Archive of Our Own

I.

Amita technically doesn’t have a last name.

She’s Tamil, which means that her name should be Thiruvallur Ramanujan Amita - Ramanujan for her father’s actual first name, Thiruvallur for their ancestral village in Tamil Nadu.

The fault is her grandfather’s. Thiruvallur Govindacharya Krishnamurthy Iyengar was a liberal man who joined millions of other Tamils in ditching the caste names that serve as last names - and reasons to discriminate - for most Indians. Krishnamurthy Iyengar became T. G. Krishnamurthy, the erasure of ‘Iyengar’ taking with it any mention of his high-caste origins, a blow struck for equality at least on paper.

Amita is glad of his progressive ways, but it does mean that Krishna Thatha made things a little difficult for his descendants. Because while he lived all his life in India, where worse deviations from the norm are shrugged at and worked around, the next generations weren’t quite so lucky.

America doesn’t recognize anything but standard Western firstname-lastname, so her dad, whose actual name is Thiruvallur Krishnamurthy Ramanujan, has been going by TK rather than Ramanujan, which to American minds is his last name, not his first. (At least, he’s TK outside the family, who all call him Sanjay, but cultural norms around in-group/out-group names Amita will leave to the sociology department.)

When Amita was born, it took a week for her to be officially named, not because there was any disagreement about naming her Amita - Paati had consulted the astrologer back in India as soon as they knew Tapti was having a girl - but because her dad was vehement that his daughter would not go through life with the confusion that came with being named the way he was. Amita Ramanujan may not have been correct, but it would make life easier, and he was determined that his little girl’s life would be as easy as he could make it.

He couldn’t have known back then that Amita would fall in love with math. It makes it a little easier to forgive him every time she hears one more tired joke about the mathematician she was never actually intended to be named for.

II.

Amita thinks she would have liked to be a historian. Or a fashion designer.

But she’s smart, and there’s a very clear hierarchy in Indian communities:

Smart people study science. People not smart enough for science study commerce. People not smart enough for either are consigned to the humanities.

(Her own father is only excused because he’s a doctor, even if it’s the wrong kind. The fact that he makes more money than many medical doctors does help, it must be admitted.)

Even as a kid, Amita thinks that’s dumb. How is coding any different from writing a poem? Isn’t there incredible skill in art? And how do all these very smart science people expect to exist in a world without books to read, music to listen to, or movies and TV to watch?

Amita doesn’t believe that biology is destiny, but she’s not sure background isn’t, in some ways. Would she have been encouraged, pushed, even the same way if she’d been white? If her genius had been not in the sciences, but in the arts? (She sees friends, cousins, get pushed to do engineering or medicine when their interests clearly lie elsewhere and isn’t sure at all, even with Paati around). Would her parents boast as much about Amita if she’d done her PhD in literature rather than math?

It’s not like Amita’s life is all science all the time, though. She lets herself use the artist side of her brain in the teaching materials she creates, spends precious free time reading history as well as fantasy, brainstorms design ideas with her interior designer friend Catie.

Most days, it doesn’t bother her; she is a creature of science, content in her chosen career path. But when she sees the floor-to-ceiling shelves at Colby’s filled with non-science books, finds out that his degree at UW Seattle was not engineering or science but history, that he didn’t have to fight his family over it - that his mom encouraged him to pick it over anything more traditional, and can’t help but feel a pang of what-if.

III.

Charlie Eppes is one of Amita’s favorite people. He’s a genius, sure, but he’s also kind, helpful, and funny, even if he does occasionally drive her crazy with how disorganized he is. Not to mention pretty damn gorgeous, especially with those curls.

He is also absolutely, positively not someone she ever wants to date. Despite the excellence of Alan’s cooking, and thank goodness Charlie shutting the whole relationship thing down hasn’t reduced the number of invitations to dinner with the team. But she would have made that sacrifice, if it had come down to it.

The cold hard reality is that Amita’s a pretty young woman of colour in a field that has been, and still is, mostly old, white, and male, with all the problems that come with that. It’s already a fight against assumptions that she’s a secretary, that she must want the Chemistry or even the English department rather than Math or Astrophysics. Never even mind the rumors that always swirl around anyone who dares to do science while not being a pimply, socially awkward geek dude.

