But Manika was with you every minute, I told myself, your chaperone, she would save you. She stationed herself a step behind you, self-erasing like a page-turner for a pianist on the concert stage; you would never lose your place, you would never get lost. Manika was a fixture in the room with you the entire time, present in the moment, unlike Varda when you used to visit baby Moshe’le in Colaba, demonstrably setting herself apart, depositing herself outside to schmooze with the terrorist disguised as the guard. O, protect us from our protectors, I say.

But as for Manika, even if in her heart of hearts it had been her desire to loiter with the security contingent stationed at the entrance leaning against the tank chewing her paan, it was not an option. There was no room in that huddle under the tent, she would have been drenched. The windows of the heavens had been cast wide open, the rains burst down in furious sheets, soaking the earth and heaving up all the filth only just below the surface. You and Manika sloshed through pools of brown sludge, kicking up excrement of all varieties and rot every step of the way on the road to your life-altering vision at Chabad, and soon the guards posted there under their sagging tarps no longer troubled themselves to poke their necks out into the deluge to stop and frisk. They waved you through without even raising their heads from their snakes and ladders. You were defanged, profiled, certified members of the inner circle, family.

So what did you do today at the Chabadniks? I would ask at the dinner table, attempting conversation. Your answer was always the same: Nothing. That was also the answer you gave to my regular daily interrogations: What did you do in school today? Nothing. Whom did you hang out with? Nobody. Manika squatting on the floor would bring her face down even lower into the bowl from which she was feeding with her fingers. I could not induce her to sit at the table after serving us no matter how much I cajoled. It was truly embarrassing, I prayed no one would walk in to witness this abject scene and make unwarranted assumptions about me. On the wall behind her against which she was propped a great water stain had bloomed, mildew rimmed and blistered at its heart, even in Geeta’s luxury flat on Malabar Hill where we were still holding out, even that proud princess was not insulated from the seepage, the monsoon’s revelations of what lies beneath, just below the paint job.

Later, after the light no longer leaked out from under your sealed door, Manika would slip into my room to tell me everything. Her English had evolved thanks above all to the call center videos she watched obsessively on the internet (her two favorite phrases were, I can definitely help you get that sorted, and, I do apologize for any inconvenience). Her ambition now was to enter the outsourcing stage of her life after the completion of the nanny stage the moment you flew the nest, on her path to stage four, the fatal stage, total final renunciation, sannyasa.