Free B006NZAQXW EBOK by Kiran Desai Page A

who was acting as marriage broker. ‘You are trying to marry poor Sampath to a crow.’
    ‘He is lucky to find anyone at all,’ said Mr Chawla, who had given up all hope of motor scooters and wedding parties at the Hans Raj Hotel.
    The girl arrived along with her family on the public bus. Apart from her family, the bus was full of singing ladies and gentlemen, pilgrims returning from a trip to the Krishna temple in a neighbouring town. The Chawlas watched as the bus veered off the road like a crazy beetle and moved towards them in a cloud of dust.
    The bus driver had obligingly offered to drop off the family right at Sampath’s orchard. A bride-to-be should not have to walk and grow dusty and be shown to disadvantage, he said sympathetically. He himself had a daughter to marry. And: ‘Yes, yes, let’s take them directly to the boy,’ chorused the other passengers, pausing to make this decision before resuming their singing. They clapped their hands to keep the song moving along; their hair flew; they swayed from side to side, partly for the sake of rhythm,partly because of the way the bus leapt and shook through potholes and bumps. They closed their eyes and let their voices rise and flutter from the bus to the Chawlas waiting under Sampath’s tree. ‘Ten ways to cook rice,’ they sang, ‘seventeen flowering trees in the forest, twenty hermits at my table. But those who know say you take forms beyond number. O Lord, teach me the way of infinite marvel.’
    The air rushed up through the cracks in the bus, up their saris and trousers, so that a pleasant breeze circulated around their legs. Everybody looked very puffed up, wobbling as if some large force inside them were trying to break free.
    Despite the driver’s kindness and the attention she had received with the help of a handkerchief, a little spit and a large amount of talcum powder, the girl descended from the bus looking extremely dusty. The pilgrims, curious about what might happen during this unusual encounter between prospective marriage partners, tumbled out of the bus as well, in a messy and chaotic heap. They needed a break for lunch anyway, and a little private time behind some foliage. Holding the prospective bride before them like a gift, the group moved towards the guava tree. Sampath had always had a soft spot for the lady on the label of the coconut hair-oil bottle. He had spent rather a large amount of time in consideration of her mysterious smile upon the bathroom shelf. While squatting upon the mildewed wooden platform taking his bucket baths, he had conducted a series of imagined encounters with her, complete with imagined conversations and imagined quarrels and reconciliations. She would meet him wreathed in the scent of the oil, with a smile as white as the gleaming inside of a coconut. A braid of hair had travelled downwards from the top of the coconut lady’s head and followedthe undulations of the bottle. Sampath looked down at the veiled woman standing underneath his tree and felt hot and horrified.
    ‘Please come down and be introduced. You have sat in the tree long enough,’ said Mr Chawla.
    Sampath thought he might faint.
    ‘Climb up, daughter,’ the girl’s father urged her. ‘Climb up. Come on, one step. Just a step.’
    The devotees raised the girl’s rigid, unwilling form into the tree. ‘Up,’ they urged, and slowly she began to climb. She was encased in layers of shiny material, like a large, expensive toffee. The cloth billowed about her, making her look absurdly stout. Her gold slippers slipped with every step. Her sari was pulled over her head and she held the edge of it between her teeth so as to keep as much of her face modestly covered as possible. It seemed an eternity before she neared Sampath. It was clear that this girl would not take well to life in a tree. She paused and looked back down for further directions. Nobody knew quite what to expect, or how she should proceed. Even Mr Chawla was at a loss as to