Even if Charlie were the kind of creep who abused the student-teacher relationship like that, Amita’s had years of whispered warnings, of cautionary tales, about what happens when you marry a genius, or are in the company of one. Has heard of Sonya Tolstoya, Anna Dostoyevska, and Zelda Fitzgerald, and closer to home, Marie Curie, Rosalind Franklin, and Katherine Johnson and all the other female ‘computers’ who are the entire reason Silicon Valley in all its sausage-fest glory exists. Has been warned of the Matilda effect, has seen it play out in real life too many damn times.

Amita built her first computer at thirteen. She graduated Berkeley summa cum laude with a double major in math and astrophysics at twenty-two. She’s a Milton Prize winner, a high-paid government consultant, someone whose expertise is valued from CalSci to CERN.

After all of that? Like hell she’s taking the demotion to Mrs Eppes.

IV.

The cool thing about combinatorics is just how many different uses it has. Between that and her knack for programming, Amita finds herself with a lot of surprisingly useful side projects over the years.

The big one, though, is a set of image enhancement algorithms she starts working on at Berkeley and refines during her first couple of years at CalSci. It’s not long before the licensing requests start coming in, from everyone from academia to private corporations to government agencies both civilian and military.

The thing is, Amita’s read Oppenheimer, seen Jurassic Park, and listened to debates at Berkeley about just what the role and responsibility of a scientist is.

It takes considerable soul-searching, and discussions with Charlie, Larry, her old advisor at Berkeley, and even Paati, but Amita finally winds up licensing the algorithms mostly to very carefully selected colleagues in academia, NASA, and NOAA. After careful consideration, the FBI gets a license, too, albeit one that’s much more restricted and up for renewal on a much more frequent basis than all the others.

Amita isn’t making anything like the paydays she could, but her conscience is clean, and that’s worth more than all the six-figure cheques in the world.

V.

Amita honestly thought she and Nate were going to get married, is the thing.

Dr Vishwanathan Swami - Nate to everyone but his parents - is just the kind of Good Indian Boy her parents approve of, an orthopedic surgery resident at UCLA, respectful of tradition while not being a slave to it, handsome, well-spoken, and kind, the sort of son-in-law they can happily brag about entering the family. Even Paati likes him.

Four years in Silicon Valley have worn some of the shine off for Amita, so she decides she’s going to be a good Tamil Brahmin girl for once and get the higher education her parents have been not-so-subtly-hinting that she should get ever since she graduated from Berkeley. She figures Nate will be supportive, too, because why wouldn’t he be?

Except it turns out that he thought when she said grad school, she meant a master’s degree at a local university before settling down and being a good Indian wife, not a PhD at CalSci.

Even years later, Amita can still remember his dismissive tone as he says, “What do you want to do a PhD for? It’s not like you’ll need one to take care of the kids.”

He still manages to be surprised when her glass of wine lands in his face, followed by her ring.

Her parents are horrified, of course, tell her she’s throwing away a good man, that there are doctoral degrees she can do in San Francisco, too. Even her extended family chimes in, all except Paati, who, thank goodness, understands like she always has.

They don’t get it. It’s not about keeping a supposedly good man. It’s about not being willing to lose herself.

VI.

Venky Chittappa is Amita’s second favourite person after Paati. He’s her Appa’s younger brother, and has lived with them ever since she can remember, in the in-law suite over the garage. It’s never been made clear why he doesn’t have his own place, but as a kid Amita is too happy for another adult to wrap around her little finger to question why.

(As an adult, she learns about ADD and autism, and a lot of things make sense. Like why Venky Chittappa would always wear the same clothes that got washed with the special detergent, or why even though Amita had to eat at least three bites of everything he got away with curd rice almost every meal, or why he had checklists upon checklists and alarms for everything.)

Venky Chittappa loves computers, and he’s very good with them too, good enough that he’s got a business out of the garage building and fixing them. Her parents’ careers in economics and ophthalmology, while more prestigious, are far more opaque and uninteresting to a small Amita. And Venky Chittappa indulges her, telling her stories upon stories while she works, letting her play The Oregon Trail and Pong and teaching her the basics of programming.

