Miss New India (34 page)

She dropped to a crouch, back pressed into a wall splotchy with dull red, still-wet stains of paan juice and maybe blood, and hoped she blended into the crowd of drunks and addicts unsteady on their feet. But gaunt-bodied, wily-eyed, bawdy-mouthed women swarmed around her, sizing her up. Several signaled obscene messages to her with their tongues. A half dozen looked so young that they reminded her of the light-fingered boys she had guarded her cash from on interstate buses. A big-boned mannish woman, wearing a gaudy sari hiked halfway up her hairy calves, blew Anjali lewd kisses. Anjali, more terrified in the lockup cell than she had been in the interrogation room, tried to shrink into a tiny ball. Egged on by the large woman with the rubbery lips, others closed around her and poked and prodded her with their grimy sandals. Two of them grabbed her by her armpits and pulled her to her feet. In her new penitential mood, she accepted their slaps and punches.

Only the older detainees who squatted or lay on the grimy floor, some coughing blood, ignored her. This hellhole was where she belonged; the apartment in Gauripur had been a mirage of home. But how had she gotten here? She had been told by the two people she was most eager to believe—Mr. Champion and Rabi Chatterjee—that she was special, and in her mind being special had meant she
deserved
better, deserved
the best.
Ambition had ruined her; worse, it had disgraced her family. At least her father had had the self-respect to commit suicide. His obituary in
The Gauripur Standard
had omitted the cause of death out of respect for him, but Peter had let it slip. Mr. Champion had begged her not to blame herself for her father's death, which meant he blamed her. She had so distanced herself from the innocent hoping and longing of her Gauripur adolescence that she could no longer call him Peter, not even in her thoughts. How had "Railways Bose" taken his own life? She pictured him hanging from the ceiling fan in the front room. She envied the corpse.

To a trust-fund Californian photographer who played at slumming, life in India might be all light and angle, but if you are an overreaching penniless Bihari, the light is murky, the angles knife sharp. Just last night she'd thought herself one of Bangalore's blessed, a Bagehot Girl. Knowledge, even self-knowledge, was cruel. Tookie was a prostie, Husseina a terrorist, and she a felon. She felt herself drifting to sleep, the willful shutting down of where she was and what she had become.

But her father wouldn't let her. He entered the holding cell, stepping over sleeping, moaning bodies as he approached her. He was dressed in the tawny cotton jacket he wore to work every weekday, crusty ridges of dried sweat radiating from the armpits. In place of his only wilted silk tie, he had a bed sheet knotted around his neck. He beamed when he reached her in her corner and, in a ritual gesture of blessing, touched the top of her bowed head.

The touch
felt
real because it
was
real. A policewoman was rapping Anjali's head with her knuckles. "Stir yourself and follow me!"

Anjali was escorted out of the lockup cell and into the booking area where, looking conspicuously relaxed among curt constables and manacled prisoners, stood a Hawaiian-shirted Mr. GG. Seated next to Mr. GG on the only bench for visitors and joking with him in what, to Anjali, sounded like Punjabi was the detective who had accused her of "abetting terror." Mr. GG stopped in midlaugh and sprang to his feet as soon as he noticed her shuffling behind her uniformed escort. "Miss Bose, rescuing you is becoming a full-time job!" he exclaimed, his voice upbeat, almost chirpy.

The policewoman shoved her toward the two men, relinquishing her authority to the detective. She peered at the men as though viewing them through dirty glass.

"Miss Bose!" Mr. GG held both his arms out. He would catch her if she fainted, as she had that first time in Barista. "It's all right now. It's over."

But she didn't lean into him. In a low, dry whisper, she said, "Just let me die."

"I have less gloomy plans for your future," Mr. GG bantered, "the most immediate plan being to get you out of the police thana." He patted his briefcase. "Release papers in triplicate."

The detective smiled at Mr. GG. "Gujral-sahib has rendered at length satisfactory explanations," he announced, without looking at her. "Why you are not informing authorities from beginning of your connections and whatnot?"

"Just let me die," she cried.

"I suggest instead that we attend to necessary business at hand." Mr. GG snapped his briefcase open and held it up to her. Her Gucci pocketbook and Movado watch lay on top of a stack of folders, manila envelopes, and forms stamped with official seals.

