‘I’m so proud of you, mahal,’ she said calmly. ‘But researching from the safety of London is very different from working in Colombo.’

‘Please, mami, if you agree, Amma will let me.’

‘No—I don’t want you here,’ she willed her voice to relax. ‘Please understand, Smrithi. Colombo is not the place for you. Not right now.’

They argued until they both cried and Smrithi finally agreed to give up her plan. Dhara put the phone down and, as usual with these calls, she immediately remembered all the things she had forgotten to say.

‘I miss you too, mahal,’ she said to herself. ‘I miss you too.’

Sydney, 2001

Nala rarely left Strathfield, unless it was to attend a wedding or a funeral in another suburb. Even then she had to rely on her children or Rajan to take her. She thought about her driver Kannan in Colombo. He once took her and Kamini all the way to Kandy to visit her old friends there.

Priya and Siva would be attending a cardiology conference in Chicago soon.

‘You should try to visit Oprah,’ Nala said, heaping more soya curry onto Priya’s plate.

‘Oprah? How do you know about Oprah?’ Priya asked.

‘I know Oprah, child, I’m not a villager. I’ve been supporting her for years, before she was famous. Do you think you’ll see her?’

Priya laughed and shook her head.

Oprah said if you didn’t like something, you should change it.

Nala took a deep breath and spoke clearly. ‘Oprah says the more you meet other people’s expectations of yourself, the more they expect of you. She says disappointment is just disappointment, it’s a temporary emotion and people shouldn’t be so afraid of it.’

‘What?’ Priya asked, confused.

‘Oprah says we shouldn’t be so afraid to disappoint others. She says we should just do the best we can and not be afraid of other people’s expectations. Like Smrithi,’ Nala added. ‘Don’t close the door on her, mahal. You will only regret it later. She loves you.’

Rajan and Siva both looked up sharply from their curries. Nala stopped talking, her heart pounding hard. She looked at Priya, expecting a response or an explosion or both, but her daughter just stared back at her, speechless. Emboldened by Priya’s silence, Siva stepped in.

‘I thought Lord Krishna said that to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita. Wasn’t that in the chapter on duty?’ he asked.

Nala shook her head; Siva thought everything clever came from the Bhagavad Gita.

‘No,’ Rajan replied. ‘Oprah plagiarised that and the rest of her commercially successful philosophy from Karna’s life.’

‘No she didn’t,’ Nala corrected him. ‘She says we should be true to ourselves, and she thought that up all on her own.’