Aurobindo and Parvati Banerji's three-story home in Dollar Colony-so named for the area's preponderance of foreign-returned executives and entrepreneurs-had four master-bedroom suites of equal size, each with its sitting area, dressing room, spa bath with separate shower, and small private porch. Two of the four suites were located on the ground floor, one occupied by Auro and Parvati, the other kept in move-in condition for long visits by Auro's elderly parents. "It was in-laws on the ground floor with us, or install an elevator," Parvati liked to joke, "and this was the cheaper solution." An efficient live-in staff of six ran the house and adjacent grounds.
The public rooms-formal drawing room, dining room, an office for Auro, a puja room, and a granite-lavished kitchen-were also on the main floor. The other two suites, fully furnished, were on the upper floor and separated by a second sitting room. They were intended for the Banerji sons, Dinesh, a senior at Harvard, and Bhupesh, a junior at MIT, and their future wives and children. That still left two small rooms with a shared bathroom and shower stall on the third floor for summer visits by Dinesh's and Bhupesh's college friends.
Anjali had been given Dinesh's suite. Cricket bats and field hockey sticks were bracketed to the walls. One wall was devoted to cricket posters and shelves for Dinesh's debate and tennis trophies. He was a well-rounded boy, the ideal of upper-class parents. Even in his absence the boy exerted a force she found shaming. He would bring a perfect bride back to this perfect house, and he would have a perfect American degree and a guaranteed lifetime of higher and higher achievement.
She lifted a field hockey stick. Memories of da Gama's girls' field hockey team. Such simple times. Worries that she might catch a stick, or the ball, and scar her face and not be top-class marriageable. The stick felt lighter than ever. All those mutton stews at Bagehot House must have put some muscle on her.
The first few days in Dollar Colony passed in a daze. The Banerjis were generous, laid-back hosts. They made no demands. They treated her like the victim of a quasi-mental wasting disease. Maybe she'd make it back, maybe she wouldn't. She accepted her role of patient in the Banerjis' care. She spoke little, ate less. The one time that words surged out of her mouth, it was to ask Parvati-to demand more than ask-why Parvati had "deselected" her from CCI. A judgment call, Parvati explained at once, as to how best to allocate resources. Anjali obviously had different, if unspecified, talents. She was a mirror talent; strangers could read themselves in her-just not on a telephone. Talent or not, she had no money, so she never left the premises. She slept too many hours during the day and stayed awake too many hours during the night. Evenings she sat mute, unengaged with the family or their friends, who tended to drop by unannounced and usually stayed on for dinner.
Rabi tried to get her to jog with him in the postdawn coolness of the community's private park, but each time she begged off. Parvati and Auro had their leisure obsessions: Parvati gardening, Auro origami. Auro offered to teach Anjali how to make birds and animals from sheets of paper. Therapy? she wondered. She watched his large-knuckled fingers birth tiny hummingbirds, storks, and flamingoes, as well as mice, leopards and hippos. He was her father's age. She couldn't imagine her father wasting his time creating a paper menagerie. Hobbies, like stamp collecting, were for young boys, handicraft for young women on the marriage market. Her father dreaded-had dreaded-looking foolish.
Some evenings she let Parvati persuade her to step across the threshold of the front door, stand on the porch steps, and breathe in the fragrance of her prized frangipani and gardenia. Parvati, comical in a floppy hat, mud-smeared apron, and gardening gloves, vigorously weeded, raked, and pruned her teeming empire. Anjali claimed she had no energy to join in. No will to get well, she could have added, no curiosity about her present, no goals for the future. She had no future. She didn't want a future. The past hadn't happened. The present was on hold. The Movado watch on her wrist was a traitor.
Girish Gujral visited four times during the first two weeks of her stay, but more in the role of solicitous rescuer than fevered lover. Auro, Parvati, and Rabi welcomed him as their newest favorite family friend. He talked animated local politics with Auro, brought artfully wrapped gifts of imported ikebana vases and clippers for Parvati, limited-edition CDs of music from Mali and Sierra Leone for Rabi. Mr. GG was a man of magical connections. For Anjali he left off his office copies of Newsweek and Time and, from Voice, Dynamo's most recent column.
She read each Newsweek and Time from cover to cover, including the lists of names of publishers, managing editors, executive editors, editors, deputy editors, editors-at-large, staff writers, reporters and contributing photographers, but she absorbed no information. She was reading for language skills, not content. She was numb to world events. She nurtured her apathy. Wars, fortunes, reputations were won or lost out there. She was a ghost floating over alien terrain, as much a ghost as her father.
The clipping from Voice was different, though. Like an animal sensing danger in the air, Anjali sniffed peril in the title of Dynamo's latest column, titled "Tyger! Tyger!" She squirreled the clipping away in her room, face-down in her nearly empty lingerie drawer. She kept opening and closing that drawer, running her fingertips over the newsprint until they were smudgy gray and had to be soaped clean. The Mr. GG who paid social calls on the Banerjis and sipped single malt was a polite pillar of Bangalore society; the Girish Gujral who stalked the city as Dynamo was radar capable of registering the slightest stirring. She felt simultaneously excited and anxious. Could ghosts who had crossed over, cross back? Once again, she tugged open the lingerie drawer. She groped under the bras and panties that Parvati had thoughtfully bought for her the morning after she had moved in. That thoughtfulness was another reason to feel ungrateful and to resent Parvati. Her fingers scraped the rough, cheap newsprint. No, she wasn't ready.
AT SIX-THIRTY one weekday morning, instead of the younger of the two maids, Rabi knocked on Anjali's bedroom door and carried in the tray of toast and bed tea.
"Something wrong?" she asked, startled.
"It's time," he said.
Rabi set the tray down on the bed. He perched, lotus-position, on the quilt by her feet. "Glowing with health, as you can see. You should give jogging a try, Angie." He poured tea for her and for himself, added two lumps of sugar and hot milk from a pitcher to each cup. "You should give something a try. Anything."
"I'm not Angie," she mumbled, scrambling to a half-sitting position. "I guess I never was." Tell me my name. Don't as\ me, don't as\ me anything.
"Well, Angie wanted to get to Bangalore. I told you you'd get here if you really wanted it. And now you are in Bangalore."
The next-door neighbor was chanting a morning hymn at the top of his voice. "There are mistakes," Anjali mumbled, "but no pardons." She burrowed her head under her pillow.
"At least Mr. Srinivasan has a decent voice. Otherwise, I'd send him a blast of Farka Touré." He shook her hip, which was covered by a blanket. "Hey, Angie, I don't like talking to a pillow."
"Is your auntie worried how much longer I intend to sponge from the family?"
"I told you, she has patience. She can imagine what you've been through. She knows you have issues-repressions, she calls them-and my aunt and uncle want to help. Not only that, they're able to help." He sprang off the bed. "Actually, I came up to your room to share, not evict."
"I'm predeceased. I don't even have a name anymore." She could feel his hand on her hip, over the cover.
"Actually, you do. That's what I came up to share. Remember the shot I took of you in the ice cream store, way back when? It's become a gallery sensation. 'Mona Lisa of the Mofussils.' That's you. You've made this photographer famous."
She felt cool fingertips over her warm eyelids. She wanted the moment to last. But Rabi was all energy. Stories about what he called "the Mona Lisa of the Mofussils Phenomenon" tumbled out. When his first set of Indian portraits were exhibited at a chic new gallery in Mumbai, the one that had gathered the most praise was "Small-Town Girl." Reviewers had rhapsodized over the subject's face, a face both beautiful and vulnerable. Why is she sad? Or is she happy? One of the reviewers had christened her 'Mona Lisa of the Mofussils,' and the tag had stuck. An art critic for a Kolkata newspaper had retraced the Indo-American photographer's steps back to Bihar and even tipped a waiter at the Alps Palace to seat him at the table where the Mona Lisa had posed. An emergent class of Indian entrepreneurs had bought out the entire exhibit.
He ended his stories with a plea. "Do me a favor? Join me for a pre-bed-tea run tomorrow? You don't have to run. We can just walk. Please?"
"I don't own running shoes." Her last resort.
He responded, "I guess my next task, then, is to drive you to the mall."
Late that night she steeled herself to read the clipping Mr. GG had given her.
TYGER, TYGER
By Dynamo
Over the years, Dynamo has had the privilege-some would describe it as the challenge, and they would not be unjustified-of knowing Mrs. Maxfield Trevor Douglas Bagehot, who is addressed affectionately by her close friends as Minnie and universally referred to by the respectful as "Madam."
"Madam" passed away in her eponymous Kent Town home under tragic circumstances Friday last. In the spirit of full disclosure, Dynamo acknowledges that he has contributed funds for the upkeep of the Bagehot property, which is comprised of the structure of Bagehot House and its extensive compound. Dynamo further concedes that he may even benefit financially, in light of the undeniable fact that lucrative conversions of cantonment-era ruins by conglomerates have become standard. Dynamo withholds comment on the popular speculation that the majority of such lucrative conversions of dilapidated-beyond-repair single-family habitations are given unstoppable velocity by a select number of conglomerates with underworld connections. As the ditty goes, the times, they are changing. And yet… Aye, there's the rub for entrepreneurs with conscience.
If Dynamo had his druthers, he would continue his charitable outlays ad infinitum rather than confront the saddest of all urban spectacles: the rape of relics. The ravaging and razing of things unique diminishes us all. And in a city like Bang-a-Buck, where gaudy architecture is spreading like invasive bacteria and choking what little remains of originals, we are losing signposts to our collective past.
Like many who dabble in the alchemic black art of urban architecture in this confused and confusing age of rapturous rupture, Dynamo has long fixed his gaze on Madam's Bagehot House. (Dynamo hastens to clarify to his readers that his interest in Madam's establishment is devoid of popular prurient fascination with the generations of delectable lady-lodgers, those iron-clad frigates known in popular parlance as Bagehot Girls.) It is the academic perfection of the house and its grounds that have merited Dynamo's affectionate admiration (that admiration having been sparked by his reading at an impressionable age of Mr. Peter Champion's Classic Indian Architecture: Public and Private).
Dynamo has it on irrefutable authority that at the time of Madam's sudden-but-not-precocious expiration, the board members of the Bagehot Trust, each of whom is a Bang-a-Buck VIP (no, make that a VVIP), were engaged in a bitter feud regarding financial plans for the immediate future of the rapidly deteriorating property. Dynamo's source, a trustee who has requested anonymity, has divulged to Dynamo that the trust was set up for the sole purpose of executing a legal contract with Madam, who had for two decades or more been afflicted with deep penury. Per said contract the board of trustees acquired the property deed from Madam in exchange for allowing her (1) to occupy the main residential structure gratis, and (2) to obtain and retain 100 percent of rents she collected from respectable migrant working ladies. As additional incentive they guaranteed the delivery of monthly gifts of provisions and liquor-Madam was partial to brandies. At the time of transfer of deed, the trustees, applying actuarial tables, had counted on Madam "to kick the bucket" within months, if not weeks, and by unanimous vote had nominated a committee to explore lucrative commercial development of the long-neglected property. Thanks to either the medicinal benefits of potent brandies or to the ironic string-pullings of the Big Puppeteer in the Skies, and much to the aggravation of the trustees, Madam bamboozled the actuaries. The consequence of Madam's stubborn longevity was loss of unanimity among the trustees. According to Dynamo's source, last month a minority faction on the board proposed the Bagehot property be designated a city or national historical heritage site, thus qualifying for not-for-profit status and funds for preservation and restoration.
Madam, by her own admission, was eighty-two years old. Madam's passing, therefore, was not untimely, but, and this is the but that beleaguers Dynamo: Why did she die Friday last? What precipitated the death? Who benefited from it?