Appa and Amma pay for it (with bemusement more than anything, but they do) but it’s Venky Chittapa who takes her to get the parts for her very first computer, his presence behind her at Radio Shack probably the only reason why the sales clerk there takes her seriously.

Life gets busy as Amita gets older, especially once she starts high school, but she tries to make time for Venky Chittappa as much as she can. He passes when she’s in Silicon Valley, the damn smog in L.A. turning a normal bout of pneumonia fatal, and Amita cries until it feels like there are no tears left in the world, never mind her body.

She builds more computers, better ones. But that first one - well, the CPU, at least - still lives in her closet, carefully packed away. Every so often, she’ll take it out, boot it up, and breathe a quiet sigh of relief around the tears. So long as it still works, it feels like she hasn’t completely lost Venky Chittappa after all.

VII.

As a teen, Amita hates Bharatnatyam.

Well. Hate is a strong word. She certainly doesn’t appreciate being made to do it, though, not the twice-weekly classes or the almost-daily practise that Paati insists she put in. She’d much rather be a cheerleader like the other girls in her class. Or if she does have to take dance lessons, let them be ballet or ballroom, not Indian classical dance with its gaudy costumes and utter uselessness on a school dance floor.

Her parents, and surprisingly, Paati, stand firm on this one. Her mother because it’s a connection to Indian culture, her father because it will look good on college applications, make her stand out from all the Asian violin prodigies. (Personally, Amita thinks that a brown girl doing ballet will stand out more, but there’s that twist to Appa’s mouth that says arguing is futile no matter how much Amita tries.)

She tries appealing to Paati, get her to consider cheer at least (the uniforms, while revealing, are at least better than tutus) but she’s surprised by the vehemence of Paati’s disapproval. No granddaughter of hers, Paati declares, will lower herself to prancing around on the sidelines half naked cheering on a bunch of boys throwing a ball around. If she’s going to put in the work, she should be in the spotlight.

And so to Bharatnatyam classes Amita goes, from when she’s six up until she’s sixteen and done with her arangetram. Technically she doesn’t need to do it, since she has no plans to either go pro or teach, but her family believes that anything worth doing is worth doing properly. So Amita spends her sophomore year planning, choreographing, practising, and organizing, until her teacher is satisfied. And then she spends two hours on stage showing off ten years’ worth of hard work and dedication, draped in silk and jewels and more makeup than she’s ever worn in her life, one final gauntlet before she can finally, finally say goodbye to something that’s taken entirely too much of her time for more than half of her life.

Except, strangely, it never does leave her. Oh, Amita never steps on a Bharatanatyam stage again. But her religiously maintained practise notebooks - first kept with Paati’s help, then on her own - are the foundation of the coding documentation skills that helped her beat out other far more experienced candidates for a top Silicon Valley job and are one of the reasons she’s the reigning queen of programming at CalSci. The fitness that comes from daily practice means that she can walk on to any intramural team she likes, and the flexibility that comes from dance proves surprisingly handy on the tennis court, too. All that experience juggling AP classes and homework and coding and her job with the craziness of planning and preparing for her arangetram stands Amita in good stead her final year at Berkeley, and again when she decides to go back to grad school. And ten years of doing something she doesn’t love teaches her the value of simply putting your head down and getting on with it, a skill that Amita thinks has more to do with any future success than the smarts she admittedly has in spades. And the ability to put on makeup in five minutes flat ends up useful once or twice, too.

Amita still doesn’t like Bharatanatyam. But she’ll always be grateful for all it taught her off the stage as well as on it.

VIII.

Amita doesn’t realize how spoiled she is as a vegetarian who grew up in L.A. and went to college at Berkeley until her first academic conference at MIT. She’s excited beyond words, has spent days agonizing over what she’ll wear and hours practising her presentation.

What she forgets to take into account is food.

It’s not that there aren’t vegetarian options - it’s a STEM conference, which means there are enough people of Indian origin attending that the organizers kind of have to - it’s that they’re bad. Networking over lunch is a lot less fun when she’s stuck with a limp chunk of overdressed lettuce or a cheese sandwich. Dinner at least is better, even if she has to be careful not to go over her per diem after all the overpriced conference snacks.

(She’d laughed at Paati when she’d told Amita to pack food; this has been a valuable lesson in listening to grandmotherly wisdom.)

