Sublime

She was poised and thoughtful and a little messy all at once.

A Room of One’s Own,

he was, as Gujaratis say, ghar-no maanas: a man from home, a kinsman. He could be trusted.

By this time, approximately 1.2 million people of Indian origin were living outside the Indian subcontinent.

Assimilation was our sole strategy, the totem we believed would protect us.

Slowly we became—all four of us—American. For Bhupendra and Bhanu this would become clearer with each visit to India or Fiji. Although they tried to blend in, to do as the locals did, the mask was less and less perfect. The changes were physiological: they could not drink the water, had to be careful about what they ate, were bothered by pollution.

how even her daughter’s life sometimes seemed like another area of the household she’d delegated to someone else.

cricket on a stem, the veined branches