like asking directions or reading signs in an airport or interacting with the officials at passport control (which the scribe had also explained to her), the teacher—a young woman who was a newlywed; Poornima could tell this because she wore a fresh, fragrant garland of jasmine in her hair every evening, and she looked at her watch constantly, and as it neared nine P.M., she would be flush with what could be only expectation, joy, newness—looked at Poornima curiously, averting her eyes from the scar, and said, “This is a conversational English class. You want the one for businesspeople.”
“Businesspeople? Why?”
“Because they’re the ones who travel,” she said.
So Poornima transferred into the class for businesspeople. This class had five men in it, and Poornima. The teacher was a middle-aged man, maybe forty, with a prominent nose and an excitable manner. He would leap around the class like a grasshopper, explaining various words and their meanings and engaging them in conversation. By the end of the fourth week, Poornima was elated. She was able to have this conversation:
“What is your name, madam?”
“Poornima.”
“What is your business?”
“I am accountant.”
“I am an accountant,” the teacher corrected her.
“Yes, yes,” she said. “I am an accountant.”
“How was your flight, madam?”
“Very good, sir.”
“Did you fly from Delhi or Mumbai?”
“I fly from Delhi.”
“I flew,” he said.
“Yes, yes. I flew from Delhi,” she said smiling, resplendent, unaware of the five other men in the class, staring at her face in horror.
* * *
The course was four months long. At the end of the four months, Poornima knew the names of major airports (Heathrow, Frankfurt, JFK), and she knew the words gate, transit, business, pleasure, no, nothing to declare, and lots of other business phrases she hadn’t even imagined, like “In for a penny, in for a pound” and “Let’s seal the deal” and “Bon voyage” (which wasn’t even English!). She would walk home after class, or ride the bus, and speak to the passing scenes. She’d say, “Bird. Hello. I am learning English.” Or she’d say, “Tree. Do you know English?” Once she saw a cat prowling around an alley near her flat, and she said, “Cat. You are looking thin. Drink milk.” On the last day, the teacher gave Poornima a pocket-size Telugu-English dictionary for being the best student in the class. She received it in front of the other students—all of them still unused to the burn scars on her face—folded her hands, and said, “Thank you, sir. With me, I will take it America.”
* * *
Once the class was finished, there was nothing more to be done. Poornima considered taking another class, an advanced class for businesspeople, but she didn’t have the money to enroll, so she waited, saved most of her salary each month, and carried the Telugu-English dictionary with her everywhere, as if it were an amulet, a charm that would take her to Savitha faster. It did nothing of the sort. In fact, she had to wait half a year before she saw another large payout. This one was for five lakh rupees. No name, no notations. She seized the opportunity. She said to Guru, “Another shepherd?”
He groaned. “They’ll finish me, with their prices.”
“How much do you make on the girls?”
“None of your business,” he said, looking her squarely in the eyes, as warning, as admonishment. The funds were kept separately, Poornima had noticed, off the books.
“I was just thinking,” she said, ignoring his look, “that I could go. Take the girls. You’d only have to pay for the ticket.”
“You,” he said, and laughed, “with that face? And not a lick of English?”
“But I do know English.”
“What?”
“I learned in school. In diploma college. When I learned accounting.”
“Where are you from again?”
“Ask me. Ask me anything.”
Guru didn’t know enough English to ask her anything beyond “What is your name?” and “What is your caste?” but the next day, he brought in an English-language newspaper, The Times of India, and said, Read that. She did, and explained that it was about two tribals in Jharkhand who’d been beaten to death for being Christian. He looked at her, amazed. Apparently, he’d already had someone, an acquaintance or a man at the newsstand, read the article and tell him what it was about. “Diploma college, you say?”
Poornima nodded.
He was still skeptical, until Poornima started speaking to him exclusively in English, convincingly enough for Guru, who hardly knew it, until he finally said, “There is this one girl. Going to Dubai. But you’ll have to get a passport.”