Miss New India Read Online Free PDF Page B

printing the invitations. There is no more to be said!" Her sister had run to her room to cry; her groans had filled the house.
    "Give me a knife! Give me poison!" she'd screamed.
    Then she emerged two hours later, pale, dry-eyed, and submissive.
    "You are right, Father," she said. "I have been behaving badly." She'd dressed herself in a new brocade sari and raided the stash of dowry gold. Arms heavy with bangles, earrings brushing her bare shoulders, necklaces and chokers disappearing under the sari-fold into her bosom, she said, "Just as you see me now, so will you see me when I am dead."
    Anjali remembered the chaos of the marriage ceremony itself. Invitations had been delivered to every Bengali family in Gauripur, but the presents were tawdry—outdated saris, cheap purses, re-gifted lemonade sets, an electric table fan, and nine flat envelopes, each containing 101 rupees in cash. Because Angie had a neat hand, her parents had assigned her the duty of keeping an accurate record of the wedding gifts. The food had run short, drawing churlish comments from the bride groom's party. The priest had abbreviated the marriage rites and afterward complained about the poor quality of the silk dhoti-punjabi he had received from the bride's stingy family. A troop of hijras had shown up in their gaudy saris, with flower wreaths, plastic baubles, and bright lipstick on their leering male faces. They extorted money for their stumbling dances, frightening the children and even Anjali with their lewd sexual gestures, their deep voices, their braided hair and spreading bald spots. Her wedding, Anjali vowed, would have glamour and dignity.
    And so it went, with variations, night after night in the Bose household. But during the day, with Mr. Bose away in the office, Mrs. Bose hatched new plans. "In six months," her mother practically chirped, "you will be a married woman." She reeled off common Kayastha-caste surnames: a Mrs. Das, Mrs. Ghosh, Mrs. Dasgupta, Mrs. Mitter, Mrs. De, Mrs. Sen, Mrs. Sinha, Mrs. Bhowmick. "You will have a new house in a new city with a new family of brothers, sisters, and parents. You'll become a whole different person." As appealing as a new family might sound in the abstract, it surely meant future entombment.
    Mr. Bose didn't have access to a computer at work and did not know how to use the Internet. He asked around for help, for anyone's son or daughter who might have a computer to come to his rescue, but the computers were in the college and the college was on summer break until the monsoons started. Neighbors suggested names, everyone recommended Bengaliweddings.com as the most reliable website with the widest distribution. There was a boy in the neighborhood, Nirmal Gupta, called Sure-Bet-IIT Gupta, a classmate of Anjali's and a genius with computers. Go to Nirmal, the Boses were told. Truly, it takes a village to marry off a daughter. Mr. Bose sent the word to distant relatives in Kolkata and alerted managerial-level colleagues at work that he was on the lookout for a jamai for his number-two daughter.
    All of the adult mysteries were about to unfold, her mother told Anjali. One's secret fate, hidden behind the stars, would suddenly burst forth like a seed in fertile soil, nurtured by sun and rain. The One True Mate whose destiny had been waiting for this glorious conjunction since the beginning of time would materialize in all his worshipful strength and beauty.
    This was parent-talk from the other side of the great modern divide. Mrs. Bose was silent on what Sonali, in her first month as wife, saucily confided to Anjali about men's "animal nature." The sisters had giggled over Sonali's graphic descriptions of marriage-bed drama. Angie doubted that her father, even in his youth, had been endowed with animal nature. Her mother could not possibly have ever expected, let alone experienced, conjugal delirium with her father. Angie wished she could ask her mother what shape her dreams of married life had taken