If the attending physician is to be believed, Madam's "great heart" gave out. Dynamo counters the physician with a resounding "Poppycock!" Madam is known to have suffered from dyspepsia (both gastronomical and temperamental), but not from a dicky ticker. Dynamo demands an investigation of the factors that induced the shock that induced heart failure. Sources have implied
(1) that Madam's only servant was in the pay of a trustee and facilitated the fatal shock to his employer's inconveniently sturdy heart;or
(2) that the same servant accidentally happened upon Madam's lifeless body and alerted his powerful paymaster, who then instructed his henchmen to wreck the structure and purloin contents under the guise of a spontaneous riot by Bang-a-Buck's underclass.
Madam's death is a sad fact. But the true tragic victim of this incidence of plutocratic greed is the young lady-tenant of Madam, the innocent job-seeking migrant, who was mistakenly ensnared in a London-based terrorist plot-"implicated," in police jargon-and cruelly harassed and humiliated, her spirit scarred permanently. That young lady arrived in Bang-a-Buck to discover, fulfill, and exceed her potential; instead she became collateral damage of countenanced greed. Did "fearful symmetry," which the bard William Blake alerted us to two hundred years ago, require the extraction of such a price?
Dynamo's suspicions are just that: suspicions. By Madam's wishes, which she expressed in writing to the Bagehot Trust, she was to be buried on Bagehot grounds. No resting place is permanent. Her bones will be crushed or bared by developers' crews. But if there's to be a memorial for Madam, let it be this: Bagehot House surrendered its ghosts so that one young lady might break the power of our property triads. In an earlier column, I labeled such ladies "the New Miss Indias." They will transform our country. Dynamo is inflamed by the new species of tyger-lamb. If there is any triumph to be gleaned from this experience, it is that this time the costs of symmetry have been borne by ancient bricks and mortar, not by flesh and blood.
Anjali reread Dynamo's column this time as a love letter. She had mistaken Mr. GG's gallantry for indifference. He hadn't lost his desire for her. He had promoted her from a plaything to an ideal worthy of devotion. She read his "Tyger! Tyger!" again and again.
Clarity came to her with each rereading, especially of the closing paragraph. Dynamo was "inflamed" by her. She resolved to cross back to the colony of the living. In the monstrous evening at the police thana, Rabi had joked about the Peter Champion network. The butterfly effect. How lucky she was to have Parvati, Auro and Rabi for temporary family! Luckier still to have Mr. GG drop by so regularly. She wasn't sure what Dynamo meant by "the new species of tyger-lamb" or why he misspelled tiger, but he was "inflamed" by her. That word made her blush. She felt sexy and slightly dangerous. On the top left-hand corner of the clipping she doodled an ink sketch of a Royal Bengal tiger. It needed a signature. Mona Lisa, but not of the mofussils. Mona Lisa of Dollar Colony. Mr. GG, a second chance? Please?
Over the next couple of postdawn walks in the residents-only park and postwalk breakfasts of tea, fruits and yogurt in the garden, Rabi entertained Anjali with anecdotal histories of his mother, Tara Chatterjee, and her sisters, Parvati-Auntie and the oldest, the New York-based gadabout Padma. His mother ("A bit of a flake, you'd like her") was the youngest; Parvati-Auntie was "the responsible middle sister, and don't get me started on the oldest."
But he started with the two house dogs, Ahilya the female and her pathetically enamored littermate, Malhar, which had been plucked off the street: pariah pups, raised inside, grown large, strong, and very territorial, very fierce looking, but never at ease, never comfortable. Never knowing where they belonged. Canines, he called them, not really dogs. It would take generations to breed a true dog from India's abundant canines. "That's the kind of woman my Auntie is," he said. "She follows her heart. She believes love is the answer to everything." Why is he telling me this? For Anjali, the parallel between her situation and a street dog's was all too obvious.
And then he gave his take on Dollar Colony, where Auro-Uncle had chosen to settle as the CFO of a startup after retiring from the Mumbai branch of a multinational behemoth. "He lived in Hong Kong, Boston, Los Angeles, Mumbai, and he picked Bangalore for building his dream house! What does that say about Bangalore? What does it say about him?"
"The only places I know, or maybe I think I know, are Gauripur and Rock City, Illinois."
"Not a very high standard, Angie." Rabi scooped out a tiny, slippery black papaya seed the maid had missed when she was preparing the fruit platter.
"Shall I tell you about Rock City?"
"Please, spare me the mysteries of Rock City. I've read the CCI training manual: learn about one little town and you've learned about the whole country. Learn some specialized vocabulary and you'll discover the whole language. Was Rock City all you hoped for?" He flicked the seed at her. "Bottom line, as they like to say, you were right to back out of CCI."
Easy for you to say, she thought. You're the richest eighteen-year-old Indian in the world. "I didn't back out. I screwed up. I failed."
"You didn't screw up-you just couldn't take the bullshit. There's something our friend Peter Champion said about you, way back in Gauripur. He said there was a war going on for your soul, or something melodramatic like that. And he was right. Something in your soul wouldn't let you settle for a call center. Something in your soul made me want to take that picture of you. You're cut out for something bigger."
She rolled her eyes. He smiled. She smiled. She hadn't interacted with anyone for three weeks. "What's your hometown?"
"A place called Atherton. It's like Dollar Colony, only bigger, with gates. But I'm a nomad. I can't get stuck in one country or one city or even one house. Neither can you."
Anjali whacked his forearm with her napkin. "Even this one?" The napkin was still folded and pleated in a whimsical shape and inserted like a bouquet into a silver-filigree napkin ring. "This is the fanciest, comfiest house I've ever been in!"
He seemed to be looking at his cousin's hockey sticks and cricket paddles. "They expect poor Dinesh to go for a Rhodes scholarship. He's a wicked tennis player. When we were kids, I used to call him 'Dimmest.'"
"What's not to like about it?" she asked.
"That's the point. They've never even thought about what's not to like."
RABI ASSURED ANJALI that she wasn't in any way a burden to Parvati-Auntie and Auro-Uncle. In addition to the two young "kitchen sisters," there was a live-in watchman, a live-in multitasking dog walker, a full-time gardener who always brought along a nephew or a son as assistant, a chauffeur, and a part-time elderly woman who came twice a day to sweep and mop floors, clean bathrooms and do the laundry. The sisters had a large room of their own on the roof and an adjoining bathroom, shared with the rest of the household staff. The sisters' room had a TV, and when not on call, the younger sister and the dog walker/handyman liked to watch shows, sitting side by side on the older sister's bed.
Were they already lovers? she wondered. A year ago, such a question would not have entered her mind. Unthinkable! Even for Parvati and Auro, it was impossible. But she could read body language, she could read a girl's gaze.
Several times, as she collected her bras and panties from the clothesline on the roof, Anjali heard the TV going in the sisters' room and envied the laughing couple on the narrow cot, sitting so close, their thighs touched. Parvati's unspoken expectations of decorum required that the unmarried kitchen sisters keep their door open while watching TV with a male. As if, Anjali thought. The sisters' parents had entrusted their care and chastity to Parvati while they looked for suitable sons-in-law. So had mine, she thought. Anjali fantasized about changing identities with the girl so overtly happy with the chance perks of her job: a room she wouldn't be evicted from, a suitor in the house, and a sister to share her secrets with. The sisters had jobs. They had earned their room on the roof. Anjali was a freeloader.
Rabi was her only confidant, but he and she had traveled to Dollar Colony from different planets. He might sneer at the oversize houses in Dollar Colony, but she could admire them as monuments of self-made men to their epic struggle. Auro, she knew from his cocktail-hour chatter, had slogged his way up from the rented apartment of his Kolkata boyhood. Her curiosity was coming alive. She decided to tease out of Auro why he had chosen Dollar Colony for a permanent home.
"You really want to know?" He poured himself the first of his two nightly Johnnie Walker Blues on the rocks. It was rare that only Auro, Parvati, and Anjali were dining at home. Rabi was away on a photo shoot for a travel magazine. The older of the "kitchen sisters" was listening to music on an old-fashioned portable disc player the size of a salad plate; the younger and the dog walker were watching TV; the watchman was on duty in his wooden kiosk at the top of the driveway. The two dogs gnawed lamb bones at Parvati's feet. "My personal reasons? Nobody's ever asked me that." Auro looked both startled and pleased. "You want the long answer or the short answer?"
Parvati looked up from the thick paperback she was reading and smiled indulgently. "How about a medium-long answer that makes its point before dinner is served?"
He helped himself from the hors d'oeuvre platter of mutton keema samosas. "Did Parvati tell you we were among the first batch to build here when it was still forestland? I bet not, since she was dead set against moving out of Bombay."
Parvati slipped a filigreed ivory bookmark to keep her place in a thick American book, a prizewinner called The Echo Maker, sent by Tara from California. Every year, her writer-sister sent her the American and British prize-winning novels. Anjali had tried reading it, but it was too complicated. Still, she would not have understood two sentences just six months earlier. She would never even have opened it.
"I still miss Bombay," said Parvati. "Well, I miss the company flat on Nepean Sea Road. I miss looking out on water." She left the room to instruct the older of the kitchen sisters to start frying the prawn cutlets and roll out the dough for roti. She would make the boiled rice herself. No matter how many world cities Auro had lived and worked in, his palate had remained Bengali, which meant that he devoured a heaping serving of boiled white rice at both lunch and dinner and insisted that only his wife could cook rice perfectly. Anjali heard the cook calling up to her sister from the stairwell and then Parvati worrying out loud, "I hope there's no hanky-panky going on. I don't want to have to confiscate the TV."
It wouldn't be the end of the world, Anjali thought.
Anjali couldn't remember being in a room with Auro and no one else before. She had not taken up Auro's offers to teach her origami. Now that she was his sole audience, she was forced to train her attention on him. He was a moon-faced man, sharp-nosed, thin-lipped, with close-shaven cheeks and a brush mustache that crept into his nostrils. He didn't seem to detect her awkwardness. Pouring himself a second Johnnie Walker Blue, he launched into his pioneer's version of the history of Dollar Colony.
"This block was mostly unsold lots when I bought. There was one Mediterranean-style bungalow with a red-tiled roof on the corner lot, long gone now, and a half-finished California-style mansion across from it. Parvati took one look and said, 'Eesh, look at this, why did we ever leave San Diego?' Land was still affordable and available. I blame my beloved Bhattacharjee sisters: they're such snobs. Parvati and Rabi's mother ganged up on me. If I had been smart, I would have gobbled up two or three lots on either side. Now I have to put up with Citibank Srinivasan's all-night snoring and morning ragas to my left and Hewlett-Packard Gupta's tabla-thumping to my right."
When Auro first got in touch with Ideal Retirement Paradise Development Corporation of Bangalore, it was the early 1980s, and he was working in the Hong Kong office of his multinational company. IRPDC brochures didn't list the soon-to-be-constructed housing complex as Dollar Colony but pitched the complex to nonresident Indians, the NRIs, overseas-based Indian nationals amassing hard-currency wealth. Auro guessed that Dollar Colony, the name that stuck, was the genius shorthand of cabbies and auto-rickshaw drivers.
Their generation of investors was made up of nostalgic expatriates planning far, far ahead for retirement. They knew that America, or anywhere other than the homeland, was no place for an elderly Indian. They dreamed of an enclave of fantasy retirement palaces for like-minded cosmopolitans. Their homes and their neighborhood would reflect the best of the West they'd grown rich in and the romanticized best of the country they'd abandoned as ambitious young men. They demanded mansions grander than the houses they could afford in Britain or Canada or America. And they rewarded themselves with all the luxuries they'd missed out on while growing up: the country clubs, the residents-only parks with jogging paths, the tennis courts, the fitness center and spa. High-end architects and contractors happily realized their fantasies in brick, granite, marble, steel and plate glass.
