The narrative flashes back to Sai’s first night at Cho Oyu. The cook asks in broken English if she has come from England or America. He is shocked to learn Sai was living in Dehra Dun, India, and that she is an orphan. He expresses misgivings that her parents died in Russia and her father was a space pilot.

Sai’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Mistry, met in Moscow when Indo-USSR relations were strong. Sai’s father, a member of the Indian Air Force, was jogging in a park and stopped to speak with the young woman who sat studying under a neem tree. Less than a year later, Mr. Mistry proposed to her in the tomb of a Mughal prince in the same park.

When Sai was six years old, her father was commissioned from the air force to participate in the Soviet space program. Sai lived at her mother’s former convent in Dehra Dun and swapped brief letters with her mother for two years. In Moscow, a bus ran over Sai’s parents in the street. Hearing the news, young Sai said, “I’m an orphan” to herself (31). Since no one could pay Sai’s tuition, the nuns contacted Sai’s maternal grandfather, the judge.