The next conference, and all the ones after, she’s more strategic. She packs Tasty Bite pouches for meals she can eat, and makes a habit of stopping by a grocery store for snacks before the conference starts. What begins as necessity soon becomes one of her favorite parts; it turns out that grocery stores are a great way to get a taste of the local culture most tourists happily overlook. She happily feasts on pecans in Georgia, beignets in New Orleans, good cheese in Europe, brings back souvenirs and gifts that are a lot cheaper and more useful than pretty much all of the overpriced knickknacks she sees in tourist shops. And it turns out that sometimes, no matter how good a conference is - or maybe because of it - dinner needs to be Tasty Bite in your hotel room and blessed silence as you eat.

These days, the food at conferences is a lot better, and Amita isn’t on a student budget, anyway. But she still packs Tasty Bite in her suitcase and makes a planned stop at a supermarket, because some traditions are sacred no matter how many options there are.

IX.

For all Amita’s parents’ flaws, one thing they’ve never had a problem with is her reading. There’s a generous budget for anything educational in the Ramanujan house, and that includes books. Even, to Amita’s surprise, fantasy books.

For her ninth birthday, someone gets her Alanna: The First Adventure, and Amita discovers to her delight that girls can be main characters, not just sidekicks. Over the years, Tamora Pierce is joined by Diane Duane and Anne McCaffrey and Robin McKinley and Marion Zimmer Bradley and Lois McMaster Bujold and a dozen others. Somewhere along the way she picks up Tolkien, Pratchett, and Jordan, and Brooks, too, but Amita will always go back to the women in the end.

They’re proof that she belongs, that boys who try and claim that being a geek isn’t for girls are wrong, that she can do anything she damn well sets her mind to.

You can’t be what you can’t see, after all, and Alanna and Nita and Raederle and Cordelia light Amita’s way as much as Sally Ride and Katherine Johnson and Ada Lovelace ever did.

X.

Amita doesn’t actually have a problem with arranged marriage as a concept. She learned in one of her sociology classes back at Berkeley that marrying for love only became popular in the West after the Industrial Revolution. Across history and across cultures, most people have had their marriages arranged for them. And it’s not as if all arranged marriages end badly. Appa and Amma have doted on each other as long as Amita can remember, as have Charu Athai and Ramani Athimber, and Amita never got a chance to meet her paternal grandfather but it’s clear Paati loved him. And given the divorce rate, it’s not like marrying for love always ends happily, either.

So when her parents bring up the idea of looking for a nice boy for her a year after she graduates, Amita shrugs and agrees. It’s not like she has time to date, even if the San Francisco dating scene wasn’t a disaster. What could it hurt?

She does have a few caveats, though. First, nobody who isn’t already an American citizen (the cultural differences aside, she won’t be able to shake the feeling he’s only after a green card no matter what he says), and they have to agree to date for a year before getting engaged.

The first nice Indian boy she agrees to date is named Suresh. He’s two years older than her, an engineer at Google, tall and soft-spoken, and he loves his mother.

It takes Amita a bit to realize he loves his mother a little bit too much.

That he stays with his parents isn’t a red flag - Paati stayed with her sons, after all, and now her daughter. But Amita can’t ever remember her buying clothes for her dad, or calling him multiple times a day, or taking his side in any arguments with her mother. If anything, Paati’s more likely to teasingly take Amma’s side, unless it’s a serious issue. And her dad would never tell her mom her cooking isn’t as good as Paati’s, or that she should ‘adjust’ because that’s just how mothers are. Or accept Paati barging in on Amita’s parents anytime she likes. Or drop whatever he’s doing to run and help her just because she expects him to. (If anything, Paati’s almost too independent.)

The straw that breaks the camel’s back, though, is six months in, when Suresh decides some minor errand for his mother is more important than Amita getting a prestigious award at work. In that moment, Amita sees her future laid out before her, a future where she’s second best in her own marriage, and right then and there she decides she wants no part of it.

On paper, Nate is perfect, or at least close to it. He doesn’t live with his parents, they have a weekly Skype family call (the same as Amita), and while he doesn’t cook he does do the dishes without complaint whenever Amita does. He’s also sweet and kind and funny and honestly wonderful, and Amita can easily see herself spending a life with him. Which is why that conversation at dinner a month after they get engaged comes as such a shock. What is even worse is the one after, when she decides to give him a chance to explain himself, at her parents’ urging, and he doubles down. Her parents still haven’t quite forgiven her, but Amita can only be grateful his mask slipped before the wedding.

