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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