Miss New India

by Bharati Mukherjee

  None of this made any sense to Anjali. Even Husseina's tone confused her. She was like a spinning top. There was an edge to every word she spat out, as though the next one might come out in a scream.

  The mysteries of Hyderabad, explained but not comprehended. Panzer Delight, with all its umlauts, would be out the door and heading back to Europe. And she, Anjali Bose, ghost of Gauripur, would inherit a closet full of expensive silks. No one had ever confided in her, except maybe Peter and Ali. She owed Husseina something heartfelt, or profound, but she was a girl with a bright smile and nothing else. She dredged up Peter's words again, hoping she'd got them right. "Innocence is attractive in a girl," Anjali said. "But I suppose blindness isn't."

  Husseina stared. At last she said, "I almost misjudged you. You're not a vulgar little bore like Tookie. Or a cunning little mouse like Sunita. You see through things, don't you? And you keep quiet. It's important to keep quiet."

  "I'm just repeating nonsense. Forget anything I say." She didn't like the way Husseina had stared. She didn't like Husseina's tone, the nakedness of her disregard for their fellow Bagehot Girls. Anjali had tried to act smarter than she was, remembering phrases from smarter people, and Husseina had caught on and given her credit and now she knew some kind of uncomfortable secret about Husseina that she shouldn't.

  When Husseina spoke again, it was woman to woman, her hand on Anjali's shoulder, her face up close. "Frankly, I don't know where I'm going. Bobby said, 'Trust me and don't tell anyone you're leaving,' but he doesn't trust me. He's sending a car and driver, that's all I know. Life is very strange, isn't it?"

  "Nothing is the way it seems," Anjali replied. "It's all light and angles."

  "Yes, light and angles. May I quote you?" asked Husseina.

  And I must remember truth is more shocking than lies, Anjali counseled herself as she went back to her alcove. That was the only lesson she could extract from Husseina's unforced revelation. She left the door curtains parted slightly and sat cross-legged on her cot in the dark until Husseina—sexy in her T-shirt and jeans, tiptoeing with a suitcase, unlit cigarette in her lips—slipped past.

  She couldn't wait for morning to usurp Queen Husseina's room and role in Bagehot House. As soon as she was certain that Husseina had fled, and even imagined a car slowing down and a car door's muffled slamming—one of Minnie Bagehot's fantasy Duesenbergs pulling up to the curb with the lights dimmed—she went into the master bedroom, trying on one luxurious silk kameez after another and admiring her new silk-enhanced curves in the cracked full-length mirror. And then she stretched out, for the first night in her life, alone on a full-size mattress. Husseina's room was dark, private, and silent.

  It was accidental that she awoke early, at six A.M.,, in that unfamiliar room. Perhaps Tookie had come back late from work and brushed against the door. Or dogs had barked, crows had cawed, or it was something internal, a sense that something was wrong. Maybe Husseina had never left, no driver had turned up, she was lying, or she was crazy. Women didn't give up a closet of silk for a handful of unwashed cotton. She didn't need an alien rainbow of expensive silks in exchange for her faithful Gauripur T-shirts and well-worn jeans. She would miss the umlauts of Panzer Delight. The umlauts, not a handful of passports, were the true sign of a wider world.

  And so she got up, straightened the bed cover, grabbed a white salwar and kameez—the closest thing in the closet to a sleeping suit—and went back to her old room for one last nap. Her old room might be loud and dusty, but at least she'd earned it. Husseina might still come back. It might all have been a dream. She again fell asleep, but almost immediately, it seemed, there came a light shaking of her curtain, and then it opened. Minnie Bagehot invited herself in. It was seven o'clock.

  "What are you doing here?" Minnie demanded. "I watched you leave."

  "I would certainly have given you proper notice, madam."

  "But I distinctly saw you sneak out of the house with bag and baggage in the middle of the night. And smoking a cigarette, no less. Smoking on the public street!"

  So, it's true: Minnie never sleeps and never forgets. She marks little demerits on a piece of paper, adding up to a dump. "Madam, I have never smoked a cigarette in my life. It must have been Husseina."

  Minnie grabbed Anjali by the shoulders. "You have the audacity to lie to me? You think I'm a blind and cuckoo-in-the head old lady you can cheat? I recognized your clothes. Husseina would never dress like you or that Goanese." She let go of Anjali and shoved her down hard on the cot. "It's a matter of breeding, simple breeding. You are the sad outcome."