Third time is hopefully the charm, and Jai Shankar is absolutely charming. He’s an investment banker whose dad knows hers, which is how the match happens. He’s five years older, handsome, suave, and absolutely sweeps Amita off her feet. He takes her to fancy restaurants and buys her expensive presents and talks about working for UBF while she blazes trails at CERN, introduces her to his investment banking colleagues with no small amount of pride, and gives her amazing orgasms. Amita is in love, and thinks Jai is, too.

And then she drops by his office unexpectedly and finds him banging his secretary. It turns out that he only agreed to the whole arranged marriage thing because his father kept pushing. He even makes Amita an offer: continue as they are, and he’ll keep her in better style than most academics can dream of.

Amita doesn’t have a wineglass to throw at him, but the slap probably hurts more. And this time, she keeps the ring.

Her parents do try nudging again occasionally, but to borrow a baseball metaphor, three strikes; Amita’s out. Her work and her consulting keep her busy, and what little free time she has is well taken up by friends and hobbies. She doesn’t even miss sex all that much, not when there are toys and her own imagination.

And then Colby asks her out. For a brief moment, Amita considers how her parents might react, then decides she’s done with nice Indian boys. Time to take a chance on a good man.

XI.

The first time Amita sees the night sky in all its glory, she’s seven and visiting India for the first time.

There are many things she loves about LA, but the thick, choking smog that is a near constant of her life there isn’t one of them.

For all the mess and the dirt and the honest-to-God cows wandering the streets, Madras is cleaner in some ways than L.A. ever was. Brighter, too, the colors rich and sharp, no patina of dull brown to obscure even her perfect vision.

The power is out - again - so they’re on mats on the terrace, where it’s at least a little bit cooler. Srini Thatha tells the best stories, and Amita is so enraptured that she doesn’t realize night has fallen until this one ends.

She looks up, and gasps.

Stars.

Stars like she’s never seen, twinkling white against inky black, constellations spread out like diamonds on velvet.

It’s nothing like L.A., and she is in love.

Srini Thatha sees the expression on her face in the (bright, so bright, she’s never seen anything like it) moonlight, and shifts from stories about gods to telling her all about the stars - Orion the hunter, Taurus the bull, Canis Major and Sirius the Dog Star, and Polaris.

Amita devours every book about the stars she can find, her interest only further heightened when Sally Ride goes to space, the first American woman to do so. A photo of her joins the one of Rakesh Sharma on Amita’s bedroom wall, glow-in-the-dark stars laid out in carefully accurate constellations shining down at them both. She goes to Space Camp, interns at NASA, and dreams of the day she’ll fly among the stars.

Alas, allergic rhinitis puts paid to Amita’s plans of being an astronaut. (In the midst of her heartbreak, a small part of her is relieved; the actual effort required to be an astronaut is not something she thinks she can sustain, even for the stars.)

The best dreams don’t die, though, they just evolve, and Amita keeps her love affair with space alive first at Berkeley, then with a second doctorate in astrophysics. The research she does won’t ever replace actually being in space, but knowing she’s helping further human understanding of what makes the stars she loves tick is almost as good.

XII.

It’s not that Amita doesn’t believe white people can’t be racist towards Indians, or that she hasn’t experienced it herself. Even before 9/11 made the lives of every brown person in the United States harder, she’s had to deal with shit. From classmates who teased her about her ‘weird’ lunches to people butchering her first and her last name, from her gods being ridiculed to being told to go back to where she’s from, from the benevolent shackles of the model minority myth to being complimented on her English to being asked repeatedly, no, where are you really from, there are plenty of ways the country she loves tells her it doesn't love her back.