"Parvati sacked two architects before she was satisfied! The Bhattacharjee sisters know what they want, and they don't quit till they get it. What's that American phrase CCI teaches students? Steel magnolia? Well, Parvati and Rabi's mother are titanium lotuses!"
Parvati came back, carrying a bowl of tiny balls of minced fenugreek leaves and shredded coconut, which she had just fried. "Consider yourself lucky, Auro. Without your titanium lotus you would have been stuck with a white elephant. Did you tell Anjali how the NRI repatriates are becoming younger and younger, and Dollar Colony is looking dowdier and dowdier compared to the new communities?"
"Infrastructure," Auro announced, before popping two of the fenugreek balls into his mouth. "That's the buzzword. Infrastructure."
Grease glistened on his mustache. Parvati blotted the grease with a linen cocktail napkin. "Oh dear, I'm not helping you with your cholesterol problem, am I?"
"We have the best doctors in the world in Bangalore, so why worry? American hospitals are outsourcing diagnoses to us, and I have instant access to the Mayo Clinic. Enjoy today, solve tomorrow. Anyway, these repats are cross-breeding brand-new East-West fruits in their gated Edens."
"We oldies had to send Dinesh and Bhupesh to Britishy boarding schools in the hills," Parvati remembered. "Now the new colonies are setting up their own private schools. Learn yoga, recite the Vedas in Sanskrit, and prepare to ace the SATs. They have it all."
"As I said, infrastructure. Medical, economic, educational, communication. I could go on."
Honestly, Anjali didn't understand a word, even as she appreciated being included in the discussion.
DOLLAR COLONY MAY have slipped from being the best address to merely something distinguished, but Anjali was still dazzled by the slightest luxuries, like the Instamatic hot water faucet in the Banerjis' kitchen. Even more than the comforts of the Banerji house-and was this a sign that she was coming out of her depression?-what she coveted as she listened to Auro was the Banerji family. Why couldn't she have been allotted Auro and Parvati as parents, Rabi as cousin? How different a person she might have been if…
Rabi came back from his photo shoot in Bheemswari on the sacred Kaveri River, excited about mahseer fishing. He was full of stories and digital pictures of skimming the water in round buffalo-hide coracles, and, on his second-to-last night in the fishing camp, reeling in ("Okay, the local guide helped," he admitted) a ten-pounder. He scrolled down the shots from his little silver digital camera. Every note a symphony, Anjali thought. Is the most beautiful woman in Gauripur still inside? What about my pictures from Shaky's studio?
Anjali had never bothered to learn the names of trees and flowers on her street in Gauripur and had never met anyone who fished for pleasure. Her father would never waste good money on something as dangerous as sport fishing. He couldn't swim, and she could not imagine him paddling a boat or standing in running water. She wasn't sure that before Rabi's Bheemswari trip, she'd ever thought of the mythic mahseer as actually existing. That mahseer was a fighting carp, an immense and magnificent river-dweller with shimmery gold sides, red-gold fins, and thick lips tipped with barbels. What was it Peter called it? Carpe diem. God's carp? To land a golden mahseer, the legendary forty-pounders in the Himalayan waters, was to know the challenge of a lifetime.
The only carp she knew, and knew too well, were of modest size and wrapped in newspaper. Her father would drag her to the fish stalls most Sunday mornings, and while she blocked out the fish stench with her handkerchief, he would diligently peer into the gills of a particular specimen to check for freshness before haggling over the price with a fishmonger. Curried carp seven nights a week, except in hilsa season, and bhekti fry for very special occasions. The Boses, like every other Bengali on the block, were staunch fish-and-rice eaters. They bought their fish in a smelly market; they didn't catch them in the bosom of nature. She'd never connected carp with romance. Rabi's enthusiasm so infected her that she even asked what he'd used for bait. "Flies!" he said, which ruined the effect. How lucky the people like Rabi, who could throw themselves so totally into their work! Even if she had passed the CCI exam and found a job, it would have been just that: a job, not a calling.
"Hey, you must be feeling better! A lot better, Anjali!" He didn't make fun of her questions or the sour face she'd made at the talk of flies and worms. "Freshwater crabs and cooked millet dumplings also worked."
THEY WERE IN Parvati's prized garden in the early morning, Rabi setting up a tripod and focusing his Nikon on the showy, sticky heads of fruits and flowers; she sipping fresh watermelon juice with a straw. He smiled up from his equipment. As the sun rose higher, he had to take new readings on his light meter. This was not an assignment for pay. He, a B &W snob, was paying homage in color to Parvati-Auntie, the fanatic gardener. The post-monsoon flowers, the swarms of butterflies and occasional parrots, budgies and sunbirds: everything about her garden was overstated and overlush. Everyone in Dollar Colony was horticulturally competitive. Citibank Srinivasan had imported Siberian fruit trees. Hewlett-Packard Gupta had transplanted a mini Indonesian jungle. Parvati was an Indian chauvinist: wide avenues shaded by rain trees and flame of the forest, blue and purple jacaranda, scarlet gul mo-har, champak, jasmine, roses, gladioli, anthurium, gerbera… it's never too late to learn, especially if you admire your teacher. Monet. Light and angles.
"At least I got to Bangalore," Anjali said. I am trying to get over the heavy stuff. Not there yet, but I've made a start, thanks to your aunt.
"I always knew you would. If that's what you wanted." Click! Click! Rabi went back to the hedges to reset his camera.
She'd never felt so comfortable with a boy. Why can't we get what we most want in the world? When he came back, she asked, "When we met in Gauripur, did you think I didn't really want Bangalore?"
"Did I sound skeptical? I didn't mean to. You were looking for a way out. Peter convinced you Bangalore was that." Click! Click! Click! A chameleon scuttled over the velvety grass.
"I've gotten over wanting life enhancement. A job that pays for basic needs, that's my goal now."
"Don't sell yourself short." He aimed his lens at a stray kitten circling the birdfeeder. "I happen to be one of a large chorus who think Anjali Bose is a child of destiny." He dodged the dripping straw she tossed at him. "Seriously."
"Don't you dare stress me out with the destiny stuff!"
"Sorry. No, I'm not really sorry. Anyway, changing subjects, have you found anybody yet? You can tell me."
"I wouldn't want to make you jealous."
"I'm jealous of anyone in love. Even more jealous of anyone loved back." He seemed about to confide in her.
"If you think there's something going on between…"
But Rabi wasn't listening. "Actually I met a guy in Mumbai-Christ, 'A Guy from Mumbai' sounds like a Noel Coward song." He did a fancy two-step. Then glided into a wicker chaise longue near her canvas chair.
"Now I am jealous, Rabi."
"Anyway, I met this Rutgers senior. He was visiting his grandparents. The last thing he expected was finding another Indo-American who… what was cool was that we met in the gallery exhibiting my photos."
Gauripur images flooded her, not the dreary small town of her memories, but the Gauripur she had glimpsed through Rabi's restless lens.
"When you create things, like my mother with her books or a lowly photographer like me, or even origami like Auro-Uncle, you still dream of meeting someone who's fallen in love with you for something you've written or painted, something you've created. Well, he fell in love with my photos of Ali and Peter and you, Mona Lisa. That's how I knew we could be… serious. Terrible word, serious, why can't we say what we mean? Serious is the last thing in the world… never mind. Then he had to go back to Rutgers. Dum-diddle-dee, dum-diddle-day, they always go back to school, don't they? That's more Cole Porter than Coward, right?"
Anjali didn't know those names, but she knew he needed her to agree. "Right," she whispered. No matter how brief their conversation, he would always leave her feeling inadequate; not humiliatingly inadequate, but eager for gaps to be filled in.
"This time I'm a nature photographer, Angie," he announced. New mood, new tone of voice, new intensity, snappier delivery. "I'm going down to a nature preserve a week from Saturday. On the Kaveri again, near Mysore. Big crocs, little crocs. Bats, you love bats, right? The funky kind called flying foxes. Bugs by the ton. I'm staying overnight, maybe a couple of nights." He had reserved a cabin. "Want to give Nature a try? You could be my assistant. Hey, if there's someone you want to bring along, you'd have me as chaperone."
"You mean, just call up someone I'd want to… I couldn't do that, Rabi."
"Send a message by carrier pigeon?"
"Well, since it's all fantasy talk, there is a Bengali guy I wouldn't mind inviting." She still nurtured a crush on the Bengali Svengali. He hadn't called her since that one magical meeting in the rooftop cafeteria of Tookie D'Mello's office building. Without confessing to the crush, she gushed about her Photoshopped picture on the cover of the latest issue of his directory.
"Oh, I can't tell you how much I adore Photoshop!" Rabi snickered. "It's revolutionized my art!" Then, conspiratorially, "We could always arrange his drowning. The crocs know their business."
She leaned down and punched his shoulder lightly. There, in the lush heart of Parvati's garden, they shared their stories. Did Shaky Sengupta's bridal photo work out? Yes, she admitted, I think it did. But in a roundabout way.
A "high tea" for Anjali's friends was Parvati's idea. "You should spend more time with people your age," she said. Anjali suspected that Rabi had put the party idea into his aunt's head so that he could reunite Anjali and the Bengali Svengali under respectable chaperonage. Parvati asked Anjali to draw up a guest list. Anjali couldn't come up with any youngish friend's name other than Tookie D'Mello, who had been "dumped" by Minnie before Rajoo had sacked Bagehot House. Tookie wasn't the most appropriate ex-Bagehot Girl to introduce to the Banerjis; still, Anjali tracked her down at her work site. Tookie snapped up the invitation to Dollar Colony. "That 'Gay India' photographer guy will be there? What a hoot! He's a YouTube sensation! Girlfriend, you landed on your feet, all right. Of course, we knew you would. All I can say is that the Bagehot bitch had it coming!" Tookie didn't explain who she meant by "we." It didn't include Reynaldo, since that relationship was in deep freeze for the moment. "Can I bring a friend or two?" Anjali shuddered; she didn't want Rajoo inside the Banerjis' home, where she was regaining her balance. But Tookie didn't mention Rajoo by name, not once. She went on and on instead about the two party-beast girlfriends she had started to hang out with.
Parvati helped plump up the list by inviting two Dollar Colony families, and Rabi added two sets of recent acquaintances: the "faux-scruffy" and the "jock dilettante." Parvati translated the terms for Anjali as Rabi's artsy gallery friends and sport-fishing friends. She added Usha Desai's name, with the penciled note "depends on Mrs. Desai's health that P.M." Auro insisted on including Girish Gujral. "Forget the tea part of 'high tea,'" he announced. "Girish and I will hole up with our drinks in my office and talk politics."
"No holing up," Parvati snapped. "We have opinions too."
THE GUESTS DEVOURED platter after platter of hot, cold, tart, sweet-sour, spicy finger foods prepared all day by the kitchen sisters, and they sipped Assam or Darjeeling tea out of bone china cups, but the "high tea" didn't accomplish Parvati's goal of widening Anjali's network of friends.
The idea was that everyone bring their eligible sons and their eligible daughters. Between them, Anjali should bond with one or two.
