Miss New India

By Bharati Mukherjee

Anjali Bose’s prospects don’t look great. Born into a traditional lower-middle‑class family, she lives in a backwater town with only an arranged marriage on the horizon. But her ambition, charm, and fluency in language do not go unnoticed by her charismatic and influential expat teacher Peter Champion. And champion her he does, both to powerful people who can help her along the way and to Anjali herself, stirring in her a desire to take charge of her own destiny. So she sets off to Bangalore, India’s fastest‑growing metropolis, and soon falls in with an audacious and ambitious crowd of young people, who have learned how to sound American by watching shows like Seinfeld in order to get jobs in call centers, where they quickly out‑earn their parents. And it is in this high‑tech city where Anjali — suddenly free of the confines of class, caste, and gender — is able to confront her past and reinvent herself. Of course, the seductive pull of life in the New India does not come without a dark side . . .

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Apr 18, 2011
• ISBN: 9780547549095

Bharati Mukherjee

Winner of a National Book Critic’s Circle Award, BHARATI MUKHERJEE is the author of eight novels, two story collections, and the coauthor of two books of nonfiction. She is a professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley.

Book preview

PART ONE

1

Through the car horns and jangle of an Indian street at market hour came the cry Anjali! but Anjali was not the name she answered to. Over blaring music from open-front shops she heard it again, sharper for its foreign edge: Anjali!

At nineteen, Anjali Bose was a tall girl, one hundred and seventy-three centimeters—five foot eight—taller than most boys in her college. She was on the girls’ field hockey team. She smiled readily and when she did, she could light up a room like a halogen lamp. The conventional form of Indian femininity projects itself through long-lashed, kohl-rimmed, startled black eyes. Modest women know to glance upward from a slightly bowed head. Anjali did not take in the world with saucer-eyed passivity. Her light, greenish eyes were set off by high cheekbones and prominent brows. Her face resolved itself along a long jaw and generous mouth, with full lips and prominent teeth. Her parents, looking to the day they would have to marry her off, worried openly about her overly assertive features. But the rare foreigners who passed through town, health workers or financial aid consultants for international agencies, found her looks striking and her boldness charming. Speaking to them, she sometimes claimed a touch of Burmese or Nepali ancestry. She told many stories, all of them plausible, some of them perhaps even true. She always made an outstanding first impression.

On any street at market hour in the provincial town of Gauripur, in the state of Bihar, there could be a dozen Anjalis—offerings to god—but no man not a relative would dare call them by name. Most of those other Anjalis would be married, hobbled by saris, carrying infants or clutching the hands of toddlers while their husbands haggled for fish and vegetables. To be hailed from the street by a man on a scooter would be scandalous. The call had to be for her, the strider in jeans and a T-shirt advertising the maiden tour (Hamburg, Stuttgart, Köln, Basel, Zürich, Wien, Bratislava—she loved the umlauts) of Panzer Delight, a German punk-rock band, some few years back—the young woman who could wait to be called by the name she preferred, Angela, or better yet, Angie. A rusty old Lambretta scooter, the kind that had been popular with Gauripur’s office workers way back in the 1960s, braked to a wheezing stop; its driver waved and nudged it toward her through the blue diesel smoke from buses and trucks, the dense clutter of handcarts and bicycles: swollen, restless India on the move.

She was standing outside Gauripur Bazaar, known locally as Pinky Mahal, the town’s three-story monument to urban progress. When Pinky Mahal was being built, bricks had been carried, one by one, by dozens of child laborers hired by the day. Rows of women workers had threaded their way along single planks, balancing bowls of cement on their heads and then dumping the contents into plastic buckets. During the construction a corporate billboard had stood on Lal Bahadur Shastri (LBS) Road, an epic portrait to feed a credulous public: a magnificent, five-story office tower behind a small landscaped forest of shade and flowering trees, lawns, fountains, and sundials. On the billboard turbaned doormen greeted the gleaming row of imported cars pulling up at the building’s entrance. And above the turbaned heads floated two legends: YOUR NEW CORPORATE HDQS IN BEAUTFUL, EXCITING GAURIPUR! and ACT NOW! COMMERCIAL SPACE GOING FAST!

Fanciful renderings of a future that would never come.

The office tower, with three stories instead of the advertised five, was completed in a year, but within six months of its ceremonial opening the pink outer plaster had begun to crumble, leaving long veins of exposed brick. The contractor claimed that the pink paint was sour and had reacted to the sweet plaster. Acid and alkaline, the developer explained to the press, then absconded to the Persian Gulf. And so Pinky Mahal, its two top floors unoccupied, its ground floor leased and subleased by owners of small shops who put up with fluctuating electrical service and no air conditioning because of the low rent, had become an eyesore rather than a proud monument in the center of town.

When Pinky Mahal failed, the spirit of Gauripur was crushed.

Then the call came again, slightly revised: Angie!

Mr. Champion pulled his scooter into the safety of the gutter, and Anjali towered above him, standing on the high edge of the cracked sidewalk. She hadn’t seen much of her former teacher in the twelve months since she’d graduated from Vasco da Gama High School and enrolled in Vasco da Gama College’s B. Comm. program. During that time he’d grown a reddish beard speckled with gray. A patched book bag was slung over his shoulder, and he still wore his trademark handloom cotton kurta over blue jeans. From her elevated vantage point, she saw that his hair was thinning. Mosquitoes buzzed over the bald spot. They landed, but he appeared not to notice.

He had to be over fifty, considering that he’d been in Bihar for nearly thirty years, but was still so slim and energetic that he seemed boyish. All American men—within the tiny compass of her experience—seemed boyish. Her father, a railway clerk, was younger than Mr. Champion but looked older. It was impossible to think of her stout father, with his peremptory voice and officious manners, in anything but the role of upholstered patriarch. He would never wear a wrinkled shirt in public or shirtsleeves to the office, and he had never owned blue jeans.