But somehow, it’s easier to deal with white people being assholes than it is other Indians. Amita’s lucky, she knows - being Brahmin protects her from a lot, especially working in Silicon Valley. (Too many Indian immigrants ditched the caste names but kept the backwards views. She tries to fight it as much as she can, but it’s not like those assholes listen to women, either.) But her caste doesn’t shield her from digs about her skin, whether it’s comments about ‘she’s pretty for a dark girl’ or the chastisements about how tennis will make her dark or the outright push towards skin lightening products that she gets every time she visits relatives in India. Or the sneering from some North Indian immigrants when she admits she doesn’t speak Hindi (why she would need to as a Tamilian in Los Angeles, Amita has no idea) or much care for Bollywood movies. Or the subtle digs at her American accented Tamil when she’s back in India.

Racism from white people is easy to dismiss, Amita thinks, because it’s clear it comes from a place of insecurity disguised as privilege. It’s a lot harder to tell herself that she’s just as good, if not better, when the digs are coming from the people who should be on her side.

XIII.

When she gets to college, Amita is excited to finally have time to get into Dungeons and Dragons. (Venky Chittappa did have a group he played with weekly, but even after finally escaping Bharatanatyam Amita just did not have time.)

Her excitement lasts until she heads to her first session only to have her character be harassed all evening in the name of realism (Amita refrains from commenting on the realism of dragons, faeries, and tieflings). Other groups are just as bad if not worse, and a month in Amita gives up in disgust. She’s got better things to do with her damn time and better people to spend it with.

In her sophomore year, her friend Chrissie - one of the only other female gamers on campus Amita knows - comes to her bubbling with enthusiasm about this new MMORPG she’s found called Primacy. Amita is initially skeptical, but allows herself to be talked into giving it a try when Chrissie promises that the rest of their alliance will be girls, too.

Playing an MMORPG means she gets to design her own avatar, complete with name, and Amita only hesitates a moment before picking Kali. She wants her character to be feared, and honestly, a goddess who wears her victims’ skulls for a necklace is excellent energy to take into a game where Amita just knows there will be assholes of the kind that put her off DnD.

She’s a little nervous starting out, but it goes even better than her wildest dreams. The gameplay is fun, the quests are exciting, and Amita’s alliance is rock solid. People drift in and out, but the five of them who make up the core of the Valkyries - she, Chrissie, Amanda, Tracey, and Meher - don't take very long to go from online acquaintances to real friends.

Amita spends more time playing Primacy than she honestly really should, given the whole double major thing, but eh, she’s a genius and things like coffee and Red Bull exist for a reason. Plus getting to fight monsters she can pretend are sexist professors and jackass classmates is very satisfying.

She figures they’ll all drift away once graduation is done, but it doesn’t turn out that way. The Valkyries continue to kick ass and take names through grad school, jobs, weddings, and break-ups; the few hours a week Amita gets to exchange sensible, practical Amita Ramanujan for a skimpily dressed magical warrior queen are a welcome respite from the (admittedly generally very productive) chaos that is the rest of her life.

Of all the ways she expected to be able to help the FBI, her skill at video games certainly wasn’t one of them. Once the case is done and she’s safe and on the outside of a giant slice of chocolate silk pie, Amita can admit that while she’s glad to have played a role in taking Duryea down? She will happily leave the fighting to Kali from now on.

XIV.

Amita has to admit, she was tempted by Harvard.

It’s Harvard, after all. Who wouldn’t be?

But after some thought, and a visit to Cambridge, Amita realizes that while teaching at Harvard is many people’s dream, it would be more like a nightmare for her.

For one thing, there’s the weather in Massachusetts. Amita might be American, but her ancestors have spent the past several millennia in the tropical heat of South India, with the resulting genetic inability to deal with cold and snow. Amita spends the entire visit trying very hard not to shiver or stumble every time she steps outside, and wincing at the thought of doing this all winter, for years.

For another, and just as importantly… if she goes to Harvard, she won’t have near the calibre of student she has at CalSci. Not that there aren’t smart people at Harvard, especially in the math and astrophysics departments. But too many students here are legacy kids whose daddies bought their seats, too many who’re here because they want that shiny crimson stamp on their resumes, too many who see it as a stepping stone to a career rather than a place where they can immerse themselves in learning. CalSci may not give her parents the same kind of bragging rights, but everyone there is someone who’s chosen it because they care more about science than prestige.

And for all she’s used to L.A. smog… it feels like she can’t breathe in Cambridge. Something about all those old red brick buildings, the weight of all the history that surrounds her. Almost four hundred years of it, and nearly all of them unwelcoming to someone who looks and sounds like her. As a woman of colour in STEM, Amita has long since learned the value of faking it ‘til you make it, but Harvard makes her feel more like a child playing dress-up than she has in a long time.

