You bolted up from your bed as if recharged. Cloaked in darkness you groped your way to the table where Manika, so spiritually tuned in at that time, had already set out the two brass candlesticks that her beloved mistress, your grandmother, would light every Friday when the sun went down in Varanasi even as she was plotting to set herself on fire like a pagan in this polytheistic land and incinerate herself to ash. With gestures as if programmed, you blessed the candles and brought back the light. You opened both arms in a welcoming circle to greet the Sabbath queen and drew them back toward yourself three times like a swimmer treading water to save her life, as if to say, come in, come in. You covered your eyes with the flattened palms of your hands and recited the blessing over the candles, taking on with this ritual the burden of the daughters of Eve down through the generations to restore light to the world, in perpetual atonement for the first woman’s original sin of falling for the seductions of the snake and plunging her descendants into darkness.

By the light of the Sabbath candles, Manika showed us a printout of the email she had received. It was from the replacement Chabad rabbi, Mendy, and his rebbetzin, Mindy. They were inviting all of Mumbai’s nannies and their guests to a special Friday night dinner that very evening in honor of the heroic nanny Sandra who had saved baby Moshe from the hands of the murderers who rise up against us in every generation, may their names and memory be blotted out. Manika had already RSVP’d for three.

We clothed ourselves in our Sabbath best, and over that we draped our rain ponchos. We pulled up our green rubber Wellington galoshes over plastic grocery bags to slosh through the streets streaming with putrid brown rainwater. Manika packed our dress shoes in my company’s tote, a personalized gift bag stuffed with a stash of goodies and essentials that I presented at orientation to each embarking spiritual seeker. This one had been intended for my dear friend and repeat client, the staggeringly rich Washington, DC, heiress and hostess, Charlotte Harlow, but fortunately just in the nick of time I noticed the typo imprinted on it; some joker had replaced the w of her surname with a t, so I decided to keep it—why waste a perfectly good bag?—and put in a rush order for a replacement. Manika was the only non-Jew among the three of us, which meant that by strict religious law she was permitted to carry objects beyond the home boundaries on the Sabbath. It was not that I wanted to give to the new Chabad emissaries a false impression with regard to the level of my observance or piety. It was simply an irresistible need to send the message that they were dealing with a seasoned insider, albeit lapsed, a former member of the club, an initiate who knew the ropes and saw through their agenda, a warning to them in effect not to try any funny business, especially with you.