I thought you were leaving, the American said. Then, with more emphasis, "In fact, I thought you told me you were leaving, and that was months ago."

When in doubt, smile. She smiled. I like your beard, Mr. Champion.

I’m not your teacher anymore, Anjali. You can call me Peter.

Only if you call me Angie.

She’d had a secret crush on her teacher her last three years at Vasco da Gama High School, though, like all other da Gama students speaking to teachers, she’d addressed him as sir and Mr. Champion to his face, and as the American behind his back. He was the only layman under sixty and the only white man in the school run by Goan and South Indian priests.

Angie, why are you still here?

It was a question she often asked herself. She could more easily visualize herself in a fancy Mumbai café overlooking the Gateway of India, stirring a foamy pink falooda with a long spoon in a frosty glass, than nibbling spicy savories from a street vendor in Gauripur, something she had been about to do when Mr. Champion startled her.

I might ask the same of you, sir—I mean, Peter, she retorted, grateful that her lips and chin weren’t greasy from eating deep-fried pakoras.

Same as you, Angie. Studying.

It was their special joke: although he earned his living as a teacher, one in fact openly admired for having introduced a popular course on U.S. business models and advertising strategies with supplementary units on American culture and idiom, he considered himself a perennial student. But not like typical Indian students, those driven rote learners with one obsessive goal: admission to an Indian Institute of Technology. A lifetime of prosperity and professional success or poverty and shame depended on how relentlessly they crammed for national entrance examinations.

"I thought you said you had to get out if you wanted to stay sane."

There were weddings. She lied. My sister got married. I couldn’t just pick up and leave. A spontaneous untruth; it just slipped out.

He frowned and she felt a liar’s momentary panic. Maybe she’d already used the wedding excuse, and forgotten. Family weddings and funerals are the incontestable duties and rituals of Indian life. There’s always a sister or cousin being married off, an ailing uncle being nursed, a great-uncle being mourned.

Truthfully, Angie had a sister. Her name was Sonali, and she had been married five years before to a bridegroom whose ad and picture in the matrimonial column of a Bangla-language local newspaper had met Sonali’s, and their father’s, approval. Now Sonali was a divorced single mother, living with her four-year-old daughter in a one-room flat in Patna, the nearest large city, and working as steno-typist-bookkeeper for the stingy owner of a truck-rental company. The bridegroom was discovered, too late, to be a heavy drinker and philanderer. But when Sonali had finally got up her nerve to institute divorce proceedings, their father had turned against her for wreaking on the Bose family the public shame of divorce.

How could she explain to Mr. Champion how difficult—how impossible—it was for a daughter in a family like hers to just up and leave town except as the bride of a man her father had hand-picked? Why did family honor and fatherly duty involve his shackling her to a stranger when he had already proved himself so fallible? It was her life he was threatening to ruin next. Her father had a simple explanation: It is not a question of happiness, yours or ours. It’s about our name, our family reputation. Even at nineteen, Anjali was determined not to yield her right to happiness.

Mr. Champion, oblivious to what she had to contend with at home, was back to smiling. Maybe all Americans were inscrutable in that way. You couldn’t tell what they really thought. Maybe he hadn’t noticed her little lie; maybe he’d noticed but forgiven her. She sailed through life with a blithe assumption that she would be forgiven.

Remember what I told you. India’s leaving towns like this in the dust. You’ve got prospects. He shifted a heavy jute shopping sack strapped to the back seat of his scooter and patted the empty space. An overripe orange tumbled out of the bag into the gutter. Two crows and a pariah dog zeroed in on the smashed fruit. Hop on, Angie.

If Gauripur was that doomed, why hadn’t he left?

I’ll give you a ride to your house if you don’t mind stopping off at my place while I put this stuff away. He retightened the strap around the jute sack. There’s fish at the bottom.

She liked the idea of not having to go right back home to her father’s bullying and her mother’s tearful silence. They were obsessed with finding a respectable son-in-law who would overlook negatives such as green eyes, a stubborn personality, and a nominal dowry. Her father blamed her for his lack of matchmaking success. Usually he pointed to her T-shirts and jeans: What you wear, how you talk, no wonder! What good boy is going to look twice?

Plenty, Baba, she could have retorted but didn’t. She was not lacking for admirers. Boys were attracted to her, though she did little enough to encourage them. She knew what her father meant, though: prospective bridegrooms—good boys from good families—would back off.

With her sandaled toe, Angie traced a deep dent on Mr. Champion’s scooter. The strappy sandal was the same shade of lilac as her painted toenails. She knew she had pretty feet, small, high-arched, narrow. He had to have noticed. Looks like you need a new set of wheels, Mr. Champion, she teased.

The American wiped the passenger seat with the sleeve of his kurta. Don’t wait until it’s too late.

He didn’t understand her struggles; how could any aging, balding American with tufts of nose hair do so? She had one, and only one, legitimate escape route out of Gauripur: arranged marriage to a big-citybased bridegroom. That B. Comm. degree would increase her stock in the marriage market.

Okey-dokey, Mr. Champion. She laughed, easing herself in place beside the jute sack on the passenger seat. Let the sidewalk throngs stare; let the crowds part for the young unmarried woman on the back of the bachelor American’s scooter. When the word got out, as it inevitably would, that Anjali Bose, daughter of Railways Bose of Indian Railways, sister of a working-woman divorcee, was riding off in plain sight, with her arms around the stomach of a foreigner, her parents would find it harder to make a proper-caste Bengali matrimonial match for her. So be it.

And I’ve got someone I’d like you to meet, he said.

You are inviting me to go to your flat, Mr. Champion? She tried not to sound shocked.

