One day I made tomato, cucumber, and onion salad with yogurt and dill, Mohini’s favorite. I tried a spoonful but choked with sadness. I never made it again.

Every day around three o’clock Chiraj and Vivek were hungry. I had to make a snack for them and then in the evening I had to make dinner. Without Mohini, the kitchen had turned into a jail.

Pappa brought baskets full of mangoes, but they didn’t cheer me up. They only added to my work. Every two or three days I picked out ripe mangoes nestled in the straw from the basket, then washed them and made them soft with my fingers while rotating them in my hand. I squeezed the pulp out and strained it through a fine wire mesh. Unlike orange juice, the mango goop sat on the wire mesh till I rubbed it and nudged it again and again. When I was done, my hands were so sore that I never wanted to see another mango in my life.

I washed all the mango pits a few times and then took them up on the terrace to dry on an old cotton sari. After a couple of days, Chiraj broke the pits open and we boiled the soft, beige gotli that was inside, and sucked on it after our meal. Even though it tasted delicious, just like mangoes, I never wanted to see another gotli in my life. It had only been a couple of months since Mohini had left, but it felt like years had gone by.

Mohini called every Sunday. When I was at Sarina’s house I’d missed her phone calls, but for the last few Sundays I’d talked to her. There was something wrong with being connected by two mouthpieces and receivers. I longed to touch Mohini’s long fingers, see the curls on her forehead, feel her warm breath next to me. I couldn’t forget that we were miles of ocean and land apart.

And I missed her more after hearing her voice. I played our conversations over and over again, trying to find out if she was happy, if Anoop was good to her, if all was well in her world.

Mohini told me she liked Naperville, Illinois. It was very close to Chicago. She’d been to Chicago a few times and said that it was a clean and beautiful city with tall buildings and a lake that was so big it had waves. I tried to picture a lake as big as an ocean, but couldn’t.