Oleander Girl Read Online Free Page A

one of the things I admire about him: how he is always unapologetically, uncompromisingly himself. His spine is erect and impatient; white hairs blaze across his chest. From time to time, he intimidates the priest by correcting his Sanskrit, but in between mantras, when he places his palm on my head in blessing, his touch couldn’t be gentler. How I love him, with all his bluster, his exasperating prehistoric notions, his tenderness that he tries so hard to hide.
    Across from us, Papa and Maman, unaware of the battles waged over the seating arrangements, are poised splendidly on the wicker chairs. Rajat, however, has chosen the floor. From the other side of Grandfather, he sends me a quick, wicked glance; the private, scandalous things his eyes say bring a rush of heat to my face. A truant lock has fallen over his forehead. It’s all I can do to stop myself from leaning over and smoothing it back. When at last he clasps my hand to slip on the diamond ring we chose together, joy balloons in my chest until it’s hard to breathe. Rajat has made me a believer in miracles. How else could we have fallen in love?
    Three months ago, I had gone to my college friend Mimi’s birthday party—a minor miracle in itself. Usually Grandfather refused to let me go out so late, but that night I’d pushed back. Grandmother had taken my side, too. “She needs to meet other young people,” she’d said. Finally, he’d nodded in grumpy agreement. When I walked into the flat, the party was in full swing: the lights low, the music deafening, the adults inexplicably absent. Crowds of people I didn’t know were downing suspicious-looking drinks and smoking what clearly weren’t cigarettes. I looked at the girls in their glittery tank tops and stretch jeans and felt antediluvian in my gold-worked kurta. I was about to make an excuse and leave when Mimi said, “Oh my God, is that Rajat Bose at the door? You don’t know about him? His parents own that swanky art gallery on Park Street. He just broke up with Sonia Gupta, whose dad owns a Hyundai factory. Wow, I never thought he’d come to my party!”
    I’d peered through the smoky dimness and seen Rajat. Backlit by the door, he appeared to be shining. A glass was already in his hand, a leather jacket slung over his shoulder. He leaned against a wall, holding court, nodding at acquaintances who rushed up to offer homage. He allowed Mimi to pull him to the dance floor, where he performed with loose-hipped, dismissive grace, smiling a little when more girls mobbed him. Weeks later I’d be astonished when he confessed that upon walking in and seeing all those people milling about, he, too, had wanted to escape.
    “Thank God I didn’t, Cara,” he added—he’d given me my special name by then—touching the bones of my face as though he needed to memorize them. “Are you glad I stayed?”
    I nodded; I wanted to tell him that he had transformed my life, bringing Technicolor to my sepia world. But I was afraid I’d sound stupid.
    “You were standing in a corner, remember? There was something about the way you held yourself that set you apart from all those gyrating girls. Like you belonged to an earlier era. It made me curious. When I asked you to dance, you told me, quite unapologetically, that you didn’t know how. I admired that.”
    He had offered to teach me. While the entire female contingent stared with envy, he asked the DJ for a slow song. Then he took me in his arms. I was nervous and awkward. To help me relax, he asked me questions. He had a way because I found myself telling him things about myself I didn’t share with anyone else. My answers seemed to interest him. We spent the rest of the evening on the balcony, talking.
    What could have caught his fancy? Wasn’t my life most unadventurous, deeply ordinary?
    “Are you kidding!” Rajat says later when I ask him this. “The way you’ve grown up, orphaned at birth, hidden away in some mountain valley, and now guarded in