The two Dollar Colony families arrived in a convoy of a Combi and two Marutis. The Ghoshes were a family of five: Kolkata-born parents in their midfifties, two of three Calgary-born daughters in their twenties, the third in her last year of high school. Mrs. Khanna, the recent widow of a World Bank executive, brought her two sons on break from Georgetown, and the sons' three American friends. Anjali wasn't sure how much of her Bagehot House drama Parvati had disclosed to the Drs. Ghosh and Mrs. Khanna. The Drs. Ghosh asked the usual polite questions about where she had grown up, what company her late father had worked for, where her married sister had settled. Anjali, for once, told the absolute truth, and that ended the potential Ghosh connection. The older Ghosh daughters, who had master of social work degrees from the University of Calgary and who had set up a nonprofit organization that rescued at-risk urban children, didn't hide their contempt for migrants who invaded Bangalore with the dead-end goal of answering phones all night at call centers.
Mrs. Khanna corralled Parvati and Dr. (Mrs.) Ghosh-all three were collectors of contemporary Indian art-to lament how, after Mr. Khanna's death, she dared not squander any savings on the painters she admired. Anjali hovered near them so she wouldn't look and feel a party-pariah. They strolled from painting to painting, praising Parvati's eye and investment smarts. Anjali had lived with the paintings all these weeks but had never looked at them closely, never peered at the artists' signatures. Even now the names meant nothing to her. Anjolie Ela Menon. Arpita Singh. Rini Dhumal. In her old Gauripur bedroom there had been a browning studio portrait of her paternal grandfather, with a dusty sandalwood garland around it. Anjolie? That was a spelling she intended to try out.
"You're such a feminist, Parvati," Dr. (Mrs.) Ghosh pronounced. "No male artists at all?"
"Not only a feminist. Mrs. Banerji is a Bengali chauvinist!" Mrs. Khanna countered.
So Menon, Singh, Dhumal were Bengali women who had married non-Bengalis! Anjolie Gujral? She sidled toward the front door, waiting for Mr. GG to show up. The dog walker was on front-door duty for the night, which meant he stood on the shallow porch step, helped guests heave themselves out of their cars, led them past the foot-high brass statue of Ganesh seated on a fluffy, fragrant bed of petals, held open the heavy, ornately carved wooden front door, and showed them into the marble vestibule. Since the two house dogs were hostile to visitors-"Poor, dear things," Parvati had said-she shut them in the absent Dinesh's suite for the night.
The Khanna sons and their American houseguests had drifted upstairs to Rabi's suite, where the "scruffies" and the "jocks" were listening to Rabi's cache of African and Brazilian music. Anjali could hear their excited voices. "Dude, check this out!" "Hey, my older brother knows the guys at Wesleyan who started the Modiba label!" "Legends of the Preacher? No shit!" It wasn't her kind of music. Actually, except for her excruciating exercises on the old harmonium, she had no favorite music. Can't sing, can't dance, can't cook, that's me. She stayed put in the vestibule, just inside the doorway, and was almost knocked down when Tookie and her two friends, all three motorcycle-helmeted, shoved the door open with their shoulders before the dog walker could do his job.
"Angie darling!" Tookie shouted at Anjali, as she unfastened the chin strap, "you won't believe what we've just been through!" She pulled off her helmet and lobbed it to the dog walker. Anjali noticed Tookie's changed hair-cropped at the back, skinny bangs dyed indigo and pink-before she took note of the swelling bruise on one side of her face.
"Eesh! I knew those machines were dangerous! Tookie, you could have died!" A word Anjali had recently learned from Auro suddenly floated off her tongue. "Poor infrastructure, that's the problem. We're stuck with Bagehot-era roads and Tookie-era traffic."
Tookie shrugged her leather jacket off her shoulders. The dog walker was just behind her to catch it. "Girlfriend, this kitty still has six lives left." She introduced her two companions as "gal pals" Dalia and Rosie; no last names. They too burdened the dog walker with their jackets. Both were model-tall, their legs encased in white stretch jeans, their bra lines visible under halter tops, bruises tattooing the bared flesh of shoulders and forearms. The dog walker was too entranced to go back to front-door duty.
"What happened to you!" Mrs. Khanna cried. She and Dr. (Mrs.) Ghosh had just finished their tour of Parvati's art collection and were crossing the hallway on their way to the origami display in Auro's office.
Parvati took charge at once. She shouted to the kitchen sisters to bring a bowl of ice cubes to the powder room. "Any broken bones, do you think? Concussion? Our driver is here, he can get you to the hospital for x-rays. Too many bikes, too many accidents. No, don't sit down. Oh, dear, are you feeling drowsy?" She ordered the dog walker to alert the chauffeur.
"Can you get her to chill?" Tookie mouthed the words to Anjali.
"Ice pack," Dr. (Mrs.) Ghosh said. "Anjali, take them to the bathroom and apply an ice pack to the swellings straightaway."
Once inside the bathroom Tookie asked, "How can you stand to be around these crisis freaks?"
"Mrs. Banerji means well."
"I heard good things about her painting collection. Where is it?"
Boys-and-Booze Tookie, an art lover? "I'll take you," she said, and tried to remember the names of the lady painters. There was an Anjolie. Dalia dumped the bowlful of ice cubes into the sink. She traced the edges of the largest bruise on her forearm with a loving fingertip. "Medal of war. Sidewalks have become war zones."
"Fucking fundamentalists! We're talking Bangalore, IT capital for God's sake, not the fucking Swat Valley!"
Rosie let loose a war cry. "Bring it on, assholes!"
"You didn't crash? You got beat up?"
"Yeah. Boys with chains and cricket bats, looking for girls coming out of bars. Where do you stand? You can't be a civilian anymore."
Dalia unlocked the door and poked her head out. "All clear! What's that thumpy music? What's upstairs? Action central?" She didn't wait for Anjali's answer.
Rosie and Tookie followed Dalia up the stairs to Rabi's suite. Anjali stood behind them as they peered into the crowded room. Rabi's party was in full swing. Large emptied bottles of Indian beer. Low lights and loud beat. Just-met acquaintances forging cosmic connections. Anjali felt like an alien in Rabi's universe.
Tookie didn't hide her disappointment. "Dude, so not-our-scene," she grumbled as she led her posse back down the stairs. "Give us a ring when you need a pub run on Residency. Ciao!"
Tookie had judged Anjali unfit to be one of Tookie's "gal pals." It brought a closure of sorts. Minnie was dead, the Bagehot Girls disbanded, Husseina an international miscreant, Bagehot House wrecked, and the jungle cleared for Jacaranda Estates, advertised by the development company as "a self-sufficient, ultra-luxurious lifestyle complex for the ultra-affluent." The first phase of her Big Bangalore Adventure was over. What next, and where? The forces of evil had amassed.
Tookie's apocalyptic vision and Rosie's war slogan didn't inspire the same urgency that Peter's exhortations to get out of Gauripur had. Anjali lingered on the threshold of Rabi's suite, reluctant to crash, unwilling to leave. The older Khanna son, lean, and looking leaner in a black muscle shirt and black jeans, waved at her with his beer bottle. She smiled back. He was on the fringes of a knot of Scandinavians whom Rabi had fished with in Bheemswari. The Khanna brothers, their American college friends, and the Scandinavians seemed so in the moment. The past held her in a headlock. She could step over the threshold; she could fake having a blast; why not? Both the Bengali Svengali and Mr. GG had stood her up; so what?
She ventured a tentative toe inside, and suddenly in a far corner of the hot, smoky room she spotted the Bengali Svengali. He must have arrived while she was attending to Tookie, Dalia, and Rosie. There he was, dimpled, floppy-haired, Bollywood-handsome, Hawaiian-shirted, his back pressed against the wall, a wineglass in hand, as teasingly real as water in a mirage. Rabi stood facing him, Rabi's scrawny torso leaning toward him, Rabi's bony arms encircling him without touching, palms flat on the wall. This had to be their first-ever meeting, but she detected a connection between them… not just the music… trust, ease, unself-conscious confidence. And some other quality… a tenderness, yes, that was it.
From the landing of the stairs, she could hear Mrs. Khanna, the Drs. Ghosh, and their three daughters saying their drawn-out thank-yous and goodbyes to Auro and Parvati. "Mrs. Banerjee, I applaud your kind heart," Dr. (Mrs.) Ghosh boomed in her judgmental voice, "but… you don't want her around when Bhupesh and Dinesh get back." Mrs. Khanna too had a suspicious nature. "These modern working girls flocking to Bangalore, they're full of schemes, I tell you. They trap innocent boys from good families. I don't let my two hang out on the Brigades!"
Anjali stole down a few steps so she could see as well as hear. Parvati dropped Mr. Champion's name-the famous author-to reassure Mrs. Khanna and the Ghoshes, or maybe to reassure herself; Anjali couldn't be sure. She had thought of herself as the victim of gathering evil forces, just like Minnie Bagehot. To the cautious Dollar Colony mothers, evil forces had taken over, and she-schemer, gold digger, opportunist migrant-was the enemy.
You can't be a civilian anymore, Tookie had warned her. But why must there be a duel-to-the-death before Dynamo's new species could emerge?
Down in the front hall, the hugs and farewells continued. The house dogs had somehow escaped their sequestering, but they behaved themselves. "They're charming on the surface, but cunning inside."
"Mrs. Khanna is giving you the unvarnished truth, Parvati." She was using Bangla, and Anjali, after a few weeks in the proudly Bangla-speaking Banerji home, understood it perfectly. "The time for this beating-around-the-bush politeness is past. You decide what you want to do about the noose around your neck. By the way, that gorgeous gold choker you're wearing, did you get it at Tanishq?"
It may have been an unconscious gesture, but with her left hand Parvati protected her throat. Twenty-two-karat gold glimmered between her splayed fingers. Anjali fled upstairs to her room in shame.
Early the next morning, a peon from Mr. GG's office arrived in a noisy auto-rickshaw with a letter and a bouquet of tiger lilies for Parvati. When Anjali heard the rickshaw brake to a stop, she assumed the passenger was Parvati's tailor, a bespectacled, professorial-looking Sikh gentleman who could no longer ride his bicycle to his clients' homes because of cataracts in both eyes. He stopped by once a week to drop off orders completed and to pick up lengths of fabric and sketches for new clothes. Auro kept him busy making dark suits for the office, linen leisure suits for dress-down Fridays, and colorful kurtas for evenings and weekends. For Parvati, who wore saris, he sewed choli blouses, coolweather capes, and caftans for family-only evenings at home. Anjali snapped up Parvati's invitation to let him sew a replacement wardrobe for everything she'd lost in the Bagehot House riot.
The earnest old man with milky irises copied avant-garde slacks, vests, jackets, and peignoir sets from fashion magazines. The frugal era of mall prowling and drooling over designer outfits on mannequins was over, at least for as long as she kept on the good side of Auro and Parvati. She was teaching herself a new two-step of Desire and Fulfillment. The tailor needed work to feed his family; Parvati, a compulsive benefactor, needed feel-good projects. Why couldn't the Dollar Colony matrons see that she was compulsively dispensing happiness?
But there were clouds on the horizon. The warnings from Dr. Ghosh. Parvati might wave them away, in her goodness, but Anjali couldn't. Objective outsiders saw her as something unsavory. Not just a small-town usurper, but someone with bad connections.
When the dog walker ushered Mr. GG's peon into the glassed-in breakfast patio, Anjali and Parvati were finishing their second round of Assam tea. Auro had switched to drinking strong Karnataka coffee since moving to Bangalore, but Parvati remained a tea snob. Anjali would have welcomed a huge caffeine hit that morning. She associated the smell and taste of brewed coffee with her first Barista cup during her first hour in Bangalore.
A heart-to-heart aimed at encouraging her to move out was inevitable, though Parvati, ever gracious, would deliver the "dump" notice obliquely. Anjali was waiting for the subtle questions: Your family must miss you so. Don't you miss your mother and sister? But Parvati procrastinated. She fed scraps of chapati to Ahilya and Malhar, who were sprawled on the dhurrie by her feet.
