After the tandoori is devoured and Ligaya is tickled, we engage in a dance-off to the beats of Bollywood music. None of us claim to be Madhuri Dixit, but Paheli is particularly lethal on the dance floor. She has two left feet, and anyone dancing near her will be tripped. We go to sleep late and wake long before the roosters and spend some time battling private demons. Later, the hotel provides us with a far grander breakfast than it should be able to in the wee hours of the morning. We spare a thought, and some money, for those whose fate writes them into hot kitchens for far less than they deserve.

In this moment, a capricious energy connects all eleven of us. We cannot stay still, so we don’t. We spill out of each other’s rooms, sprawl over sofas and chairs, sing, and whisper to each other or ourselves. Now that we have an immediate purpose, we are more alive and more clearly present in each moment. We suddenly have meaning. We, who were abandoned by those who meant the most to us, suddenly are important to someone. It is a heady feeling that occurs less in words and more in the feeling of looking into someone’s eyes and knowing you are being seen.

We leave the hotel just as the first rays of the sun hit the Taj Mahal’s domes and turn them incandescent. The city still has patches of darkness. The murmur of people on their way to act out the daily struggle of making a living is gaining momentum. We pause in front of a chai wallah and purchase eleven cups of hot masala chai from him. Looking around as we sip our tea, we see many middle worlders in this sea of humans. Most of them are physically identical to humans, but there are some who aren’t, who present themselves in the human world anyway, relying on the human brain to not comprehend their not-human features. For example, a middle worlder with the body of a human but with the yellow legs of a bird is standing right next to us. He is talking merrily about his wife to the chai wallah, who notices nothing different about him.

Another middle worlder in a purple sari that is a touch brighter than her equally purple skin walks coolly down the opposite street, turning heads but not for the reason you’d think.

We are visible to humans today, and as long as we don’t give it away, middle worlders cannot tell that we aren’t human either. So we pretend that we don’t notice the middle worlders who express themselves more fantastically than others. This is an added layer of protection we have carefully cultivated.