It would not be her first visit to her teacher’s home. Mr. Champion offered an English conversation course on Saturday mornings, and an advanced English conversational skills course on Sunday afternoons, at his apartment. Anjali had completed both courses twice, as had a dozen ambitious male da Gama students hoping to improve their chances of getting into professional schools in engineering or medicine or business management. A few of Mr. Champion’s students were now doctors in their early thirties, waiting for immigrant visas to Canada or Australia.

The very first time Anjali showed up for Mr. Champion’s Saturday conversation class, she had been severely disappointed with how little he owned in the way of furniture and appliances. No refrigerator, no television, no air conditioner, no crates of carbonated soft drinks. He owned a music system, professional-looking tape-recording equipment, and a bulky laptop and printer. Wooden office chairs and a pile of overstuffed cushions served as extra seating. Dozens of Indian books in every language were stacked on a brick-and-plank bookcase. A divan that surely doubled as his bed was pushed alongside a wall. Anjali had expected a professor’s home to be shabby, but a shabby portal of learning, crammed with leather-bound books by world-renowned authors.

Anjali had been the only girl in those classes. She had been brought up to revere her elders and teachers, but whenever she visited Mr. Champion’s place, she’d imagined his shame: the rooms were so barren, so like a servant’s quarters. Some Saturday afternoons the sheets on the divan still looked mussed. She was embarrassed to be in a room with a man’s bed, with his clothes hanging from pegs on a wall as though he had undressed in front of her. His apparent loneliness depressed her; his exposure agitated her. The silence of Mr. Champion’s room made the beehive drone of an Indian family seem less insane. She was not much of a homebody—according to her mother’s complaints—but if it hadn’t seemed too forward a gesture by the only girl student, she would have brought her teacher small house gifts, a flower vase or just a wall calendar, to make the room look cozier.

Now terra-cotta pots of blooming flowers lined the narrow walkway to Mr. Champion’s back staircase. Vines hung over the stairwell, and the stairs themselves were fragrant with flowers she couldn’t name in any language. Could it be the same place?

Mr. Champion! Have you gotten married? She laughed, and from the top of the stairs he turned to her with a smile.

Some difference, wouldn’t you say?

The door was painted bright blue. It opened inward before he could even insert the key. By then, Anjali had gained the top step, and there she faced a young man wrapped in a lungi, bare-chested, rubbing his eyes. Jaanu, he said in a low voice, and Mr. Champion said a few words in what sounded like Urdu. Angie made out the universal tea and biscuits and maybe a version of her name.

There were cut flowers on a round table, a colorful tablecloth, and paintings nailed to the walls. There were two comfortable-looking cane chairs and a floor lamp. An old wooden almirah now held the clothes that had been hung on pegs, and bookcases ran along every wall, right up to the sleeping alcove. The bed was not made, almost as though the boy had been sleeping in it. She didn’t see his sleeping mat. Angie, this is Ali, said Mr. Champion. Then he added, He is my friend.

Americans can do that, she thought: make friends of village Muslims. Young Ali, Mr. Champion’s jaanu, his life (if the Hindi and Urdu words were congruent in meaning), a handsome enough boy if nearly black, with long hair and flaring cheekbones, had painted his fingernails bright red. He opened the almirah to find a shirt for his half-naked body. Either the shirt had been donated by Mr. Champion but still hung in the master’s closet, which was cheeky enough—or else the two men shared closet space, which to her was unthinkable.

Mindful of parental wrath if she was to return home on the back of a man’s bike, Anjali insisted that she would stay only a few minutes and then take a bus back. If Baba or the nosy neighbors saw her get off the bus at the stop close to home, they would suspect nothing. She wasn’t ready for a screaming match with Baba. But she stayed an hour, speaking more freely of her longings than she did with her girlfriends. She didn’t want marriage. Her classes were dull. She wanted something exciting, life-changing, to save her from the tedium of Gauripur. I understand, Mr. Champion said. Ali was sent off to buy sweets. Angie had been Peter Champion’s fondest project, someone very much like him, he said, who couldn’t live in the small town of her birth. What a pain it is, to know that one is somehow fated to set sail for the farthest shore. What a calling it is for someone like me, he joked, to fill that ark with passengers.

Mr. Champion was in high teaching mode, in full confessional self-display. He was, he said, a man in love.

So that explains the woman’s touch, she said. But where is she?

Angie, Angie. He tut-tutted.

She wondered for a moment if she herself was the woman he’d chosen and if the next words from his mouth would be I love you, Angie, I always have, and I won’t let you leave until you agree to go to America as my bride . . . She had a romantic nature; she assumed any man could love her.

Bravely, she asked, So who is this person you want me to meet?

You’ve met him, Angie.

She was left in the dark, still smiling. She hadn’t seen anybody, and there was no place to hide.

It’s too late for me to leave, he said, but for you I want the best. Is this a proposal, she wondered, and almost asked out loud, trying to help him. I’ll do it! I’ll make you happy! Then he said, You must try a larger city. She’d always imagined herself in Bombay or maybe on the beaches of Goa, and so she mentioned those possibilities to him. Eventually, even in America, she thought, though she dared not say it for fear of inviting the evil eye.

Bombay? He laughed. You’ve been seeing too many bad movies. Bombay is yesterday. It’s a hustler’s city. Bangalore’s the place for a young woman like you.

She wondered, Is that where he’s taking me? Why not? I’ll go. Then: What kind of girl am I?

She knew nothing of Bangalore, a southern city as alien to her as the snows of Kashmir. Mr. Champion was back in teaching mode. He explained that for two hundred years Bangalore had been a British army base, a cantonment, and the Britishers had left a few scars—golf courses and racetracks and private gymkhanas—that moneyed Indians adopted a little too enthusiastically. But now it’s a hopping place. And he had contacts in Bangalore, people who would listen to his recommendations. The call centers, luring thousands of young people from all over the country, people like her, the new people.