Ahilya stood, stretched, then laid her muzzle on Anjali's thigh. Do I pet her, rub her ears? Would she bite if I touched her? It was Anjali's first doggy moment.
Parvati launched into a monologue that sprinted from topic to topic, including her CCI lesson plans for the day, Usha Desai's mother's improving health, her fear that Dinesh was getting seriously involved with an international student from Norway, and the importance of getting fish oil and magnesium into people's diets, especially that of poor people. Her heavy briefcase was on the floor by the dogs, propped against a chair leg, ready for the driver to carry to the car.
Every few days she fed CCI questions to Anjali. "Keeping you on your toes," she'd say. Somehow, according to Parvati, whatever future she had would be attached to her ease with the English language.
The dogs made low growling noises when the peon, his terrified eyes fixed on them, approached Parvati. The peon backed away and took cover behind the dog walker. Anjali noted the dog walker's smug grin as he took officious custody of the envelope and bouquet, and laid the envelope on the bistro table. Parvati rubbed Malhar's broad bottom until his growl stopped. Anjali boldly scratched Ahilya's ears. "With these brave fellows, who needs an electronic security system?" Parvati joked. With an unused knife, she slit the envelope open and scanned the note inside.
Anjali recognized Mr. GG's handwriting on the discarded envelope: Mrs. Parvati Banerji, and under the name, RSVP per peon.
"The Bagehot Trust meeting lasted longer than Girish had expected," Parvati summarized. "Incendiary, apparently." She reached down to pull her roller-ball pen out of the briefcase. "He'd like to stop by this evening so he can apologize for missing the party. Not that that's necessary, but you've seen how Auro loves to argue politics with him!"
Mr. GG hadn't meant to stand her up. That buoyed Anjali's spirits. Mr. GG the assiduous networker was cultivating Auro and Parvati, and Dynamo the futurist was courting his muse. She missed Rabi, but he had left at dawn for another travel magazine assignment. With Rabi, she could blurt whatever outrageous thought came to her because he wasn't judgmental. Mr. GG was signaling his desire for her, wasn't he?-but in a respectful way. What they'd both let happen that one time in his apartment had to do with lust, with the quality of light in the bedroom, and, through an uncurtained window, with Cubbon Park's lushness. Her face felt hot. She needed to do something with her hands, pour more tea if the teapot hadn't been drained, or stick the flowers in a vase, something physical to tamp down her excitement.
"I'll get a vase," she said abruptly.
Parvati stared at her, baffled, so she pointed to the tiger lilies dripping greenish stains on the dog walker's shirt front. "Vase?" Parvati repeated. She had scribbled her RSVP at the bottom of Mr. GG's note and was about to slip it back into the original envelope. "Are you all right? Oh, of course, it's Bagehot House, isn't it? How insensitive of me to have let slip that name. I'm so sorry, Anjali, would you rather I disinvite Girish? He has business in Mexico next week, but we can have him for dinner when he gets back."
"Oh no," Anjali protested. "Please don't change your plans for my sake. I've already been enough of a burden. I feel like such a parasite."
"Stop!" Anjali couldn't remember Parvati ever sounding so sharp. "You are not a burden. Let's get you a flower vase. If you are here long enough, I'll make you an ikebana enthusiast."
The dog walker perked up when he heard the English word vase. The Banerjis joked that he knew more English than he let on so that he could eavesdrop. "Swati!" He shouted instructions in Kannada, and the younger kitchen sister bounced in with a cut-glass bowl nestled against her chest, a thick braid dancing down her back. A teenager in love, and not hiding it.
So that was her name. Swati. Anjali felt guilty that she hadn't learned the names of even the kitchen sisters, let alone the compound staff: the dog walker, the driver, the watchman. Swati pried the tightly bound bouquet out of the dog walker's bemused grip. Anjali didn't miss the intensity of that covert caress.
Mr. GG's peon dropped the resealed envelope into his bag. The dog walker responded to that stimulus and escorted the peon out to the waiting auto-rickshaw. Then he ran back into the room and handed one internal air-letter to Anjali, which the mailman had just left off in the mailbox nailed to the guardhouse. Anjali took a look at the address- P. Champion, Gauripur -and crumpled the letter. When she went back to her bedroom, she stuffed it into the top drawer of her dresser.
Girish Gujral texted Parvati: cu @ 7pm dnr raincheck?
By four in the afternoon Anjali had decided on her look for the special evening. (Artfully) simple, (effortlessly) sexy. She mixed and matched every piece of clothing in her made-to-measure Dollar Colony wardrobe, and by six in the evening she'd achieved that look: dusty rose linen capri pants; rosy dawn midriff-baring sleeveless top with daring neckline; silver anklets and high-heeled snakeskin sandals dyed neon pink; tiny rose-quartz ear studs; and as a hair ornament, one of Mr. GG's tiger lilies.
Anjali came down to the living room at six-thirty and installed herself in a corner chaise longue, where she knew the lamplight was pinkish and flattering. Parvati was on the phone with Rabi's mother in San Francisco, sharing kitchen chitchat twelve hours and half a world apart, including tips on shrimp malai curry (go crazy with the garlic; caramelize the diced onion; slow-sauté the spices so they don't taste and smell raw; canned coconut milk is for amateurs; steep, squeeze, discard coconut flakes and use just enough of the liquid so the jhol has thok-thok consistency). Auro was still showering. Anjali tuned out Parvati's voice, now gone on to serious topics with her sister, in Bangla, the hiss and sizzle of the kitchen sisters deep-frying pakoras, the gardener's son and nephew practicing birdcalls just outside the open window. Soon Mr. GG's car tires would scatter gravel on the unpaved road.
Auro slap-slapped noisily into the room in stiff-soled Kohlapuri sandals. He acknowledged Parvati with a shrug and a mumbled, "What's your sister up to now?" on his way to the bar trolley. "What an enchanting vision!" he exclaimed to Anjali. He made a camera with his fingers. "Click! Click! Pensive Woman Awaits Nightfall. Why isn't Rabi here to capture this?" Anjali responded with a half-wattage version of her halogen smile. Auro lifted the lid of the ice bucket. "What'll you have, Pensive Woman?" In his modish turquoise cotton kurta and loose white pajama, his bristly wet hair sleeked back, he looked a relaxed host. "The usual?"
She winced when she thought back to the squabbles and tears on the rare Sundays that her mother persuaded her father to have "Munitions" Mitter and "Tobacco" Nyogi and their families over for lunch. "A waste of my sweat-of-brow savings," "Railways Bose" ranted. "What favor have they ever done for us?" The only person he tolerated as a regular visitor was Dr. Fit-as-a-Fiddle Dasgupta, who was smart enough to leave after a double peg, which he earned by dispensing medical tips: hartaki-steeped water for constipation, ajwan water for indigestion, folic acid pills for child-bearing daughters. "Yes, please. The Auro Special." The Auro Special was a fizzy sweet-sour nonalcoholic cocktail that had become Anjali's new signature drink, and Swati brought out freshly blended ginger and mint paste, lime juice and chilled syrup when Auro was ready to play bartender.
"Don't do anything rash, Tara," Parvati begged her sister on the phone, "and promise you'll call me back in a couple of hours?" She flipped her cell phone shut. "Tara's cooking as therapy. She says cooking calms her, and the more elaborate the recipe, the better. She's sick of the same old, same old fight with Bish about where to retire. Bish wants us to look into Bangalore properties. Whitefield, Palm Meadows, for a start."
"Don't get sucked into Tara's problems," Auro admonished his wife. "Gin and lime? I'm serious, never lend money to relatives, and never, never give marriage advice."
"It better be a scotch tonight, Auro."
"That bad?"
"Bish wants to settle here, but she wants to bring up little Kallie in San Francisco."
"In other words, your sister would rather live in California than in Bangalore."
"Once Bish has made up his mind, it seems there's no changing it."
Auro laughed. "Pull of homeland, et cetera. We know about that, except you and I were on the same page." He fixed Parvati's drink: a halfpeg of single malt.
"Bish'll keep the San Francisco place for Rabi. That's the only concession he's willing to make. Tara's very upset."
"Upset as in furious? Or upset as in depressed?"
Anjali marveled at how openly they were discussing family fights in front of an outsider. Rabi's mother was lucky to have a sister she was so close to. She remembered her last bitter fight with Sonali-di in Patna. She'd been a novice runaway with a heavy suitcase then. She still had that suitcase, and she was still running. Boldly, she asked "Would you be offended if I changed my mind and asked for a glass of the Sula chardonnay instead?"
"As long as you promise not to get tipsy, my dear," Parvati joked. "Auro, did I tell you Bish is thinking of investing in a winery around here?"
"If it was anyone but Money-Spinner Bish, I'd say it was a crazy idea."
MR. GG PARKED his car in the Banerjis' driveway at two minutes before seven. Anjali had surreptitiously clocked him on her hand-me-down Movado. She pretended it was the wine, though it was Mr. GG's entrance that gave her a happy buzz. He was still in the dark suit that he wore to the office, but he had undone the top button of his starched white-stripe-on-white shirt and loosened the knot of his pink silk tie. Instead of a briefcase he carried a cellophane-wrapped gift basket of assorted nuts, candies and dried fruits. He presented it formally to Parvati, who showered him with thank-yous-"Oh, Girish, you didn't have to"-and handed it to the dog walker to unwrap.
"Mrs. Banerji," Girish Gujral announced, thick hands folded in na-maste, "your home is an oasis for weary wanderers. You see how I'm drawn back again and again."
Anjali, trusting instinct, decoded his flowery compliment to the hostess as his confession of lovesickness for the houseguest. She had dared hope for only a hint of his feelings and was rewarded with a declaration. She, not the house, was his oasis. Pleased, she arranged her legs on the chaise as she'd seen models do on the virtual deck chairs on virtual beaches on Mr. GG's Vistronics website. And sure enough, instead of joining Auro at the bar trolley, Mr. GG settled into the chair nearest her. "Miss Bose, you should always wear a tiger lily in your hair," he said, raising his highball glass.
"Then you'll have to make a habit of sending them, Mr. Gujral," she responded.
Why did clueless Auro have to pull up an ottoman close to Mr. GG's chair just then and bombard Mr. GG with prophecies of a Kali Yuga-scale financial meltdown? In this "epoch of cosmic slump" India must "decouple" its economy from that of Western nations. "We Indians hitched our bullock cart to the U.S. wagon, and now we're up to our knees in horseshit and bullock dung." Citing statistics about investment flight, capital lost, and plummeting rates of corporate expansion, he worked himself into cathartic wrath. Mr. GG refuted each of Auro's arguments and dazzled Anjali with his optimistic theory that a belt-tightening time in the United States equaled an outsourcing boom time in India. Debt collection was the newest growth area for call centers. He was part of a consortium scouting belly-up overseas businesses. "Best of all," he rhapsodized, "this is our chance to leapfrog and win the creativity race. We Indians are genius inventors, not just cut-rate mistris!"
Anjali had to concede that the tight-fitting vest, the saucy capri pants, and the bright blossom behind the ear were no competition for Auro's incitement to debate India's financial future. Auro was for decoupling; Mr. GG ardently against it; Anjali resentful of it for having turned Mr. GG from swain to debate champion. Parvati took her husband's side. "How can you be so smug, Girish? Nobody's recession-proof in this skittish economy." Student enrollment was down at CCI, and a competitor had already folded. She pummeled Mr. GG with more anecdotal proof. Two of Dr. Ghosh's nephews had been let go from their software programming jobs in Gurgaon. Dr. (Mrs.) Ghosh's beauty-and-brains niece-in-law ("top of her IIT class") had expected to pick and choose from fat-salaried job offers even before graduating, but months after finishing school she was still temping. Mr. and Mrs. Pandit, with the unmarried, aging twin daughters on the next block in Dollar Colony, had scratched all bridegroom candidates with IIT degrees from their list.
