“What is this?” Papa said, poking a green Tupperware lid. “Just a bit of plastic, no? Anyone can make this.”

Madame Mallory deposited herself squarely in front of Papa’s path as he paced, and he was suddenly forced to stop short, his great bulk towering over the little woman. I could see this was the last thing he expected—to be stopped by a woman—and he peered down at her with a puzzled expression.

“Wah?”

“I am your neighbor, Madame Mallory, from across the street,” she said in excellent English.

Papa gave the woman a dazzling smile, the Pole and the savage Tupperware negotiations instantly forgotten. “Hello,” he boomed. “Le Saule Pleureur, nah? I know. You must come over and meet the family. Have tea.”

“I don’t like what you are doing.”

“Wah?”

“To our street. I don’t like the music, the placard. It’s ugly. So unrefined.”

I have not often seen my father at a loss for words, but at this remark he looked as if someone had punched him hard in the stomach.

“It’s in very bad taste,” Mallory continued, brushing an imaginary thread off her sleeve. “You must take it down. That sort of thing is all right in India, but not here.”

She looked him straight in the face, tapped him on the chest with her finger. “And another thing. It is tradition here in Lumière that Madame Mallory has the first choice of the morning’s produce. It’s been this way for decades. As a foreigner, I appreciate you would have no way of knowing this, but now you do.”

She offered Papa a wintry smile.

“It’s very important for newcomers to start off on the right foot, don’t you agree?”

Papa scowled, his face almost purple, but I who knew him so well could see—in the downturned corners of his eyes—he was not mad but deeply hurt. I moved to his side.

“Who you tink you are?”

“I told you. I am Madame Mallory.”

“And I,” Papa said, raising his head and slapping his chest, “I am Abbas Haji, Bombay’s greatest restaurateur.”

“Pff. This is France. We are not interested in your curries.”

By this time a small crowd had gathered around Madame Mallory and Papa. Monsieur Leblanc pushed his way into the center of the ring. “Gertrude,” he said sternly. “Let us go.” He pulled at her elbow. “Come, now. Enough.”

“Who you tink you are?” repeated Papa, stepping forward. “Wah dis talk in third person like maharani? Who you? God give you right to all best cuts of meat and fish in the Jura? Nah? Oh, then perhaps you own dis town. Yaar? Is that what give you right to the fresh produce every morning? Or perhaps you are some big important memsahib who owns the farmers?”

Papa thrust his enormous belly at Madame Mallory and she had to step back, a look of incredulity slapped across her face.

“How dare you talk to me in this impertinent manner.”

“Tell me,” he roared at the onlookers, “does this woman own your farms and your livestock and vegetables, or do you sell to highest bidder?” He smacked his palm. “I pay cash. No waiting.”

There was a gasp from the crowd. This they understood.

Mallory swiftly turned her back on Papa and shrugged on a pair of black leather gloves.

“Un chien méchant,” she said dryly. The assembled crowd laughed.

“What she say?” Papa roared at me. “Wah?”

“I think she called you a mad dog.”

What happened then is forever burned in my memory. The crowd parted for Madame Mallory and Monsieur Leblanc as they began to leave, but Papa, agile for a man of his size, quickly ran forward and stuck his face close to the chef’s retreating ear.

“Bowwow. Roooff. Rooff.”

Mallory jerked her head away. “Stop it.”

“Rooff. Rooff.”

“Stop it. Stop it you . . . you horrible man.”

“Grrrrr. Rooff.”

Mallory covered her ears with her hands.

And then she broke into a trot.

The villagers, never before having seen Madame Mallory ridiculed, roared with amazed laughter and Papa turned and joyously joined them, watching the elderly woman and Monsieur Leblanc disappear behind the Banque Nationale de Paris on the corner.

We should have known then what trouble was ahead. “She was jabbering away like a madwoman,” Auntie told us when we came home. “Slam car door. Pang.” And over the next days, as I glanced across the street, I periodically spotted a pointy nose pressed up against the fogged windowpane.

Maison Mumbai’s opening day approached. Lorries backed into the Dufour courtyard: tables came from Lyon, dishware from Chamonix, plastic menu folders from Paris. One day a hip-high wooden elephant, trumpeting, suddenly greeted me as I entered the restaurant’s doors. A hookah went into the corner of the lobby, and brass bowls on little tables were filled with plastic roses purchased at the local cash-and-carry.

By now the carpenters had converted the three reception rooms into the restaurant’s dining room, and across the teak-paneled walls Papa hung posters of the Ganges, the Taj Mahal, Kerala tea plantations. On one wall he had a local artisan paint a mural of Indian life—of a village woman hauling water from a well, of all things. And all day while we worked speakers on the walls blasted out geetsand ghazals, the warbling Urdu ballads and love poems of our heritage.

Papa was Big Abbas again. He worked for days with my oldest brother designing and redesigning an advertisement for the local newspapers. They finally settled their differences in a notebook of inky scratches, driving their design to Le Jura’s office in Clairvaux-les-Lacs. A silhouette of a trumpeting elephant, usually between the sports and television listings, filled an entire page of the newspaper. The balloon coming out of the elephant’s mouth offered everyone who showed up at Maison Mumbai’s opening night a free carafe of wine. The ad ran in Le Jura three weekends in a row. The restaurant’s slogan: “Maison Mumbai—la culture indienne en Lumière.”

And I, at the age of eighteen, finally took up my calling. It was Papa’s idea, ordering me into the kitchen. Ammi was simply incapable of serving a hundred people at a time, and my aunt was the only woman in all India who could not cook. Not even an onion bhaji. But I choked, suddenly afraid of my destiny. “I am a boy,” I yelled. “Make Mehtab do it.”

Papa swatted me across the back of my head. “She got other tings to do,” he roared. “You spend more time than anyone else in the kitchen with Ammi and Bappu. Don’t worry. You’re just nervous, yaar. We’ll help.”

And so my days disappeared in belching smoke and the steamy rattle of pots. Tentatively, backed by constant consultations with my sister and Papa, a rough vision of my menu emerged. I rehearsed and rehearsed until I was sure: lamb brain stuffed with green chutney, coated with egg and tawa-grilled; chicken cinnamon masala and beef cooked with vinegar-spices. For side dishes I settled on steamed rice crumpets and cottage cheese simmered with fenugreek. And as a starter, my personal favorite: clear trotters soup.

The wheel of life was turning. Ammi steadily lost control as I steadily gained it. Dementia had her now, full by the throat. The occasional erratic scene we witnessed in London had become commonplace, and she drifted in and out of this fragile mental state, only rarely again returning to us in moments of lucidity. I recall her looking over my shoulder, giving me useful tips on how to extract the rich flavor from cardamom, very much like she was in the old days on the Napean Sea Road. Moments later, however, she was frothing at the mouth and cursing me as if I were her worst enemy. It broke my heart. But with the restaurant opening so soon, I could ill afford hand-wringing, and I instead buried myself in the kadais.

But there were scenes. Ammi’s obsessions often fixated on the daal, the chickpea staple of Indian cooking I was making in the kitchen, and we frequently argued over the subject. One day, as I was preparing for the grand opening, I simmered an aromatic mix of onions, garlic, and daal. Ammi wandered over and smacked me hard on the arm with a spoon.