Sarina ate so daintily that it took her almost all of the recess to finish the food I’d given her. She can’t eat this slowly at home, I thought. Either she’s trying to impress us with her good manners or she doesn’t like Mummy’s cooking. The next day she did get her own tiffin and she still took bites as tiny as a fingertip. That was her habit. It seemed like a luxury an only child could afford to have!

After that first day, Sarina and I talked every chance we got. By the end of the first week I felt as though I had known her for at least a couple of past lives. I was intrigued by her travel stories and she was delighted by my family stories.

Sarina had traveled all over India. She’d taken a bath in the holy Ganga right where it touches the plains in Haridware. She’d ridden a camel in the Thar Desert and had seen lions in the Gir Forest. In a textbook, I’d seen a picture of the wall paintings at Ajanta. It was a picture of an apsara, a celestial dancer, in a beautiful pose, painted in the fifth century when the Gupta dynasty ruled India. I’d loved that picture. When Sarina told me that she’d seen cave after cave filled with paintings at Ajanta, I knew I had to see them too, someday. Her favorite memory was the sunrise and sunset on the Indian Ocean at Kanyakumari, on the tip of India’s chin.

Sarina had traveled abroad, too. She’d been to places like Bali and America. I knew exactly where those places were on the map, but she’d actually been there. She’d seen the temples surrounded by lush gardens in Bali, and Balinese men and women wrapped in sarongs, shopping for their families. She’d traveled across the world to America and eaten pancakes and seen the Statue of Liberty.

I told her that I’d lived all my life in Mumbai except for two short trips. Once we went to Nathdwara for the first haircutting ceremonies for Chiraj and Vivek. All I remembered from that trip was people, people, and more people, and the towering, black statue of Lord Krishna called Shrinathji, and Chiraj and Vivek’s bawling after they saw their completely shaven heads in the mirror for the first time.

On the other trip, we traveled by train to Sihor, Mummy’s home town. I was only six at the time, but I could still picture the white marble temple of Lord Shiva on a hill, the saffron-colored flag and the small golden kalash, the dome on top of the temple, reflecting and radiating the colors of the setting sun.