Kamal’s years at Kodaikanal flew by, as happy times always do. He found friends and freedom. He found hobbies; he discovered a talent for both music and acting. He learned to play the piano tolerably well, and the guitar, and sing along. He joined a theatre group and discovered he was particularly good at playing dastardly villains. He was the brightest student in his class, and could take his pick of the best universities in the world. He wanted to go as far away from Rani Abishta as possible. He chose the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in the USA.
Rani Abishta, of course, had been strictly against his going abroad. There had been a hot discussion, with her extolling the virtues of the Indian universities in Calcutta and Bombay and Delhi. But since his illness a subtle change in the balance of power had taken place, and Rani Abishta knew now that there was nothing she or anyone in the world could do when Kamal had made up his mind. She accepted defeat on this issue with something very much like grace.
Besides, she told Jairam, there was absolutely no sign of Kamal fulfilling Swami’s prophecy. Kamal might be intense and strong-willed, but definitely not religious: there was no danger of him taking sannyas, becoming a monk. He had chosen to study engineering for his degree – what could be more worldly than that? She had pleaded with him to take up economics, business studies, law, degrees that would fit into her plans for him, but he had refused. She pleaded with him to at least let it be textile engineering, which would come in useful when he took over the silk business, but no, stubborn as usual, Kamal had set his mind on civil engineering. And, he told her, he had absolutely no intention of going into the silk business.
Rani Abishta shrugged and accepted defeat. It was a pity; but, after all, the family business ran itself. She had placed good and trustworthy men in charge, and with only a minimum of supervision the profits were good. The market for patola silk was still thriving – patola silk was royal silk, and although there were no more royals in India, there were plenty of millionaires who behaved and dressed like royalty. They had also expanded, invested, purchased a struggling silk company in Tamil Nadu, built it up. Moved on to a lesser, but still exquisite, quality for their top range, and more commercial qualities for the export market, and profits had only increased in the last few years. People would always want silk; women would always want to wrap themselves in fine garments. The future was rosy.
In his third year at MIT, Kamal received a bulging envelope from Rani Abishta that made his blood boil.
‘Soon your studies will be over, my son,’ she wrote, ‘and no doubt the offers of work will be flooding in. It is time to start looking for a bride for you and I have initiated the process. In the envelope you will find five possibilities: all beautiful ladies with good connections. I have already negotiated with their parents. I have decided we will not demand a dowry as we are modern people, but the connections are important. My favourite is Miss Battacharya – a lovely girl and her father owns a chain of retail fabric outlets all over the North. They are from Delhi. She is having an excellent education, which she will complete at the end of this year. She is perfect for you but if you prefer one of the others I am quite understanding. All of them are extremely suitable, just that Miss Bhattacharya is the best.’
Kamal threw away the entire packet of colour photographs and marriage proposals, and wrote Rani Abishta a curt reply: ‘None of them are right for me, Daadi. Please do not send any more marriage proposals, and please do not search for anyone else.’
Kamal met Caroline Mitchell in his fourth year at MIT. He first came across her at a Thanksgiving party in the home of a friend, and he spent that first evening answering all her avid questions about India.
As Caroline had spent her early years in the care of an Indian nanny, Meena, she had been nourished for years on the stories of the great epics Mahabharata and Ramayana. Meena had created a paradisical India in her mind, a place of flowers and birdsong and fabulous palaces and magical landscapes, snow-capped majestic mountains and sparkling lakes. As she reached adulthood and became involved with liberal politics she of course came to understand that this India was a clichéd, one-sided version of a very complex country; that the real India was far more multifaceted; that great misery and ugliness existed there side by side with the beauty and sublime ideas. But she remained fascinated. Against her parents’ advice she chose anthropology as her major, and for the theme of her thesis, the Language and Culture of the Dravidian People of South India.
She would be going to India! In a year’s time, she told Kamal; to do the fieldwork in Tamil family traditions necessary for her thesis. She hoped he could give her some tips, maybe some addresses?
