The social niceties completed, she smiled, withdrew her hand, and cocked her head to one side as she sized me up. I couldn’t tear my gaze away from the bindi on her forehead. Not the red dot I’d seen on some women, but a small crescent-shaped moon with the horns pointing upward.

“It’s impolite to stare, Mr. Jacobs,” she said. “Would you like me to remove it?”

“I … I’m sorry. Of course not. I was … admiring it.”

“Don’t mind her games,” said Smets, interrupting my stammering. “Mita is a playful girl.”

He even had a pet name for her.

“It’s called a chandrakor bindi,” she said. “Typically Maharashtrian.”

“It looks like a crescent moon. What does chandrakor mean?”

“It means crescent moon,” she said.

“Oh,” was the wittiest riposte I could manage.

I suspected she was laughing at me. At my awkward attempt at sophistication. And each smile, every spark glinting off a tooth, and the curl of her lips only made my discomfort more difficult to hide. I took a sip of my whisky, which dribbled down my chin.

“What are you doing in Bombay, Mr. Jacobs?” she asked, shifting her weight from her left foot to her right, opening a narrow space between her hip and Smets.

My eyes betrayed me again. Without realizing it, I glanced at the bare skin of her waist, where the fabric of her sari wrapped around her middle. She uttered a soft cough. Trying to act as if I hadn’t been ogling her, I told her I was a reporter for UNI.

“How interesting,” she said, those brilliant eyes fixed on mine, a mischievous smile on her lips. “Can you tell me about that without spilling your drink?”

But, in that moment, I could think of nothing remotely interesting to share with her. Instead, trying to calm my nerves, I tapped the roll of film in my pocket, the one that I’d been carrying around for days. The one with the bomber I’d interviewed. The one I was so afraid to lose that I kept it with me always. I put that thought aside and told Sushmita I worked at the UNI bureau in Fort, on Phirozshah Mehta Road.

“Of course, I know the place. Have you tried the pani puri from the chaatwallah outside?”

“You mean the … that guy who sells food in the street?” I asked. “With all the flies?”

“That’s the one. And don’t worry about the flies. You’re going to get Delhi belly sooner or later. You might as well be done with it.”

“That’s enough for now, Mita,” said Smets. A man in a white safari jacket approached us. “Danny Boy, I must introduce you to Ashok Pethe. Ash to his friends.”