Seeing a man, isn't it?"
"You think a secretary is just a secretary?" Sonali asked. "You're such a child still." She gave the pillow a whack with her palm before slipping a pillowcase over it. "Men are men, they're all the same. You don't have to lead them on, it's in their nature." Piyali whimpered in her sleep, and Sonali immediately lowered her voice. "Look at us," she muttered, "take a good look at Piyali and me, do you really think I'm better off being divorced? Do you have any idea what the word
divorced
means to any man? It means 'Take it, it's free.' Wouldn't I be better off married, no matter what?"
"You had no choice, Sonali-di! He practically moved those women into your flat!"
"What do you know? Nothing, you know nothing, and you come to my house and lecture me? This handsome Mr. Mitra of yours thought—no, he was positive—that he was Baba's choice of jamai. What he does to you
before
the wedding or
after,
does it matter that much? Does it matter enough to ruin other people's lives? Four lives, in my case. Baba's and Ma's, Piyali's and mine?"
And so the great divide was not just the thirty years that separated Anjali from her parents—that wasn't a divide, it was a chasm—but the five years between her and her sister. Five years ago, Sonali had capitulated to her parents' demands. Five years ago, it would have been impossible for Sonali to have resisted, and fled. A wife might conceivably leave her properly arranged husband and move back in with her parents, even divorce him for cruelty or drunkenness, but never for the laughable motive of personal happiness.
"But you sent me money, didi," Angie said. "You're the one who told me not to cripple myself." Every few months, Sonali had sent her small money orders and inland air-letters, care of an unmarried, club-footed girlfriend she had gone to Hindi medium school with.
"That was for clothes and whatnot," she said. "It wasn't meant to heap more shame on the family."
That night, lying with her niece on the chowki while her sister "stepped out," Anjali thought about how the world had gone mad. Sonali was jealous of her sister's still-open future, Anjali decided, because she could do what Sonali hadn't. In just a day, India had gone from something green and lush and beautiful to something barren and hideous. Her sister had deserted her, and her parents were prepared to marry her off to a monster whose father demanded a set of golf clubs.
THERE ARE WAYS of crossing India by overnight buses, short-haul trains, even by flagging down truck drivers, but very few that single young women would ever try. The discomfort, especially at night, as cold air and rain blasted through the open windows and men relieved themselves anywhere, then crawled about, feigning sleep in order to grope the sari-bundled women: intolerable. If she spoke to no one and answered no questions and requested no favors—posed, in fact, as a tourist on the model of an Indo-American like Rabi—she prayed no one would dare bother her.
At a crossroads village south of Nagpur in eastern Maharashtra, near the Andhra Pradesh border—really just a cluster of tea stalls and a petrol pump called Nizambagh—prostitutes and their children, and maybe just desperate women fleeing their villages for work in cities, swarmed the parked row of long-haul trucks. The women were lined up, holding their babies, and the drivers lifted their lungis and the women climbed onto the running boards and performed their services. It was not a view of India from behind a limousine window. Anjali walked like a ghost past the trucks; nothing shocked her, nothing disgusted her. She could see herself armed with a knife or a gun, walking down the row of trucks parked at night and executing every single driver and his helper. If hell and all the citizens of damnation had an Indian address, it was here. If she ever saw Rabi again, she'd have something to tell him. Had he been here? Had he caught this picture?
Somewhere down
"You think a secretary is just a secretary?" Sonali asked. "You're such a child still." She gave the pillow a whack with her palm before slipping a pillowcase over it. "Men are men, they're all the same. You don't have to lead them on, it's in their nature." Piyali whimpered in her sleep, and Sonali immediately lowered her voice. "Look at us," she muttered, "take a good look at Piyali and me, do you really think I'm better off being divorced? Do you have any idea what the word
divorced
means to any man? It means 'Take it, it's free.' Wouldn't I be better off married, no matter what?"
"You had no choice, Sonali-di! He practically moved those women into your flat!"
"What do you know? Nothing, you know nothing, and you come to my house and lecture me? This handsome Mr. Mitra of yours thought—no, he was positive—that he was Baba's choice of jamai. What he does to you
before
the wedding or
after,
does it matter that much? Does it matter enough to ruin other people's lives? Four lives, in my case. Baba's and Ma's, Piyali's and mine?"
And so the great divide was not just the thirty years that separated Anjali from her parents—that wasn't a divide, it was a chasm—but the five years between her and her sister. Five years ago, Sonali had capitulated to her parents' demands. Five years ago, it would have been impossible for Sonali to have resisted, and fled. A wife might conceivably leave her properly arranged husband and move back in with her parents, even divorce him for cruelty or drunkenness, but never for the laughable motive of personal happiness.
"But you sent me money, didi," Angie said. "You're the one who told me not to cripple myself." Every few months, Sonali had sent her small money orders and inland air-letters, care of an unmarried, club-footed girlfriend she had gone to Hindi medium school with.
"That was for clothes and whatnot," she said. "It wasn't meant to heap more shame on the family."
That night, lying with her niece on the chowki while her sister "stepped out," Anjali thought about how the world had gone mad. Sonali was jealous of her sister's still-open future, Anjali decided, because she could do what Sonali hadn't. In just a day, India had gone from something green and lush and beautiful to something barren and hideous. Her sister had deserted her, and her parents were prepared to marry her off to a monster whose father demanded a set of golf clubs.
THERE ARE WAYS of crossing India by overnight buses, short-haul trains, even by flagging down truck drivers, but very few that single young women would ever try. The discomfort, especially at night, as cold air and rain blasted through the open windows and men relieved themselves anywhere, then crawled about, feigning sleep in order to grope the sari-bundled women: intolerable. If she spoke to no one and answered no questions and requested no favors—posed, in fact, as a tourist on the model of an Indo-American like Rabi—she prayed no one would dare bother her.
At a crossroads village south of Nagpur in eastern Maharashtra, near the Andhra Pradesh border—really just a cluster of tea stalls and a petrol pump called Nizambagh—prostitutes and their children, and maybe just desperate women fleeing their villages for work in cities, swarmed the parked row of long-haul trucks. The women were lined up, holding their babies, and the drivers lifted their lungis and the women climbed onto the running boards and performed their services. It was not a view of India from behind a limousine window. Anjali walked like a ghost past the trucks; nothing shocked her, nothing disgusted her. She could see herself armed with a knife or a gun, walking down the row of trucks parked at night and executing every single driver and his helper. If hell and all the citizens of damnation had an Indian address, it was here. If she ever saw Rabi again, she'd have something to tell him. Had he been here? Had he caught this picture?
Somewhere down