I was of course flattered that Nick was attracted to me as well, but I didn’t expect him to pursue a relationship. And I really didn’t expect that I, even in my wildest flights of fantasy, would be amenable to dating him. But he was, and I was.

Before I knew how it happened, and before I could think of all the reasons why it was a really bad idea we were dating, we were having dinner together. As if things were not bad enough, we started to have sex and soon we moved in together and after that everything really went to the dogs because we decided to get married. And now I was sweating in my parents’ home, dreading having to tell them about Nick.

To remove the sweat and the two layers of dust that had deposited on my skin after my trip to Monda Market, I took a quick bath, dipping a plastic mug in an aluminum bucket filled with lukewarm water, heated by the sun in the overhead tank. My mother still had not installed showers in the bathrooms. “Save water,” she said.

I put on a yellow cotton salwar kameez to appease Ma and looked at myself in the mirror. My skin had turned dark almost as soon as the Indian sun had kissed me and I knew no amount of sunscreen was going to stop my melanin from coming together to give me the ultra-ultra-tanned look. My hair had also become stringy. It was all the extra chlorine in the water. And my…

I winced; I was doing that complaining-about-India thing that all of us America-returned Indians did. I had lived here for twenty years, yet seven years later, the place was a hellhole. Guilt had an ugly taste in my mouth. This is my country, I told myself firmly, and I love my country.

TO: PRIYA RAO ‹PRIYA_RAO@YYYY.COM›

FROM: NICHOLAS COLLINS ‹NICK_COLLINS@XXXX.COM›

SUBJECT: GOOD TRIP?

HOPE YOU HAD A GOOD FLIGHT. SO SORRY I MISSED YOUR CALL. I WAS IN A MEETING AND I TURNED OFF THE CELL PHONE. AND SO SORRY THAT YOUR MOTHER IS GIVING YOU A HARD TIME ABOUT BEING SINGLE. I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO SAY EXCEPT THAT YOU ARE NOT SINGLE.