Free My Lady of the Bog by Peter Hayes

around her brown shoulders like bees, and her eyes were the color blue that certain works ascribe to paradise. A yellowish diamond, small, but flawless, studded her nostril, while a thumbnail-sized emerald, green as Eire, sparked at her throat. It was a formal dinner and the new Mrs. Prasad was dressed for the occasion in a magnificent gold-embroidered Kanjeevaram sari worn in the most daring high fashion without the underlying choli , the fitted brassiere. The sari hid the front of her breasts, to be sure, but left bare their sides, exposing one almond shoulder and the delicate fluting of her ribs—so that while the other young beauties were equally uncovered, flaunting low-cut gowns with deep cleavages, it was Vidya’s tan and tender sides that drew the men’s stares and the women’s daggers.
    “What a bizarre fashion,” a dowager whispered as Vidya and I passed by.
    The new bride, who might easily have ignored the dig, flashed at the woman a smile of such wattage that the old lady froze like a deer in the headlights. “Oh, not at all,” Vidya laughed, “it’s traditional , really. It was the missionaries who made us wear cholis , so as not offend their Victorian tastes. Before that we were quite content with jewels ( jew-ells ) in a few strategic places.”
    Having defended both her dress and her countrywomen with an argument of such boldness and impeccable political correctness it could not be touched, she bowed graciously, threw me a grin, and, confident I was right behind her, headed off toward the den where Jai was holding court.
    A vigorous, handsome, white-toothed man of extraordinary personal charm and charisma, Jai Prasad stood out in the world of academia like a movie star. At the conferences we attended several times a year, his entrance made the coeds’ pulses quicken and sent shivers of excitement running through the hall. His lectures were always SRO—for if, as a scholar, he was controversial, as a teacher he was mesmerizing. Later, you would ask yourself what the hell it mattered if you now knew that hag had meant originally holy (as in hag iography, the life of a saint) and was applied to a woman at menopause when her “wise blood” was no longer lost, and that it was only much later—with the church’s efforts to break the power of these “witches”—that it took on its current derogatory spin. Still, listening to Jai, it seemed to matter vitally , as if you were on the cusp of uncovering some secret set of correspondences that would connect all the dots and explain everything . Later, in the rheumy blue eyes of the crone who sold the evening paper, you saw someone staring back at you you’d never seen before.
    The dean of students was speaking with Jai as Vidya smoothly inserted me into the conversation, saying, “Xander, I hear, is Jai’s star pupil.”
    “He’s more than that,” Jai corrected her evenly. He gave me a warm and affectionate hug. “I’m grooming him to be my spiritual heir, and yet . . .”
    “And yet?” the dean queried.
    “Obviously, we’re still in process. The training for that is still going on.”
    I was surprised by Jai’s answer. Something was up, though now was not the time to pursue it.
    Sensing the awkwardness, Vidya slipped her arm through mine, declaring there were a dozen guests to whom she had to introduce me, and whisked me off, employing for her purpose that excessively cheery neo-British manner we Americans so deplore.
    And yet I found myself enchanted by her, and more than willing to stay by her side. She spoke a lovely, lilting colonial English, with a cadence less clipped and musically richer than London speech. Nor was she strictly Indian . Her family, I learned, were ex-patriots in Kenya, a part of the Asian community there. They were, I gathered, part of one of those clans who appear on the surface more British than the raj itself—with splendid, impeccable nineteenth-century manners and a father who is managing director of a firm