My Kind of Girl Read Online Free

boy? She’s so dark, what prince will take her away on his golden steed? They were so fortunate that I . . . oh!”
    It was the same story over and over again. Raghab probably fell asleep, and Makhanlal gave up trying to listen. But he could stillhear his mother speaking, on into the afternoon, for quite a while longer.
    Hiranmayee smarted under the insult for a few days. The added injury was that as much as she wanted to get her son married, she wanted even more for him to have Malati as his bride. “I told them, ‘If you’d like Malati to continue studying, we’ll take care of it, a daughter-in-law with a B.A. would be a matter of pride, we have no demands by way of dowry,’ but they didn’t even entertain the idea. Oh my God, their arrogance. But why – may I know why? Is it because they eat their pathetic meals at a table?”
    â€œOh, please be quiet, Ma!” Makhanlal protested, in a low voice. “The houses are so close to each other, what if someone hears?”
    â€œLet them,” Hiranmayee moved toward the professor’s veranda and raised her voice a few decibels more. “Am I scared of them? Am I going to beg them for this? Huh, I have such a wonderfully eligible boy in my son, what do I have to worry about? Take my word for it, Makhan, a day will come when they will burst with envy when they look at you. I guarantee it.”
    The storm continued thus for a few more days, then the topic of Makhanlal’s marriage faded gradually. Avinash-babu, the liquor shop owner, got his daughter married off by July, and many other virgin foreheads were touched by vermilion, but the subject of the marriage of Mr. Makhanlal Ghosh, B.A., and his special ability to shoulder the responsibility of a wife never even came up. Certainly there was no lack of unmarried girls in Bengal that year, but despite all her talk Hiranmayee just didn’t take the initiative. Why not? Couldn’t she havegotten a wonderful bride for her son and astonished the professor’s family? Would that not have been her natural response? Certainly. Just why she behaved to the contrary, I cannot say. Had she really imagined she would be able to wreak some kind of extraordinary revenge on that scholarly family? There was no indication this would ever be realized. A month went by, two months; not out of a sense of courtesy, or even out of mere neighborliness, did the professor’s wife pay Hiranmayee and her family a visit, although Hiranmayee had visited them a few times now. The veranda remained as uncaring as before. There were still gusts of laughter, the flash of a sari, but Makhanlal no longer looked her way.
    You think it was out of grief? No; Makhanlal possessed that singular virtue of not understanding grief or rejection. The truth was, he had no time. He woke in the morning, ate a frugal breakfast and went off to the shop, came home for lunch and took a brief rest, then went off to the shop again, only returning late in the evening. He had taken most of his father’s responsibilities on his own broad shoulders. Practically all of them, actually. His enthusiasm was matched by his enterprise, and if he lacked for a brain in that great big head of his, he compensated for it with sheer hard work. I saw him back then, working like a horse, shuttling between different places in town. When did he have the time to think of the talented daughter of the erudite professor?
    No, he did not have the time for this. Only, he felt a little uncomfortable whenever he passed the professor’s house on his way in and out of his own home. Suddenly he felt he was too tall, too fat; maybehis clothes were dirty, his gait and posture terrible. The professor’s drawing room was on the ground floor, by the road – try as he might, Makhanlal could not resist stealing a glance every once in a while. Did he see anything? Nothing, only a blurred hint of something behind the curtains. Sometimes the