Tall and dark like his father, but wiry, not yet muscle bound, with a thick fringe of black eyelashes that almost brushed the lenses of his glasses and a flushed complexion still only lightly matted with pale down, Shmuly resembled his sister, Malkie, consigned to the other end of the table with you and the other girls, almost as disturbingly as I resembled my twin brother, Shmelke. In compliance with the admonition of the sages that partaking in a meal without talking Torah is like making offerings to the dead, and in his role as the promising son of a leading Chabad emissary being groomed to take over in his turn one of the most influential posts, a critical hotspot, Shmuly now rose to offer a few words of Torah. First, though, he took a moment to welcome the guests at his family’s table, singling us out for a special distinction award, you and me, Maya, “Close friends of the Mumbai martyrs, peace be unto them,” he proclaimed, zooming in on you especially. “Little baby Moshe’le best playmate,” he called you. “Maya here had the z’khus, the high privilege, of playing with Moshe’le every day, she knew little Moshe’le, my friends, she knew him, she was like the best big sister to him.”

So that was the explanation for my seat of honor, I reflected—mother of Maya. Manika had talked us up, laid out the main selling points, Manika was our public relations advance team. Then he plunged into his Torah talk, focusing on the death of Miriam in the Wilderness of Zin, read in that week’s Bible portion, hailing Miriam as one of the first great recorded nannies. She saved the life of her little brother Moshe by babysitting from a distance when he was set afloat on the Nile in a reed basket to escape Pharaoh’s death sentence against all the Hebrew male newborns—just like our beloved nanny Sandra saved the life of our own little Moshe here in Mumbai from the hands of the wicked Pharaohs and their henchmen who rise up to destroy us in every generation, and in our time too, Shmuly declared.

He beamed an irresistible smile of gratitude at the little flock of nannies fluttering at the table and gestured with both hands for them to stand up and take a bow. All the assembled then rose in ovation and began clapping and singing and dancing in a circle, the men with the men around the table, stomping with their hands on each other’s shoulders, the women more sprightly in a modest corner apart with the nannies seated in the center, whom some of the bigger girls raised up in their chairs, they were all so small, so slight, two lifters per nanny were more than enough to bear the weight securely.