For some reason though I kept putting off signing up for my slum tour. Already we were three weeks into July. I would rise up in the morning meaning to get the job done, but the rains hammered down against the windows and puckered the walls with mildew, wetness permeated everything. I pictured myself sloshing through the muck and contagion of the basti, and my good intentions washed away with the day. But what really was stopping me? Tourism after all was my business. If a particular destination however repugnant or contrived draws in the paying customers, who was I to object? I hadn’t yet stooped to peddling sex tours, it is true, but certainly I knew very well how I myself took full advantage of the sad human longing for meaning in this life, for relief from suffering by delivering all of those spiritually needy souls to the feet of gurus such as Amma and other frauds. Truly, the entire India itself that I served up was a freak show—tourists flocked to gape as if at performing monkeys, they couldn’t get enough of the grotesque novelty, the garish exotica, the nonstop street performance, within half a day after arriving they were all flying high in shawl and salwar kameez, and I was their enabler. I had no right to sit up there on my high horse declaiming about this pathetic minor manifestation of human prurience, these harmless sideshow tours of the slums with their landscapes of shit lakes and garbage mountains, and especially because in the end it seemed everyone left feeling good, everyone benefitted, spiritually or monetarily, and no one was harmed.

You didn’t pressure me, you never even reminded me to sign up, which, to excuse myself for my procrastination, I interpreted as a sign of your dread of being embarrassed by having your mother show up at your place of work in front of all your friends, a totally normal adolescent reaction, I was not offended. It was your preference that I stay away, I decided, I was only doing what you wanted. Still, your friends were the ones who had invited me—that was a fact. I knew virtually nothing about what you did all day, even into the night. You were coming home later and later, always escorted by someone, you assured me, Sita, Samir, others I had not met, though they never came in to show their faces and say hi mama, they didn’t want to disturb me, you said. There was so much to be done after the day’s teaching, you said, paperwork, planning, meetings, but otherwise you revealed almost nothing. You were not silent though. You talked over the light supper I set before you. Whatever the hour you came home, I was always waiting up for you with a warm meal, lentil soup, biryani, vegetable curry. You talked with striking animation and heat in fact, but never about yourself, always in generalities, about social and political issues, your consciousness was being raised, in principle a good thing. I suppose in retrospect, though, I should have realized that this was your way of talking about yourself, you were trying to send me a message, I should have understood.