Sitting with her thumb in her mouth in her fat ayah’s lap in the state-of-the-art wheelchair her father had also sent along, she was steered by a turbaned retainer to the limo after the vans were loaded with the eight new jumbo-sized suitcases packed to bursting, not to mention furniture, paintings, books, linens, carpets, china, silver, kitchenware, and so on—any detachable object of value that she could claim and fit into the transport. She ransacked the place, took everything she could take from the penthouse condo that was our home in those days on Malabar Hill with its magical view of the sea. You remember how we would stand there at the great floor-to-ceiling expanse of windows, Maya, you and I, and imagine we could see over the waters into the houses of other little girls just like you in all those countries far away with names also beginning in the letter I—Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Iran, Israel.

But no way would I have let her take you from me, Maya, not that she tried, I’m sorry if it hurts you to hear. She seemed to have lost interest in you over the last year or so, and truth be told, in me as well. This may be too personal a disclosure between mother and daughter, but I’m telling it to you because I believe it will bolster your self-esteem, reassure you that it was not your fault, if you knew that our sex life, Geeta’s and mine, was virtually over. It was a classic case of lesbian bed death, which usually hits around the five-year marker (not too different, by the way, from sex apathy in the heterosexual single-partner bedchamber), though for us it struck between the third and fourth year, still within the statistical range if that’s any comfort. But coming back to you—knowing Geeta, there’s no doubt she emotionally disconnected because you had blossomed into such a mature, beautiful young woman, and if there was one thing her royal highness did not appreciate, it was competition; like Snow White’s wicked stepmother, this queen too had to be the fairest of them all. Still, had she tried to stake a claim, I would have fought like a tigress to keep you, like a desperate wild woman I would have fought even from my disadvantaged position with regard to power, influence, money, and, let’s face it, my hopeless situation as a stranger in a strange land far from my home turf, condemned to a life sentence as an outsider with no reprieve, no matter how hard I might struggle to fit in. Still, I would never have let them have you, Maya, I would have stretched myself out under the wheels of their rolling motorcade rather than give you up. You were the one thing in our joint household, Geeta’s and mine, that was nailed to the floor. You were not a movable feast. Even now I cannot bear the terrible thought of how things might have turned out had I let you go.