“My mother,” Aanya said quietly. “My grandmother. The woman who sweeps your office floor. The man who drives your cab. That’s who.”

That night, Aanya had a video call with Baba Ansari. He was weaving a sari for his daughter’s wedding. “She will wear it only once,” he said. “But she will remember the touch of this silk for a lifetime. Can your laptop do that?”

“Beta,” Shanti would say, crushing cardamom pods with a heavy stone mortar, “your computer designs have no soul. A kaali (black) and white geometric shape? That is not India. India is the red of sindoor , the orange of marigolds, the green of mango leaves on a doorframe.”

The next morning, she walked to the weavers’ colony. The narrow lanes smelled of indigo dye and old wood. She met Baba Ansari, a 70-year-old Muslim weaver whose family had woven brocades for the Mughal emperors. His hands were gnarled, but on the handloom, they danced like a pianist’s.

Aanya felt a sting of shame. She had spent years trying to scrub the “Indianness” from her aesthetic, calling it “clutter” in design school. But standing there, with the Ganges reflecting a million flickering lamps, she realized she had been trying to erase herself.