Miss New India - Bharati Mukherjee [79]
"If you're wondering, it wasn't from a heart attack," said Peter. "But that's the story they're putting out."
What was he saying?
He died "suddenly"; that can only mean a heart attack, a stroke, something to do with high blood pressure. All Indian men suffered from high blood pressure. Salty food, smoking—it was a known flaw.
"I am taking up too much of your time. You'll be late for your flight," she said. For all his empathy for Gauripur students, Peter didn't understand their family problems, especially not hers. She'd grown up with chaos masquerading as coherence. Fear, not steadfastness, had kept her father in dead-end Gauripur. Fear had forced him to follow his father's and his grandfather's footsteps into the railway office of Gauripur. She was an ungrateful, unworthy daughter; she accepted that. She was selfish and recklessly impatient. In fact, she embraced her flaws. Confessing unworthiness delivered a newfound freedom.
Her family had orphaned her. She had not even any pretense of a home back in Gauripur. The Bose flat would already be occupied by another tenant. Ma must have been taken in by Sonali-di. A month ago Sonali-di had been the disgraced, divorced daughter; now Sonali-di was the good, dependable one. She pictured her mother in Sonali-di's drab apartment, fussing over her granddaughter, cooking, cleaning, and faking middle-class respectability while Sonali-di did for her boss whatever he demanded so she wouldn't lose her job. "You have more to go back to in Gauripur than I do." She rose from the armchair, not sure if a good-bye hug was appropriate.
"I don't have Ali to go back to, if that's what you mean." He slumped on the mattress, cupping his face with his hands.
She heard the sobs. "Oh, Peter!" Anjali rushed to her teacher and sat cross-legged beside him on the mattress. Peter's love story emerged in halting phrases. Ali had run off to Lucknow for back-alley surgery. She heard the phrases "instant gratification" and "black-market butcher" over and over again. Peter had counseled, cajoled, finally begged Ali to please be patient while he researched and ranked safe big-city clinics and experienced surgeons. But Ali had acted on a grapevine lead in Lucknow from one of his secretive acquaintances. "Instant gratification" had compelled Ali to risk death or maiming.
"He wanted to be a woman. He thought that's what would make me happy."
Awful as it seemed, as terrible as the judgment, she felt greater pity, greater pain, for Peter than she did for herself. Now Baba was dead, but he had first killed her off. She sat with Peter until Asoke knocked on the door and announced that he had taken it upon himself to flag an auto-rickshaw, which was now in the portico, its meter running.
4
At exactly nine on Monday morning, just as she had been promised, Anjali received a call from Usha Desai to set up an interview. "I can see you at eleven A.M. on Thursday. The only other possibility this week would be three P.M. on Friday." Though Peter's friend's voice was as soothing as it had been at Minnie's gala, her manner was more businesslike. "I have to be out of town Tuesday and Parvati is busy all day Wednesday."
"Friday, please. Friday is suiting me better," she stammered, to give herself time to prepare for the interview.
"Do you know where we are located?"
A wilier student applicant would have done her research and found out not only the CCI street address but how best to get there by bus. Anjali was relieved to hear Usha Desai reel off the information in a nonjudgmental voice before Anjali could mumble no. "Apartment 3B, Reach for the Galaxy Building, Reach Colony, Ninth Cross, Indira Nagar, Stage 1. If you say 'Reach Colony' to the driver, he'll know. Three P.M. on the dot, please."
"Thank you, Ms. Desai. I'm much obliged."
"Much obliged? You couldn't have learned that phrase in Peter's class."
"No, madam. I mean, Ms. Desai."
Usha Desai's manner softened. "Peter broods over you like a mother hen, you know," she confided before saying goodbye and hanging up.
Asoke appeared