Miss New India - Bharati Mukherjee [48]
They were finally in a proper residential suburb. Many of the houses were old Anglo-Indian-style one-story bungalows, crumbling and partly demolished, hidden behind towering trees and overgrown vegetation. They had names, and she read some of them aloud: THE HEATHER, SNOW-DROP LODGE, PRIMROSE PALACE, and HYACINTH GLORY. Names right out of British poetry, she remarked. His explanation was that the original builders and later occupiers had refused to believe—or perhaps had known only too well—that they would never see England again. The street names had undergone orthographic decolonization: CHARLESS WRIHGT ROAD and KENT TOWN, or KENTT or KHENNTAON; words changed their spellings block by block.
She'd been noticing the impatient march of gleaming new mansions, built on tiny plots, and three- and four-story luxury apartment buildings with doctors' clinics and fabric shops on the ground floor, wedging their way between the remaining bungalows. Every old mansion that died had given birth to half a dozen offspring.
Every block seemed to contain a small church, an old house converted to that purpose, with a signboard announcing its name and denomination and times of services. Farther on, an immense white mosque occupied an entire block. On the streets around the mosque, on the back seats of scooters and motorcycles, clinging to their husbands and holding their children, were Muslim women clad head to toe in black and looking at the world through thin eye slits. Where had all the Hindus gone?
"This little area is called Bagehot camp," Mr. GG announced. "We're coming up on Bagehot Alley and Kew Gardens Road." The street sign read BHAJOT.
"And there..." He paused for effect. "There in all its glory stands—well, leans—Bagehot House. Every architect in Bangalore has dreamed of getting his hands on that property. There's even a book about it."
Of course, had Angie Bose been intellectually curious (or had Peter Champion bragged even a little about his accomplishments in those months before she'd left), or had she even thought to ask GG, "Oh, who wrote that book on Bagehot House?"—and if the answer had come back, "Some American guy, Champion's his name, if that means anything," Angie's resulting gasp might have forced GG to slam on the brakes. Had she known to drop the name of her benefactor, GG might have corrected his tone of mild condescension and begun treating her as a fellow sophisticate. He might have asked, "You know Peter Champion, that gypsy-scholar who wrote Classic Indian Architecture: Public and Private?" Or "Peter Champion? Don't tell me he's still alive!" But of course she was not intellectually curious, at least not about the realm of books.
In a neighborhood of old mansions, Bagehot House was the largest. It was dark and sprawling, its grounds untended. The outer wall, topped with glass shards, had lost most of its stucco; the old bricks were crumbling, and parts of the wall were worn down to shoulder level. Even from the car she could see holes in the roofs of the larger outbuildings. Other houses at least maintained a pretense of serviceability, with uniformed chowkidars seated outside the gates and pots of flowers lining the driveway. Bagehot House looked abandoned.
"Well, you wanted Bagehot House, and now you've got it." He pulled to a stop around the corner and across the street, facing what had once been the front gates and lawn. "The old biddy is sure to be inside, but it'll take a while for her to hobble to the door. Every developer in Bangalore is praying for her to pop off."
Anjali visualized the developers as vultures circling a dying cow.
No room for sentimentality in this city, she realized.
The house was daunting enough, but she wondered what she owed Mr. GG or what he might