'Can you go instead? I'd like you to meet him'
'Who?' she asked, still disbelieving.
'Professor Ved Vyasa Chaturvedi. We should get to know him, now that he's going to be family.'
And so the sickening feeling came back to her that, once again, Vyasa was dictating the course of her life. The mere thought of Vyasa - of everything he had done - filled her with rage. But she said nothing further to Hari; and although she still felt angry, sitting on the plane with the paper folded in her hands - while she wanted to scream that she had been doubly betrayed, to weep that she would not set foot in her motherland however much he begged her - she knew, too, that the reason she had agreed to come back had nothing to do with her husband and everything to do with Meera. Once, long ago, she had made a promise, and she could not leave India a second time until that promise had been honoured.