Riot Read Free Page B

flavors of ice cream, to live in the armpit of India and work in population control. Why do you do it?”
    â€œPopulation-control awareness ,” I corrected him. “I’m just teaching — I mean telling — people about their rights, about what’s out there, what can help them. That’s all,” I added, knowing as I said it that I was sounding more defensive than I should.
    â€œWhy? Are you pursuing some sort of missionary vocation?”
    â€œDon’t be silly. I mean, I am a believing Methodist, but my church didn’t send me here. I’m here as a student anyway,” I replied, a little more spiritedly. “Doing my field research. It all fits in, and I’m glad to be useful.”
    â€œUseful,” he murmured, his fingertips touching under his chin, an amused look in his eye. “I think it was Oscar Wilde who said that usefulness is the last refuge of the unappealing. But even a man of his proclivities would have to agree that that last adjective doesn’t apply to you.”
    It took me a second to get his meaning, and then I blushed. So help me God, I blushed.
    â€œI didn’t know Indian administrators were required to read Oscar Wilde,” I ventured a little lamely, to cover up my confusion.
    â€œGod, we read everything,” he replied. “What else is there to do in these godforsaken places they post us to? But Wilde, actually, I performed in college. St. Stephens. ‘The Importance of Being Earnest.’ My friends and I loved his use of language. ‘Arise, sir, from that semirecumbent posture!’ ‘Truth is rarely pure, and never simple.’ ‘Really, if the lower orders don’t set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them?’ For months after the play we went around talking in Wildeisms, some of which we made up ourselves. It got to the point where I could no longer tell the authentic Oscar epigrams from the ones I’d invented on the spur of some particularly opportune moment. I’m afraid the one I just came up with may well have been one of my own. A mere Lakshmanism.” He laughed, lightly, softly, and that was the moment I knew I wanted him to kiss me.
    â€œThat’s an India I’ve never known,” I said.
    â€œThe India that performs ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’? That makes up Wildean epigrams? That considers the pun to be mightier than the sword? You haven’t met many Stephanians, then. The products of St. Stephen’s College, the oldest college in Delhi University and the best institution of higher education in India— just ask any Stephanian. The one place where you could actually have a classmate saying, ‘I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my silk kurtas.’ Mind you, we produce all sorts of Stephanians. I should put you in touch with our chief cop here, Gurinder. No Wildean — quite the opposite, in fact — but in his own way, he’s far worse than me.” He smiled, dazzlingly, a perfect set of white teeth against the darkness of his face. “Priscilla, my dear, we’re just as Indian as the pregnant women in your population-control proawareness programs. Unless you think you’re somehow less authentically American than the welfare queen from Harlem.”
    I grimaced inwardly at the last stereotype but saw the point he was making, so just nodded.
    A little grinning boy brought in tea. “Ah, Mitha Mohammed,” Lakshman greeted him. “His tea is always too sweet. He has a heavy hand with the sugar, which is why we call him Sweet Mohammed. You don’t have to drink it if you don’t want to.” He took a large gulp from his own cup anyway as the boy, still grinning, salaamed and left. “But how come you haven’t met many Stephanians? Didn’t you say you’d lived three years in Delhi?”
    â€œYes, but I was a kid then,” I replied. “Just fifteen when I