Ali returned with a box of sweets.

In Bangalore, Mr. Champion said, if you’ve got the talent, there’s a market.

This time she asked the question that was always on her mind. And what is my talent, Mr. Champion?

Peter, please. Don’t you know what your talent is?

I haven’t the p’oggiest.

"Foggiest, Angie. Initial f-sound, not p. Initial w-sound, not v, and vice versa. Wedding, not vedding. Vagaries, not wagaries. Not wice wersa. Develop, not dewellup. Keep practicing."

She could cry. They’ll always find you out.

Your talent, Angie? You have the passion. You’re not satisfied. But you’re still very innocent. Innocence is appealing in a young girl, but not blindness, not ignorance. Look at us. She smiled at his way of including her, but then he said,—"Look closely at us, Angie, take a long look at Ali and me."

At the mention of his name, Ali smiled and began to dance. The boy was a good dancer; he must have seen a hundred movies. And then Peter stood and put his arm over Ali’s shoulder, and Ali nestled his head against Peter’s cheek.

A clash of emotions met the dawn of consciousness: she could have screamed, but instead she whimpered, barely above a breath, Oh.

Peter went on about places in Bangalore where she could stay. He knew old women from the British days who let out rooms in old mansions in the middle of the city, houses that could have been sold for crores of rupees (and leveled, their tangled gardens hacked down for parking lots and swimming pools), but where would the old women go? Old Anglo-Indian women whose children had fled to Australia or Canada, whose grandchildren would never see India, dotty old women whose sense of decorum reached back to pre-Independence days and who (Believe me! he laughed) would never be sympathetic to India’s freedom fighters and Independence, but who nevertheless offered rooms and breakfasts of tea and toast and suppers of mutton stew at 1970s prices. Much was forgivable in such women. A place in Kew Gardens or Kent Town, that’s what Angie needed. And he knew the women who ran the new money-spinning call centers were always looking for girls with good English and soothing voices who could fool American callers (I can do that? she was about to ask. I’m good enough to fool Americans?) into thinking they’re talking to a girl in Boston or Chicago.

Finally, a chance to use those regional accents I taught you, he said. You’re very good, Angie, you’re the best student I ever had.

"That’ll be five dallars," she said, remembering.

Chicago o’s sound like a’s. So do Boston r’s.

I told you at graduation you had to leave this place before you got trapped in a rotten marriage. I’m telling you again, let that happen and you’re as good as dead.

Why do they say as good as dead? Why not as bad? But this was not the time to ask. He seemed about to put his hand on her arm and she felt excited. I have dreams for you. You get married to some boy from here, and the dream dies. You’ll never see the world. He studied her T-shirt. No . . . Dortmund, no Bratislava. You’ll have kids and a husband who’s jealous of your intelligence and your English and won’t let you out of the house, and that would break my heart. This time, he did put his hand on her arm—You understand?

Ali snapped up the plate of sweet crumbs as though it was crawling with ants and noisily dumped it into a bowl of soapy water. He was jealous of her! He was just a child. He lifted his dripping fingers to eye level and glared at a chip on a painted fingernail.

All I’ve done is give you a start. The rest is up to you.

In the movies, there was a moment of accounting. She wouldn’t be allowed to leave her benefactor’s house, not without a favor, or worse. The rest is up to me? The door would be blocked. He’d reach for her hand, then close in on it, like a trap. But Peter was her teacher and a teacher’s help had purity and noble intentions behind it. It came from his heart because she had earned it honorably. Peter was smiling and even Ali was smiling, and Peter held out his hand to her and said, Good luck, Angie.

She took his hand. Ali thrust out his, which confused her: shake a servant’s hand? Up close, she could see a fine line of kohl limning his eyes. In that moment of confusion she saw Peter’s arm reach around Ali’s waist and pull him close. I hope you’ll find happiness too, he said.

More words followed, in Urdu, and Ali laughed and said in English, Good luck, Anjali.

Then he walked her to the bus stop.

2

If a girl is sufficiently motivated, she can distill ten years’ worth of Western dating experience—though maybe not all the sex and heartbreak—from a few months of dedicated attention to the photos, backgrounds, and brief meetings with the boys her father selects. She can enjoy the illusion of popularity, glamour, and sophistication. She can fabricate relationships and fantasize about new cities, new families, and new worlds opening up, without the terror of leaving home and sneaking off to Bangalore. Even in the heavily chaperoned world of the arranged marriage market, a girl can fabricate passion and lose her innocence. Anjali was tuned in to her culture’s consolations for the denial of autonomy.

She was nearly twenty, a few months into her bachelor of commerce studies. But why, her father wanted to know, delay groom-hunting for two more years until she received her B. Comm.? It was therefore decided that while he wore himself out in search of a worthy boy, she was to resume attending the English conversation classes the American held in his apartment on weekends. Good English equals good match. He was willing to dig into his savings to pay the American’s fees because if any misfortune was to befall her mythical husband, she could help out by tutoring school pupils. English-language skills would always be in demand.

What husband, Baba? Anjali protested, though she was pleased to have his blessing to attend the weekend classes. You haven’t even started looking, and you’re worrying he’ll be disabled or destitute! This was as close as her father could come to admitting the horrible mistake he had made in hand-picking Sonali’s husband. In the Bose family, a married woman forced by circumstances to hold a job to make ends meet was a tragedy. A divorced single mother supporting herself and her four-year-old daughter by working long days as an office typist was a catastrophe.

