Vikas Swarup - Six Suspects

How I met my dream girl is one heck of a story. I'm convinced that all marriages are made in heaven. And it's God who decides who will marry whom, and when. So he makes some guys, like my old school mate Randy Earl, who have no trouble at all in scoring with girls. And then he makes some, like me, who, well, have to wait a bit longer, being shy and all. Guess I was just born that way. Not that I am bad looking or ugly, like Johnny Scarface, my foreman. His mom probably had to tie a porkchop around his neck so the dog would play with him. I'm just your ordinary sort of guy. Mr Joe Average. I'm five feet, seven inches tall, and Sandy, my-tenyear- old niece, says that if my face was a little rounder, my nose a bit smaller, my hair a shade darker, and my weight fifty pounds lower, I'd look just like Michael J. Fox! But not to worry, I am working on both my height and weight. I've been using KIMI, the scientifically developed height-increasing device by Dr Kawata which promises to make me three inches taller in just six months, and I'm regularly taking the Chinese Miracle Slimming Powder which I bought off the Home Shopping Network.

Anyway, Mom was getting seriously worried about me turning twenty-eight and still being a bachelor and had begun wondering whether I might be gay, till the folks at International PenPals fixed all that. In return for a nominal membership fee of $39.99 (payable in four instalments of $9.99 each), they gave me the addresses of seven beautiful girls who wanted to become friends with me. Now that's what I call too much of a good thing. I mean, try juggling seven girlfriends all at once. The girls were from all over the world, including places I didn't even know existed. In ABC order, I had Alifa from Afghanistan, Florese from East Timor, Jennifer from Fiji, Laila from Iran, Lolita from Latvia, Raghad from Kosovo and Sapna from India. I wrote to all of them, introducing myself and asking them to reply. And they wrote back, each and every one of them. There was one problem, though. Three of them didn't know good English. I mean it's kind of difficult to carry on a decent conversation when you receive a letter which says, 'Daer Larry, Braenbooking a hello you too. Mares fioggicku. I wanna lioxi plean. Amerika goot place for a leev. Loov you.' Some of the letters were, well, too perplexing. The girls from Afghanistan, East Timor and Iran just talked about the political problems in their countries. And the one from Fiji asked for my credit-card number in the very first letter. Now that I thought was being too upfront. The girl from Latvia was more modest. 'Hello Larry. I'm Lolita,' she wrote. 'I am sixteen years old. I want to be friends with you. Call me on 011-371-7521111.' I thought she was a bit young for me, but you can't tell how deep a well is just by measuring the length of the pump handle. So I called Lolita up. I think she must have a bad case of asthma, because all I got was heavy breathing for, like, five minutes and I freaked out when I got my phone bill and found that the call had cost me $57.49. So that was the end of my friendship with Lolita. Eventually I was left only with the girl from India, Sapna Singh. She wrote me the most wonderful letter, telling me of her brave struggle against cruelty and oppression. She was so poor she didn't even have a telephone. It brought tears to my eyes, made me remember my own struggle to become the best hi-lo driver in Texas. I replied, she replied back. Two months later we exchanged pictures. Till then I had considered Tina Gabaldon, Miss Hooters International 2003, to be the best-looking filly in the field. But one look at Sapna's photo and I knew I had been wrong. She was the most beautiful girl in the universe and I fell head over heels in love with her.

Gathering all the courage I could muster, I proposed to her in June this year. Amazingly, she accepted, making me happier than a rooster in a hen house. I began learning Hindi. She began learning how to make chocolate brownies, my favourite dessert. We fixed a date for the wedding in India. She requested five grand to make the preparations. I was broke as a church mouse, but I begged and scrimped and saved and wired her the money. Three weeks ago she sent me our wedding card. And now I'm off to New Delhi to marry the woman of my dreams.

'Hi y'all! Howdy!' I greeted the two pretty air hostesses who welcomed me on to the United Airlines plane that was taking me to India. The aircraft was huge, almost as big as the Starplex Cinema in Waco. Another tall air hostess directed me to my seat, 116B. It was one of the best seats in the plane, right at the end, and very conveniently located too, bang next to the john.

I put my bag underneath my feet and settled down. Today really seemed to be my lucky day. I was in the middle seat, flanked by a blonde sitting next to the window and a dark, Indian-looking guy wearing a red Hilfiger T-shirt and a Dodgers baseball cap.

The blonde was reading a magazine called Time. 'Excuse me, Ma'am.' I doffed my hat and tapped her arm. 'Where are you headed to?'

She shrank away from me like I had the chickenpox and gave me a look which would make a porcupine seem cuddly. I turned to the youth on my left, who seemed more friendly.

'So how's yer momma and them?' I asked him.

He looked at me like a calf at a new gate. 'Excuse me, what did you say?'

Quite clearly the guy wasn't from Texas. 'Aap kehse hain?' I asked in my best Hindi.

'I am fine,' he replied in English.

'Kya aap bhi India jaa rahe hain?'

'Hey man, why are you talking to me in that strange lingo? I don't speak Hindi.'

'But… but you are Indian!' I blurted out.

'Correction, dude. I'm American,' he said and whipped out a blue passport from his front pocket. 'See the bald eagle on the cover? That's American, man.'

'Oh!' I said and fell silent.

Before the plane took off, the air hostess did some hand exercises and made us watch a safety video. I was busy memorizing the instructions given on the card in the seat pocket, but none of the other passengers seemed to be bothered about what would happen to them if the plane fell into the water. And before I knew it, we were flying.

The air hostess returned after a while, trundling a metal buggy loaded with bottles and cans.

'What would you like to drink, Sir?' she asked me sweetly.

'Coke, please,' I told her.

'I am sorry, Sir. We seem to have run out of Coke. Will Pepsi do?'

'Yeah,' I nodded. 'That's Coke too. How much?'

'It's free, Sir,' she said and smiled.

The Indian looked at me curiously. 'Are you flying for the first time?' he asked.

'Yeah,' I replied and extended my hand. 'We've howdied but we ain't shook yet. Hi, I'm Larry Page.'

'Larry Page?' He seemed impressed. 'You know you have the same name as the inventor of Google.'

'Yeah, everyone keeps telling me that. Isn't Google something to do with computers?'

'Correct. It's a search engine for the internet.'

'Johnny Scarface, my foreman, is always on his computer. But I know as much about the internet as a pig knows about playing the piano.'

'Not to worry,' he said and grasped my hand. 'Glad to meet you, Larry. My name's Lalatendu Bidyadhar Prasad Mohapatra, Biddy for short.'

'What do you do, Biddy? You look like a college student.'

'Yeah. I'm a sophomore at the University of Illinois, planning a double major in microelectronics and nanotechnology. And what do you do?'

'I'm your friendly forklift operator at the Walmart Supercenter in Round Rock, Texas. That's the one off I-35, Exit 251. Any time you happen to pass by, stop in and holler at me. I'd appreciate it. Might even get you a five per cent discount.'

That broke the ice between us. Ten seconds later we were talking like old buddies at a school reunion. Biddy began telling me all about some project that he was doing with some stuff called super-cooled conductors. Before I knew it, I was telling him everything about my trip to India and about Sapna.