Miss New India (20 page)

***

EARLY ON FRIDAY
evening, as Anjali paced the cluttered floor of her alcove, trying to decide which of two tops to wear with her slinkiest pair of black cotton pants, Husseina poked her head in. "Which do you think?" Anjali asked. "I don't have a decent mirror in this rat hole. Minnie has some nerve charging me the rent she does!"

Husseina took the tops from Anjali. "I was wondering if you would like to borrow one of my gharara sets. Minnie thinks of tonight as a dress-up night." She managed a theatrical shudder. "Who knows what sumptuous moldy gown she'll deck herself out in."

Anjali thrilled at the chance of greeting Mr. GG in one of Husseina's elegant formal outfits. The one and only time they had met, they'd
clicked.
And what had she been wearing that first day of her new life in Bangalore? The sweaty, rumpled jeans and T-shirt in which she had finished her odyssey all the way from Gauripur. She coveted Husseina's look of effortless stylishness. But on her, Anjali was convinced, Husseina's expensive clothes would look seductive as well as sophisticated. How could Mr. GG not be overwhelmed?

Husseina's room was huge. Anjali envied the massive four-poster bed, the rosewood chests of drawers and cupboards with lion's-head brass pulls, the sun-bleached velvet curtains and the elaborately framed paintings: golden-haired little girls in frocks with frills and bows, kittens playing with balls of wool.

"Borrow what you like," Husseina urged Anjali, as she unlocked the door to a ceiling-to-floor almirah. "Sunita's ironing the salwar-kameez I'll be wearing tonight. That girl's so selfless, it's almost annoying." The interior of Husseina's almirah glowed with a pastel rainbow of silk. "Key lime, lemon chiffon, apricot, mango, raspberry sorbet. My just desserts, I call them. Go on, take your pick. I'll be in blueberry."

"I couldn't," Anjali said, without meaning it. She fingered the silks, georgettes and organzas.

"Don't you like them?" Husseina sounded hurt.

"They're beautiful."

Husseina pulled two pistachio-green gharara sets out of the almirah. One was decorated with crystal beads, the other with sequins. "Swarovski," she said. "That's what I wore on my first real date with my fiancé after we were engaged. We had ice cream sundaes." She shut the mirrored door of the almirah and pointed to their reflections. "Pistachio matches your eyes." She pulled Anjali closer to her, pressing her body hard against Anjali as if trying to fuse their flesh. "The same greenish eyes, would you believe?"

Husseina's sudden intensity frightened Anjali, but she didn't want to risk losing the chance to borrow an expensive gharara that might inflame Mr. GG.

"We could be sisters," Husseina continued. "If we dressed alike, I bet we could pass for twins." She laughed as she handed the crystalspeckled outfit to Anjali. "I want you to have this. And not just for tonight."

"Oh, I couldn't..." Anjali said, but she grabbed the top. Rich and mysterious Husseina could afford to be magnanimous, so why insult her by refusing her exquisite gift? As Tookie often remarked, there was no point in worrying about Husseina's motives: "She's so rich, she lives on a different planet."

Husseina draped the shimmery top over Anjali's navy stretch T-shirt. "You're going to look very beautiful for your young man."

My young man?
She decided Husseina was referring to Peter Champion, not Mr. GG. "He's not
my
young man." She could take Husseina into partial confidence. "Peter isn't young. You'll see tonight."

"But you call your teacher by his first name?"

"It's an American thing. Actually, he's more like my father's age."

Husseina arched a finely plucked eyebrow. "What's twenty, twenty-five years in the giant scheme of things?"

"He may be older than my father ... and he's got someone else."

"Ah, the fatal hesitancy. That fatal someone else."

Anjali couldn't tell if Husseina was consoling her or teasing her. "I think Americans like to say, 'He has a partner.'"

Husseina laid a maternal hand on Anjali's shoulder. "It's all a business arrangement. You'll get used to it."

"In the giant scheme of things." Anjali repeated Husseina's phrase. It was a comforting notion. "It's all a matter of light and angles, isn't it?"

Mr. GG, carrying a huge bouquet of flowers and a copy of Peter Champion's book, was the first to arrive. In the old days, according to Minnie, guests in ball gowns and tails were greeted by a long receiving line that ended with Maxie, Minnie, and the guests of honor. Gout and poverty had forced Minnie to dispense with such Bagehot House traditions. Asoke, instructed to meet guests in the portico with a welcoming salaam, ushered Mr. GG to the threshold of the formal drawing room, then hobbled back to his post. Minnie, majestic in a brocade caftan, had installed herself in a wing chair in the center of the room and Anjali on an ottoman right next to her a full hour before. The other three boarders hovered behind her like ladies in waiting, offering her appetizers of meat-filled pastries and refilling her glass of rum punch.