Mr. Bose went back to his nightly pegs of whiskey, ignoring her. Anjali toted up her assets and liabilities in the marriage market. Unlike Sonali, she was tall and slim, and under favorable light and clothing, pleasant looking—no, make that passably good looking. On the minus side, she lacked accomplishments such as singing, dancing, and sewing, traditionally expected of bridal candidates. She was also stubborn, headstrong, and impulsive, and by middle-class Gauripur standards, inappropriately outgoing. Those were correctible or at least concealable failures. The one flaw that couldn’t be overcome was her eye color: greenish hazel. Her mother prayed for her pale eyes to turn black. Black hair, black eyes, fair complexion, sharp nose, and thin lips were unassailable proof of ethnic purity, whereas brownish hair and light eyes hinted at hanky-panky with a European in some long-ago time and place. Anjali reminded her mother that Sonali’s long-lashed black eyes had fetched a lecherous cad who paid no child support and no alimony.

To marry her off was her father’s Hindu duty: Anjali accepted that. Given her willful personality, he was eager to marry her off before she sullied her reputation and disgraced the whole family: she understood that too. She couldn’t talk about her wants and fears with her parents, but she knew when to humor and when to defy them.

The matchmaking campaign began casually. Her father might come home from the office saying, Took tea with Mr. Pradip Sen this afternoon. He’s looking for someone for his son. Meaningful pause. Anjali, you remember the Sens, no? And she might drop what she was doing, which couldn’t be much, since she was fairly useless in the kitchen, and say, I trust you’re not talking of Buck Tooth Sen. Good luck! Little tests like that, easily deflected. And her father would shoot back, Sen is good family. Everyone is remembering Mr. Pradip Sen’s maternal grandmother’s brother, just a boy, was hanged by damn Britishers on Andaman Islands. The formalities of matchmaking were conducted in English in the Bose household. Over breakfast Mr. Bose might linger on the page of marriage ads in the local Bangla paper, checking out the boys. Promising lad, engineering, awaiting U.S. Green Card. The newspaper photo was reduced from a visa-size, visa-posed grainy black-and-white, rather insulting to her estimation of her prospects. She thought, They actually think this clerk-in-waiting is worthy of me? Shall I drop this young chap a line? her father would ask, and Anjali, feeling more like Angie, would reply, You do that and I’m out the door, thank you very much. They sparred and chuckled. Their girl had self-respect, which the parents considered a good thing; she was also a little willful, which was not.

Angie wrote to Sonali that things at home were much as usual. Grumbling, threats, entreaties, criticism, and promises: the whole parent–unmarried daughter bag of tricks. Nothing she couldn’t handle.

Sonali warned that matchmaking might start as a small cloud on the distant horizon, but before it was over, the marital monsoon would break, and no one in the world could hold the floodwaters back. Anjali secretly looked forward to its destructive fury.

THREE MONTHS LATER Anjali was still in Gauripur, making excuses to herself. The pre-monsoon summer was at its zenith. Nothing moved, all was heat and dust, but two thousand kilometers to the south, seasonal low pressure had been sighted. Low pressure meant monsoon. Monsoon meant mud, cooler weather, and a temporary reprieve from mosquitoes—and it meant that the next school year would soon be starting.

A sudden marriage, outside of her control, could certainly occur. Nonetheless, she felt it was only fair to her parents to let them test the marital waters. The possibility of going to Bangalore on her own would be a monumental life-destroying—or liberating—decision. She needed time to plan. She had saved the cash from occasional money orders Sonali had sent her over the years, but it probably wouldn’t be enough for train fare. Hiding even the slim stack of bills from a family intolerant of privacy would be a challenge. Maybe she could stash it at the bottom of one of her mother’s just in case metal drums in which was hoarded a six months’ supply of rice, sugar, and lentils. Just in case was her mother’s mantra. Disasters are waiting; they can’t be avoided, and there’s no one to trust. Everyone is corrupt, with twisted values. Even Anjali’s

Reviews for Miss New India

[autumnturner76 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A very interesting look at old vs. new India, highly recommend.

[matamgirl · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This was not what I was expecting when I picked it up and frankly if I had known what it was going to be like I would not have picked it up. It was interesting alright but so not my thing. Oh well.

[needmoreshelves · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Interesting premise, and I think the author is a good writer, but unfortunately I found the main character to be a bit shallow and irritating. I was much more interested in the secondary characters - they seemed more vital and full of life. Nice idea, but somewhat disappointing in execution.

[melaniehope · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Anjali Bose, a smart, rebellious 19-year-old who flees her provincial town after her father's attempt to arrange her marriage goes horribly wrong. With the help of her expat American teacher, Anjali finds her escape in Bangalore, the booming capital of call centers and electronic start-ups.There the brave country girl undergoes a crash course in urban life and the new vibrant world of outsourcing and call center careers. For the first time Anjali finds herself in charge of her own future. Although she views herself as a pioneer of sorts, she is still conflicted and wonders if she should have obeyed her parents in finding an appropriate husband to care for.This story is of a very modern day India. It is somewhat based on call-center employees and their dual identities (American at work; Indian at home.)The story sounded really interesting, but let me down. I was disappointed because I had a very hard time connecting with the character of Anjali. The book never really grabbed me. It seemed to be too unorganized for me and I speed read just to finish it faster.

[laurenbdavis · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Mukherjee navigates the world of "The New India" as seen through the eyes of Anjali, a girl from a small town who moves to bustling, bursting-with-possibility Bangalore --the international epicenter of the customer phone service industry -- in search of a new way of living. Anjali, assisted by an ex-pat American teacher, is on the run after being raped by the man her father had chosen to be her husband and certainly there are many more perils waiting for Anjali in Bangalore, including a run with in terrorists. Some of the finest scenes are those that take place in the crumbling mansion of "Mad Minnie." The decaying, ramshackle house (as well as its mistress) with beggars squatting in the ruined garden and photos of British troops with their feet atop slaughtered Indians, a fine and beautifully written metaphor for the clash of old and new, in all it's emotionally-churning complexities. One is reminded of Dickens' Miss Haversham. Mukherjee is exploring, in this somewhat fable-like novel, how the economic boom and resultant new possibilities affect the lives of young Indian women, whose lives will be far different than those of their mothers. The answer is not so simple as 'better' or 'worse' and Mukherjee allows for that complexity. Life, even in the "New India" is still messy and fraught with danger, but like Theodore Dreiser's "Sister Carrie," it's the potential that lures a provincial young woman into the wider world, and there is always a price to be paid for lost innocence.

