Dear Reader,

When I return to Mumbai, I find my bedcovers smelling musty. They remind me of a friend’s complaint about her South American trip—how the rainforest’s beauty came with mold creeping into everything: clothes, drawers, even her journals and her graph paper.

So too with Mumbai’s rains. Inside, it’s cozy; outside, a watery wonderland. Rain pelts off the coconut palms, a lone kite perches on the tree outside my window, and the garden below is a pool of brown water, a still life mirror of caramel and bronze. But like the rainforests, this paradise too has its price.

“I’m being eaten alive—it’s got to be bed bugs,” my youngest groans. When the sun grudgingly appears, I haul our mattresses onto the ledge, only for her to wake with fresh bites by morning.

The rain doesn’t relent. Grey skies sag; a plane skids off the waterlogged runway. Yet the city marches on—autos plow through ankle-deep water, buses cough along their routes, and we join the clogged traffic, hunting for new mattresses and lights.

In the car, Anand Bakshi’s lyrics fill the space between........

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