Maya smiled. “Hindidk, Amma.”

It was a joke at first. A way to dodge the embarrassment of mixing up kya and kyon , of replying in English when someone asked for the time in Hindi. But the word stuck. It became her secret identity—caught between two worlds, fluent in neither, yet belonging to both.

“ Beta, woh dabba le aa… nahi, woh nahi, woh jismein mithai thi. ”