[gypsysmom_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book received a really good review in the Globe and Mail. A friend of mine who is originally from India was bemoaning the fact that all books written about India show a negative image of the people. I sent her the Globe and Mail review and she read the book and really liked it. So I thought I should read it as well.Anjali Bose lives in Gauripur, a backward town in the northern part of India. She has recently graduated from highschool and she is now taking college classes in management. In highschool she had an American teacher, Peter Champion, who was very impressed with her language ability in English. Peter suggests that Anjali should go to Bangalore to find work in the call centres that proliferate there to service the North American market. However, Anjali's parents think she should get married and settle down. Her father puts the word out in the Bengali community that he is looking for a husband. Anjali is torn between these two visions of the future and she is certainly not opposed to marrying if her father can find the right man. She understands the problem of arranging a good match since her older sister married a man who appeared to be a great match but now she is divorced and a single mother.After a disastrous meeting with a prospective bridegroom Anjali does decide to go to Bangalore. The city is vibrant and bustling and intimidating to Anjali. Peter Champion gave her two names of residents who could help her. One is an old woman who rents out rooms in her Raj era mansion. Anjali is able to get a room there -- there are lots of empty rooms but few of them are habitable. The mansion is almost a character in the book. The description of the house and surrounding grounds gives a Gothic feel to the book. The other name Anjali has been given is of a woman who owns a school that prepares young people to work at the call centres. With these two contacts Anjali should have had it made but life seldom turns out as it should.Many North Americans have probably had the experience of calling customer service for a company only to realize they are talking to someone in India. I never really thought about that industry other than being frustrated if the person at the other end of the line had difficulty servind me. This book certainly opens that whole industry up to scrutiny.I quite frankly got rather tired of Anjali and her vacillations about work, men, living arrangements etc. And it almost seemed like the author did too. The ending seemed to come very quickly and didn't resolve many of the issues raised. I was disappointed but maybe my expectations were raised too high by the Globe and Mail.

[maggie_rum · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Eh. It's not much of a story, which is perfectly fine. Mental stories are excellent. But this one fell sort of short. I've read a lot of Indian literature, and this one just kind of resounded with a big "meh." I may reccommend it. I may not. I'm sort of just not sure what to think of it.

[rfujita-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Was very excited to win this book in the Library give away and I started it right away.The book wasn't as exciting as I thought it would be, descriptions of India were good but not the best I've read. The story was anti-climatic and I didn't care much for the characters, they didn't have enough passion for their own lives.I liked the women characters in her other books much better.

[karenlisa_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Miss New India By Bharati Mukherjee Fictional heroine Anjalie Bose is a middle class girl, living with her parents in a small apartment in a small town in India. Her mentor, an American teacher named Peter Champion sees possibility in Anjalie that noone else can see. Her father is desperately trying to match her with an appropriate husband, basing his decision on class, family background, future work prospects and most certainly not love! After a brutally failed attempt Anjalie, calling herself Angie, runs away to Bangalore. Even though this will destroy her parents, she knows that with her English language skills and the support of Peter she must at least try to succeed to a higher level position outside of her small town. Pretty, smart, English speaking girls have very good opportunity of work in the growing, ever changing cities with call centers, hosting companies from around the world. The family dynamics of her parents desperately holding onto tradition and Angie's burning desire to see the world lead her on an adventure to change her life. Enjoyable, easy read, very detailed world of the west invading Indian culture and a young adult finding true destiny.

[akreese · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Anjali is a girl caught between two worlds: the old culture of traditional India of arranged marriages; and the progressive India of women who are educated, employed and chose their romantic partners. Anjali is from a rural area, but on the advice of her teacher she decides to leave her family and look for opportunities in the city.The author brings to light the difficulties facing girls who want to break free from traditional roles in order to have a say in their future. The culture that Anjali lives in is so far different from anything I have known that it was shocking when I realized what was at stake for her if she left her family. Her family honor is so important to all of the members of her family that she is at risk of being disowned and declared dead to them. I don’t think that we have anything equivalent in our society when it comes to that sense of family honor being besmirched. It was eye-opening to see possible challenges that even affluent girls could face in India when it comes to asserting their independence.As for the characters, I found that I could understand Anjali’s actions, but I really didn’t like her. She was very naive, and even when she starts to understand how things work in the city she is still clueless about the motives of those around her, and is easily taken advantage of. This seems consistent with her character coming from a rural area, but the drawback is that I she was hard to empathize with and really was an annoying girl.While Miss New India did let me get a closer look at what hardships a rural Indian girl might face in the big city, none of the characters endeared themselves to me. Anjali has a couple of romantic interests in the story and yet I never felt like she had a real relationship with any of them. She likes one man in particular, and after a few short conversations she decides she is willing to have a romantic relationship with him. I think it disturbed me more because it was more like a business deal in that the man had a good job and could help further her career. It seemed shallow and cold to me, but I don’t know if that’s what the author intended, or if this is just one of those cultural differences to which I couldn’t relate.

