Free THE IMMIGRANT by Manju Kapur Page A

colour fair, she has a straight nose, large eyes and sharp Punjabi type features. Height medium. Her circumstances will make her grateful and loving. They are certainly not well-off.
    Here is the girl’s address. Should you decide to correspond with her, she will understand there are no obligations. She is thirty years old and sensible.
    Give this a try, I beg you. Even though you have taken citizenship at heart you are an Indian, with Indian values. Why else have you not been able to settle down? Thank god you have not chosen to marry a Canadian, like our uncle.
    After you set up practice in Dehradun our mother was looking for a wife for you. It is my duty to finish the work she started.
    Now it is up to you.
    Ananda read this letter several times, increasingly exasperated. How was it his sister managed to aggravate his sensibilities every single time? What did she mean, the girl would be grateful? If gratitude was what he wanted, he would marry a beggar off the streets. And what did she mean at heart he was an Indian? He was no such thing. He was now a Canadian of Indian origin. What did she know of him, they hadn’t met in seven years.
    His sister reminded him of all that he found objectionable about arranged marriages, with her talk of gratitude, adjustment, double income families and paranoia about future in-laws before he even had a wife. It was disgusting.
    He looked at the photograph and wondered exactly how fair she was. Pictures were deceptive. He who appeared so light-skinned in his own knew that.
    Thirty—how come still unmarried? The father’s death must have something to do with it. People may say that time was a great healer, but such events marked you for life. That was one thing they had in common. No other proposal from his sister had included a French speaking girl. If her knowledge was good she could help him acquire another skill useful in Canada.
    He would write to her on the weekend. The post office had some special air mail letter forms printed with the flowers of Canada. She might find them pretty.
    A letter to a stranger was a step in the dark; on the other hand he was writing to someone who understood the end goal. That immediately brought her closer.
    The flowered aerogramme that was to appeal to Nina’s aesthetic sense arrived in Jangpura two weeks later. With a casual air the mother handed it to Nina as she was sipping her first cup of evening tea.
    ‘What does it say?’ she murmured involuntarily, staring at her daughter’s hand as it slowly sliced the letter open with the back end of a spoon.
    Nina instantly held out the still folded page.
    ‘No, no, you read first. It came at eleven o’clock. I knew at once it was from him, such a nice design, don’t you think, why can’t we do things like this? Your father was always buying paintings by Indian artists to hang in the embassies abroad, maybe he is like him.’
    ‘He’s a dentist, Ma, not an artist. Everybody there must be using these things.’
    ‘Come on, read, what are you waiting for?’
    This aerogramme held the promise of change, a commodity rare in Nina’s world. The anxiety she felt was reflected a thousand fold in her mother’s scrutinising face. She pushed her half drunk, now cold, tea away.
    Her mother got up and carried the tray into the kitchen. Nina remained on the front steps. From there she could see the arc of the newly completed flyover. Day and night cars zoomed down it, the swish of traffic, the blare of horn accompanied every waking moment of the road facing Jangpura residents.
    Slowly she opened the two flaps. The handwriting was legible (his patients must love him), the ink blue (conventional? but then he was a doctor), the style formal, the tone correct (a man well brought up by middle class Indian parents) and the information one could have got from a guide to Halifax. Expectations of romance would have to wait in the wings a little longer. This letter did not invite their presence.
    As she mused over the