By October the rain was gone and the skies cleared. The days were hot but the nights were as soft as moon’s kisses. Every year I waited to devour the months from October to February.

One day when I came from school, Mummy was beaming like the universe had opened up a secret to her. “Nimita is pregnant,” she whispered.

“When did she find out?”

“Just today.”

“Why are you whispering? No one is around.”

“We don’t want to announce it to the whole world, do we?”

“Well, in a few months it will announce itself, won’t it?” I said, washing my hands.

“Until then we have to be careful.”

“Yes, these days our walls and windows gossip.”

“I tell you—”

“I know, my tongue wags too much,” I said as I broke off a piece of chiki, a peanut and brown-sugar candy.

Now that Nimita was pregnant, Mommy invited her and Girishji to spend every Sunday with us. They arrived at noon and didn’t leave until eight. Mummy and Mohini would spend all morning cooking. Because twelfth grade is the most important year of school, I didn’t have to help with cooking, but I had to help serve the food.

For Sunday lunch Mummy would cook two or three curried or stuffed vegetables, curried lentil soup called dal, fancy basmati rice with cashews and raisins, and a salad of shredded carrots, cabbage, and bell peppers with a hint of lemon and ginger. She made a dessert called shrikhand by draining yogurt in a colander lined with muslin and adding sugar, saffron, and cardamom to it. It was Girishji’s favorite. After having the same dessert for two Sundays in a row, I didn’t care to eat another spoonful of it. Sometimes Mummy stuffed spicy peas and a coriander mixture into mashed potato pockets and then deep-fried them. It took her and Mohini the entire morning to make this special lunch. I felt a little guilty for not chopping cabbage, shelling peas, mashing potatoes, and making chutney, but mostly I was glad.

Mummy made hot rotli and told Mohini to spread a generous amount of ghee on them and serve them to Girishji as fast as he could stuff them in his mouth. I don’t think Girishji’s own mother would have fed him so well.

At lunch, Mummy served Girishji and Pappa first. Occasionally, she asked Chiraj and Vivek to join them, but never Mohini or me. Mummy treated Girishji almost like a lord, serving him food on the shiniest, newest thali. Because Nimita was expected to be embarrassed to serve Girishji in front of Pappa, Mohini and I had to hover around him like flies around food.