From the memoir: An Indian-American woman on growing up with white society beauty standards

One day, a girl named Swapna asked if I wanted to join a dance she had choreographed to a song from the movie Devdas. She was a grade above mine, so we didn’t know each other well. She needed one more person for a performance at the local Hindu temple, she said. I missed performing Bollywood dances and I wanted desi friends. I knew that you and Papa would approve. I said yes.

Swapna was the unlikely combination of smart, kind, and mellow. Her calmness drew me in. At dance practice, I met her friend Adya, a tall, light-skinned Gujarati girl who went to a neighboring private school. She was Swapna’s foil, the bubbliest person I’d ever met, bursting into laughter over the smallest comments. The three of us had an instant chemistry.

Dance practices spilled into hangouts, which rotated among our three homes. At school, Yush befriended Swapna’s younger brother, and we absorbed the boys into our group seamlessly. We told one another jokes and stories, mostly, like about the time an uncle gravely cautioned the boys to drink water during a garba, as if the festive folk dance were a marathon: “It’s nonstop dandiya! Stay hydrated!”

We laughed, but then Yush couldn’t...

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