Miss New India - Bharati Mukherjee [42]
I get no kick from Champagne,
Urbana too is a kind of a zoo,
But I know now what has to be true—
There's something sick coming off of you.
"Lyrics by Girish Gujral," said Bombay Girl. "He'll come over soon enough."
Angie knew the meaning of the words fuck, shit, asshole, though she'd never used them. Where do young Indians learn to use such language? What frightened her was the simple truth that if a boy from an American college, even a psychopath, had sent in his marital résumé, her father would have lunged at it. Any Indian going to any American school was, by definition, a catch.
"There's always the phone-sex line," Mike said. "You'd be way cool. They actually favor exotic names and Indian accents."
"A girl in our dorm went over to phone sex," said Suzie. "The money's good, but you have to find weird ways of keeping those guys talking."
"Not that you couldn't," said Mike.
"Oh, just shut up," said Suzie. She waited for silence. "You have something more you want to say ... Mahendra? Oh, sorry, Mike."
My God, how a simple name change changes everything!
"Three hundred bucks a night weird, I hear," said Darren. Who was he in his pre-Bangalore life, Angie wondered. Dinesh? Dharmendra? "Pretty cool."
"One step up from the streets," snorted Roxie. And you, Roxie: Rupa? Rukhsana?
The women didn't seem jealous or possessive. Most of them were plump and the men already getting stout, like her father. Their friendships didn't seem like lead-ins to marriage. The young people in Bangalore had no parents, no nearby families to appease. No gossip or scandal could compromise them. They had come from all over India to get away from gossip.
It was exciting just to be part of such a flow, even for one morning, and to be carried along like a twig in a flood. She'd been accepted, no questions asked, even if she didn't understand most of what she'd been hearing. It was English, but ... From her perch on the Barista's plaza, she could see the tops of skyscrapers flashing their international names in blue and red neon. She knew those companies: IBM, Canon, Siemens, Daihatsu. None of them existed in Gauripur. A Pizza Hut in Gauripur would automatically become the luxury hangout, the Place to Be Seen, and would draw longer lines than a cinema hall. In Gauripur there was only Alps Palace, a Welcome Group hotel with a vegetarian restaurant and innumerable tea stalls, where men sat or stood, sipping and spitting. For Gauripur's alcoholics there were two back-street liquor stores where bottles were wrapped in straw and newspaper and smuggled out in used plastic sacks with sari shop logos.
High on the side of one building she could read hand-painted placards: ENGLISH LESSENS. CALL-CENTRE PLACEMENT. FRESHERS TAKE NOTE. FOREGIN LANGUAGES TAUGHT; FRANCIAS, ESPAGNOL, ITALINO. She found it reassuring, as though they'd known she was coming and might need a brush-up course, even if Bangalore spelled words differently.
She would like to stay. Barista was comfortable, with a touch of conspicuous luxury and a hint of intrigue. The young people were just like her, open and friendly, and probably held the kind of job she was hoping to get. She'd heard that ten thousand agents a month were hired, and six or seven thousand quit or were let go. What could a girl buy, with fifteen thousand rupees coming in? For one thing, she could stop in a Barista and order cold coffee with ice cream and not think twice. For Angie, a lakh—100,000 rupees—represented a lifetime of scrimping and saving. In Bangalore, she could be earning a lakh, or even two lakhs, every month.
She was swept up in visions of stuffed clothing closets, a scooter, and an apartment of her own. Big-city ambitions; small-town desires. Her poor sister worked her fingers to the bone—fingers and more—for two thousand a month, if that. From a few tables away, a pleasant male voice spoke up. "Kew Gardens is on my way," but Angie