It took about twenty minutes to stumble upon a YouTube clip I’d never before seen. It was labeled “guest spkr @ 2014 miss india teen new jersy.” I gathered from the text below the video that a twenty-three-year-old Anita had been invited to address the MTI finalists. Someone commented, “this video had gotten taken down few years back thank you for riposting.” Someone below that replied, “she is 1 ungrateful girl.”

The video, taken on a phone camera, was washed out. Behind Anita fluttered the Tricolor and Chakra next to the Stars and Stripes. The phone refocused on a Jumbotron, where Anita’s face had been supersized. There, through a camera on a camera, came the simulacrum of Anita Dayal. Her features looked slathered with too much cakey makeup, and her cheeks were chubbier than they’d been in Hammond Creek. Her hair hung down to her breasts, thick and artificially curled. There were the thank-yous and the lead-ups, and then the meat of it:

“So, why did the Miss Teen India committee choose me as one of your speakers today?

“For one,” she said, “because I won this pageant some years ago, as Miss Teen India Georgia.” A whoop from the crowd, perhaps 2014’s representative from the Peach State. Anita smiled wanly, waiting. She was plainly not there to cheerlead. “But I think I was invited because in the years since, I’ve lived up to the promise of this organization. I went to Stanford. I work in technology. Someone overly optimistic about my future once called me the next Indra Nooyi.”

Her eyes darted to the wings, as though she was trying to remember her choreography. She took a few long strides. “I keep seeing how successful our community has become. Everyone wants to celebrate that. People like you all, here. And me. And your friends, and cousins, and classmates, and siblings who are getting into good schools and winning quiz team tournaments, and who go off to work at tech companies and consultancies and banks.”

The camera shifted away from the Jumbotron and attempted to zoom in on Anita herself. “I remember wanting so badly to be where I stand now, when I was a teenager. I would have literally killed to be seen as successful. My mother would have killed for me to be seen as successful.

“I grew up in a community called Hammond Creek, outside Atlanta. It was the kind of suburb where immigrants move to give their kids a better life. It’s a beautiful thing, when you think about it. These masses of Asians who all somehow collude to land up in the same place.