Miss New India - Bharati Mukherjee [96]
Moni waved in the servers' direction, and Mohammed Chowdhury lifted a hand in response.
"In case you were wondering, my family doesn't consider itself the deep-down, sprung-from-god's-head kind of Brahmins," he said. "The last name might make you think so, but all it means is somewhere along the line we snared a Brahmin male. My father went to Johns Hopkins to study medicine, found work at Mass General in Boston, flew back home for two weeks to get married, settled first in Toronto, moved on to Madison, Wisconsin, and finally to St. Louis, Missouri, where he had two sons and a daughter. One son became an oncologist, the daughter's a biologist. Me, I'm a wastrel wannabe and amateur photographer with an MBA from Wharton. Anyway, if you think I'm babbling, it's to distract you from posing. You have energy. That's what I want to get across on your cover photo. Prettiness I can Photoshop."
The Bengali Svengali was going to put her on the cover of a glossy? That made Anjali self-conscious. She assumed her signature halogen smile but could feel tightness in the muscles around her lips.
"Don't try so hard." He glanced over at the freezer section of the cafeteria line. "Feel like an ice cream? They have sherbets, popsicles, frozen yogurts, everything."
She knew sherbet from Alps Palace in Gauripur. Rabi had photographed her in Alps Palace with his boxy camera. "Sherbet, please," she said.
He brought her two scoops of mango sherbet and a plastic spoon, but nothing for himself. She was relieved to have something to do with her hands and dug the spoon into the orangy-yellow sherbet. It was denser, sweeter than sherbets at the Alps Palace. She hoped Rabi would call her when he returned from his wanderings to his Aunt Parvati's house in Bangalore.
"Do me a favor," Moni Lahiri said, picking up his camera again. "Sit on the table."
She put her dish of sherbet on the chair seat and complied.
"No, no, sit on the table and bring a spoonful of the stuff just to your lips. Desire and promise of gratification. That's it! You'll be Miss Two Scoops. Refreshing as sherbet on a hot day." He handed the dish to her as she rearranged her legs on the tabletop.
"Now raise your left arm halfway up, as though it's around someone's shoulder."
"Whose?" she asked. Yours?
"I'm thinking Queen Victoria's. There's a statue of the old girl in Cubbon Park. I can Photoshop you into her lap."
There was that word again. Photoshop had not appeared in Mr. Champion's workbooks.
"Now, face me and keep your left arm up, as though it's resting on a railing; no, it's on my shoulder. Good. We're getting there. Look at me as though I'm the answer to all your prayers."
"Mr. Lahiri, really." She giggled.
"Concentrate. Give me intensity. Great! Love the set of that steely jaw! How about the eyes? You're in love! That's better. We're nearly there. I'll Photoshop you stepping out of a first-class air-conditioned carriage at the railway station. No, next to that big victory obelisk in Cubbon Park. You're taking in Bangalore for the first time. Or would you prefer Electronic City? I've got a hundred Bangalore backdrops."
"So it's all a matter of light and angles? And backdrops?" She was afraid to ask about obelisks.
"It's a Photoshop world," he said.
So this was the famous Monish Lahiri. It wasn't hard to look headover-heels in love with this handsome man with floppy hair, bulked biceps, and quick hands. She could imagine pouring shampoo on his hair, kneading it over a lavatory sink, and rinsing it off with a pitcher of water. She'd never had such intimate fantasies. She'd never really fantasized touching any part of a man, especially not his hair. And now she found herself imagining other things, and she blushed, avoiding his gaze. Her body was itching, starting from down below. It was embarrassing, a disease perhaps.
"Tookie said you'd be perfect for a cover. She didn't exaggerate." He followed this up with a brief Bangla