And in the end, she was happy for the company, even though, or maybe in part because they had no common language between them to communicate with. Nevertheless, they understood each other in their bones, like mother and daughter. She especially loved the long head and foot massages Manika administered, and her unfailing cheerfulness, which given her circumstances was a mystery Ma sought to unravel in the hope of gaining some spiritual insight, she told me. This was during a telephone conversation after I had already left Varanasi and returned home to Geeta and Maya, and to my office in Mumbai. Ma then went on to inform me with the superior air of an old India hand that the name Manika fit her even better than the rebbetzin could imagine—not only because she’s the rebbebtzin’s so-called gem, but also because of the way she would creep into Ma’s bedroom at night to steal a piece of jewelry. (Ma believed in jewelry, especially gold, you could never have too much; in this as in so many other ways, I might point out, Indians and Jews are more alike than you would ever have dreamed of in your philosophy.) “She thinks I’m sleeping while she’s poking around in my jewelry box, but the whole time I’m awake and I’m thinking—C’mon, hurry up, take what you want from in there and get out. Just finish your business already and let me sleep. Same like I used to think in the old days, with your father, when he used to bother me.”

There was also an unforeseen advantage in setting Ma up with a servant, which I regard as priceless and treasure to this day. It emerged very soon after my departure, when I began to receive photos taken by Manika on the cell phone I had left with my mother, a reasonably high-tech mobile toy that gleamed like an onyx gemstone, which this illiterate little woman from a village without running water or sewage system or electricity promptly mastered thoroughly. These pictures form a kind of visual archive of Ma’s time in Varanasi, charting her sojourn there. At first, they tended to be taken against the background of her apartment, generally on the terrace where the light must have been best. It seems my mother did not object despite the traditional strictures she had abided by all her life against allowing herself to be photographed for reasons of modesty (and also, to be completely frank, because she always thought she looked too fat). Here in Varanasi she was mellow, laid back, zen, going with the graven-image flow, easing into liberation.