  Anjali's first impulse was to throttle Mad Minnie and stuff her Raj-era vocabulary back down her gullet. Her fingers itched to circle the scrawny throat, its papery wrinkles caked with pink foundation. Anjali's father died because she had brought dishonor to the family. Guilt reheated itself into rage against everything that Bagehot House stood for.

  "Breeding?" She could feel her voice rising. "You want to talk about breeding? You stupid old cow! You are not God. You are not even British—ha! You are one of us, and you are living on Indian goodwill!"

  Minnie backed away, perhaps startled by the sudden increase in volume. She lived inside a bubble and had selective hearing. She didn't respond to words, to insult, or to anger. "I haven't the slightest idea of what that little outburst was about. What are you trying to tell me? A rich Mohammedan stole your clothes and ran off without paying her bill?"

  Anjali could hear the unspoken implication:stole from the likes of you? "I haven't the p'oggiest notion why, but she wanted to trade clothes."

  "Preposterous!" But for the first time, Minnie looked perplexed. She shuffled toward the door curtain. "I'm sure there's a simple explanation."

  "Things like that are never simple. It is just a mystery." Let it go at that, for now.

  Minnie dismissed complications with a wave of her hand, like a spoiled child. Or like self-appointed royalty with severe memory loss. Her self-confidence bounced back. "Perhaps I misidentified the culprit."

  "Culprit, madam? What is the crime? She left without saying good-bye? We pay you a month's rent in advance."

  Minnie's voice dropped to a soft, conspiratorial mumble. "Just yesterday, I came to a very difficult decision. It's that prostie, that Goanese. I should never have let her in. I'm sure she's conspiring with dark forces. She has to go." Then Minnie explained that since Anjali was the protégée of that dear boy Peter, she was willing to hold off on collecting rent until she'd found a suitable position. ("I do hope you're looking. There was a time when I could call on governors and ministers for favors, but they've all...") Anjali could pay all that was owed from her first paycheck.

  That fabled first paycheck already bore unrealistic burdens, so why not add a few more?

  Strange negotiations first with Husseina, next with Mad Minnie, but in both cases Anjali was coming through the winner.

  "You don't have to thank me," the landlady continued. "I too was once a young woman of modest means on my own in an unfamiliar town. I too have been the beneficiary of kindness." It was her Christian duty to repay the grace she'd once received.

  "Christian duty" was a concept alien to Anjali. Duty meant dharma and a host of caste and social restrictions she'd never seriously observed. Squatting in a cracked, dingy bathtub used by generations of Christians and Muslims, then submitting to Subodh Mitra and not resisting with her life, had wiped the slate clean of any remaining dharmic duties.

  "Bangalore's become an evil place. Remember the way it used to be when Maxie and Bunty were in charge?"

  Bunty—wasn't that the widow Philpott's husband? Mad Minnie really had lost her marbles. Or was retreating into the past another one of her tricks of survival? "Gone to the dogs," Anjali snickered, in the best All-India Radio news-anchor Britishy accent she could manage. "My Bunty would go bonkers if he were still around."

  "There are goondahs resident on the property," Minnie fumed. "I'm a prisoner in my own house. I don't dare shut my eyes in
my own bed." From inside the soiled lace glove on her left hand, she extracted a sheer white handkerchief embroidered with a pink B inside a lilac floral ring, and blotted her anxious, watery eyes. "Forces are gathering," she warned. "It's no use, Opal. We're doomed."

  Cut the melodrama, Minnie. All you are is a cobweb about to be swept away! One good housecleaning and you're gone!

  But Minnie babbled on. "You've seen what the vermin have done to my rose garden. It's a jungle! And to think that the Prince of Wales himself brought me cuttings from England! The vermin have taken over the compound. I see their lights from my window. I call the police, but they do nothing. They won't, or can't, who knows? No good Christian deed goes unpunished. A long time ago Asoke begged me to let some of his village brothers rest up for a night or two. Those peasants were making their way on foot to Madras, walking, can you believe, with their women and children and bundles and body lice and oozy sores. Now they think they own my compound. The Bagehot name doesn't strike terror anymore. Maxie would have had them flogged. They mock me when I catch them with loot. I'm missing a silver goblet, but who cares? What they don't cart off and sell, they destroy. I keep my eyes peeled, what else can I do?"

