Miss New India - Bharati Mukherjee [7]
Peter went on about places in Bangalore where she could stay. He knew old women from the British days who let out rooms in old mansions in the middle of the city, houses that could have been sold for crores of rupees (and leveled, their tangled gardens hacked down for parking lots and swimming pools), but where would the old women go? Old Anglo-Indian women whose children had fled to Australia or Canada, whose grandchildren would never see India, dotty old women whose sense of decorum reached back to pre-Independence days and who ("Believe me!" he laughed) would never be sympathetic to India's freedom fighters and Independence, but who nevertheless offered rooms and breakfasts of tea and toast and suppers of mutton stew at 1970s prices. Much was forgivable in such women. A place in Kew Gardens or Kent Town, that's what Angie needed. And he knew the women who ran the new money-spinning call centers were always looking for girls with good English and soothing voices who could fool American callers (I can do that? she was about to ask.I'm good enough to fool Americans?) into thinking they're talking to a girl in Boston or Chicago.
"Finally, a chance to use those regional accents I taught you," he said. "You're very good, Angie, you're the best student I ever had."
"That'll be five dallars," she said, remembering.
Chicago o's sound like a's. So do Boston r's.
"I told you at graduation you had to leave this place before you got trapped in a rotten marriage. I'm telling you again, let that happen and you're as good as dead."
Why do they say as good as dead? Why not as bad? But this was not the time to ask. He seemed about to put his hand on her arm and she felt excited. "I have dreams for you. You get married to some boy from here, and the dream dies. You'll never see the world." He studied her T-shirt. "No ... Dortmund, no Bratislava. You'll have kids and a husband who's jealous of your intelligence and your English and won't let you out of the house, and that would break my heart." This time, he did put his hand on her arm—"You understand?"
Ali snapped up the plate of sweet crumbs as though it was crawling with ants and noisily dumped it into a bowl of soapy water. He was jealous of her! He was just a child. He lifted his dripping fingers to eye level and glared at a chip on a painted fingernail.
"All I've done is give you a start. The rest is up to you."
In the movies, there was a moment of accounting. She wouldn't be allowed to leave her benefactor's house, not without a favor, or worse. The rest is up to me? The door would be blocked. He'd reach for her hand, then close in on it, like a trap. But Peter was her teacher and a teacher's help had purity and noble intentions behind it. It came from his heart because she had earned it honorably. Peter was smiling and even Ali was smiling, and Peter held out his hand to her and said, "Good luck, Angie."
She took his hand. Ali thrust out his, which confused her: shake a servant's hand? Up close, she could see a fine line of kohl limning his eyes. In that moment of confusion she saw Peter's arm reach around Ali's waist and pull him close. "I hope you'll find happiness too," he said.
More words followed, in Urdu, and Ali laughed and said in English, "Good luck, Anjali."
Then he walked her to the bus stop.
2
If a girl is sufficiently motivated, she can distill ten years' worth of Western dating experience—though maybe not all the sex and heartbreak—from a few months of dedicated attention to the photos, backgrounds, and brief meetings with the "boys" her father selects. She can enjoy the illusion of popularity, glamour, and sophistication. She can fabricate "relationships" and fantasize about new cities, new families, and new worlds opening up, without the terror of leaving home and sneaking off to Bangalore. Even in the heavily chaperoned world of the arranged marriage market, a girl can fabricate passion and lose her innocence. Anjali was tuned in to her culture's consolations for the denial of autonomy.