Always and Forever

Chapter Eight

"Well, juicy news I heard," said Sonia, leaning forward, her British accent not able to fully conceal her vernacular twang. Aman's mother had explained to him that even though the Nageshwari family was well-connected and wealthy from generations just like them, Sonia's father had believed in sending his children to local schools so that they stay grounded to their roots.

Their mother had died early and they had been left in the company of an uncultured poor relative who kept house for their father and acted as nursemaid. All of this would have been fine in a town like Ooty with its fabulous schools but the family transacted their business in a dusty little village to the north of the country where the rest of their school-mates were the children of the working lower classes.

The results were disastrous.

Instead of staying rooted, both Sonia and her brother were intolerable snobs and because they didn't have the natural confidence that came from good breeding, they seemed to think that behaving like the bad rich characters portrayed in Indian cinema made them look cultured.

Aman must have realised that something was not right but did not have the natural intuition in such matters to identify what exactly was wrong with his fiancé who had the perfect figure, dressed well and had the energy of a horse. She was willing to go clubbing and drink all night and be ready to get to work in the morning. She had also propositioned him many times and thought he was being ridiculous when he turned her down.

Of course the match had been arranged. Sonia's father had been an old friend of Mr. Ram Satrap and had even helped him during his dark days of struggle. Mr. Nageshwari had well known the short-comings of his children, although he would never admit his part in it and had been quite generous in his offer of dividing his estate equally between the two of his children. Mr. Ram Satrap and his wife had discussed these circumstances at length and decided that were Aman ever to fail in his business ventures, some of which were quite risky, he would always have the option of depending on his wife.

This fact, they did not discuss with Aman and he was not the sort of man shrewd enough to understand these matters. He simply took the first explanation that his mother gave him, that the family if aligned with them would be a good match. He had decided long ago that when the time was right he would allow his parents to arrange his marriage. A marriage which was on an equal footing, where neither party thought they were being taken advantage of and there would be no cause for any sort of differences because of their similar backgrounds. Even their sub-caste, something the Satraps were too modern to consider matched, as did their horoscopes.

Aman had met the girl and although her contrived accent grated on his nerves, there was nothing else that he found fault with. She was a fit, young and reasonably good-looking woman, tall enough to be mistaken for a model and she was a good trophy to flaunt with his business associates and if he were being honest with himself; as different from Lekha as the sun is to the moon.

"I heard you met with your former fiancé," she was saying now, sitting forward so that he could get a clear view of her cleavage. She pronounced fiancé strangely as she did a lot of things. She sometimes forgot her Brit accent and suddenly remembered it and corrected herself in the next sentence.

He idly debated whether he should tell her to stick to one accent. Perhaps if she were told that the accent didn't really matter, there were lots of languages in the world, not everyone could pronounce things the same way and her vernacular English was good enough if she were willing to be fully confident about it – she might be easier to converse with.

Aman looked at his watch. "Do you have to go somewhere?"

He pretended not to hear. "Hello, Hello, are you going somewhere?" she asked again, her voice louder this time. He looked at her then and she must have seen something in his eyes that made her lower her own. The she looked up again. "I asked if you were going somewhere because you looked down at your watch, so I thought you may be in a hurry..." Sonia tried to put some hurt in her voice and she widened her eyes like she had seen some girls who landed all the good men do. She didn't realise she sounded whiny and coarse with her rude hellos.