While the rest of the city sleeps, the Indian matriarch (or sometimes the grandfather) is already awake. In a typical middle-class household in Delhi, Mumbai, or Chennai, the morning begins not with an alarm, but with the clanking of a pressure cooker and the aroma of filtered coffee or masala chai .
He grinned and kissed her cheek quickly before the children could see. “Then I’ll bring wine.” While the rest of the city sleeps, the