista's, where do you think? Really? She agreed? I'm surprised. No, I'm shocked. Look, there's a new Bangla babe here." She looked up at Angie with a big smile, then winked. "Moni, you'd better get here fast. She's a real cutie. Hot and going fast. You want her in BanglaBazaar before those MeetMate guys snag her."
Cutie? Angie thought. Cute was something small and soft and dimpled. She was too tall and skinny for cute.
Mumbai Girl put her hand over the phone and whispered, "His name is Monish Lahiri—we call him the Bengali Svengali. Movie handsome, but kind of short. Not short-short, but shortish. He romances all the girls, so he's too busy to concentrate on just one. Anyway, he's minting money on his Facebook ripoff. He has us recruiting all the F-O-T Bangla babes and studs for his directory."
Angie tried to follow it all and came up ... short. What's a Svengali? she wondered.
Lifting her hand off the phone, Mumbai Girl said, "I don't know—pretty tall, hundred and seventy-five, hundred and eighty, maybe. Wear your shoe lifts."
"Tell him a hundred and sixty," Angie said.
Lalita continued. "Cool, Moni. Oh, she says a hundred and sixty." She turned to Angie. "Moni started the trend. Now every group in Bangalore, the Gujaratis, the Tamils, the Konkans, the Punjabis—everybody's getting into these Bangalore directories."
Angie's head was spinning, faces popped up like flashbulbs, voices twittered, coming from nowhere, or everywhere, and she couldn't understand a word they were saying. Maybe she'd strained something, hauling her Samsonite up from the sidewalk.
The smart-looking boys working on their laptops made her occasional Gauripur heartthrobs