Bharati Mukherjee - Miss New India

"Tookie said you'd be perfect for a cover. She didn't exaggerate." He followed this up with a brief Bangla poem she didn't recognize.

"Isn't it a little early for poetry?" she asked. "Anyway," to discourage further excursions into the thicket of modern literary Bangla, she added, "I'm here to learn better English."

"I can teach you that. St. Louis English anyway. No, make that SoCalspeak, since Santa Monica's my latest home base. Or was." He wriggled his fingers as if to magically conjure up a scene. "Pretend it's nighttime in California," he said. "Actually, it really is. It's about two in the morning. We're on a blanket on a beach in Santa Monica. We have a bottle of nice, light red wine. The moon hides behind a cloud. A slight chill comes off the water. The stars wink in and out. I pour, and we drink. We're watching the planes rising from LAX, or coming in."

She liked this make-believe game about being romanced on a beach with a lilting name by a Bengali-American MBA with a dimpled chin and floppy hair. A chill was an inspired touch. The suitor would offer his jacket, lean close, and drape it over her shoulders.

" Really, Mr. Lahiri," she exclaimed as though he really had done so.

He looked amused. "Really," he repeated. "But you don't need lessons. Your English is good enough."

Only good enough? What did that mean, in the Bangalore world? Good enough for what-some dead-end job talking to Mukky Sharma? Or the sex lines-is that where they put Indian girls who were just good enough? Where an accent is advantageous? She envied Moni Lahiri's ease in both Bangla and English. She envied people blessed with two mother tongues. Her English was good, but it would never be a mother tongue.

He seemed unaware of having hurt her feelings. "I've got a confession," he said, his voice soft with guilt. And he did lean close to her, so close that she was afraid she would impulsively touch his shoulder with hers, or worse, run her fingers through his straight, fine hair. "I'm not really a wastrel. I came back to India because this is where the money is, money and opportunity. I didn't want to be just another unhappy American doctor having to toe the HMO line. Like Baba and Dada."

The country was being overrun with repatriates and immigrants. India had become the land of milk and honey for everyone except young people born and raised in Gauripur. It wasn't fair! Moni Lahiri had seduced her with fantasy games of wine and sand, only to betray her.

"C'mon, Miss Bose, you've got the most expressive face in the world-you're angry at me, but I'm not sure why. Why?"

"Everyone here comes from somewhere else."

"In Bangalore, that might be true. That's the reason for this. " He pulled a publication from the middle of the stack. "You'll be the star of the next issue."

" This? "

"It's my baby. The Bangla HotBook of Bangalore. " He handled the booklet tenderly. It was the seventh edition of a directory that listed names, phone numbers, and local addresses, plus hometowns, of the three thousand newly arrived Bengalis in Bangalore. "Only singles, of course. And newly singles. I've put my MBA skills to use."

She'd thought it was a book of pictures, shots of models like the girl on the cover. She flipped through the pages. There were sections announcing Bangla "First Date" mixers, and for the straitlaced, puja celebrations; announcements of who had been promoted, who was looking to date, and which Bangla-friendly companies were hiring, along with ads and discounts at restaurants and discos. Then she studied the list of names: two full pages of Boses, even three other Anjali Boses, along with rows and rows of the usual Bangla names, the Banerjees and Chatterjees, the Dases, Duttas, Ghoses, Guhas, and Sens, skipping ahead to the Roys and Sinhas. Then, suddenly anxious, she flipped back a few pages: Mitra, Subodh. Home address: Asansol. So he hadn't been lying; he'd actually worked in Bangalore. And maybe he was still here.

"Something the matter?" Moni asked.

In her most innocent voice she asked, "Who's this Subodh Mitra?"

"Nice guy, but not the sharpest knife, if you get my drift. You know him?"

The thought of Subodh Mitra slicing his way through Bangalore with a dull knife brought back all the terror: the dark mango grove, the rusting rebars, the blood on her sari. She was no longer under an umbrella in sunny Bangalore. "The name sounded a little familiar."

"Tall guy, a little heavy? He left here a couple of months back, off to Bengal to find a wife, he said. Going through hundreds of bridal pictures finally got to him. One day he ran up to me and said, 'Moni! I found her! Miss Perfection!' You had to be happy for the guy. He was gone the next day."

She tried to hide her disappointment. Any friend of Subodh Mitra was no friend of hers. The itching stopped. For no particular reason, except perhaps to press her bona fides, she said, "I might have been that girl"

He dropped the directory on the stack of magazines. "No way. Subodh's a nice enough guy, but no way cool enough for you."

And how cool am I, Mr. Lahiri? But she didn't ask. They sat there for another few minutes. The tables near them filled up. She waited for him to ask her out. Her father would have considered Moni Lahiri, MBA, with homes in America and India, the "perfect boy," but the perfect boy was slipping through her fingers. Was there something she should do, should say? "I have to get back," he said. He handed her the copy of The Bangla HotBook. He didn't ask to see her again. Rabi had given her a phone number, Mr. GG had given her a ride, and Peter Champion had given her money. Moni gave nothing, yet she felt connected somehow.

"Do you have a cell-phone number to list in The HotBook? "

She said she didn't. Bagehot House was the most temporary address in Bangalore. A cell phone was an unimaginable luxury.

He scrawled a number on the back cover of the directory. "Anytime," he said.

She watched him stride to the elevator and hop in just as the door was closing. It was his fault that she felt newly abandoned. She visualized the two of them walking, side by side, on the crisp, green spaces of the TOS compound. She felt his body against her, and her arms, her back were itchy. She wanted someone to scratch them. She wanted to hold her arms out to Moni Lahiri, but he was already gone.

Just like that, a Bangalore legend enters my life, and then he's gone. Like the dancers in a Bollywood movie, a flash of skin, a hint of hidden wonders, then in a second they're gone.

Today's the day, every day's the day: she felt that rush again.

She wasn't so far from the place where she had made her first grand entrance into Bangalore, her lucky spot, the Barista on MG Road. Things that had confused her just a few weeks earlier were starting to clear up. In her red kameez and cream-colored salwar and expensive makeup, and after weeks of fattening up on Minnie's potatoes and mutton stew, she was steadier on her feet. Tookie said she had that Bagehot House greasy glow. At least she wouldn't pass out.

The scene of her Bangalore Grand Entrance was a cheap rickshaw ride away.

The tables were full but the mood was subdued, lacking the high-spirited silliness and cast of characters she had encountered on her first morning in Bangalore: no Mumbai Girl or overly friendly Mike, no Millie the chain smoker or Suzie with the butterfly breasts. Maybe they were on different shifts; maybe they'd moved on to newer IT call-center hubs that were luring away Bangalore veterans with better pay. Out on the fringes of the coffee sippers she spotted Mr. GG hunched over his computer. She bought a small coffee and moved in his direction.

Mr. GG wasn't as dashing a figure as she remembered from the night of Mad Minnie's gala. In just two weeks it seemed he'd aged and softened into a short, squat man, with hair thinning on top. She remembered looking down on Peter Champion's balding head, the mosquitoes landing but not swatted away. There were no mosquitoes in Bangalore, at least not this month. The buttons of Mr. GG's white shirt strained against his belly. Like her pot-bellied father, she thought, and like the young people in Bangalore, getting fat on snacks as they worked through the night, fat on cafeteria food, fat on beer and savories after work, fat on being free and rich and away from home.