They were not ageists, Rabbi Assi and his rebbetzin Dassi, they were inclusive, they didn’t discriminate when it came to saving Jews. They too had come to Varanasi from Israel, from secular families, he from the development town of Dimona in the South, home to the Black Hebrews who are not Hebrew and the nuclear reactor that doesn’t exist, she from the grim city of Afula in the north, otherwise known as the anus of the world, famous throughout the Middle East for the balls of falafel it excreted. They made their way to Varanasi in search of enlightenment directly after their rite-of-passage military service, and, like all the other deluded Israelis, sank to the lowest depths in this idol-worshipping underworld, they would spare me all the ugly details, until the true path revealed itself to them, as if a veil had lifted to illuminate what had always been there, their birthright, their legacy, right there in front of their eyes—It was like a vision, the rebbetzin recalled, We were as if dreaming. They would look after Ma, they assured me. The holy Rebbe Himself had sent them to this heathen place precisely to reach out to such wandering Jews, even to such endangered species as my mother no matter how little life remained in them yet. And soon, soon, God willing, the holy Rebbe Himself, our Master, our Teacher, our Rabbi, will rise from concealment in His true form as the Messiah the King to rescue the living and to raise the dead.

Well, he’d better hurry up, I was about to say but held my tongue. The other day Ma dropped a reference to cremation. Does the Messiah do ashes?

What I need to report here, though, is how irrationally, regressively thrilled I felt when my mother approved of nearly every detail of my arrangements. Not only that, but for the first time in God alone knows how many years she even gave me a compliment on my appearance—she admired my long black braid. “So shiny, like a shampoo ad in a magazine.” She pressed her finger tenderly on the red tikka on my forehead as if she were suctioning up the last moist cake crumb from the table—my third eye, the sign that I am a married woman.

As for the apartment, she was unambivalently enraptured by it—it was perfect. She had never had even a room of her own, much less an entire dwelling place. She appreciated the mezuzot that Rabbi Assi had affixed to the doorposts. She was pleased with the simple but adequate furniture, the clean bed, the soft couch, the sturdy kitchen table and two solid chairs, the dishes and cutlery and pots and pans all clearly marked in big, bright letters for clouded eyes—blue for milk, red for meat. She acknowledged my thoughtful considerateness in choosing an apartment on the ground floor with no steps for her to negotiate. She was grateful for the uniformed guard at the door of the building in the wake of the bloody slaughter by terrorists at Nariman House, the Chabad headquarters in my own city of Mumbai. She especially enjoyed the drop-in visits of the two oldest of Rabbi Assi and Dassi’s seven children, the fraternal twins (precious evocations of Shmelke and me no doubt), Menachem Mendel and Chaya Mushka, age six. There was always a supply of unhealthy treats stocked for them, such as bags of Bissli and Bamba imported from Israel, in a special drawer they flew to directly.