"That gentleman with charming manners, is he the fan who wants to meet our Peter?" Minnie asked Anjali in a tipsy whisper. "He cuts a dashing figure."

Anjali couldn't get over how dashing! She had remembered Mr. GG as a lithe man with a slight paunch, but here he was, tall and princely in black silk sherwani and white ruched churidar, gliding toward the hostess.

"Where are your manners, child? Go on, get up, introduce him to me."

"Mr. Gujral!" Anjali couldn't hide her excitement. She rose from the low ottoman in such a hurry that the stiletto heel of one shoe got caught in the threadbare weave of the rug, and if limber Mr. GG hadn't managed to tuck Peter's heavy tome under one arm and rush with the bouquet to steady her, she would have taken an unromantic fall instead of merely bruising a few flowers.

"I keep having this effect on you," he joked. Then he turned his full attention to Minnie. "Ah, finally I have the fortune of meeting the chatelaine of this gem of a manse that I have long admired." With a gallant flourish, he presented the dented bouquet to her. "How do you do, madam? Girish, please. Not even my clients call me Mister Gujral."

Minnie accepted the bouquet with a tinkly giggle and handed it to Sunita to place in a vase. "Girish, it is. How do you do, Girish. Thank you for making time to dine with a recluse in a mausoleum."

"Gem," Mr. GG said, air-kissing the gloved fingertips she offered him, "not mausoleum. And speaking of gems"—he returned his attention to Anjali—"has it been a week or a month since ... Barista? It
feels
like twenty-four hours." Anjali glowed, flattered by his courtly come-on. "What a transformation, and you're not even wearing glass slippers!"

Glass slippers? She hadn't the foggiest. Her slingbacks were python skin, yesterday's impulsive splurge at a just-opened boutique on VM Road.

Husseina broke away from Tookie and Sunita, and introduced herself to Mr. GG. "Punch? No, you're more champagne than punch." She clapped her hands and called out to someone in the pantry. A rough-looking boy in a sweatsuit appeared with a tray of champagne flutes. "Please." She urged Mr. GG to accept one.

Mr. GG plucked two champagne flutes off the tray and offered Anjali one and Husseina the other.

"Oh, I don't imbibe, GG," Husseina explained. "Excuse me. I have to check on the kitchen staff. They're new." She walked away.

Anjali who had already taken a sip of her first-ever glass of champagne, worried that Mr. GG would consider her a lush. Why couldn't she have taken her cue from Husseina?

The noisy appearance of another guest provided Anjali with a convenient distraction. Two stout youths from the squatters' settlement in the "back garden" deposited Opal Philpott, in her pre-war wheelchair, next to Minnie. Tookie, looking uncharacteristically frumpy in a red velvet dress, fetched a glass of punch for Opal and another gin fizz for Minnie. Sunita made a face at Tookie. "Don't ply her with more," she pleaded as they joined Anjali and Mr. GG. "She needs food. Where is this American anyway?"

Tookie laughed. "Tipsy is the only way I can take the old cow."

"Where
is
the guest of honor?" Mr. GG pursued the point.

She hadn't the foggiest. He had not been in touch since the call from Gauripur. Flight delays? For all she knew, he had changed his mind about deserting Ali for a whole weekend. In any case, she was enjoying the princely GG's undivided attention.

"Patience, GG," Husseina said.

Anjali envied Husseina's easy grace. "Patience," she repeated. "Peter never breaks his promise."

And Peter Champion, toting a large khaki duffel bag and a cloth book bag, entered the drawing room as though on cue. He wasn't alone. He was flanked by two Indian women in their midforties.

"My dear, dear Minnie." He greeted Minnie with an affectionate kiss on each powdered cheek. "You don't look a day older than you were the last time I saw you!" He handed her a bottle of imported brandy.

"Rubbish, transparent rubbish! But gratefully accepted." Minnie rang a small bell hanging by a silk cord from an arm of her chair, to summon Asoke. "Asoke is becoming a dunderhead! How come he hasn't relieved our guest of his baggage?"

