He came at 2:30 as usual and again failed to recognize me when I came down the stairs. He looked around absently and put his hands in his pockets. I went and read the notices. Then he came, exclaiming, “Oh, here you are! Ho many times have I told you not to wear a sari, because you look positively ugly in it,” he said in his abrupt manner, “besides, you look old also.” He smiled.
I wasn’t sure whether he was joking or not, so I looked at him directly, and hid my face behind my palm. He forgot it all almost immediately. “Tell you what, yesterday...” and went on in his boyishly enthusiastic manner about how some people had come to see him for their daughter. I also forgot my hurt feelings and said, “Really! What dreary business! Did you like her? When will you get married?”
I should have remembered that this was not Ashok whom I could tease about anything, from his hair to his future wife - who, I often told him, would be a perfect disaster like himself. I didn’t remember at that time that this person was eight years my senior, that he would be more mature in his views.
“Will you stop being kiddish?” he said softly. I shut up. He continued, “I told them no question of my getting married to a girl in elephant bottoms. So there!”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because I like girls in pajama-kurta and in saris wrapped tightly round their shoulders, so as to prevent their bucks being exposed - girls with long plait instead of bobbed hair, and green eyes in particular - and more so if they have a ‘til’ on their right cheek.”
I told him without thinking that he couldn’t prepare a finely detailed picture of his wife. He said, “I can, if I see a girl exactly like that.”
There was a strange look on his face when he went away. I placed that look in a proper category while walking back from college. I saw D coming on a scooter, and immediately knew where I had seen that expression before. He told a rickshaw man at a distance to go and pick me up. Meekly I took the rick and went home feeling angry - couldn’t I have taken a rickshaw myself? Why does he bother? Why couldn’t I have refused?...
I went over R’s last speech... girls in saris... green eyes...til... I was most surprised when I realized that it was my description. What did he mean by looking at me like that? Did he mean...?! I felt very shy, very woebegone. Oh god, R as husband! Never, Why not, though? He’s better than D, but D is younger... Why should I think of all this - Hindu girls should be pious and obedient to their parents - dutifulness...?... and suppose R is just joking - I look awful in a sari and I knew it. Then why make a public clown of myself? I went home and prayed to god, and resolved not to meet him any more. What would Papa and Amma say? Papa always says that D is a very nice young man, that he talks as if he is applying a balm to the listener. But I have seen him being contemptuous also; that day he had said, “Were you showing off when you fainted that day, Geeta? Carmel girls learn a lot of acting!” I had felt frustrated, not being able to hurt him back. And D had never talked to me like R did.
I realized that I had told very little about myself to R. I knew everything about him - his interest in Chinese food, and chicken, his favorite games, like cricket and polo and car racing, his hobbies, books and movies, and dancing with good partners. D was vaguely good to me, that’s all. D, however, knew everything about me, he lives opposite our house, and there is a lot of communication between our families. R had several bad points too, like being rich, and drinking and smoking. He never talked about them boastfully, though. “Necessary evils” he called them... How little I knew about D as well! I was furiously angry with myself, because I couldn’t stop thinking about either of them...
I got a hold on myself, and promised not to go to college on Thursday. My duty to my parents came first, I decided, because after all, you can’t trust these rich people. If there had to be a choice, it would be in favor of D ultimately... fancy a girl getting married out of her will!
I shook myself and became firm - why think he was serious at all. He must just be joking, as he always did. Elopement! I shuddered as the word occurred to me. What - what utter nonsense!
I began remembering the description of love by Dr Corfield. “...you feel as if the walls of the world are breaking around you and you are dissolving into a torrent of refreshing and soothing watercade, and being poured out of a burning chamber of perfect grandeur,” she had once told me very slowly, pausing and selecting her words carefully. I had been almost amused by it, but I had thought that she must have experienced something of that kind herself. But I had never, not once, felt anything like that. R just happened to be better than any other of my present acquaintances... but I wouldn’t be bound by him.
I thought of the tremendous efforts I had been putting in my studies, just to get out of the threat of marriage after I finish BA. Even D did not fill me with any good or romantic thoughts - I was almost afraid of him. So how, and why should I not be independent of them both. Why was R trying to be what they call “more than a friend”? I wondered. With D. if I refused, there was the burden and shame of parental disapproval - with R even that was not there. Am I so weak as to be bound, body and soul, like a slave? I felt as if something was breaking in me, and I wept for a long time. I would have liked to be born a boy, so that at least I would have been free to chose a career for myself. All night I wondered on and on - why not even as a girl? Why should I be tied to someone I like, or someone I don’t like? It would be difficult both ways...
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