[bale_5 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Miss New India is a novel whose intent seems clear – the dissolution of traditional India via a social revolution steeped in the “benefits” of materialism. It is the new India, a feminine universe, whoring herself out to the westernized world; namely the USA. In this regard, India is young and naive, like the protagonist, Anjali. India has not yet matured from her experience. It is adolescent growth in progress - the outcome yet unknown. Like Anjali, it is still being invented. India’s purpose is innocent – ambition – to better the quality of life. The problem, as in every society, is how to grow without losing one’s identity. The young are quick to throw away the old ways, while the older generations tenaciously hang on to them. Somewhere in between there lies the threat of violence.When the above is taken into consideration, the author’s sense of purpose and integrity is admirable. However, as I read Miss New India, I felt impatient. Poems seemed dropped in haphazardly, as if forced intellectualization. The plot was over-loaded and void of passion, an innate component of any social change. Despite everything that occurred throughout the novel, it lacked impact. As much as I wanted to embrace this book, it drowned in its insipid characterization of an empowered female and was laden with overwrought details. The foundation was well prepared; the story-line fell short of its goal.

[jcelrod_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I really wanted to like this book more than I did because I've read and enjoyed other novels by Mukherjee but I just couldn't get into this one. I found Anjali/Angie to be insipid and silly and the other characters felt more like caricatures than believable characters . I couldn't understand how Anjali came to be viewed as being an exceptional student by her teacher and I found myself irritated by her seeming inability to function in a large city. It took me a long time to get through this book and, while it did pique my interest more towards the end, I was generally disappointed.

[mcelhra · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Nineteen year old Anjali Bose lives with her lower middle class family in a small village in India. Her father's dream is to arrange a marriage for her with a suitable boy but Anjali has bigger dreams than that. With the help of her English teacher, Anjali moves to Bangalore with the hopes of becoming a customer support specialist at a call center. She quickly learns that big-city life is not as easy and carefree as she thought it would be.Anjali was a hard character to like. She floats through her life depending on her "award winning smile" to get her though tough situations. For some reason, the other characters are captivated by her and misread her vapidness as depth. I never quite understood why. Some of Anjali's decisions were just downright stupid and instead of sympathizing with her, I wanted to shake her.I enjoyed reading about how India today is quite modern in some ways, yet still very traditional in others. I wish this book would have a had a glossary because the author uses quite a few words from different languages that I didn't know.From what I understand, the author's previous books have gotten very good reviews. I look forward to reading one of her older books. This particular book was just okay.

[mojomomma_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Anjali Bose is caught between the allure of modern India and the traditional roles her parents expect her to fulfill. After being raped by a potential husband, she decides to run away to Bangalore and take advantage of her English skills to find herself a job. With the help of her American ex-pat English teacher, she makes some contacts in Bangalore. And at this point, the book takes an unexpected turn. Anjali, or Angie as she refers to herself, has her head turned by easy money and smooth-talking men. She relies on her looks, not her skills. I was really rooting for Anjali/Angie to overcome the obstacles, but she just gets stuck deeper and deeper in a strange plot twists. Her Muslim friend turns out to be a terrorist. Really? And of course, she implicates Anjali in an attempted attack on Heathrow. By the Epilogue, Anjali/Angie finally gets her stuff in a pile and goes back to her home town and her old school to talk about her success. I tried to like this because I usually like novels about women in different cultures, but this one left me shaking my head and feeling like I'd wasted my time.

[cbl_tn · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

In some ways, this book is an extended illustration of Thomas Friedman's flat world. Its main character, Anjali/Angie, is a young girl from a provincial Indian city who dreams of making it big in a Bangalore call center. She hopes that her aptitude for English will land her a position as a customer service agent for one of the many American firms that outsource these jobs to India.I was fascinated by the setting, but not by the characters. I didn't see in Anjali/Angie what the other characters see in her. All of her concerns beyond the basic food/shelter/safety seem superficial. She shows little evidence of an interesting inner life. She seems self-absorbed, aloof, and amoral. She's supposed to be her mentor's most promising student, yet she appears pretty average to me. She does seem to have above average luck, though. Somehow, among the millions of people in India, she keeps meeting people with wealth and influence who are willing to spend it on her behalf. One character explains to her that she is a mirror, and others see themselves in her. The more I think about this, the creepier it gets. I can imagine Anjali/Angie using this quality to manipulate people in the future. She's not a person I would trust.Readers who have read other books by the author will recognize some familiar characters. Tara Chatterjee doesn't appear in this book, but some of her relatives do, and they mention her several times. I'd like to try at least the first of the Tara Chatterjee books. I think I might identify more with a character closer to my age.This review is based on an advance reading copy provided by the publisher through LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program.

[clara53_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"Obstacles are stepping stones", says the main character of the book, a 20-year-old Anjali Bose, half way through the novel that depicts less than a year of her life, but what a year: in rebellion to an improper selection for an arranged marriage, and having shockingly suffered as a result, she embarks on a journey to maturity, away from a small provincial hometown and off to Bangalore where, despite the unbelievable promise of good fortune to energetic and capable young people (most of them working in call centers), "you can't just float around... like a kite - someone will cut the string"... Throughout the novel, Anjali struggles with her vanity as opposed sincere desire to make it on her own. We learn a lot about the inside doings of the call centers, the perceptive view of America on behalf of this new generation of unconventional Indian youth, as well as the ugly side of India (at times, shockingly so - even I, married to an Indian, couldn't believe some of the things presented as a reality). Anjali's father's character, a typical Bengali male of his generation, is described very aptly by the author and certainly rings a bell - I could recognize the traits. On the other hand, a death of a young talented boy (a computer nerd in Angali's hometown) seemed rather downplayed. While some secondary characters are rather predictable, the story line weaves in such a way that one cannot foretell the next chapter, which, in my view, is always an accomplishment for the writer.

[susanbooks · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Flat prose, repetitive descriptions, and one-dimensional characters make this book so bad that I'm going to take a look at my other Mukherjee novels. I thought I had liked them, but if she's capable of this, maybe my judgment was off.

[emperatrix_1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I had high hopes for this novel, but I just couldn't get into it. I found the narrative dull and stilted, and found Anjali's musings somewhat unnatural. As a narrator, I found Anjali/Angie uninteresting. The novel just failed to engage me.