Anjali hung back with Mr. GG in a corner of the drawing room. The Mr. Champion she had known in Gauripur was tall and balding and often wore his thinning hair drawn back in a limp ponytail. The Gauripur Peter rode an ancient scooter, wore a kurta and blue jeans, and shunned the company of women. The Bangalore Peter was shorter than she remembered, wore a dark suit, white shirt, and red tie, and acted chummy with the two beautiful women, one in a tailored silk pantsuit and the other in an embroidered silk sari.

Peter introduced the two women to the hostess as his friends Miss Usha Desai and Mrs. Parvati Banerji. "Where's my brightest-ever student?" he asked, looking around the room. When he spotted the glamorous young woman in a pistachio gharara and realized that she was Angie, he bounded up to her, swept her up in a movie-like hug, complimented her on her big-city transformation, then whispered in her ear, "We have some serious business to discuss tomorrow. Tonight, though, is Minnie's night." Then he introduced her to pantsuited Usha Desai and sari-wrapped Parvati Banerji, adding that Parvati Banerji was Rabi Chatterjee's maternal aunt. He had gone directly from the airport to CCI, he explained, because he had business to discuss with the CCI board.

"Parvati and Usha are partners," he added.

It made sense, coming from Peter, but she would never have guessed.

Usha must have noted her confusion. She smiled and said, "I think Peter means a partnership. Parvati and I are CCI's cofounders." She promised to call Anjali on Monday to set up an admissions interview.

At least Usha Desai spoke English with a slight Indian accent. That made her less threatening. Anjali turned to Rabi's aunt. "I love listening to Rabi," she gushed. "He's so brilliant."

"Around Rabi all you can do is listen." Parvati laughed. Perfect American accent. California, Anjali decided. "He's my only nephew, his mother's the youngest of us three sisters and lives in San Francisco. Tara—that's my sister—was expecting him home for his dad's fiftyfifth birthday, but you know Rabi! He's gallivanting all over India, places I've never been to."

"Will he be visiting you?"

There was no mistaking the pleasure Parvati took in Anjali's admiration of her nephew. "Right now Rabi's somewhere in Kerala on a nature photography kick." She gave Anjali's cheek an affectionate pat. "I feel I know you a little bit. Do you mind my saying that? I don't mean
know
you, other than from a photo of you in Gauripur. Rabi left it with us before he rushed south. He was into portrait photography when you met him. We—that's my husband and me—loved his Cartier-Bresson phase, but he's over that."

"If he comes back..." Anjali stopped herself, embarrassed. How could she be so forward as to beg for an invitation? She knew what drew her to Rabi, but to his aunt? The spontaneity of her offer of friendship to a stranger about whose background she knew nothing? She envied Parvati's capacity for trust.

"Oh, Rabi will be back. He's in no hurry to return to America."

Mr. GG sidled toward Anjali's group, bearing a plate of savories and a freshened flute of champagne. Anjali had never handled social niceties like introductions. Was it man to woman? Younger to older? How much biography was appropriate? She let Mr. GG hover at the edges of the group to find his own conversational opening.

The CCI partners eased the awkwardness by taking the lead. Hands thrust out, firm shakes, their names. They seemed to recognize Mr. GG's name when he introduced himself. So Mr. GG had to be a celebrity of some sort in Bangalore. Anjali found her voice. "And Girish, I'd like you to meet my teacher, Peter Champion. Peter, Girish Gujral."

The four guests drifted into esoteric conversation about virtual construction and the projects under development by Girish Gujral's firm, Vistronics. Opal Philpott and Minnie Bagehot, stuck in their chairs, were engaged in a loud debate about what precise incident at the Gymkhana had led to the ferocious enmity between Ruby Thistlethwaite and Opal. Husseina was either still in the kitchen, supervising the squatter women's cooking and plating, or was on the empty front porch talking to her fiancé in London on her cell phone.

With the hostess and guests temporarily occupied, Tookie and Sunita huddled with Anjali.

"Isn't he too old for you?" Sunita sounded worried.

Tookie asked, "So have you fixed a date yet? And where have you been hiding this Girish guy? Girl, you've got more secrets and more angles than a Delhi politician. When you're finished with him, can you set me up?"

Not in that red dress,
Anjali thought. Some girls are just made for blue jeans and T-shirts with scooped necks, and some of us can wear expensive silk.

Opal and Minnie were about to come to blows with their hand fans over which man was the guiltier party, "that silly goose" or "that cad, that bounder," when Husseina finally reappeared in the drawing room and announced that Asoke was ready for the party to move to the dining room.