But somewhere down the middle of the sloping lane of Rue Mouffetard, I stopped in my tracks. I was not quite sure at first, not quite trusting my senses. I again sniffed the moist midnight air. Could it be? But there it was, the unmistakable aroma of my youth, joyously coming down a cobblestone side passage to greet me, the smell of machlikasalan, the fish curry of home, from so long ago.

So I was helpless, pulled down the dark passageway, drawn by this haunting odor of curry, to a narrow shop front at the end of the lane, where I found, squeezed between two unsavory Algerian restaurants, Madras, newly opened but now closed for the day.

A streetlamp buzzed overhead. I shielded my eyes to cut the glare of the light and peered through the restaurant’s window. The dining room was dotted with a dozen rough wooden tables, covered in paper sheets and set for the following day. Black-and-white photos of India—water-wallahsand loom weavers and crowded trains at a station—were framed simply and hung on bright yellow walls. The front lights of the restaurant were out, but the harsh fluorescent overhead tubes of the back kitchen, they were on, and I could just see what was going on down the long hall to the kitchen.

A vat of fish stew bubbled away on the stove, the special for the following day. Before the stove, a lone chef in a T-shirt and apron, sitting on a three-legged stool in the narrow back passage, his head lowered in exhaustion over a bowl of his spicy fish curry.

My hand, it rose on its own accord, hot and flat like a chapatis pushed against the glass. And I was filled with an ache that hurt, almost to breaking. A sense of loss and longing, for Mummy and India. For lovable, noisy Papa. For Madame Mallory, my teacher, and for the family I never had, sacrificed on the altar of my ambition. For my late friend Paul Verdun. For my beloved grandmother, Ammi, and her delicious pearlspot, all of which I missed, on this day, of all days.

But then, I don’t know why, standing before that little Indian restaurant, in that state of intense longing, it suddenly came to me, something Madame Mallory told me one spring morning many years ago. It was, as I look back, among the very last days I was at her restaurant.

We were in her private rooms at the top floor of Le Saule Pleureur. She wore a shawl about her shoulders and was sipping tea in her favorite bergère armchair, watching the warbling doves in the willow tree outside her window. I sat across from her, studiously absorbed in the De Re Coquinaria, taking down notes in my leather-bound book which to this day follows me everywhere. Madame Mallory returned her teacup to its saucer—with a deliberate rattle—and I looked up.

“When you leave here,” she said acidly, “you are likely to forget most of the things I have taught you. That can’t be helped. If you retain anything, however, I wish it to be this bit of advice my father gave me when I was a girl, after a famous and extremely difficult writer had just left our family hotel. ‘Gertrude,’ he said, ‘never forget a snob is a person utterly lacking in good taste.’ I myself forgot this excellent piece of advice, but I trust you will not be so foolish.”

Mallory took another sip of tea before pointedly turning those eyes on me, which were, even though she was an elderly woman, uncomfortably blue and piercing and glittery.

“I am not very good with words, but I would like to tell you that somewhere in life I lost my way, and I believe you were sent to me, perhaps by my beloved father, so that I could be restored to the world. And I thank you for this. You have made me understand that good taste is not the birthright of snobs, but a gift from God sometimes found in the most unlikely of places and in the unlikeliest of people.”

And so, as I looked at the exhausted proprietor of Madras, grabbing a bowl of simple but delicious fish stew at the end of a long day, I suddenly knew what I would tell that impossible man, the next time he told me how honored I should be, the only foreigner ever to earn a place among France’s culinary elite. I would pass on Mallory’s comment about Parisian snobs, perhaps letting the remark settle a moment before leaning forward to say, with just a touch of flying spittle, “Nah? What you think?”

But a nearby church bell chimed one a.m. and the duties of the next day beckoned, pulling at my conscience. So I took one longing last look at Madras and then unceremoniously turned on my heel, to continue on my journey down the Rue Mouffetard, leaving behind the intoxicating smells of machlikasalan, an olfactory wisp of who I was, fading fast in the Parisian night.

Chapter Twenty

Hassan? Is that you?”

From the penthouse kitchen, the clinking of dishes getting washed in the sink.

“Yes.”

“It’s amazing! Three stars!”

Mehtab had her hair done smart that day and she came into the hall, kohl-eyed like our mother, in her best silk salwar kameez, smiling up at me, arms outstretched.

“Not so bad, yaar,” I said, slipping back into the patois of our childhood.

“Oh, so proud. Oh, I wish Mummy and Papa were here. I tink I might cry.”

But she looked nowhere near to crying.

In fact, she gave me a very hard pinch.

“Ow,” I yelped.

The gold bangles up her arm jangled violently as she shook her finger. “You stinker! Why you not call and tell me? Why you embarrass me with the neighbors? I have to hear from strangers?”

“Ah, Mehtab. Wanted to, you know, but so busy, yaar. Learn just before restaurant open and phone ringing all the time and guests arriving. Every time I try and call you I have one big thing to deal with after another.”

“Huh. Just excuses.”

“So, who told you?”

Mehtab’s face suddenly softened.

She put her fingers to her lips and beckoned that I should follow.

*   *   *

Margaret was in the living room, sitting upright in the middle of our white leather couch, her eyes closed, her head slowly dropping back as she dozed, only to snap forward at the last moment. A hand each rested on her son and daughter, both sound asleep, both with their heads on her lap, their legs curled under the blankets that I recognized came from Mehtab’s personal chest. And I recall that the children’s faces were wiped of everything but the most profound and touching innocence.

“Aren’t they adorable?” Mehtab whispered. “And so good. Ate up all my dinner.”

The look on my sister’s face, it was the utter joy of finally having children in her home, that destiny she always thought would be hers but was never meant to be.

But then she scowled, just like Auntie, with that bitter-lemon look. “She the only one of your friends bother to tell me you get the star.”

She pinched me again, but not so hard this time.

“Brought me the paper, France Soir. Such a nice girl. And told me all about her husband, you know. What a brute. They have suffered terribly, her and the little ones . . . and why you not tell me she move to Paris?”

Luckily, at that moment, I was saved from another barrage of Mehtab mortar attacks, because Margaret opened her eyes, and when she saw us peering at her from the door, she smiled, her face sweetly lit up. She held up a finger, signaling us to wait, and she slowly, delicately extricated herself from the dangly limbs of her children, both still sound asleep.

We hugged and kissed warmly, out in the hall.

“I couldn’t believe it, Hassan. It’s so exciting.”

“Shock to me. Come out of the blue.”

I grasped both her hands and squeezed, looking into her eyes.

“Thank you Margaret, for coming here. For informing my sister.”

“We came right as soon as we heard the news. It was just so fantastic. We just had to see you and congratulate you. Immédiatement. What an incredible achievement. . . . Madame Mallory, she was right!”