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batch of short-listed candidates on the basis of their photos alone. "Look at those shifty eyes!" she'd say. Or "He's fat as an elephant!" Or "Eeesh, what happened to his teeth? He's wearing dentures." Bald spots, double chins, hairy arms. She automatically rejected boys with fancy mustaches and sideburns, those striving for coolness in blue jeans and sunglasses, and those who appeared too goody-goody, too pretentious or too homespun. No pictures, please, with mommy/daddy or grandparents or household pets. No Man-of-the-People shots with servants. She detested foreign settings ("Here is a snap I have dug up from base of Eiffel Tower"...or "Buckingham Palace"...or "Statue of Liberty"...or "Gate of Forbidden City"...). Those were the easy ones. But if a boy with outstanding prospects or handsomeness actually turned up, she'd make a show of serious scrutiny before complaining, "He thinks too well of himself, he's posing like a fashion model." Or "A boy like that—if he's so perfect, why couldn't they find him a rich girl in Kolkata?"
    "It's your fault." Mrs. Bose charged her husband with this failure, reminding him of all the trouble with "your other daughter," reminding him of all of
Sonalis
prideful rejections of acceptable boys from reasonably good families. Sonali had imagined their soft, round,
bhad-bhada
faces aging into double chins, their bristly eyebrows that could only grow untamed ("I'm sure he's already clipping his ear hair!" Sonali had complained). And look at what all her rejections finally got her—a man too handsome for his own good, a man with glorious prospects and no accomplishments, a man who stole her dowry gold and made a mockery of marriage.
    "Two daughters!" Mrs. Bose wailed. "No jamais!"
    After Anjali's final English conversation class—tuning up for interviews, she told her parents; prepping for Bangalore, she told herself—she informed Peter that this visit was to be her last class, her last public appearance in jeans and a T-shirt, her last day as a student. After all, she had a marriage-worthy English proficiency certificate, first class. Peter asked if she was perhaps having a bovine interlude.
    "A
what?
" she asked, and he stared back.
    "Cowlike," he said. But she'd turned down thirty-five potential suitors, a few of whom under different circumstances might have been worthy of a follow-up; that could hardly be considered cowlike. But Peter showed no interest. She assured him that Bangalore was in her plans; she was only testing the waters, placating her parents.
    He said his offer of help—meaning money as well as contacts, she wondered—for Bangalore was waiting, but it had an expiration date.
    "When?" she wondered aloud.
    "Soon," he said. "All right," Peter said, "one bonus private English lesson before Bangalore. Do you like poetry?"
    She didn't, but she knew the proper answer.
    "I want you to read this, and then recite it."
    Even the title confused her. "What is a rawen?" she asked. How could she read it if she didn't know what it was?
    "A raven is a big black bird like a crow that can get an Indian student hired or fired," he said. "You just said 'ray-wen.' Try again."
    She got it on the second try, and didn't mess up on "weak and weary."
    "Good," Peter said. "You aren't too out of practice, Angie."
    And then she was hopeless on "Quoth the raven, nevermore!" Two th's in a row? Back-to-back middle v's? She could cry. But Peter just kept tapping his pencil like a music teacher, muttering "Again, again" until, exhausted, she got it right.

    TWO DAYS LATER , shopping with her mother for mangoes and oranges, she spotted Peter at the outdoor market. She was about to lift her arm and signal, but no, she couldn't, not in a sari, with jingling gold bracelets. Angie-in-sari was Anjali, a stranger to her student self.
    And she thought, just like a hundred generations of potential brides had thought before her, why all this talk of new sisters and new brothers and a new house in a new city and not a