Amid a cacophony of children playing, “pigeons strutting the paving stones”, old people exchanging greetings, and vendors walking by, Bonita —an Indian girl who’s in Mexico to learn Spanish—has stationed herself on a bench in a park in San Miguel with a Spanish-language newspaper in hand, signalling no desire to talk to anyone. But, as is, the atmosphere resembles that of any community park in an Indian city, and there’s always someone eager to initiate a conversation with a visibly colloquial outsider like Bonita. Dressed flamboyantly and donning festive makeup, Victoria (aka Vicky) calls out to Bonita, confirming that she has been keenly watching her.
She is sure, she tells Bonita, that she is the mirror image of her beloved friend, Rosarita. Thus begins Anita Desai’s latest novel—two decades after The Zigzag Way—Rosarita. Interestingly, the previous novel was also set in Mexico.
“It’s the closest I can get to India when I’m in America,” Desai had noted earlier. Like a primordial truth, Desai’s novels have been about the quiet, simmering feelings that often go unacknowledged. For example, though Bonita finds Vicky “too intrusive”, didn’t she want “and [was] certainly in need of—exactly such an ‘interchange’ with a ‘native speaker’ who approaches you so warmly, so effusively?” Why was Bonita bumfuzzled then? Was it the histrionics of Vicky’s mannerisms that put her off? Or was there a promise of discovery about Bonita’s mot.