Miss New India - Bharati Mukherjee [60]
"Hullo, madam..."
"No, no. Never madam. Unless it's a crone like our Mad Minnie."
"Hullo, Mrs. Desai. My name is Anjali Bose..."
"No. No, and again no. How do you know she's married?"
How could she not be, Anjali thought. The woman is middle-aged and she's prosperous. "I don't," she admitted.
"Make mizz your default for her. Okay, give it another go. Usha Desai here. Who is speaking?"
"Good morning, Mizz Desai. My name is Anjali Bose, and I am, I mean I was a student of Mr. Peter Champion in Gauripur, Bihar. He has recommended I enter your training facility."
"That's very thoughtful of your teacher. Have you applied for admission? What are your qualifications for admission?"
Anjali dropped her imaginary telephone. Bumpkin, bumpkin, bumpkin!
"Who is this teacher?" Husseina continued the role-play. "He sounds like a foreigner."
"Mizz Desai will know him," Anjali protested. "Mr. Champion said she knows him. Everybody knows him."
Husseina lifted a skeptical eyebrow. "All right, feedback time. Your greeting to her is fine. Introducing the teacher's name and place are also fine. Say what you need to say simply and precisely: Good morning, et cetera, et cetera. My name is et cetera, et cetera. I was a student of et cetera, et cetera, in whatever town, and wait for the contact's reaction. She might go, 'Oh, dear old et cetera, et cetera. How is he?' And then you come back with 'He's hale and hearty, he sends his et ceteras." Is there a wife? If so, don't forget to mention her, so there's no hint of hanky-panky. Go on to 'My teacher said I must call you when I reached Bangalore to see if you could find a place for me in your training school.' After that, you play it by ear. Those classes can be shockingly expensive. Just so you know what expenses you're committing to."
Husseina's casual aside on fees was the most chilling information yet; Anjali hadn't counted on having to peel off rupees—thousands of them—from Peter's stash for the CCI course.
ANJALI DIDN'T WASTE her energy cultivating short, bespectacled Sunita Sampath. Sunita had nothing to teach her. She was too familiar a type; a middle-class Hindu girl from a nearby small town, the eldest of five sisters and a brother, with a Second Class Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature. Her brother was in Bangalore, but out of work and estranged from the family. She was working to help her family until her father found her a caste-appropriate bridegroom. "I am not a demanding person," Sunita confessed to the Bagehot Girls, "but I'll nix any candidate who expects a dowry."
Poor Sunita, thought Angie; as though being short and myopic was not bad enough, she also underplayed the marriage market. What kind of desirable boy thinks so little of himself that he doesn't demand a dowry? And are you of such little value in the eyes of your father or even yourself that any boy with minimal qualifications and no self-assurance can just grab you? Even my father thought I was worth a matched set of golf clubs. And then she thought, almost ashamed to admit it, Yes, Sunita, you are of little value.
Of the Bagehot Girls, Husseina was the one who could help her most, Anjali decided. But though she tried to corral Husseina in the foyer whenever the other boarders were not around, she couldn't get close to the sophisticated Hyderabadi. Anjali pried, but Husseina Shiraz disclosed next to nothing of her family or her hopes and wants. She deflected Anjali with a wink and a clever phrase: "What happens in Hyderabad stays in Hyderabad." As for her family's fortune, she had a two-word explanation: "Daddy dabbles." Her English was perfect and her voice so low, so appealing, and ultimately so authoritative that Angie conjured her own picture of the Shiraz family: an armada plying between India and Hong Kong, Singapore and the Gulf. Tookie, on the other hand, was compulsively friendly. Instead