Bharati Mukherjee - Miss New India

I get no kick from Champagne,

Urbana too is a kind of a zoo,

But I know now what has to be true-

There's something sick coming off of you.

"Lyrics by Girish Gujral," said Bombay Girl. "He'll come over soon enough."

Angie knew the meaning of the words fuck, shit, asshole, though she'd never used them. Where do young Indians learn to use such language? What frightened her was the simple truth that if a boy from an American college, even a psychopath, had sent in his marital résumé, her father would have lunged at it. Any Indian going to any American school was, by definition, a catch.

"There's always the phone-sex line," Mike said. "You'd be way cool. They actually favor exotic names and Indian accents."

"A girl in our dorm went over to phone sex," said Suzie. "The money's good, but you have to find weird ways of keeping those guys talking."

"Not that you couldn't," said Mike.

"Oh, just shut up," said Suzie. She waited for silence. "You have something more you want to say… Mahendra? Oh, sorry, Mike."

My God, how a simple name change changes everything!

"Three hundred bucks a night weird, I hear," said Darren. Who was he in his pre-Bangalore life, Angie wondered. Dinesh? Dharmendra? "Pretty cool."

"One step up from the streets," snorted Roxie. And you, Roxie: Rupa? Rukhsana?

The women didn't seem jealous or possessive. Most of them were plump and the men already getting stout, like her father. Their friendships didn't seem like lead-ins to marriage. The young people in Bangalore had no parents, no nearby families to appease. No gossip or scandal could compromise them. They had come from all over India to get away from gossip.

It was exciting just to be part of such a flow, even for one morning, and to be carried along like a twig in a flood. She'd been accepted, no questions asked, even if she didn't understand most of what she'd been hearing. It was English, but… From her perch on the Barista's plaza, she could see the tops of skyscrapers flashing their international names in blue and red neon. She knew those companies: IBM, Canon, Siemens, Daihatsu. None of them existed in Gauripur. A Pizza Hut in Gauripur would automatically become the luxury hangout, the Place to Be Seen, and would draw longer lines than a cinema hall. In Gauripur there was only Alps Palace, a Welcome Group hotel with a vegetarian restaurant and innumerable tea stalls, where men sat or stood, sipping and spitting. For Gauripur's alcoholics there were two back-street liquor stores where bottles were wrapped in straw and newspaper and smuggled out in used plastic sacks with sari shop logos.

High on the side of one building she could read hand-painted placards: ENGLISH LESSENS. CALL-CENTRE PLACEMENT. FRESHERS TAKE NOTE. FOREGIN LANGUAGES TAUGHT; FRANCIAS, ESPAGNOL, ITALINO. She found it reassuring, as though they'd known she was coming and might need a brush-up course, even if Bangalore spelled words differently.

She would like to stay. Barista was comfortable, with a touch of conspicuous luxury and a hint of intrigue. The young people were just like her, open and friendly, and probably held the kind of job she was hoping to get. She'd heard that ten thousand agents a month were hired, and six or seven thousand quit or were let go. What could a girl buy, with fifteen thousand rupees coming in? For one thing, she could stop in a Barista and order cold coffee with ice cream and not think twice. For Angie, a lakh-100,000 rupees-represented a lifetime of scrimping and saving. In Bangalore, she could be earning a lakh, or even two lakhs, every month.

She was swept up in visions of stuffed clothing closets, a scooter, and an apartment of her own. Big-city ambitions; small-town desires. Her poor sister worked her fingers to the bone-fingers and more-for two thousand a month, if that. From a few tables away, a pleasant male voice spoke up. "Kew Gardens is on my way," but Angie was still lost in her future. In a few months, after promotions, before she turned twenty, she'd be earning more than her father, far more than her father.

Those pleasant words from a distant table had been meant for her. Suddenly there he was, in blue jeans, white shirt, and blue blazer, belt buckle at her eye level, dangling his car keys. He seemed slightly older than the others but still young, plump, and round-faced, with glasses: a harmless, even friendly face. "My name is Girish Gujral," he said. "They call me GG. I hear you need a ride to Kew Gardens. My Daewoo is at your service. Don't worry, it's on my way."

He kept on talking, but she couldn't make out the words. His lips were moving, but nothing got through to her. She thought she should stand, get closer, and shake his hand, but as she tried to rise, her legs went numb, then her head filled with light, her knees buckled, and she was falling against him. He threw his arms around her, keeping her half-standing, then let her down to the ground, easily. She saw faces, all the girls and some of the boys she'd been watching, arranged in a semicircle around her. Mr. GG cradled her head in his hand and shouted to the others, "Get toast and juice." Then, to her, he almost whispered, "When did you last eat?"

"This morning." She lied.

"Not to pry, but are you by any chance diabetic?" he asked. She was offended; diabetes was for old people.

"Of course not."

"So it's just my manly charm?"

"Pardon me?"

She didn't know where she was. Lights kept spinning behind Mr. GG's head. Her head was a big, hollow, swaying balloon; her legs and arms were numb. Then she was drinking the juice and tearing off mouthfuls of toast.

A minute later, she was back in her chair. The world had stopped spinning, and Mr. GG was buttering another stack of toast. He said, "You're looking much better." He pushed the platter closer to her. "You seem to have fallen in my lap. What am I to do with you?"

Just like that, she made the lightning calculation: She who hesitates is lost. She who worries over the future or her reputation or skimps on comforts and counts only the rupees in her pocketbook and not the dreams inside her Samsonite, she who dwells on can-it-get-any-worse, and not pie-in-the-sky, cannot compete.

"My name is Angie Bose," she said, introducing herself to him formally. "Thank you for the offer of the ride."

A COURTLY STRANGER had offered her a free ride to Kew Gardens, wherever that was, and she'd been in Bangalore not much more than an hour. In Gauripur the only answer would be a polite "Thank you, no." But in Bangalore? "Why not?" was the smart answer.

Besides, she didn't have to own up to anyone at Barista that she had spent all her life in Gauripur. She didn't even have to be Angie Bose; she could invent a flashy Bollywoodish first name, like Dimple or Twinkle or Sprinkle. Why not? No one in Bangalore seemed to be stuck with a discernible identity. She could kill off Angie Bose, and who would know, or care? She could be anything she wanted, a Hindi-speaking girl from Varanasi or a Brahmin from Kolkata. Who do you want to be? Bangalore doesn't care. Bangalore will accommodate any story line. She could eliminate her parents and her sister. No, she couldn't bring herself to do that, but she could make them more solidly, more powerfully middle-class.

The man who'd called himself GG led the way out of Barista to a sleek Daewoo sedan parked at the curb. Let the story line of her life write itself! Like a typical Bollywood heroine-the eternal innocent, the trusting small-town girl placing herself at the mercy of a confident, benevolent older man-she climbed into the stranger's car. She'd seen this movie a hundred times.

Anjali Bose decided she'd already encountered at least one version of every likely male she would ever meet. Not every man was as befuddled as Nirmal Gupta, or a bully like her father, or a rapist like Subodh Mitra, or a lying cheat like Sonali's ex-husband, or an exploiter like Sonali's current boss, or a brutish john like the truck drivers of Nizambagh. Some were kind but twisted, like Peter Champion. All the fifty-odd matrimonial candidates she'd rejected had to belong in one of those categories. Any young man she had recently met, or might in the future, would fit into one of them-everyone except maybe Rabi Chatterjee. It would be interesting to see where Mr. GG and his big silver Daewoo fit in. In broad daylight in a big city she felt she had nothing to fear.