My Kind of Girl Read Online Free Page B

Appearances remained unchanged, however, still stamped with the untidiness of poverty: no one would have realized that the family’s earnings had not just doubled or quadrupled, but grown tenfold.
    You think it was self-discipline? Not exactly, though perhaps they had not indulged in small luxuries, preserving their riches for large-scale displays of affluence. For securities held their faith! Raghab kept buying up land, not to mention Hiranmayee’s gold and jewelry purchases. Soon, it was time to arrange the daughters’ marriages. Very soon for the elder one, if traditional norms were to be applied, though as for the younger girl, Hiranmayee’s second vow was to get her through college as well. She would be the mother of not just a son with a B.A. degree, but also a daughter with a B.A. degree. “Let them see, let them realize we’re no less when it comes to academics.”
    Them, of course, referred to the next-door neighbors, and mostlyto the vain wife of the professor. Learned your lesson? If only you had agreed to the marriage, your daughter would have lived like a queen, my son’s a millionaire now.
    Hiranmayee had been going so far as to send news of their good fortune through the shared domestic help; she didn’t once forget to inform them of her family’s wealth. Certainly not on the day Raghab purchased a half-finished house in Ballygunge. Her messages reached their recipients, but the professor’s family never broke its silence. Its obliviousness to its neighbors equalled Hiranmayee’s inability to forget about hers. Strange was her competitiveness, extraordinary her desire for vengeance.
    It was now said that the professor’s household could no longer afford meals. Perhaps this is what happens when the gods smile on you; even Hiranmayee’s desire to lay waste to her neighbors’ self-sufficiency was almost fulfilled. Very pleased to hear this, she recounted the story to her son in great detail.
    It was certainly a story to be recounted. The professor had apparently not received his salary for six months; his obscure college had never paid salaries properly. They’d pay eighty and extract a receipt for two fifty. So never mind the airs and graces now, the professor’s family was actually bankrupt. He’d survived on private tuitions and writing guidebooks. Now that there was a shortage of paper, nobody was publishing guidebooks anymore, and with everyone getting jobs left, right, and center, who needed a private tutor? Apparently things had come to such a pass that . . .
    Having listened silently till this point, Makhanlal asked, “How did you come to know all this?”
    â€œWell, Harimati does the dishes at their home too. Yesterday she was saying she can’t continue there – after all, these poor people all do this work for a living, if they don’t get paid . . . Never mind servants, apparently they don’t even get provisions every day – and the girl is supposed to take her exams this year, the fees have to be paid . . .”
    Here the dutiful son Makhanlal may have said something to the effect of, why discuss other people’s affairs; maybe he made an even softer protest. Hiranmayee changed her tune immediately, “You’re right, of course, what business is it of mine – just that I was thinking of the girl, she couldn’t get married and now she can’t take her exams, so what I’m saying is, enough of educational lessons, if you agree I can organize a different kind of lesson!”
    Thickheaded Makhanlal was unable to read between the lines of this subtle proposition, so she elaborated.
    â€œShould I sound out the professor’s wife? I’m sure they’ll be gratified if we so much as throw a bone their way!”
    Her face suffused with a victorious smile, she looked at her son; but Makhanlal’s normally grave face looked almost stern, and he left without saying a word, only