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dry flowers in, and furniture collected from all over the country.
    Since two-year-olds were unpredictable, Divya Auntie had moved the glass vases and glass tea trolley and had replaced them with plastic toys and balloons. I always thought that since Divya Auntie’s husband had retired as a brigadier, her house exuded wealth and sophistication. It was not real wealth, but she managed to make her drawing room and the rest of her house look like they belonged to a rich family. Somehow army wives knew how to do that. They had class and elegance, which we civilians seemed to lack.
    Divya Auntie was an amateur painter, and on the off-white walls of the drawing room hung vivid paintings of bullock carts and villages, of women carrying earthen pots on their heads, and, in the painting that I liked most, Omar Khayyám lay luxuriously under a tree, holding an ornate glass of wine, while a beautiful woman sat beside him playing the harp.
    Divya Auntie had promised to give me old Omar as a wedding gift. After seeing Prakash, I yearned for that painting as I had never before.
    “What do you want to do now that you have finished your B.A.? Work? Go back for an M.A.?” Prakash asked, and I smiled gently and shrugged. It was not important for me to go to work or get a better education. I had other plans, glorious plans. I would take care of my husband, my house, and my children. I would cook great meals and invite people for dinner. In the army everyone threw big parties and I would make it my job to be the perfect hostess.
    “Where are you posted now?” I asked, changing the subject. Men liked to talk about themselves and I wanted to know more about him.
    “I just got my transfer papers to go to Bhopal. There is an EME Center there. I was in Udhampur before that.”
    “Udhampur?” I couldn’t contain my joy. He had been to places I hadn’t even heard of before.
    “It’s in Jammu and Kashmir, about fifty kilometers above Jammu. It’s a nice place, close to Srinagar.”
    “It must be fun to travel and see new places,” I said playing with the edge of my sari. I leaned against the wall of the balcony, where Divya Auntie had sent us to “talk.” Some children peeped through the glass doors and then slithered away as Divya Auntie stood guard.
    “Yes, it is. Do you like to travel?”
    My eyes hit the floor. “Act demurely in front of a man,” my grandmother would always say. I wanted to be Mrs. Prakash Mehra, but I couldn’t be overt; I couldn’t just tell him that he was what I wanted. What if he wasn’t interested?
    “I love to travel,” I said, raising my eyes slowly and looking into his with confidence. “I haven’t done much though. Just a little. I went to Bombay for a wedding last year and . . . a friend of mine got married in Madras a month ago.”
    “In the army there is constant moving,” Prakash seemed to warn me. “You think you could deal with constant moving?”
    I was dumbfounded. He was so direct. He was almost proposing to me and that was not how marriage proposals were made. He first had to speak with his parents and they would speak with my parents and then the matter would be arranged. Ordinary men didn’t speak like this, only an army officer did, I thought happily. My lips broke into a genuine smile.
    “I could deal with it very easily,” I said.
    That was all it took. A few minutes of conversation and the date of the marriage was fixed.

FIVE
    ANJALI
    I was still seething when I got home. How dare he come to my school and embarrass me? Mrs. Gujjar had asked all sorts of questions after Prakash left . . .
    Who is he?
    How do you know him?
    Does your husband know him?
    Does your husband know you know him?
    Is he an old friend?
    How long since you’ve known him?
    I had answered each question patiently and unconvincingly. By the time I got out of my afternoon class, everyone in the staff room wanted to know about the brigadier who had come to see me. If I had said ex-husband, they all would