Anjali sulked. "Coupling" or "decoupling" made sense to her only in the context of her personal life. She didn't feel connected to global issues. She boycotted the conversation swirling around her.
Mr. GG surprised her with a question. "May I invite Miss Bose for a dekko of Bagehot House, what's left of it anyway?" He seemed to be asking for Auro's and Parvati's permission to ask her out for an evening ride. The casual seducer of Cubbon Park had evolved into a respectable, permission-seeking suitor.
Trust your impulses. "I'd love to," Anjali quickly answered.
Parvati hesitated. "Do you feel ready to see it? You don't think it's too soon, Anjali?"
"Well, she'll have to find out for herself, won't she?" Auro scolded Parvati. "And under what more reassuring circumstances than with Girish?"
Mr. GG rose from his chair. "If you are ready…"
Anjali couldn't get to the front door fast enough. "Tell me, Girish." Auro persisted in continuing the conversation. "The slump must be affecting your redevelopment plans for the Bagehot property? Be honest, bank loans must have become more iffy, even for a consortium of hotshots."
Mr. GG guided Anjali out the front door. "My dear Banerji, I'm constitutionally incapable of anxiety. It's off to Mexico and Hawaii early next week for me, Mrs. Banerji, but if there's any way I can be of service to CCI before or after the trip, please text me."
Anjali walked ahead of him to his Daewoo to cut short the lengthy goodbyes required by Indian etiquette.
THEY DROVE TO Bagehot House in silence. The rusty entrance gate was missing, probably carried off by scrap-metal scavengers. Heavy wrecking equipment was parked in the torn-up driveway. Two watchmen smoked near a small mound of excavated earth.
"Thank you for what you did." The night in the holding cell in the police station felt more immediate than the weeks as a Bagehot Girl with prospects. Gratitude was a higher form of love than lust. "I can't imagine what would have happened to me if you…"
He wasn't listening. He undid his seat belt with an angry snap. "I can't believe what I'm seeing." He strode out of the car without closing the door. "They're tearing this down without a permit."
Anjali let herself out but kept her distance from him. Mr. GG was staring past the bulldozers at the side of Mad Minnie's house, with its broken windows and fluttering curtains, its missing front door and torn, trampled-on banquet-night tablecloths on the floor of its foyer. The house, though structurally intact, seemed to have rolled over, like an ocean liner on its side. He might have been crying. It seemed possible; he was folding his handkerchief. "This is… tragic." He still hadn't faced her, so he might have been consoling Bagehot ghosts.
In profile, Mr. GG's jaw, flecked with gray, was just a little slack. Still, he was a handsome man, handsomer in profile than straight on. She thought, I'm standing here next to a man I've slept with. I'm standing here where I was handcuffed and dragged into a paddy wagon like a dangerous criminal, and I'm not talking about it. I'm acting as though were two normal people on a romantic date on a starry evening in Bangalore.
Some of Asoke's squatters must have stayed on in the partially cleared jungle. Anjali heard low whistling and then a pariah dog's howl of pain. Mr. GG shuddered. "Fearful symmetry," he muttered.
To lighten his mood, she made a callow effort at flirting. "I so envy you, Girish. You get to go to fun places like Mexico and call it work." She stroked the tiger lily in her hair. A petal felt wilted.
"I shan't always have a get-out-of-jail-free card, Anjali."
"What makes you think I'll need another one?" She liked the perky sound of her own voice.
"Come with me to Mexico."
What is he saying? I owe him more than I've given?
"And maybe on to Haiti. Depends on the deal coming through."
I'm just another business deal? Is that how life is?
"Can't promise Haiti."
"Pick up and go? Just like that?" Like rich-kid Rabi? Like terrorist Husseina?
"Give yourself a vacation. You deserve it."
"Vacation from what? Evil forces? Minnie's dead." She got carried away by self-pity. "So's my family. Dead. You are looking at a penniless orphan, a parasite, a charity project." The horror was that she wasn't lying, just exaggerating. "I don't need a vacation, I need a job."
"If you want a job, I can set up an interview with the head of human resources at RecoverySys. He was an MBA classmate. We'll get you in on the ground floor of the debt-collection industry." Mr. GG faced her squarely. "Now, what's your passport situation? Don't have one, no problem. I can expedite your getting one."
"In other words, you want me to know you are a big shot?"
"No. In other words, I want you with me in Mexico."
She could have screamed. Yes, I'm flattered, I'm grateful. Drive me to- night to Cubbon Park. Have your peon pick up my stuff from Parvati's tomorrow. She would spell her first name as Anjolie on her first-ever passport. She said, "Mr. Gujral, I shall consider your offer and make my counteroffer when you get back from your trip."
Mr. GG grinned. "You were born to be a debt collector, Miss Bose."
All the way back to Dollar Colony, he gushed about the sad, stark majesty of Mayan ruins. She imagined herself scrambling up the stony sides of an alien people's monuments. Every death made possible a new beginning. And then she thought, with a suddenness and finality that shocked her, I don't want a passport. My new beginning is here, but different from Baba's and Ma's generation. They had to fight the British; their big fight was to establish an independent India and create a nonaligned world. Theirs was a struggle-lost, in Baba's case-against communalism and caste-ism and poverty and superstition and too much religion. They were lucky. Their fights weren't easy, but simpler and clearer than mine with Mr. GG. Poverty terrified Baba. But I'm terrified, tempted, and corrupted by the infusion of vast sums of new capital. Light and angles, that was it. Truth revealed in an imaginary viewfinder. She stepped out of her Photoshopped Bangalore. Aloud, she said, "I get no kick from Champagne. Spend too much time away from India, and it drives you crazy."
In the Banerjis' driveway, she opened the passenger-side door to let herself out. GG grasped her arm and held her back. "I don't want you to go. Let's get you a passport. Visas are no problem. I have contacts. Don't just walk away from me."
She wondered what the night watchman and the dog sitter were making of the scene. The dogs would be curled up in bed with Auro and Parvati. "And what would you expect of me in Mexico?" she asked, swinging her sandaled feet out of the car. Porch light glinted off the silver anklets.
"Be my-"
Then Mr. GG stopped himself. His face was so pleading, so pained, she almost got back inside. "No," he said, "that came out wrong. Be whatever you want to be. If you don't want Mexico, fine. There's Indonesia. There's America. There's the world… I want you with me."
What a sad, pathetic thing it is, a man's cry for what? Favors? Companionship? His private little prostitute?
She felt a surge of power. Glad she had the night watchman and the dog walker as witnesses, she kissed Mr. GG on the mouth. "You'll be back," she whispered, stepping out of the Daewoo. She was careful not to slam the door.
Sometime late that night, in the hours when Anjali never slept, she was startled by a sudden, piercing whine. One of the advantages of Dollar Colony was the silence of the dark hours: no cars, no rickshaw horns, no bicycle bells, no cowherd flicking a stick on buffalo flanks. She ran to her window, the one that looked out over the narrow lane, but saw no one. Then she realized the watchman wasn't at his post. He must have gone to the servants' bathroom behind the main house. And the dog walker? Of course: he was with Swati. He'd left the house unguarded.
And then she identified the source of the whine. By moonlight and dim streetlamp she could make out the shape of Ahilya lying on her back, her legs straight up. Anjali had never seen a dog in such a posture, and as she watched-and watched-Ahilya didn't move.
A white van prowled the lane at bicycle speed, then parked, blocking the driveway. Two men in dark, hooded sweatshirts descended from the van and silently opened the heavy iron gate just wide enough to squeeze through. In Dollar Colony, no commercial vans circulated at night. No one was on foot at two A.M.
Ahilya was dead.
Anjali's instinct was to lock herself in the bedroom. How could two men break into the house? There were many windows on the ground floor, the living room was a wall of windows looking out to the garden, but shattering them would make a noise. Parvati trusted her dogs to sound the alarm, but one of them was already dead, and Malhar, despite his bulk, teeth, muzzle, and perpetual growling, was innately timid.
She knew it was up to her to take the initiative. Auro and Parvati were asleep in their ground-floor suite. Even if burglars had driven a truck into the living room and begun demolishing the walls with hammers, Auro's snoring would muffle the noise. Anjali and Rabi shared the second floor, separated by a second living room, but she couldn't bring herself to open his door and enter, as he so jauntily did with hers. And what good would he be in a crisis? He'd want to take a picture. She opened her own door and listened with a kind of attention she'd never exercised, because the last thing in the world she expected was a stranger in the house.
And another thing: she knew, almost immediately, that she was to blame. If she had disappeared from everyone's life after the hours in jail, they'd all be safe. If she hadn't come to Bangalore, none of this would have happened. She had brought destruction on her own home, and on Minnie and Husseina and even poor Ahilya, and now the same thing was about to happen to Parvati and Auro.
It was Tookie, of course, and her new friends, and her Rajoo. Bang-a-Buck had got to her.
Anjali could hear the distant, muffled sounds of movement. She could picture the two men somehow cracking open the rear door, or cutting the window and not letting it fall to the floor to waken the house. She could imagine them now in the kitchen, perhaps with flashlights, then moving into the living room and clearing the tables of anything valuable… but when she ran a mental inventory of the downstairs tabletops, there were no valuables worth the effort of breaking in. They weren't like Minnie's tables, laden with "priceless" silver trays, "irreplaceable plates," heavy sterling silver that had once graced the mouth of a king, and thinner-than-thin "historical" crystal goblets and champagne flutes.
And then it came to her: the only valuables were the paintings, by the Bangla women artists. She had no sense of their value, but she remembered what Parvati's friends had said: the paintings were nice, of course, but such brilliant investments.
In the end it was an easy decision. I owe my life to Parvati, and my life is worthless anyway. Anjali lifted Dinesh's hockey stick from its place on the wall. It floated like a feather in her hands. The stairs were just outside her bedroom door, and as she slowly descended, barefoot, the noises, even the male voices, grew more distinct. They were in the downstairs living room. Why didn't Auro wake up? But of course, he snored too loudly. Some nights, she could hear him all the way upstairs.
No lights were on, but moonlight was pouring through the windows. The burglars had lifted two paintings off their brackets and leaned them against the wall, and with their backs to her, they were working on the next. They were laughing and talking loud enough to be understood, had she spoken Kannada, as though they'd been assured the house was empty. She knew the location of every chair and table in the living room; she could negotiate the passage to the far wall with her eyes closed.
The men half-turned, facing each other, in order to lift the painting off its hooks. And that's when one of the men must have seen her from the corner of his eye; he gave a shout and dropped his end of the painting, and their eyes met and she remembered his face, and that's when Anjali aimed for his head and let the hockey stick fly. It caught him between the eyes, across the bridge of the nose, and he screamed as a plume of blood shot straight out; then he staggered and fell. The second goondah dropped his end of the painting, and it flopped toward her, separating her from him as he frantically turned his head in every direction. He was cursing loudly, and she screamed back at him, in Hindi, threatening to kill him as she had his partner. But he kept the painting between them and she couldn't squeeze her way around it and the sofa it had glanced off. Please, Auro, she prayed, wake up, call the police, but the bedroom door remained partially closed. And so she screamed again, "Thieves! Thieves!" in English, Bangla, and Hindi, and out of nowhere, from the darkened hallway behind him, Malhar leaped upon the man's shoulders, the low growl no longer a warning but a prelude to full attack. The thief fell, hands across the face, and the dog fastened on one wrist and shook it till the man's arm broke.
