“I’m not going to cook there.” I smiled at Mummy, hoping she’d let us go to the kitchen.

“Jeeta, Vatnu vateser shu kam kere che? Why are you turning tiny talk into a twisty tale? Why are you being so stubborn?”

My smile collapsed.

Foi was sitting next to me. She patted my hand.

Mummy glanced at her and said, “Go, but be back in five minutes.”

“Come,” Foi said, getting up. “I’ll take you and Chiraj to the kitchen.”

Mummy lowered her eyes, and Chiraj and I went with Foi.

The Shree Café kitchen was long and narrow, and there were three people working in it. The head cook turned up the flame under the big iron skillet and stirred the creamy batter vigorously. He sprinkled some oil on the skillet and added a ladleful of the mixture to its center. Quickly, he spread the mixture in a circular motion until it covered the skillet’s entire surface. He added a little more oil on the top and around the edges of the fresh dhosa, and let it cook.

It was hot in the kitchen, but I wanted to see how he flipped the dhosa to cook the other side. But the batter was spread so thin that he didn’t need to. With a spatula he went around the edges and folded it over. Swiftly, he lifted the dhosa up with two spatulas, placing it on a plate, where it stayed like a rolled-up sheet of oversized paper.

“This dhosa is for all of us to share,” Fua said. We each tore a piece of it for ourselves.

“I can never get my dhosa to come out so thin, crisp, and brown on the outside and so chewy and light on the inside,” Mummy said.

Foi and I glanced at each other and covered the cook’s secret with our smiles.

six

IT WAS MY LAST YEAR at the Majiraj School. It was an all-girls school, and most of my classmates had been with me since first grade, so I was surprised to see a new girl sitting three benches down from me. “Why would she switch schools for the last year?” I asked my friend Janki.

“I don’t know. I wouldn’t,” she said.

Yamini turned around and said, “Her name is Sarina. Her father was appointed as a high court judge in Mumbai, so they had to move.” Yamini was the gossip master of our school. It was nice for me, because she told me all she knew. I liked being on top of the news. And it didn’t cost me a rupee.