Sure, Boston would be an adventure. But Amita loves LA, loves the year-round sun and the easy access to the beach and the amazing Mexican food. Loves the family she’s built here, both her friends and the one Charlie has so graciously pulled her into. Loves that she can drive an hour and be at the beach or at Disney, loves that it’s only six hours of beautiful driving up the coast to her family, not a six-hour red-eye it’d probably be only worth taking a couple times a year. Loves that every once in a while, she gets to help the actual FBI catch actual bad guys.

Besides. Boston is offering her an assistant professorship, with the chance of a tenure track after, and Amita has the distinct impression they think they’re being incredibly generous. CalSci’s offer is assistant professor, tenure track, and 15% more than Harvard is paying. All without having to move her life cross-country. Or root for the Celtics.

Amita doesn’t need to be a genius to do the math.

XV.

Honestly, Amita doesn’t think much of Colby Granger when she first meets him.

Wait, that sounds a lot harsher than she means. It’s more that he never gives her reason to think of him, either poorly or well. He’s just a generic FBI agent who shows up occasionally in search of Charlie and is polite and respectful in a way she’s rarely seen from country boys. Amita is content to idly think he’s hot, especially once his suits get better, and leave it at that.

As time passes, though, she realizes there’s more to him than a pretty face and an aww-shucks smile. He’s smarter than he pretends to be under that farmboy persona, and he takes her seriously, and the math, too. Plus, the fondness threaded through his occasional bemusement at Charlie and Larry can’t help but endear him to her. And he’s kind, too. After Amita explains she can’t eat the potato salad he’s brought to the cookout because of the turkey bacon bits, he makes sure to always keep a portion of anything he makes for the team meat-free without making a big deal about it.

That reflexive kindness is one reason why Colby’s confession doesn’t make sense to Amita. She can’t imagine he doesn’t have a reason for confessing rather than bolting, though, so she keeps quiet and tries her best to support the team through those horrible weeks until the freighter.

In all honesty, the fact that he was a triple agent doesn’t bother her the same way it does the team. She is the granddaughter of freedom fighters and the daughter of parents who grew up in the shadow of Chinese aggression, and she understands that country must sometimes come first no matter the cost.

She still isn’t interested in him that way until he throws a housewarming party after his return to the team. (Amita doesn’t blame him a bit for not wanting to stay in his old place, it looked awful even by L.A. real estate standards.) Unfortunately timed conferences and consultations mean she misses both times the team descends to help get the place ready. Which means the first time Amita sees Colby’s place is at the party. She’s not surprised by the family pictures or the hints of his small town Idaho upbringing, but she is surprised at the bookshelves. Floor to ceiling, and filled with both books Amita expects - criminal justice, Westerns - and ones she doesn’t, like history and Spanish fiction.

They wind up in a conversation about Pride and Prejudice of all things, and it strikes Amita just how much of himself Colby had to keep hidden these last two years. And how much she wants to get to know all of the real him.

XVI.

Amita’s relationship with faith is… complicated.

Try as she might, she’s never, quite, been able to logic herself into believing in an omnipotent, omniscient higher power. Not with how much suffering there is in the world. Being told that she isn’t eligible to wear the sacred thread Brahmin boys can (regardless of their level of belief) doesn’t help, either. Nor does the fact that according to Hindu scripture the only sacrament available to women is marriage, or being told that the only way to get enlightenment is to have a son. (Amita can’t decide what she’s more pissed off about, the insult to her parents or the one to her.) And that’s not even getting into all the casteist bullshit she’s learning to be better about.

Amita believes in the concept of dharma, that it is the duty of every sentient being to do what's right. She just disagrees with the (conservative, often male) elders as to what precisely that is.

