Miss New India - Bharati Mukherjee [93]
On the morning of the scheduled visit, Rajoo showed up at Bagehot House to pick up Tookie and Anjali—in a chauffeured Jaguar. "You sure make things happen, Rajoo. I owe you one," Tookie said.
He acknowledged Tookie's compliment with a leer worthy of Bollywood cads. "Give and take, take and give. That's what society is about, no?" Anjali hung back as they bantered. To her, Rajoo, in his indigo silk shirt, tight white slacks, and dyed-blue snakeskin boots, looked more Dubai than Bangalore. She couldn't visualize Mr. GG in such a getup. Squatter kids materialized from the green wilderness of the Bagehot compound to check out the fancy automobile. The chauffeur scrambled out from behind the steering wheel to shoo them off.
But Rajoo intervened. "Like these wheels?" he asked, beaming at them. They moved away from the car and clustered around the flashy stranger, who was extracting a wad of rupees from the back pocket of his snug-fitting pants. "It's a matter of giving and taking," he explained to Tookie, who looked pained as he distributed a one-hundred rupee note to each of the kids. "Not baksheesh," he told them. They rewarded him with worshipful stares. "Make it work for you. I'll be back to collect my cut." Since he was speaking in English, the effect must have been meant for Anjali.
Tookie cut it short. "Some of us working stiffs have cards to punch," she snapped at Rajoo as they strode toward the car. Anjali followed.
"I hope you weren't expecting a Rolls, Miss Bose," Rajoo joked, catching up with the women. "Deep down, this capitalist is a Gandhian."
It was Anjali's first-ever ride in a Jaguar, and she sank into the leather seat, savoring its aroma and its chauffeur's imperious honking, his lane-changing maneuvers, and his way of swearing at slow traffic.
When the Jaguar pulled up in front of the guardhouse of the TOS compound, the chauffeur leaped out and held the car door open for his boss instead of the women. Rajoo speed-dialed his contact in the TOS office tower before helping Anjali out of the Jaguar. Tookie was left to clamber out without help from either her nighttime fun-beau or his chauffeur, and get in place in the employees' line at the guardhouse. Intimidated by the elaborate security procedure, and feeling more Anjali than Angie, she stayed close to Rajoo. He sensed her anxiety and personally escorted her through the security post; informed the uniformed guard that she was not carrying cameras or tape recorders on her person; watched her print her name and address, Anjali Bose, 1 Kew Gardens, as well as sign into the logbook; took her visitor's badge out of the guard's hand; and clipped it to the shoulder strap of her purse. Since Tookie would be working a full shift, he even offered to send his car and driver back in a couple of hours so that she wouldn't have to take crowded buses back to Bagehot House. Give and take, take and give: he was practicing what he preached. He got off on power and gratitude. To show gratitude, she flashed her halogen smile at him, but she declined the ride back. "I'll take a taxi," she said, lying.
THE VISITOR'S PASS allowed Anjali access only to the roof floor cafeteria and the landscaped grounds of the TOS campus. Tookie had just enough time to give her a tour of the roof floor before reporting for her shift—this day, working as "Tess" from Lubbock, Texas—in a monitored bay on the third floor of the tower.
The open-air cafeteria-cum-patio roof floor of the glass and steel tower was crammed with benches and refectory tables under broad, tasseled umbrellas. It looked like a luxury resort floating above a modern city, missing only pull-down screens of Goan beachfront hotels. Agents on break huddled over laptops, white buds in their ears, colas within easy reach. But