People are more gullible, and less compassionate, than any of us want to believe, don’t you agree?”

I’ve begun to see that the herbal remedies of the Himalayan people have a place in modern medicine. If their homemade poultices and potions didn’t work...well, they wouldn’t still be using them.”

With Radha I could only guide and suggest. She was strong-willed and preferred her own counsel. I had learned that much.

Hadn’t Gandhi-ji said, An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind?

He had come from Britain to work with Indian soldiers—many of whom had fought for England in the First World War—when

This was how my saas had taught me to show my love. Not with words or touch but through healing.

He’d been around nautch girls who concealed their names within the henna design on their body. If a man found it, he won a free night in their bed. If he didn’t, the women were paid double rate.

She felt separate from my ladies and longed for friendship. Motherhood, she felt, would be her entrée into a world of cozy chats, shared intimacies.

Day after day, I worked alongside her to heal women—most were children still, twenty years old or younger, bodies weak from too many births, too many of them rough. Their days were filled with worry about how to feed their brood; at night they prayed their husbands would come home from labor too tired to add to their troubles. One day Saasuji