It was over in seconds. Both men lay in blood, moaning, and the bedroom door opened and Parvati, still tying the sash of her nightdress, cried, "Anjali! What have you done?" Malhar was dragging his trophy by the wrist down to his hiding place at the end of the hall. And then Parvati saw for herself the damage, the paintings, the man at Anjali's feet, and heard the screams of the second goondah as Malhar pulled him into the shadows like a lamb bone to be gnawed over in the dark.
Parvati screamed. Auro shouted, "Wha?" And upstairs Anjali heard a door close.
THEY HAD THEIR breakfast, or at least their tea and granola with yogurt, at four A.M. The medical vans had taken away the burglars. Swati and her sister had swabbed the floors.
Inspector Raja Venkatesh, known socially to Auro and Parvati, was on the scene. By Anjali's standards he was the perfect Bollywood police inspector: an aging heartthrob, efficient, trim, mustached, with epaulettes, graying temples, and perfect English. Even at four in the morning his starched trouser creases were knife-sharp, and his polished shoes reflected the kitchen spotlights.
"These guys are known miscreants," he said. The second thief had been carried away, sobbing and trembling, as Malhar shadowed him to the door. The first goondah was in a coma from a fractured skull and had been carried out on a litter. "No legal jeopardy attaches to your action, sir," he said to Auro. "Warranted self-defense."
With her recent police history, better that Anjali not be a part of it.
"I trust the same immunity extends to my brave watchdog," Auro laughed. He patted Malhar's broad bottom.
"Of course, sir. And my condolences for the other dog. Poisoned, no doubt." He sipped his tea. "I had no idea of your proficiency with a hockey stick, Mr. Banerji. Maybe we should be looking for you on the club tennis court?"
"Hardly." He chuckled. "Schoolboy skills."
"So brave," said Parvati. "But I do hope the poor boy pulls through."
Rabi was slurping his granola and yogurt. "Those poor boys knew what they were looking for, didn't they?" he said.
Inspector Venkatesh nodded. "They apparently were sent here on a mission-who sent them is still to be determined. Have you heard of All-Karnataka Auction House?"
"Nothing at all," said Auro.
"Nor have I," said Parvati.
Fortunately, Inspector Venkatesh didn't look at Anjali. She remembered the van, and Rajoo peeling off his hundred-rupee notes.
"Who's behind this auction house?" asked Rabi.
"We have traced the abandoned van to that company. Those boys could have been employees." He seemed to be mulling over a mountain of additional commentary. "I need not mention to collectors like you that Indian antiquities-and what we might think of as yesterday's rubbish-have become international attractions. The big houses, the London and New York and Tokyo markets, they are involved with local providers who are not always, as we can see, on the up and up."
And then, almost as if compelled to confess under duress, Anjali interjected, "I think I remember that company removing objects during the Bagehot House riot." It was the least, and the most, she could say. She should have shut up.
He wrote it down. "You were a witness to such removals?"
"I saw a van with that name on it."
"Anjali was a tenant there," Parvati explained. The inspector took the news quietly. "Yes, Miss Anjali Bose. I am already knowing," he said.
She didn't say everything she knew: His name is Lalu. He is the brother of my fellow Bagehot House tenant Sunita Sampath. He looked like a frightened mouse, just like her. He worked at Glitzworld for a man named Rajoo. Everyone knows Rajoo. He sent food and booze to Minnie Bagehot. I ate the mutton stew that Rajoo sent. Read Dynamo's columns. It's all connected.
"Miss Bose, let me be the first to inform you that yesterday a passport in your name was found in an abandoned purse in Amsterdam. And yesterday, the body of a young Indian lady was discovered in an Amsterdam hotel. We believe it was your Bagehot House co-tenant, Miss Shiraz. She hanged herself by a T-shirt from the shower stall."
He stood, shook hands with Auro, bowed to Parvati, patted Malhar's head, and nodded in Anjali's direction.
WHEN SHE WENT up to her bedroom, she remembered the letter from Peter. Maybe it wasn't a continuation of the argument they'd had at Minnie's.
Peter's handwriting was feathery light.
My dear Angie, I am ashamed of how I behaved in Bangalore. You have endured aspects of this beloved country that expats and refugees have been spared. I was too categorical and overbearing. Smugly superior, whatever you might call it-I apologize. Your father's passing is very much on my mind. Life is too short, death too sudden to behave with anything but affection and gratitude.
Your father's passing tells a mighty, and a humbling tale. The persistence of colonial castes like "sub-inspectors," the deputies and the assistants that the Indian system inherited and then respawned, and the stubborn dignity of the so-called "little man" makes me weep. (I've been weeping quite copiously these past several days.) There is such a tone of bent-back dignity to his "steadfast" and "unyielding" life (in the words of the obituary notice), of never quite rising to a position of leadership, and the unending dedication to duty, duty, duty. No mention of joy, fulfillment, or happiness-it's heroic.
I think of the millions of men in India like your father who still bicycle to work or ride the buses and commuter trains each morning, rooted to the town and the vocation of their fathers and grandfathers. They shuffle papers, drink endless cups of tea, stamp documents, then make their same way back home at the same time each working day of their lives. Places have been found for them, in the millions, and should any one of them pass on, the system would not grind to a halt. And yet, as the playwright said, "Attention must be paid." To understand what's noble in India is to understand that their lives coexist with yours and millions like it in a dozen other new-age Bangalores. I hope you read this as I intend it, not as questioning of your father's achievement in life but as the fulfillment of all that his life and his vision offered him.
I have talked on the phone to your sister and have faith that in time your mother will acknowledge, at least to herself, why you had to run away from home. That time has not yet come. Your sister will keep me informed of her physical and emotional health with the understanding that I will relay the information to you.
On a different subject (forgive me if I'm being presumptuous): You were wronged by the man your father selected. Believe me, dear Angie, I had not meant it literally when I said that your formal marriage portrait would only fetch up monsters. Last week I read of a man (his picture accompanied the story) who had been arrested as a criminal imposter. He has been able to swindle dowry gifts from anxious fathers and much else from their daughters. One of the fathers (unnamed) swore out a warrant. It was mentioned that Gauripur was one place he visited. If this is so, your father must have understood the full story behind your leaving. That man is now in jail. He is an embodiment of another aspect of the New and Old India in one criminal soul.
I too have gone through a lifetime's change in the past few days. You remember Ali (how could you not?). Well, he is gone, along with a sizable portion of my savings. It was his dream that he undergo a certain dangerous and expensive surgery. But from street gossip I hear it went badly for him. Now I fear for his very life. The mutilation of so beautiful a creation is a nightmare from which I'll never awake.
So, to honor him, or at least to honor the changes he brought about, I'm trying not to slip back into my old solitary habits. The flowerpots still light up the steps, bright calendars still hang from the walls, and books are neatly lined in cases. Almost in a daze I seem to find flowers to put on the table at night, and somewhere I found a bright bedspread to cover the mattress. If you ever come back to Gauripur for a short visit or resettlement I hope you'll make your first call a visit to your old friend and teacher, Peter.
P.S. You and Ali are the only two people in decades to have pierced my shell. I wanted to be an instrument in your salvation (to put a high gloss on my interventions); with Ali, my interference might prove self-defeating, if not fatal. I pray that your activities in Bangalore will redeem my clumsy but well-intentioned encouragement, as well as Ali's impulsive embrace of his life's dream.
Peter
Suddenly she was back in Gauripur. It was again the day she'd visited Peter Champion to show him her marriage portrait, and Peter had said she was dead to him if she married. "Weak and weary," she kept repeating. "Ray-venn." He called the portrait somehow obscene. Still holding it, she'd started walking back home, fighting tears, but had found herself walking past the da Gama campus. And she was sobbing again. Let Swati eavesdrop on the howls and growls of a woman breaking down. The tears were for Peter, who still cared for his protégée, and for her father, who, in his clumsy way, had cared too much for the rebel daughter.
In the garden next door, Citibank Srinivasan of the booming voice exhorted elephant-headed God Ganesha, son of Goddess Parvati, to liberate all mortals from the tormenting cycle of reincarnation. In the kitchen Swati and her sister cooked lunch and prepped dinner for the Banerjis, drop-in guests, and household staff. And in a Gauripur sparkly with Anjali's tears, "Railways Bose" lounged, whiskey in hand, feet propped on a low morah, enrapturing Mrs. Bose with his harangue on statewide graft and greed, and Angie dreamed up a perfect groom.
And then he picks up the newspaper, left over from the morning. There is a picture of a boy he remembers, and an article. What? Is he getting married? What? Is he so famous, his exploits merit the front page? But it is a police report, and the accusations against him are enough to rip a father's heart to pieces.
"Oh, Anjali," he cries, "I didn't know. Why didn't you tell me? I would not have been compelled to do what I now must do."
Mr. GG delivered on all his promises. Mr. GG's MBA classmate, Mr. K. K. Jagtiani, director of the HR division at RecoverySys, had his personal assistant, Mrs. Melwani, call Anjali on the Banerjis' land line. Would Miss Bose care to have Mrs. Melwani initiate the setting up of "a chat" with Mr.D. K.Jagtiani, the deputy in charge of human resources (a younger brother of Mr. K. K., she assumed, in a Sindhi-owned business, if family names are any indication), to take place after his return from his business trip to California and Michigan? If so, Mrs. Melwani would request Mr.D. K. Jagtiani's personal assistant, Miss Lalwani, to get in touch directly with Miss Bose to squeeze her into his calendar.
In the Bose family hierarchy of Indian groups to avoid all dealings with, Sindhis usually ranked near the top.
Anjali summoned all of her "phone poise." "Certainly, if I am still available then," she said. "And I'd prefer Miss Lalwani to call me on my cell phone. Let me give you that number."
Mrs. Melwani stopped her. "Not to worry; we have it on file. Telephone numbers, current address, résumé."
Résumé? She had no job experience. Mr. GG must have taken liberties with truth when he'd pitched her to his friend. If Miss Lalwani called to set up the meeting with her boss, she would instruct her to spell her first name as Anjolie. A day could start with guilt and grief but end in hope. Let Citibank Srinivasan aim for nirvana; she was happy to be mired in maya.
PARVATI OFFERED TO coach Anjali for the upcoming interview. If the delinquent debtors were like Thelma Whitehead, her fictitious caller from Arkansas, they would probably resent being dunned by an agent with a detectable Indian accent. She sounded excited. "Thanks for alerting CCI to this brand-new outlet. Debt recovery, how exciting." Anjali would be her guinea pig for a training manual for pay-up-or-else phone specialists. For RecoverySys, Anjali's voice would have to project authority. Start with compassionate authority, shift to credit-score damage, then to legal intimidation. Parvati had met K. K. Jagtiani at a couple of fund-raisers, she added, but not his son or cousin or brother, D. K. Jagtiani. At the time of their meeting, Mr. K. K. Jagtiani had been exploring an intercontinental cremation-and-ash-scattering service for overseas Indians.
"I guess that Hindu NRI corpse-disposal scheme didn't get off the ground," Auro laughed. He too volunteered to help Anjali get interview-ready. "If you're going to be dealing with Sindhis, how about we watch some episodes of The Sopranos?"
After dinner the next night, he sat Anjali and Parvati down on either side of him on the widest sofa in the living room and started playing the first of three seasons of The Sopranos. Dozens whacked, or were whacked. Young whacked old, brothers whacked brothers, cousins whacked cousins, bag guys whacked debtors, enforcers whacked snitches.
