The tiny girl had slid into the rickshaw next to me, accompanied by her Burka-clad mother. She wore a frilly pink frock, with iridescent plastic flowers lining its sleeves. She stared up at me, big-eyed and open-mouthed, while her mother asked in slow, thickly accented English whether I was a foreigner. "Hain," I replied, as my rickshaw driver, Shushi, grinned at me in his rear-view mirror. He thinks it's funny when I speak Hindi.
"And... where you belong?" she asked.
"Here." I wanted to say, but I knew what she was asking. "America."
She nodded.
Her daughter, who'd been wiggling around, clung to my knee with her small hand. She began to count. I didn't realize what she was saying until she got to 63. "Sissty fo, sissty fie, sissty siss.."
She stopped when she got to "wahhn HUNRET", and I got the funny feeling I'd found Gautham's soul mate.
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