Prologue: More than one
In 1976, four years before I left New Delhi for America, I had a concussion and lost a few days of my memory, and not long after I lost most of my mind.
Everyone commiserated about my lost memory. They said, ‘Poor thing, but never mind, only a few days of memory she has lost, so much worse it could have been.’ Of course, there was no poor-thing-but-never-mind-so-much-worse-it-could-have-been about losing your mind. Nothing was worse than that. Mallika’s become mental, everyone would have said, had they known the truth. Mental meant mad, mental merited no excuse, better dead than that.
Now, had my mothers been different, they would have married me off, because – of course – marriage cured all ills. Marriage was more effective than any psychiatrist. A psychiatris
