I will not be born for another nine years.

It is my father's first foreign posting; my mother is his bride. She leaves a sprawling home in Calcutta and fifteen playmates to take his hand, crossing black seas to go where he will go. In a house as vast as her natal home there are the two of them, a maid, a gardener's family… only silence speaks her language through cavernous days.

He has not learnt to woo her; they both married when told.

But one day he brings home a sari from the Parsi merchant. Look, he says, unfurling a shimmer of cloth on their bed. The rose color reminded me of you.

He is color blind.

She sees a snot-green of silk; it reminds her of mold on damp monsoon drains.

She picks up the sari and drapes the pallu coyly over a shoulder. She looks at the ground and says, This is the most beautiful thingI have ever owned.