“Does that mean we have to spend more than we can afford? Who cares about a stupid custom, anyway?” I said, dumping a spoonful of black mustard seeds into the hot oil.

“People care. Didn’t you see how many relatives and friends came to admire all the things we gave Nimita?”

“What about you? They’re talking about your marriage now. I heard Foi saying that a few people have approached with marriage offers for you.”

“Have they?” Mohini said, with such urgency in her voice that I couldn’t resist teasing her.

“You paraded enough at Nimita’s wedding; you should be expecting it.”

“Expecting what?”

“What do people do when they gather around? They talk and look for a boy or a girl for whoever is single. That’s why Mummy and Foi had you all dressed up and prancing like a peacock in a monsoon. They wanted you to be seen.”

She was quiet now, staring out the window.

“Don’t you think?” I asked.

“Maybe.” Suddenly, the smell of burning rotli filled the air, and Mohini whisked it off the stove.

I was glad that Mummy wasn’t here. One thing she couldn’t tolerate in us was not being able to make rotli right. “If a girl can roll out a thin, round rotli and cook it just right so that it puffs up like a balloon and has no black burn marks on it, then she knows how to cook,” she would say to us.

“Are you ready to be married?”

“There is a part of me that is ready—ready to find someone who’s brave, smart, and a survivor.”

“You want your romantic hero to walk out of a book,” I teased.

“I can dream.”

“Yes, doesn’t cost a rupee to dream.”

“Only a rotli or two,” she said as she took off another blackened rotli from the stove.

She spread ghee on two burned rotli, and we each ate one before Mummy got home.

Now that the wedding was over, we could go to the pool every day. The boys’ and girls’ pools were separate, but every morning Mohini, Chiraj, Vivek, and I walked two miles to the Mafatlal Bath together.

The first day after swimming, as we waited for Chiraj and Vivek, I saw three boys walking toward us. “Ooi ma!” I could hear my heart shout for the one walking on the right side, the side closest to me. He’d flung his towel like a scarf around his neck and was holding the ends. As he came closer to us I saw his eyes, as dark and dreamy as midnight. Maybe it was the dimples in his cheeks or the way his eyes brightened when he smiled that made me forget to breathe.

I caught his smile with my eyes and offered it right back.

Mohini caught me. “Why are you smiling at a stranger?”

“Just being polite.”