She looked up at him with warm amber eyes that somehow touched him with their cool blend of naivety and intelligence. That naivety came from a pre-knowledge of India that was entirely idealistic and totally clichéd, established by a homesick nanny in whose lap she had dreamed her first Indian dreams, and later modified by a thousand books and articles written by Westerners, brimful of Western prejudices and Western condescension. Kamal was able to set her straight on a number of issues.
They were so thoroughly engaged in the discussion that they did not notice the passing of time, and had to be gently levered out of their wicker chairs on the wraparound porch at two in the morning. Caroline lived with her parents in Cambridge, just a ten-minute walk from the friend’s home. Kamal walked her home.
They talked all the way. Then Kamal felt her hand in his, and stopped speaking in mid-sentence. They walked the next few paces in silence. Then Caroline said, ‘There’s my house,’ and pointed with her other hand, and Kamal squeezed the hand in his.
‘I hope—’
‘Kamal, it was—’
They spoke simultaneously; both stopped and looked at each other and laughed. Then Kamal said, ‘Go ahead, you first.’
Caroline took his other hand and clasped them both between her smaller ones. ‘I just wanted to say, I haven’t had such a stimulating evening for… oh, my God. I don’t think I’ve ever had such a stimulating evening in my whole life! It was awesome, talking with you, Kamal, and I think we’re going to be great friends.’
Caroline’s words were prophetic. They not only became the best of friends, they became lovers. From that first evening Kamal had known that this was the woman he was going to marry. She was so different from him, and not only physically, with her long blonde hair and pale heart-shaped face. She was the stranger he longed to embrace because she represented the half of him he did not yet know, that missing part of him that, once united with him, would make him whole. She was intellectual and warm at the same time; genuinely interested – no, interested was too weak – enchanted by India and all things Indian; touchingly ingenuous; sometimes brittle, but the brittleness was only superficial and easy to melt. They could talk for hours, and be silent for hours; when the first snow fell she drove him out to the countryside and they walked through the whiteness without speaking a single word, arms slung around each other in a silent intimacy overflowing with warmth, and though the bitter cold stung his bare cheeks Kamal felt the winter must melt before them, like the snowflakes melting on his lashes. He opened his lips and caught the snow on his tongue and laughed out loud. Caroline, her face small and white in the soft maroon shawl wrapped around her head, glowed with inner joy. She pressed an icy-cold, snow-encrusted glove against his cheek and said, ‘Kamal Bhandari, if you don’t promise to marry me I swear I’m going to lie down right there in that snowbank and let the snow drift over me and cover me till I look like the Abominable Snowman and just wait there until you do!’
Kamal chuckled and moved her hand from his cheek. He pulled off her glove and flung it away onto the snow, and replaced the warm hand on his warm cheek.
‘That’s more like it. Now, Caroline Mitchell, what do you want me to do? Go down on one knee and propose officially?’
‘No. Just say it. Say it. Say you want to marry me. Say you want to be mine for ever and ever.’
‘You know it already.’
‘But I want to hear it. I want you to say it out loud. I can’t stand this deep Indian silent communication. Go on, just say it.’
‘You don’t know me properly yet, you know. Wait till I get you back to India. I will turn into the tyrannical Indian patriarch of your worst nightmares! I will ravish you as my wife and keep another four in my harem just for good measure. I will keep you well under my foot, forbid you to step outside the walls of our marital abode unless you walk four paces behind me. You will occupy yourself with raising five fine sons to follow in my revered footsteps. You will refer to me exclusively as “Father of my Sons” and bow your head, hiding your face in the folds of your sari, when I enter the room. You will humbly serve me delicious meals you have cooked with devotion on golden platters and only take food yourself when I and all our sons have been sated. When I die you will—’
‘I’ll stuff this snow down your damned throat if you don’t look out!’ cried Caroline, then made good on her threat. Kamal wrenched himself out of her grasp and ran stumbling through
the snow. Caroline bent down and picked up a handful of snow, pressed it into a huge snowball and pelted him with it, screaming, ‘You asked for it! You jerk!’ It hit him square on the back of his head.