"Please to verify contents of lady's handbag," the detective urged her. And when she did not do so, he plucked the item from the upheld briefcase and dumped its contents on the visitors' bench. A Shantiniketan leather wallet stamped with a red-and-black paisley pattern; a key ring with a heavy metal key for the padlock on her bedroom door, a small flat key for the safety-deposit drawer in Husseina's almirah, and a smaller, flimsier one for the tiny wooden chest in which she hid what was left of Mr. Champion's cash; a cotton coin-purse; a CCI trainee badge; two Lakmé lipsticks and a tube of "whitening and brightening" face lotion; a comb; a purse-size pack of paper tissues; two ballpoint pens; four safety pins; a strip of aspirin tablets; a couple of green cardamom pods. "Please to report items missing, if any." He flashed a toothy, superior smile to indicate he was daring her to.

Mr. GG scooped the items back into her pocketbook. He snapped the briefcase shut. "We'll just take our leave straightway, sir," he said to the detective, who was still smiling. "No need to waste more of your urgent time chasing this red herring. Thank you very, very much, sir." He hustled Anjali toward the exit, promising to replace any item pilfered or lost.

Her cell phone was missing.
Getting a replacement wasn't the same. A replacement will be a copy. All the names on speed dial will be copies. I am
just a copy. In that hellhole I wanted to talk to Baba. I wanted to hear Ma's and Mr. Champion's voices.

In the parking lot, Mr. GG announced, "I have a surprise for you."

"No more surprises."

"Okay, I won't spoil the surprise." He gripped her right elbow and guided her toward his car. "You know, until this morning, I never noticed how green your eyes are."

"I hate my eyes."

"That's why Husseina targeted you! She must have taken your picture, then she learned your birthday, but it's your light eyes that did you in."

My sister. My generous benefactor. The mysteries of Hyderabad. The mysteries of Bangalore, the mysteries of everywhere and everyone. You think you're moving forward, you think you're beginning to figure things out, and it's all a trap. My parents were right: everyone is corrupt. There are conspiracies everywhere.
But she said only, "I hate everything about me."

"You'll get over it. Time heals all wounds."

"The things that happened, happened to me, don't you understand? My father came to my cell with a bed sheet around his neck, my dead father who killed himself because I ran away to Bangalore. I'm in hell."

He jerked her by the elbow to stop her. "Maybe I don't understand. Maybe I can't. But understand this: You're lucky I have connections with the police. You're lucky I'm not off in Mexico right now. Shit happens, but you are very, very lucky, period. You have friends you don't even know, but you can't just float around Bangalore like a kite—someone will cut the string."

Her kite string had already been slashed. She had no phone and no one to call. Not that she cared. What friends? There was no longer a Bagehot House room to go back to. "Where are you taking me?"

"Patience," he counseled. "You'll find out."

She steeled herself for the next favor Mr. GG was about to bestow. He would insist she move in with him in the flat overlooking Cubbon Park. In the police thana, she had been called a prostitute. What choice did a woman like her, homeless, jobless, skill-less, have? The police were right: she was a prostitute. What other name is there for a young woman without a job or means of support? "All right," she said. "I'm very lucky I know you."

They neared Mr. GG's car. She made out a shape in the back seat. "Don't get ahead of yourself, Miss Bose. You haven't heard me invite you, have you?" He unlocked the trunk of his Daewoo. "Don't take me for granted."

"I'm hallucinating!" she gasped. Her red Samsonite was in the trunk.

The back-seat passenger scrambled out of the car. "Hey! Whazzup?" He grinned. Tall and skinny, his hair grown out and standing on end. He moved the red Samsonite suitcase to make room for the briefcase. Then he gave her a bear hug.

Mr. GG banged the trunk shut. "Let's just say you've completed a reality TV episode."

"And survived the final round," the passenger joked. "Girish activated his local network
and
the vast Peter Champion network. You can't imagine how many thousands of activists are working night and day for you! Parvati-Auntie's sorry she couldn't come to the thana herself, but her driver's wife's in surgery, so she's keeping vigil in the hospital. Anyway, she said to tell you her home is your home."

"But I've let her down."

"She's an incurable do-gooder. A one-time call agent might not interest her, but an unjustly accused prisoner is right up her alley. But as aunties go, she rocks."

Anjali rested her head on the skinny chest of the young photographer she had met—it seemed incarnations ago—and succumbed to tears of shame.

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.