  So, it was true after all that Minnie sat by her window all night and kept watch! What the Bagehot Girls had got wrong was why and whom she was watching. "Vermin!" Minnie repeated. "They're keeping a death watch." So, her clinging to nasty imperial prejudices was another trick of survival. Minnie knew just how powerless she was in Bang-a-Buck Bangalore. Anjali held out a conciliatory hand. "I think I understand, madam," she said, meaning it. She too hailed from the heartland of suspiciousness; she'd spent a lifetime publicly agreeing with, and privately dismissing, the not-dissimilar prejudices of her parents concerning the threat posed by anyone not of their blood. But to understand was not to approve.

  The old lady grasped Anjali's hand in both of hers. "You'll be my eyes and ears. I must write your benefactor and thank him for sending you to me all the way from the mofussils. The dear Lord works in mysterious ways."

  Minnie inhabited an impenetrable, Minnie-centric universe. Why take offense? Better for Anjali to press her momentary advantage. "I wonder, madam, if I might ask for one more favor?" The old lady seemed receptive. "I wonder ... when Husseina left, she said I could take over her room. Would that be possible?"

  Minnie's eyes were closed behind her thick glasses—her way of quelling dissent or reaching a decision in her own sweet time. "I don't see why not."

  I'm undumpable! It was a high-five moment, with no one to share it. So she could keep a luxury room and have it for next to nothing, so long as Minnie trusted her to spy on the squatters.

  End of supplication. End of begging. She was ready to take her place. And not just in Bagehot House.

  ***

  SHE AWOKE AGAIN at ten o'clock in Husseina's bed, with the feeling that the night before and the early-morning intervention had been dreams of a future, and that today's the day! This day would be different from any other in her nineteen years. She indulged herself with Husseina's imported shampoo and conditioner, lipstick and mascara. She slipped on Husseina's wispy bikini briefs and lifted and separated her breasts with Husseina's expensive black bra. From the full-length mirror, a tall, languid lingerie model smiled back at her. The mirror-woman was definitely Angie, not Anjali. Anjali was an insecure, dumpwary tenant; Angie was an entitled squatter and scavenger.

  She suddenly realized why the teenage girl seated in the shed's window frame in firelight had stirred a visceral kinship. From a silver tray on the dressing table, she picked up Husseina's comb and smoothed the tangles from her long, wavy hair. In Gauripur her mother used to massage syrupy red hibiscus-scented hair oil into her scalp every single morning, a pre-bath mother-daughter ritual. A full head of thick, black hair is a woman's wealth, her mother insisted, as she concocted home remedies for all kinds of hair damage: yogurt-rub to cure dandruff, pastes made from oily berries to add luster to frizzy hair, seed-soaked potions to reverse hair loss. At bedtime, her mother had forced her to wrap her braids with thick cotton tape to prevent split ends.

  What if the bitter wife and nagging mother had actually been a contented, creative woman? Angie stood at the window in newly acquired underwear and dragged Husseina's comb harshly through her hair. She wouldn't let Gauripur memories ruin this day. Comb vigorously; comb until your scalp hurts; comb all knots of guilt out of your selfish head and prideful hair.

  When the comb broke in two in her hands, she moved away from the window. From the magic closet, she selected a slinky pink salwar-kameez set and tried it on. She hadn't looked so good in months—maybe never. Looking great was the shortest cut to feeling great. Add a pair of purple, high-heeled slingbacks and a Chanel purse. Arrogance bled into selfconfidence. She was starting her life over. She was starring in the Bollywood version of her breakout from Gauripur. Bangalore! Bangalore! A chorus of sweaty, spangled dancers circled her. Today's the day! Today's the day! They sang and shimmied. She felt male dancers lift her from the dreary world of Sunita Sampath. She floated free, the spirit of Mr. GG's Bangalore. Mr. GG, the love interest played by Shah Rukh Khan, awaited her in the next scene. She flashed on Ali swaying to a Bollywood soundtrack in Peter Champion's flat. She loved Ali. She loved Peter. She loved her sugar daddy, GG. Most of all, she loved the lithe, saucy, dancecrazy new Angie!

