Bharati Mukherjee - Miss New India

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?"