“Ah, I don’t know, Jaya.” Her mother sighed. “After so much shifting around my whole life, I just want to stay in one place these days. Besides, I have my bridge club, my embassy docent tours, my dance lessons for the little girl downstairs. My life is so full, how can I leave everyone for that long? How can you do that?” Her mother looked at her with an expression of concern, lines furrowed deep between her brows. “I worry this is getting to be too much, Jaya. It’s one thing to have daily prayer in your life, as we’ve always done. It’s another to dedicate your whole life to it like this. It’s not . . . balanced.”

“It brings me peace, Ma,” Jaya said. “And it’s not my whole life. I have other things.”

“What else do you have?” her mother asked. “No work, no husband, and you’ve barely talked about Karina this whole trip.”

Jaya felt the words like a slap across the face. Is that what her mother truly thought of her? After all, it was her mother who had reintroduced her to spirituality. “Karina’s fine,” Jaya said. “She’s . . . busy with her own life; she’s basically an adult now. She doesn’t need me anymore.”

Her mother smiled and reached out a hand. “Don’t fool yourself, darling. She will always need you.” She squeezed Jaya’s forearm. “I’m not saying you have to stop your spiritual journey. I know it has brought you some peace. Just don’t make it everything. You deserve to have more in your life. Look at Dev: he has a family, a career, a whole life.” Jaya felt herself shrink from the comparison to her brother, who had made different choices, marrying an Indian woman, living in a cosmopolitan city. How would her life have been different if she’d made such choices? Would her marriage have survived? Would they have had more family support? It was never far from mind that Dev had more than she did, with his two children and solid marriage, but now it struck her with force.

On her way home from India, Jaya stopped over in London to spend a few days with Dev and his family. Her niece and nephew were teenagers now, straddling the age Prem would have been. It was a painful reminder, but Jaya pressed herself to face the feeling, and gradually, she felt its grip on her loosen. They were a delight, these sprightly young people who navigated their way around the city by tube. Dev and Chandra returned in the evening with take-away from one of the restaurants a few blocks away: Chinese, kebabs, and the best curries Jaya had tasted outside India. Their lives weren’t perfect: their jobs were stressful, and Chandra’s elderly parents, with their traditional Indian expectations, lived nearby. But there was an abundance, an overflowing richness to their lives that made stark the contrast her mother had pointed out.

It wasn’t until the plane ride back to California, as she reflected on her mother’s words that Karina would always need her, that it struck Jaya her mother might also have been referring to their own relationship, that Jaya would always need her mother, and this seemed to ring true.