[jbd1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

An interesting and often amusing take on the coming-of-age story, this one set in the brave new world of modern India. While the main character seemed a bit "along for the ride" some of the time, I enjoyed the book.

[eenerd · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Great read about life in modern India and the difficulties faced by the youth, caught in between the traditional Indian point of view of their parents, and the global/Western youth culture of finding success and making your mark on the world. Anjali "Angie" Bose is bright, attractive, and has great English--the only thing standing between her and success is the narrowness of her hometown and her parents expectation that she marry and settle down to a traditional life as wife and mother. Angie nearly succumbs to her parents wishes until she is attacked by the man her father has chosen for her. At that moment she decides to take her future into her own hands and runs away to the bright lights of Bangalore, with money borrowed from her ex-pat American friend, mentor and professor. Once in Bangalore Angie's story really begins, and all the highs and lows of one starting from scratch in a world far removed from everything she's ever known. Super book.

[shelleyraec · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Stifled by tradition and expectation, nineteen year old Anjali accepts the help of an unconventional professor to escape an arranged marriage and her small town of Gauripaur in rural India. She dreams of a new life in Bangalore, perhaps with a successful career or a Bollywood style romance but the reality is not what she expects. Boarding in a crumbling mansion, Angali’s megawatt smile and passable American English do not provide the advantages she has hoped. Painfully naive, she falls victim to her ruthless housemates as her illusions shatter around her.Set in contemporary Indian society, Miss New India is an interesting insight into the changing culture of the country with it’s increased share of the global market due to Western outsourcing. Customer Support Agencies (ie. call centers) train their employees to speak ‘accentless’ English and embrace an American/English identity inflating it’s value against the traditional Indian culture. For many of those raised in marginal castes or regions the new employment opportunities (and high pay) offered are an irresistible lure and for women like Mukherjee’s character, Anjali, a way to escape family expectations and earn independence.I’m really not sure if Anjali’s character and her experiences are intended to act as a warning, or encouragement for the young women of India searching for a career. The consequence of Anjali’s fleeing from her home, after rejecting an arranged marriage, is her father’s suicide/death and permanent estrangement from her mother and sister. Almost immediately after her arrival in Bangalore, Anjali is out of her depth and simply sinks further into trouble, mostly as a result of her own naivety. It is her female housemates, women who purport to work in the call center industry, that betray her and she is rescued repeatedly by men who have standing in Indian society. Initially I was sympathetic to Anjali’s situation and her determination to make her own way but I felt she was quickly revealed to be quite weak and I lost interest in her struggle.I also felt the plot was overcrowded with issues, Anjali becomes involved in rape, a Muslim terrorist plan, riots, a ring of thieves and prostitutes. I thought the impact of the call centers on Indian society and individual identity was an interesting enough theme to carry the novel without all the extra complications.The language is good, though I thought it a bit dense at times. Mukherjee integrates a lot of information about Indian culture that I found interesting, like the myriad of spoken dialects and class structure, but it does tend to clutter the story. Initially the pace is a little quiet but becomes frenzied as events and characters trips over each other in the last third of the story.There is a lot to like and learn from this novel yet I really found it slow going. Miss New India is a novel that leaves me in a quandary of indecision, so I think it’s best to leave any definitive recommendation out.

[lukes_171461 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

“Miss New India” contains the story of Anjali (Angie) Bose, who grows from sheltered nineteen-year-old in a backwater India town into a sadder but wiser young woman with growing skills and ambition. It embraces a much larger canvas, though, nothing less than the dizzyingly rapid modernization of the second most populous nation on Earth. Angie Bose’s journey opens this transformation before our eyes, cutting a clear slice for us and laying it on a slide for our microscopes.Growing up quietly, steeped in traditional middle-class (and middle-caste) Indian virtues, Anjali, from the northeastern Indian state of Bihar, learns good, accentless American English, and shows a spark of intelligence. She gets an associate degree in business and hopes the husband her father finds for her can be intelligent, good-looking, and kindly. Unfortunately her betrothed young man mistreats her badly – criminally - in their one brief meeting, and she escapes to modern, bustling, 21st-century Bangalore. Things don’t go very much better for her in the big city, though: at rock bottom she ends up in a holding cell in a Bangalore jail, facing every manner of threat and menace. What a creation is Miss Anjali Bose! Pretty, innocent, lucky, unlucky, endlessly engaging, unforgettable. Author Bharati Mukherjee draws such a realistic girl; she’s nineteen going on thirteen, it seems, for much of the book. I kept waiting for her to grow up a little, get some perspective, make a mature choice for a change! Then I would cast my mind back to her origins, and the scant weeks since her emergence from her sheltered existence, and I reflect that she’s perfect. She has the exact worries, hopes, and reactions that such a girl would in real life. Congratulations and laurel wreaths to Ms. Mukherjee on her perfect creation.Through this endearing and frustrating heroine, the author shows us the wrenching changes now contorting India and changing its face. In graphic detail: the closed, insular town with its backward-looking mores, the mod big-city aspirations, and the mod-big-city criminality. The flooding of India with apparently limitless new rupees (lakhs and crores of them!) brings with it every new convenience and technology, and unfortunately every new kind of venality, too. Some plot elements seem, on surface, over-contrived – Angie’s falling in with a vastly wealthy family, the spurious international terrorist roommate, her serendipitous relationship with the entrepreneur Girish, the looting of the crumbling Raj-era estate – but these chances and drawbacks represent the new chances that India is taking with itself. May she ride a hot streak to glory!It’s been quite a while since I met a character as charming and demanding of our attention as Angie Bose. I trust she will make thousands more readers as besotted with her as I am. Watch for this publication in May, and don’t let it go by. It will clearly be worth your attention for its great virtues: its unblinking look into modern India, and its main achievement, the quirky, delicious heroine.