FOR THE PAST MONTH Mummy had been busy trying to find a match for Mohini. Mohini had even met two eligible boys, but neither went beyond the first meeting. Then a boy named Sunand came to see her. In his bio-data he’d mentioned that he’d received a gold medal for academic achievement.

“Why does Sunand have to mention the gold medal? He’s not applying for a scholarship or looking for a job. What difference does it make?” I said to Mummy as I was tying my shoes.

“It does. It tells me he’s smart and works hard.”

“I suppose if Mohini gets married to him he’ll have to get an extra-large turban for himself.”

“Why?”

“To fit his oversize brain.”

“If you don’t stop making fun of him, I’ll have to shrink your head.”

I laughed as I slipped out the door.

Mummy had shown Mohini’s and Sunand’s horoscopes to a pundit, a scholar of Vedic philosophy, including astrology. After talking to him she was convinced Sunand and Mohini were going to get married. “The pundit says that thirty-three out of thirty-six points match. There’ll never be a better match. This is it.”

After the first meeting, Sunand and Mohini were both interested in each other. So they went out one evening. Mummy paced the bedroom. When the clock struck eight she said, “Gone for three hours! Soon, we might be eating brown sugar for good luck.”

When Mohini came back she looked as pale as a raw banana and went straight to bed. The next morning when Mummy went to take her bath, Mohini and I were still in bed, pretending to be asleep.

Once I was certain that Mummy couldn’t hear me, I asked, “How was Sunand?” We both sat up on our mattresses.

“I liked him the first time we met, when Mummy, Pappa, and Foi were with me. Last night, when it was only the two of us, he fired question after question at me as if he were an examiner.”

“What did he ask you?”

“Everything! He asked me if I knew how to cook. When I said yes, he laughed and said, ‘I don’t mean the same, plain Gujarati food of dal, rice, and rotli. Do you know how to cook Punjabi food and South Indian food? Have you made pudding before? Do you know what a pizza is?’”

“Is he an incarnation of Bheem, from Mahabharat, or what, that all he could think about was food?”

She rested her face on her knees and wrapped her arms around her legs. She laughed faintly; then her eyebrows knitted again. “He did that with other things, too. He wanted to know what kind of marks I’d received in math and science. If I’d taken singing lessons. If I knew how to dance.”

“You do garba and dandia raas so gracefully.”