Read Online THE IMMIGRANT by Manju Kapur - Free Book Online

edifice of Ananda’s love for Canada, the sanctuary. He determined to become a citizen as soon as he qualified.
    From time to time Alka brought up her poor lonely brother’s need for a wife. Such and such offer had come, what did he think? He always thought negatively. A wife from India meant the India Club, meant socialising with immigrants, pretending they had a bond, when really he found their conversation monotonous and boring. With a superior snigger they compared their own virtues with the shortcomings of their adopted country; look at their domestic life, the way they educated their children, their sexual morality, their marriages, their treatment of the old, etc, etc. Then they talked of Hindi films and songs. Their heads, hearts and purses were permanently and uneasily divided between two countries.
    Give him Gary any day.
    Alka began to get more insistent.
    ‘Did you think about that last proposal? I can’t keep putting off interested people.’
    ‘You should see the way I live—in one room as a paying guest.’
    ‘A wife will help you settle. Ma’s spirit will not rest in peace till you are married.’
    Ananda thought mournfully of his sexual difficulties, and wondered whether the breakthrough moment would come with an arranged marriage. Certainly he could count on a willing, patient, forgiving, loving partner.
    ‘You have to stop being so fussy. My astrologer told me about this girl, a teacher in my old college, a year younger than you, father used to be in the IFS. She sounds just your type.’
    ‘How do you know what my type is?’
    ‘O-ho. Calm down. I will send her picture, and if you approve I will meet her.’
    ‘There is no need for hurry.’
    ‘You are thirty one, you call that hurrying?’
    ‘How can I decide with just a photo? What about compatibility, taste, her ability to live here?’
    ‘Poor boy,’ murmured Alka after a pause. ‘To think like this makes it more difficult. Marriage is a question of adjustment.’
    ‘You still need a canvas to paint on.’
    ‘So write, phone, get to know her. I am not asking you to marry a stranger. No thinking person can.’
    Still, she was pulling him backwards into the arms of an Indian wife. If she could see how respected he was in his community, how immersed in Canada, she would understand his reluctance.
    ‘Why don’t you visit me? Get your hotshot husband to wrangle a trip abroad. Must be easy now.’
    Alka spent the next five minutes of the precious phone call explaining how Ramesh was not one of those corrupt civil servants used to wrangling trips abroad. He was a loyal and humble servant of the state. He wanted India to progress, and ever since strikes were banned the economy had been improving.
    Abruptly Alka rang off. Were things so bad that an ignorant middle class housewife had to sound like a propaganda machine? Was her phone being tapped?
    Two weeks later, a photograph. He stared at it, a bland, black and white formal portrait of a girl gazing into the distance. It gave away nothing. Certainly not the state of her teeth.
    He first kept the snapshot face down on the table, but after a few days propped it tentatively against the frame containing his parents. Suppose circumstances propelled her from the basement to the clinic?
    Picture of wife sitting in the dentist’s office on top of the implement cabinet:
    Patients ask, who is that lovely lady? She looks so exotic.
    With quiet pride he responds, that is my wife, her name is… he opened his sister’s letter, ah yes, there it was, Nina. Her name is Nina.
    Nina, what a nice name.
    Both Indian and Canadian. There are few names like that.
    Like Andy? Dr Andy?
    Actually Andy is not my real name, my Indian name is Ananda. Means deep happiness.
    Really?
    My friends call me Andy, and since it is easier to say, I use it myself.
    End of conversation, but was it the end of Nina? Her name had been thoughtfully provided, no need for a Westernized version.
    By this time Ananda had experienced