Bharati Mukherjee - Miss New India

There's now a spirits store on LBS Road. No more back-alley booze. The atrium restaurant serves cocktails, Indian wines, and beer.

Our mayor predicts a promising future for Gauripur, just as placards outside Pinky Mahal once did. When Pizza Hut opened a branch, he announced, "Imprisoned inside every clerk in Gauripur is a painter or musician or poet. No one will ever feel the necessity to leave Gauripur. We will have schools for music, for art, for science, for medicine. We will have a subway, mark my words! My ambition is to nurture the next Hussein, the next Ravi Shankar, nothing less."

SHE AND PARVATI flew to Ranchi, then hired a car and driver to Gauripur. Anjali had, in effect, been adopted, and Parvati wanted to see it all-the school, the old neighborhood, the studio where Rabi had photographed her-and to meet Peter Champion on his turf, not hers. "Truly," Parvati said, "it must be a magical place, no? How fortunate for you to have been born in such a nurturing town, simmering with potential, just before it took off." Was it the refocusing of eight months' exile or an authentic change? Anjali couldn't tell, but Gauripur wasn't the desert she remembered and had been describing. It was a city; it extended ten kilometers in every direction from Nehru Park. And Nehru Park was refurbished by the Volunteers for Beautification Committee. Children were climbing on slides and pumping their legs on new sets of swings.

She walked the familiar streets with Parvati, but now she saw changes-maybe they'd always been there-a cinema house, the Bihar State Emporium, and apartment blocks rising from razed, abandoned estates. "What a charming town!" Parvati exclaimed, against Anjali's every unstated objection. "This is the Old India!" she said. "I can see what Peter was talking about that night at Minnie's! Poor Minnie."

And so they made their way down LBS Boulevard to Peter's apartment. Evening was falling, and terra-cotta dias lighted the outside stairs. Even before they started to climb, the blue door opened, and there was Peter at the top of the stairs, pushing a much-aged, almost unrecognizable Ali in a wheelchair. "Welcome, welcome," he called. They must have seen behind him, in the well-lit apartment, the crowd of friends and students he'd invited for the talk. Ali smiled and raised his hand in greeting.