Bharati Mukherjee - Miss New India

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.

Young men were pounding the bar for more drinks. He ignored them. A scrawny young busboy brought out two trays of still-dripping glasses from the kitchen and arranged them by highball, beer, and wine. "Lalu!" Rajoo snapped his fingers and pointed to heaps of plates and glasses stashed in plastic bins under the bar. "Idiot." He apologized to Anjali. "What to expect? Your friend Sunita's stupid brother."

Before she could respond-the very idea of Rajoo's hiring Sunita's brother and the possibility that Rajoo, from behind a bar on Brigades Road, controlled an empire of hirings and real estate placement sent her spinning-Rajoo leaned forward simply to stare at her face.

"You've got to say this about Tookie," he said. "She has the prettiest friends in Bangalore."

Anjali took advantage of Tookie's new, almost fawning, admiration for her to set up a visit to the campus of Trans-Oceanic Services (TOS), Tookie's all-night home. That way, she reasoned, she would experience a day at a call center, gaining a decided edge over other students at CCI. Except for rare trips to her father's railway building in Gauripur to bring him a file or spectacles or acid reflux pills, she had never been inside a business office. And Bangalore office complexes were vaster, glitzier, scarier than the long dusty room with rows of wobbly wooden chairs and file-cluttered wooden desks in which her father had worked. Tookie acted eager to do Anjali a favor. Security was tight in all downtown glass-tower office buildings, but she would get her "badass beau" Rajoo to call the head security officer of TOS. "I'll switch to a day shift for the next couple of weeks, girlfriend." She even offered Anjali a bonus: she would arrange for Moni, "the Bengali Svengali," to bump into her.

It was available, the world that she, Anjali/Angie, aspired to. She did aspire to it, didn't she? In any case, it was a challenge, and challenges turned her on. She had no idea of the entrance requirements, or if she had the skills and the stamina to stick it out. She knew only that she was a young woman with a very slight advantage, and she'd better grab Bangalore and whatever it offered, or else she'd end up living her sister's life.