“There’s one or two things I want to go over,” Amitabh said.
“And you want to do it now?”
“That’s about the size of it,” Amitabh said.
“Maybe someone else can help you.”
“Nope. I’m focusing on yourself.”
“Not ‘yourself.’ ‘I’m focusing on you.’”
“I’m focusing on you.”
“Better. But I wish you wouldn’t.”
It seemed that whenever she was in a hurry or had a deadline in India, she encountered an obstruction: a traffic jam, or the sidewalk was mobbed and slowed her, or someone wanted money, or the office was closed. Or, like today, she wanted to feed the elephant and rush back to the ashram, and here was Amitabh, in her face with a question. But she had given him the convincing accent, and with it, an attitude.
“The thing is,” Amitabh said with the heavy-lidded gaze and torpid smile he affected at his most American, “you said you were kind of interested in seeing the gods at Mahabalipuram.”
He said kinda and gahds.
“Did I say that?”
“You mentioned the elephants on The Penance of Arjuna and the Ganesh temple.”
“I think I said Ganesh seemed the most dependable, maybe the most lovable. And the carvings of elephants there—”
Interrupting her, Amitabh said, “I’ll take that as a yes.”
Alice began to laugh. Had she taught him that? No, but as with other phrases he knew, she might have used it in conversation. He remembered everything.
Using her laughter as a chance to interrupt again, Amitabh said, “I know somebody who knows somebody who got me a couple of tickets on the so-called Super Express to Chennai. You haven’t been there, am I right?”
“Not yet.”
“I figured as much,” he said. “So this is your chance to see the whole thing.”
How did he know that? Perhaps she had mentioned the elephant carvings at Mahabalipuram during one of her classes. She and Stella had spoken about visiting the shrine. One of the attractions of the ashram in Bangalore was that it was half a day by train to Chennai and the coastal temple, the famous bas relief called The Penance of Arjuna, the temples called the Raths, one dedicated to Ganesh, all of it at the edge of the great hot Indian Ocean. That’s on the list, they had said. This was before Zack entered the picture.
“How about a trip there some weekend?”
Alice smiled at his presumption and squirmed away from his reaching hand.
“Sorry.”
“What’s the problem?”
“The problem is that I’m a teacher and you’re a student, and it’s against the rules.”
Wagging his finger and opening his mouth wide to speak, he said, “We’re both employees of InfoTech. I’m team leader, full time, and you’re an associate instructor, part time. Hey, you owe me—I got them to kick some work your way.”
“Listen, I got this job on my own merits, and don’t you forget it.”
“It’s not about that,” he said, and shrugged. “It’s about the tickets.”
“If I wanted to go to Chennai I’d pay my own way.”
She did want to go—he was reminding her of what she had planned to do. But she objected to big smiling Amitabh’s insisting that she go with him.
She said, “Find someone else, please. I’m pretty busy.”
When she got to the stable and indicated to the mahout that she had brought some cashews for the elephant, she could tell that he was preoccupied: he had already fed the elephant, was just humoring her by allowing her to give the animal some nuts. But the elephant at least was grateful—forgiving, glad to see her, still smiling.
She was so late arriving at the ashram that she replayed the whole delaying conversation with Amitabh and began to hate him for his insolence. How about a trip there some weekend? and Got them to kick some work your way infuriated her. He now seemed to her a monster of presumption, without any grace. That night she sat in her room, ignored by Priyanka and Prithi, hating herself.
Two days later at InfoTech, she went to Miss Ghosh to tell her how she felt. Not just her misgivings about the emphasis on the American accent, but her suspicion that with these fast learners, taking on so much language and accent, they were losing something important—some subtlety, an Indian obliqueness and charm, a fundamental courtesy.
Feeling that she was rambling, she then said, “I’m starting to wonder whether I’m any good at this.”
Miss Ghosh said, “I can sincerely offer assurance that you have been a resounding success.”
“I can see I’ve made a difference.”
“It is chalk and cheese, for which I am duly grateful.”
Miss Ghosh’s Indian English and her dated Anglicisms reminded Alice of how the students had once sounded. The archaic and plodding language made Miss Ghosh seem trustworthy and sensible.
“Block Four, I am thinking of,” Alice said. And she was seeing in her mind this rather shy but intelligent roomful of bright young people had become a crowd of noisy Americans.
“You have worked wonders with them. They have developed a high success rate. We have taken them off Home Depot and put them on call lists to obtain service agreements for contractors to sign up with mortgage companies in southern California. The percentage of sign-ups has been phenomenal.”
“I’ve been finding them familiar.”
“That worries you?”
“The rudeness does. Overfamiliar, I mean.”
Miss Ghosh’s head wagged back and forth. “Rudeness will not be tolerated in any manner.”
“Some of them, the men especially, seem presumptuous.”
“How so?”
“The way they talk to me.”
“Not Mr. Amitabh. He has come on very well as your protégé.”
“He’s one of them.”
“He is scheduled for promotion. You would enjoin me to initiate action?”
Alice was turning shed-jeweled over in her mind. “Not really. I can take care of myself.”
Miss Ghosh said, “I think you are being modest about your achievements. I want to show you the results of your efforts.”
No one was allowed to enter the inner part of InfoTech without a pass—a plastic card that was swiped on a magnetic strip beside the doors. Miss Ghosh got a pass for Alice and took her, swiping her way through a succession of doors, to the call center where her class worked, all thirty-seven of them, in cubicles, sitting before computer screens, most of them on the phone.
Alice had never seen the callers at work. The sight was not surprising. Most business offices looked like this: people talking on the phone, tapping on keyboards, watching monitors. The workers all wore headphones and hands-free mikes that made them insectile in appearance—bulgy heads, antennae, a proboscis. But that was a passing thought.
What astonished her, overwhelmed her, and even physically assaulted her were the voices, the jangle of American accents, inquiring, pleading, importuning, apologizing.
“This is Jahn. Jahn Marris. May I speak to the homeowner?”
“Let me repeat that information …”
“I’m gonna need the serial number …”
“The mahdel number. I said, the mahdel number.”
“Are you sure this is our prahduct?”
They sounded like a flock of contending birds. Even the room had a cage-like quality, the employees roosting in their narrow cubicles like squawkers in a hen house. Their sounds were strangely similar in harshness, as though they were all the same species of bird, not hens at all but a roomful of macaws, the teeth and smiles of American voices but hardly human.