The windows of the heavens crashed open at last, the rains came slashing violently down, flooding and clogging the vessels of the city, heaving up in great spasms the foundation of sewage and garbage it rested upon, coating its millions with a mossy fuzz. We were extras in a Bollywood horror movie, topiary animations lumbering about ponderously as if risen from underground. For weeks we did not see the sun. We dwelt in dampness, confined by the monsoon within our four walls for hours of gray daylight, battered by darkness.

Manika believed you were sad because Geeta had left us. It is I who am sad because Geeta has left me, I corrected. I’ve lost not only Geeta but my best shot at India, now I belong to nobody, nowhere. Maybe there was a time once when Geeta had paid attention to you, Maya, willingly looking after you when I was forced to travel for business, even bringing you along some nights like her pet lapdog to exclusive clubs and restaurants when there was no school the next day, or taking you on long holidays and adventures to spas and exotic settings where white tigers stalked and peacocks strutted, treating Manika too, buying fancy gifts for both of you, trendy clothing, designer saris, diamond studs, gold bangles, ruby slippers, every high-tech device update, but that was history, all that had ended more than a year ago. For a year at least Geeta had lost all interest in you, she scarcely noticed you. When she left us she was not thinking about you; when she left me she wanted the hand-held luxury ergonomic bidet, she didn’t want you. No, I explained to Manika, the child is not sad because Geeta split, she is sad as in SAD, Seasonal Affective Disorder, presenting with depression, hopelessness, apathy, carb craving, and so forth due to the leadenness of the monsoon, the absence of sunlight. I went out in the gloom to buy a light-therapy box to reset your circadian rhythm, and ordered Manika to park you in front of it for as many hours as you would tolerate it, supplementing with St. John’s Wort, and Dr. Bach’s Rescue, and mustard flower remedies, reinforced with yoga and meditation.

The light-therapy lamp could also be beneficial for your acne, you decided, like those aluminum foil reflectors offering up to the healing rays of the sun gods the mottled fruit faces of your grandmothers, or the tanning beds upon which your mothers were stretched and tortured, and since in any case you were already lying around inert, paralyzed, there would be no extra exertion required in letting it shine upon you. One Friday in June with the weekend looming, in the bleak afternoon teatime hours of the day, too early for dinner or bed, you were soaking up the beams of simulated sunlight to impregnate you with joy when suddenly the permanent battleship gray of the monsoon season engulfing us deepened to pitch black, and there was an explosive boom. The power grid of the entire subcontinent had collapsed. Light was drained from all of India, everything came to a halt throughout the land—traffic, railways, airports, waterworks, the complete slapped-together inadequate improvised substandard electrical infrastructure gave up with a groan, including your light-therapy lamp. It crackled in an otherworldly golden red zigzag as if God were calling you from the burning bush—Maya, Maya, put your shoes on your feet—and then it went out.