Authors: Bharati Mukherjee
He said she was just one in a billion, but each of us had it in us to be another one in a billion. He said she, and a friend, would come to his corporate management class and give a little talk. If we were ready to listen, and to act, she had lessons to teach us.
What to say about Gauripur since she left? Maybe she'll notice a crane on the horizon, more women and children carrying bowls of cement on their heads, some painters' scaffolding around old buildings, and new apartment blocks being erected. Pinky Mahal's shored-up walls have been repainted sunflower yellow (although we still call it Pinky Mahal), and the flat roof now supports an atrium with a sky-top restaurant, and all five floors are serviced by elevators and even an escalator. Somehow the air conditioning is working, and shops that were dark for months are now well lit and full of shoppers. Alps Palace Coffee and Ice Cream Shop has relocated to the ground floor of Pinky Mahal, installed a dance floor, and hired an emcee.
The biggest change, potentially, concerns the future of Vasco da Gama High School and College. Gauripur is suddenly one of the "it" towns in the Ganges belt, meaning a future IT magnet, as the older, larger centers mature and become too expensive. A mofussil town like Gauripur has been identified as an emerging small city, with cheap land and housing and a cozy population of just under ten lakhs—a million souls about to be launched into space. And so the church authorities are in negotiation with Infosys and others to create a satellite IT campus. Our mayor tells us we are the beneficiaries of the overspill; we're to be the next high-tech mega center. On new maps, we are represented by a star on the riverbank, halfway between Delhi and Kolkata. But the church is also trying to preserve the "educational mission" of the campus and pressuring Delhi to locate a new Indian Institute of Technology or perhaps an Indian Institute of Management, using the existing structures. One way or another, Gauripur will survive another century. The era of South Indian and Goan pedants reciting their lectures is over. "Materialism is outpacing spirituality," the rector told a local reporter. "It is a global phenomenon."
There's now a spirits store on LBS Road. No more back-alley booze. The atrium restaurant serves cocktails, Indian wines, and beer.
Our mayor predicts a promising future for Gauripur, just as placards outside Pinky Mahal once did. When Pizza Hut opened a branch, he announced, "Imprisoned inside every clerk in Gauripur is a painter or musician or poet. No one will ever feel the necessity to leave Gauripur. We will have schools for music, for art, for science, for medicine. We will have a subway, mark my words! My ambition is to nurture the next Hussein, the next Ravi Shankar, nothing less."
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HE AND PARVATI
flew to Ranchi, then hired a car and driver to Gauripur. Anjali had, in effect, been adopted, and Parvati wanted to see it all—the school, the old neighborhood, the studio where Rabi had photographed her—and to meet Peter Champion on his turf, not hers. "Truly," Parvati said, "it must be a magical place, no? How fortunate for you to have been born in such a nurturing town, simmering with potential, just before it took off." Was it the refocusing of eight months' exile or an authentic change? Anjali couldn't tell, but Gauripur wasn't the desert she remembered and had been describing. It was a city; it extended ten kilometers in every direction from Nehru Park. And Nehru Park was refurbished by the Volunteers for Beautification Committee. Children were climbing on slides and pumping their legs on new sets of swings.
She walked the familiar streets with Parvati, but now she saw changes—maybe they'd always been there—a cinema house, the Bihar State Emporium, and apartment blocks rising from razed, abandoned estates. "What a charming town!" Parvati exclaimed, against Anjali's every unstated objection. "This is the Old India!" she said. "I can see what Peter was talking about that night at Minnie's! Poor Minnie."
And so they made their way down LBS Boulevard to Peter's apartment. Evening was falling, and terra-cotta dias lighted the outside stairs. Even before they started to climb, the blue door opened, and there was Peter at the top of the stairs, pushing a much-aged, almost unrecognizable Ali in a wheelchair. "Welcome, welcome," he called. They must have seen behind him, in the well-lit apartment, the crowd of friends and students he'd invited for the talk. Ali smiled and raised his hand in greeting.