  TOOKIE ACCOSTED HER on the stairs late that afternoon as she made her way down to take a stroll in the neighborhood; better still, she wanted to drop in on the super-cool Darrens and Roxies at Barista. It wasn't enough to be seen by squatters and street vendors. She wanted to be envied by total strangers.

  "Honey, you look hot!" Tookie exclaimed. "Join me for a cappuccino? I'm meeting Reynaldo in a few." Then, with a wink, she added, "Just don't try to steal him from me."

  Anjali, channeling Angie, took a couple of strides back and forth and executed a half-twirl. "Foxy?"

  "Talking of stealing, isn't that Husseina's kameez?"

  Poor Tookie had no clue that she was about to be dumped. So why take offense at her question. "We traded."

  "Well, aren't you the sharp trader!" The working woman checked her imported imitation-ostrich pocketbook to make sure she had her company ID, cigarettes, and credit cards. "Our High and Mighty Miss H must be cracking up! Either that or she's up to hanky-panky with some boy other than that fabled fiancé stuck in London. I heard her go out last night, but I didn't hear her come back in. She's risking a dump."

  "I don't think she cares," Anjali said.

  "How do you know? Anyway, where has she gone?"

  Now it was Anjali's turn to play mysterious. "She said, 'Anywhere.'"

  "I'll find out from Rajoo. Nothing happens in town without Rajoo making it happen. I call him the Minister of the Night."

  "Your nighttime bad boy Rajoo?"

  "If a cappuccino sounds pretty good right now, let's get going. Reynaldo's a punctuality freak."

  Reynaldo, short, tubby, and hairy (except for a tawny balding spot on the crown), was on his second iced coffee when the two women arrived at Barista. The tip of the plastic straw was chewed flat, Anjali noticed. He was the fidgety anxious kind of date. No wonder Tookie kept Rajoo on the side. Since Mad Minnie's house rules did not permit partying on the premises, coffee houses and bars were where Tookie met her two men friends. Tookie had her work-and-fun routine down right: get on a shift from ten P.M. to six A.M., and you have plenty of time for hitting the pubs before being picked up at the Bagehot House front gate by the company minivan.

  In the restroom, Tookie confided that the best thing about Reynaldo was that he was undemandingly dull. Mister Moderation, she'd nicknamed him. Rajoo was Mister Too-Much. "I have this yin-and-yang thing going with them. How about you? What turns you on?"

  "I'm dying to find out." Anjali laughed.

  Reynaldo left soon after the women returned from the restroom. The oldest of his seven brothers, a pharmacist in Ontario, was sponsoring his application
for "landed immigrant" status in Canada, and he had a mountain of documents to put together.

  Tookie waved him off with a cheery "Ciao!" Her voice dropped to the low register of girlish intimacy. "I know what you're thinking. What do I see in Reynaldo?"

  "It never occurred to me to think that." Anjali lied. She sucked the last noisy sip of her iced coffee through her straw, then with her fingers she fished brownish ice chips one by one out of the glass and laid them on her tongue. Deal with that breach of table manners, Minnie!

  "If his visa comes through, I'll marry him and go to Canada. If it doesn't..." She put her helmet on. "Don't turn judgmental on me, girlfriend," she warned, leading the way back to her Bajaj Chetak. "Ready?"

  "Ready for what?"

  "To find out what turns you on, of course."

  They started out at Pubworld, where the big screen featured European videos and sound throbbing to the max. Did Angie see correctly? Was that Panzer Delight? Yes, it was, in a ten-year-old video, confirmed by a little identifier tag at the bottom right. She wanted to scream, "Look at me! I had that T-shirt!" but no one was watching, and no one could hear. Then they went on to Opus, where two crooners took turns singing and where Tookie bid on a bottle of champagne being auctioned off for charity, but was outbid by a glamorous woman with perfect teeth, whom Tookie identified as a TV celebrity. TV? Anjali thought, I haven't seen TV since I got to Bangalore! Who watches it, and who has the time? Their last stop of the night was Glitzworld, where Rajoo tended bar. Rajoo was Mister Too-Much all right: too pomaded, too flashy, too imperious, and too indiscriminately lecherous. With Anjali, however, Rajoo chose to act the gallant. He plucked her right hand off her lap when Tookie introduced them and held it up to his lips. She let her fingers rest on Rajoo's plump, moist lips, savoring a new confidence, wondering what did turn her on.