‘OK, it’s WAR!’ cried Kamal, and bent over for his own snowball.
They fought fiercely, hysterically, for a good half-hour and then, suddenly, Kamal threw up his arms and said, ‘OK, OK, you win. I admit my defeat. I surrender unequivocally. I will fulfil each and every one of your demands.’
She flung herself at him so that they both lay in the snow. ‘Marry me. That’s all I want. Say it out loud.’
‘Marry me,’ he whispered, and the words came out on a breath like smoke, fading into the crisp cold air.
‘Louder. I can’t hear you.’
‘Marry me, Caroline.’
‘Sorry? What was that?’
‘I refuse to shout. I’m not going to shout. Come here.’ He drew her head close to his, her ear to his lips, and there he spoke the words again, clearly and gently. ‘Will you be my wife? To have and to hold, till death do us part?’
She smiled, put her arms around him and rested her cheek on his. ‘Yes,’ she sighed ‘I will.’
The path to marriage was, for Kamal and Caroline, rough. Caroline took Kamal to meet her parents and they received him with a civil but icy reserve that caused him to fear the worst.
‘You see, they belong to the old Boston aristocracy. Old money, real old. Very Anglo-Saxon, very white, very Protestant. They have a precise idea of the kind of man they want me to marry and – well, Kamal, you just don’t fit the cookie-cutter.’
‘They haven’t even tried to get to know me.’
‘Getting to know you isn’t the issue. Who you are doesn’t count; it’s what you are.’
‘What I am? Come on, I’m not exactly the plumber! I’m a MIT student, for goodness’ sake. All right, I realise a medical or a law student might be more up their street but—’
Caroline cut in. ‘That’s not the point, Kamal. Even if you were going to be a doctor they’d be against you. It’s where you come, from, how you look.’
‘In other words, they’re racist.’
Caroline hung her head. ‘I’m sorry, Kamal. That’s just the way they are. They can’t jump over their shadows. I warned you they’d be this way.’
‘Look, I don’t give a damn about them. The question for me is, can you jump over their shadows?’
‘Oh Kamal, why do you even ask!’
‘So you’ll go against them? Marry me, even if they don’t agree? Come with me to India?’
‘Kamal, I’ve always known I’d end up in India. Ever since I read The Jungle Book as a child I’ve known it – it’s a pull I can’t explain and for me it’s only logical that I should marry an Indian and go there with him and there’s nothing in the world my parents can do about it. They can’t hold me back. But anyway’ – she smiled – ‘sooner or later they’ll have to give in because they love me. And when they hold my first baby in their arms, they’ll be just like grandparents anywhere. They’ll go completely gaga.’
Of course, Kamal told Caroline all about his childhood in the golden cage. Caroline was beyond excited.
‘So you’re a real Indian prince! Wow! I can’t believe I’m going to marry a prince! Does that make me a princess? I can’t believe it! Kamal, I used to dream of becoming an Indian princess but no one would believe me, and now it’s going to be true! I can’t wait to see the palace! Shall we have a big wedding in the palace? Shall I arrive riding on an elephant? Just kidding, don’t give me that look! But you know, knowing you’re a prince might be just the thing to win over my parents. You should have told me earlier!’
But Kamal frowned, and his eyes clouded over.
‘No,’ he said. ‘You’re not a princess, and I am not a prince. I’m not taking you to that place. I don’t want to see Daadi ever again.’
Caroline was persistent. ‘But why, Kamal, why? She’s your grandmother; your only relative. Surely she’ll want to meet your wife, and when we have kids—’
‘I don’t want to discuss it, Caroline, OK? She wouldn’t approve of you anyway, so you can forget about a big royal wedding. It’s not going to happen.’
That was the only time they ever came near to a quarrel, and Caroline thought it was wiser to leave well enough alone. She understood: Kamal wanted to be loved for himself, not for his blue blood. And she did love him for himself.