"Who needs the mafia," Auro joked, "when you've got an Indian extended family?"
"Is that a dig at the Bhattacharjees?" Parvati demanded. "Let me tell you, Anjali, Tony's mother reminds me of Auro's mother."
"That's totally out of bounds!" Auro fumed.
"Okay, okay, mother-in-law jokes are funny only on TV."
Anjali went to bed at dawn and dreamed of ducks bobbing in the swimming pool. It didn't matter that Anjali didn't know how to swim because in her dream she was Meadow Soprano.
RABI CUT SHORT his scouting trip for his next photo assignment by three days. "Orders from Baba, Parvati Auntie," he announced. "Ma, Baba, and Kallie will be here in two weeks, and I'm supposed to line up properties for Baba to view."
Auro faked exasperation. "Oh, oh, you know what that means, Anjali, don't you? Less time for us. Much less time for Carmela and Tony. Once the two sisters start their adda, there's no stopping. I'll need a vacation from them!"
Adda. Bangla talk-talk over endless tea. Or, in Dollar Colony, over white wine.
The comfort zone of make-believe family in the Banerjis' home collapsed suddenly. She wasn't Parvati's and Auro's daughter; she wasn't even their houseguest; she was their rescue project, like a street dog. Parvati's excitement swirled around her. "Rabi, do you think I should put your mother and the baby in Bhupesh's suite?" "Auro, remember to lay in a lot of beer. Bish likes his Kingfisher, but not warm the way we drink it." "I'll get the mali's wife to come in once a day and take care of the extra laundry." "Oh, I can't wait to have a baby in the house. It's a first for your graying auntie!"
Anjali didn't want to share Parvati and Auro. She begrudged Tara and her baby girl the sweet simplicity of Parvati's love for them. Parvati's sister-love had not been dipped in bile. Parvati hadn't killed her father nor predeceased him. Bitterness soured into dread. The brief, impossible friendship she had forged with Rabi in Gauripur was at stake. Monet, moray, light and angle. Restore mountain, please. But there were only a half-dozen pull-down props, and the Banerjis' living room was not among them. She would have to move on, again.
PARVATI SETTLED INTO a deck chair under a jasmine-covered pergola and waved to Anjali to join her. "Come, sit by me," she insisted when Anjali hesitated. "I need a break from this stuff." She pointed to the screen of her laptop. "Not quite Napa, but Doddaballapur will get there. Farmland to vineyard, thanks to Bish, who loves wine and wine lovers like his wife and sister-in-law." She put her glass of chardonnay on a stack of real estate brochures by her feet.
Anjali squatted on the grass, envying Parvati, envying most of all her trust in strangers. Even when a well-meaning stranger could open the gates to monsters. Money made for that kind of self-confidence. Money was the safety net of women like Parvati and Rabi's mother. Money made possible ayurvedic spa-pampered skin and radiant hair. They had never been homeless, never starved, they'd never stolen, never had to seduce a potential benefactor.
She had left Gauripur believing in the world of Peter Champion. Poverty was virtuous. Knowledge was protection enough. Love, at long last, would come her way. Nothing would change, year after year, except the names of students. And look at what Bangalore had done to her in just a few months. She had dared to reach above her station, she'd reached for happiness, and all she'd done was bring a shelf of bricks down on her head.
"It's selfish of me, but I'm glad Tara will be settling here. She's been through too much. Not like you, of course, but traumatizing nonetheless. Has Rabi told you about their house fire three years ago? A firebombing, not careless cooking. We still don't know why. The police think international gangs, because Bish is so important. He was badly burned; his feet sort of melted away. He used to have a wicked serve in his Saint Xavier's days in Kolkata; now he walks supported by canes. Tara's afraid of coming back, but I keep telling her that living in Palm Meadows is more or less the same as living in Atherton before she divorced Bish. Oh, you didn't know? She's the only one of us three sisters who did what Daddy wanted, which meant she married the boy Daddy selected, and Bish didn't come from big money, but Daddy said he saw a spark of genius in him-that was Daddy's exact phrase-and she arrived in Palo Alto twenty years old, already the bride of a computer science graduate student and pregnant with Rabi. She divorced him ten years later and lived on her own with Rabi. Well, not exactly on her own, as she'll be the first to admit. She wrote her books. Bish and she got together again and remarried just before Kallie was born. But she's had her years as a single mother and even as a scarlet woman. You know the phrase? Red herrings, scarlet women-they're lost phrases now. She thinks she's lost touch with India in the twenty-plus years she's lived in California. Of course, she visited twice a year while Mummy and Daddy were alive. She reads and clips and Googles all she can, but she says that makes her feel even more an outsider. She says she's tired of our generation of aging Kolkata beauties, and I've told her they bore me too, but your generation of women, Anjali, they're unknowable to me even though I teach them. I sometimes feel that I'm shouting at them across a huge canyon, but they can't hear me, or they're not listening. I can't begin to enter your lives. But I'm curious, not frightened like her."
"What do you find so mysterious about me?" Anjali blurted out. Tell me who I am, please. Tell me because I haven't the foggiest, other than the fact that I seethe with envy and rage.
Startled, Parvati rubbed a fingertip up and down the cool stem of her wineglass. Condensation left a stain on the glossy brochure. She blotted it with a monogrammed cloth cocktail napkin. "You know what you can get in Palm Meadows that we couldn't get when we bought in Dollar Colony? Vaastu compliance. Forget feng shui. Hot new builders have created a buzz for ancient Hindu rules and orders. Vaastu compliance for spiritual equilibrium and a temperature-controlled wine cellar for gustatory gratification. I know I'm babbling." She picked up her glass and pushed the brochure away. "The short answer is, I don't know, Anjali, I really don't. The best I can come up with is you're like a reflecting pool. You give back wavy clues to what we are or what we're going to be."
The Kaveri cuts broad and shallow from the ghats down to the sea, but the preserve is nestled on a bend in the river where the gradient falls and the jungle intrudes to the banks, and a few islands break the navigational flow. On the islands, most days, crocodiles sun themselves and the taller trees are black with hanging bats. Rabi, with his commission from Discovery India, has been assigned the assistant deputy's lodge, where the staff keeps an eye on him ("So young!" he heard them say), providing food and drinks for the young lady and the other man.
They paddled their own canoe to the island, Anjali in the middle in a sun hat and dark glasses, feeling very Euro-glam and, as Moni said, the subject of both men's attention and their professional lenses. She stayed in the anchored boat as the two men waded ashore on one of the larger islands and set up cameras and remote releases in front of a few dead fish. Then they reanchored themselves in the deeper channel, still close enough to watch and trip the shutter release. It didn't take long for smaller crocs to come out from hiding. They'd been just a few feet away! Those boys were messing with the smelly fish and the stubby tripods and there were crocodiles watching them from the bushes!
"My heroes!" she sighed, a line she remembered from Seinfeld, when the first of the crocs came out. The fish was half the croc's size and it raised itself on its hind legs to get full extension, the full effect of gravity to help slide the fish down its gullet-a great subject for a photograph.
The boys wished something larger would come out of the water, something canoe-long and twice as wide, but what bait would suffice, except maybe Anjali, tied to a stake? She was agreeable; can't cook, doesn't sew, won't row. Bait's good. "A girl's got to pull her weight," she said.
Rabi suggested, "We could let her twist in the sun for a while, and then when we spot the really big one, we deftly remove the rope…"
"…and hope we can reel her back to the boat in time," said Moni.
"It's a plan," said Anjali.
The Deputy Assistant Manager's Assistant ("Sounds like a name from Catch-22" said Moni; Anjali drew a blank but kept smiling) swore there were some big fellows in the river, but usually not on the islands. They sunned themselves on the banks but they favored the slower, warmer waters downstream, where the bigger fishes and otters swam. They'll go for birds too. And sometimes the bats-some trees harbor thousands of bats in the afternoon, and some of the younger ones get pushed off their perches and fall in the water. Sometimes they don't even hit the water before a big croc snaps them up.
That would be a picture. "Make it so, Number One," said Rabi.
In the manager's bungalow there were photos from the old British days, showing crocs attacking tigers. Rabi called it, with an eye to Anjali, "Big-time debt recovery. These guys didn't mess around." Tigers and chitals, crocs and boars. No tigers now, maybe some leopards, but no competition with the crocs. Crocs are at the top of the food chain, except maybe below bats. In gross tonnage per annum, one little bat probably out-eats a croc. Nothing tops a bat.
"Who knew?" said Anjali.
Rabi started to reminisce. "When I was a little boy back in San Francisco, I'd spend weekends with my father. We'd go for long walks on Ocean Beach, or sometimes down past Candlestick. The old Italians would be sitting there in folding chairs with five or six poles stuck in the sand, sipping a beer or maybe their homemade wine, eyes half closed, waiting for the bell at the tip of their pole to tinkle. They'd give it a jerk. Like clicking a shutter release. It was magic."
"I know," said Moni. "My parents had a summer place in British Columbia. I used to jig for rock cod on Galiano Island. I'd stretch out on the dock and wrap the line around two fingers and just lower it into the rocks. If I didn't get a fish, I'd get a crab or a lobster. You stare long enough into dancing water and you think you're in there with the fish, like you've sprouted gills."
Rabi's ego was so vast, it encompassed the world. Anjali felt herself a part of it.
"Watch out for Moni," said Rabi. "He'll Photoshop a pair of nesting pterodactyls."
It's a Photoshop world, she thought.
"We've all been Photoshopped," said Moni. "I know I've been."
She had no memories. Her memories were only starting now. Her life was starting now.
The boys drank beer; she had a soda. Three small crocs were exploring the tripods; like kittens or puppies they were trying to climb them and bite the cameras. Rabi kept clicking away.
"Um, Rabi, old man," Moni whispered. "Turn around very, very slowly."
Not five feet off the bow, two eyes and a pair of nostrils floated, unattached, it seemed, to anything underwater. Except that far away downstream the water eddied at the base of an armored tail. And to think, just seconds before, Anjali had been swirling her hands in the water to clean them of fish slime.
Click!.
The rest of the day was devoted to birds and bats. Overripe fruit, halved watermelons, spotted mangoes, and guavas were spread at the base of a rookery tree, the tripods set, cameras loaded and guano hoods attached, remotes set. A few flying fox bats dropped down from the trees despite the daylight hour. It was never too bright in the forest. They moved over the moldering fruits like stooped old men in heavy capes. They reminded Anjali of the priests at Vasco da Gama, with their long coats and bent posture. "The weight of the world," Father Thomas used to say. But in the zoom lens their true nature appeared, and their name held true: foxes. Sharp-faced, intelligent dogs, with wings.
Then the three paddled upriver and drifted back down, Anjali consulting the bird guide, pointing "There, there," and Moni and Rabi taking turns paddling and taking pictures till the light began to fail and the foxes lifted off from their trees for a night of pillaging.
THEY SAT IN three slack, ground-grazing sling chairs, just a small step up from hammocks, swirling dal and chapatis with their fingers, sipping beer, looking out over the water. In their sun hats and full sleeves against the mosquitoes, they could have been nineteenth-century British planters surveying God's handiwork, with full satisfaction. My boys, Anjali thought. My brave, funny boys.
In the last minutes of sunlight, the smooth river was pocked by leaping fish, swooping birds, and drifting logs-floating eyes and nostrils-that weren't logs at all. The clear, peach-colored sky was sooty with funnels of bats lifting off from the trees.
She had a sudden thought: Nothing bad can come of this.
I'm down to one iron in the fire. Debt-recovery agent. If anything is to come of this night, or the future, she thought before turning in, I owe it to bats and crocodiles. How to explain the wonders of this world?