Mohini and I were absorbed in looking at the saris while Mummy talked to the salesman. “The girls don’t listen to us anymore.” Mummy sighed. “It was different in our time. When I got married I didn’t buy one single new sari. My mother had collected saris over a period of two years, and that’s what I got. Fashion, bashion—it didn’t matter. I was glad to have those saris. Nowadays, children are so fussy.”

“We didn’t dare ask about anything of our choice,” he replied. “Not even who we married. If we did, we got our ears twisted so hard that we forgot what we wanted.”

I asked him, “Uncle, in the very old times, women like Damyanti and Kunti in Mahabharat chose their own husbands. Don’t you think we should go back to that tradition?”

I’d trapped him. He shook his head as if to break loose.

Good thing Mummy was asking Mohini something and hadn’t heard what I said.

We selected three saris, two for Mohini and one for me. Uncle was pleased, and he ordered orange-flavored Fanta for us. While he made the bill, we sipped our drinks. “I am sure this one brings you much joy,” he said, glancing at me first and then at Mummy, his glasses dangling halfway down the slope of his nose.

“Joys and headaches both. She can be as sweet as a mango and as sharp as a tiger’s tooth,” Mummy replied.

Anoop, I must admit, was certainly not as good-looking as Girishji, yet his manners were charming. He spoke fluent English with an American accent. His thin face and deep-set eyes made him look as though he hadn’t eaten a good meal in two years. I knew that if he stayed here and ate with Girishji every Sunday, his face would fill out in no time. His black hair was wavy and coarse.

The first thing I whispered to Sarina at the wedding was, “I hope and pray that their children will inherit their mummy’s hair.”

“Let’s not take any chances. I’ll pray too,” she said with a straight face and serious tone. Then we both burst out laughing.

Mohini’s wedding was a hurried, chaotic celebration. It was like gulping down ladu without savoring a bite. Later I wondered if it had really happened. Now that Mummy had found one foreign-living jamai, son-in-law, she was determined to find another. She asked Anoop if he had any single friends from our caste living in America. I knew that was for me.

Only a few years ago I thought that a girl should marry before she was twenty-one or twenty-two. Mummy had married when she was nineteen, Nimita at twenty-one, and Mohini at twenty. Now that idea had washed out of my head completely, and there was no way it was going to get back in.