But Hinduism is a culture as much as it’s a religion, and it’s threaded through every aspect of Amita’s life. She can’t imagine having grown up without the extended family get-togethers every January for Pongal, the five of them packing up the car and heading to San Francisco for a weekend of feasting, drawing kolams, and general merriment. Can’t imagine not getting dragged into Holi at the community centre in Artesia, rules about ladylike behaviour and not getting messy relaxed for once. Can’t imagine not getting swept into the frenzy of mixing, frying, and sweet-making that is the Ramanujan house in the weeks before Deepavali, or the Deepavali morning ritual of oiling and washing her hair and consuming a spoonful of Deepavali marundhu so she won’t get sick from gorging all day. Can’t imagine not helping her mother and grandmother set up their golus, listening to them gossip and trying not to laugh at the cutthroat rivalries that have sprung up, both in L.A. and in the Tamil Brahmin community in San Francisco. Can’t imagine the house not awash in oil lamps for Karthigai. Can’t imagine not setting her books aside for the day every Saraswati Puja, or diving into new projects on Vijayadasami. Can’t imagine a Desi home without a puja cupboard, even a little one, or not lighting the lamps at least on festival days.

She wrestles with this for years before realizing that real life isn’t binary, that it isn’t an either/or choice. There are Hindu atheists, even, and Amita’s Jewish friends are living examples of that it’s possible to have culture but not faith.

Amita doesn’t pray daily like her Paati does, or visit temples every chance she gets like her parents do, or have a giant puja display that’s the centrepiece of the living room like Ramani Athimber’s parents in New Jersey do. The statues of Ganesha and Parvati and Lakshmi and Saraswati in the little cabinet that lives on her wall don’t get offerings of food when she cooks, and the pretty brass oil lamps she brought back from India stay unlit most of the year. Her devotion is to her community, and to doing what she thinks is right. In Amita’s opinion, if there are gods, and they’re worth believing in, that will tip the scales in her favour far more than empty shows of faith ever will.

XVII.

Amita wishes she loved cooking more.

Paati does her best to teach her, before college and during breaks home, teaches her how to make sambar and South-Indian style kurma and vegetable upma and all the other dishes that are a staple of the Tamil Brahmin kitchen. Amita’s copy of Samaithu Paar is stained with turmeric and splashed with tamarind water and littered with notes in gel pen where Paati has countermanded Meenakshi Ammal’s authority. Paati even buys her, as a graduation gift, her very own anjarai petti, the seven-compartment container that Tamil women use to store spices, although Amita’s is stainless steel rather than wood.

Amita appreciates it, really she does. But her job doesn’t leave time for the kind of cooking Paati makes effortless, and honestly, South Indian for one is an oxymoron anyway.

It doesn’t help that Charu Athai insists on pressing an armful of containers of home cooking on her every time she goes to their house for lunch, or that her first roommate is a genius in the kitchen, albeit cut from a very different cloth than the women Amita’s known growing up.

Sarah teaches Amita that meals don’t have to be elaborate to be good, that there’s nothing wrong with jazzing up store-bought ingredients or making a meal out of a variety of odds and ends. It turns out, jarred pesto and frozen ravioli makes a fine meal, as do salads and soups and even sandwiches, and none of them make so much you get tired before they’re done.

Sarah’s lessons stand her in good stead even in L.A., and Amita feels only a little guilty that the only Indian food she eats comes from Charu Athai’s kitchen.

The last thing she expects to change that is dating Colby.

Oh, Amita doesn’t suddenly change into some kind of good Tam Brahm girl just because she has a man in her life. It just so happens that Colby Granger is a damn good cook, and delighted by an entirely new cuisine to explore.

Suddenly Amita is eating sambar and kurma and aviyal and masala vadai, with no need of a six-hour drive first. Paati and Charu Athai, once they get over their bafflement at the white boy actually understanding spices, are happy to teach him, and Colby is just as eager to learn. Amita’s solo Skype chats with Paati suddenly acquire a guest, and she’s only a little worried at how well those two get along.

Amita’s still not the biggest fan of cooking, but South Indian for two is a lot easier than South Indian for one, especially with help. Sometimes she and Colby make a date of it, the knife skills he learned at his mother’s knee just as handy cutting vegetables for sambar as they are for chicken or beef, the work made easier by banter and stolen kisses.

And after dinner, there’s always dessert.

XVIII.

Amita loves her parents. Really, she does.

And they love her too, she knows. They pushed her, as a child, but it was never to excess, not like so many other Asian parents. And they’ve always been generous with her - there was always money for books, for Space Camp, for computer parts, for Disney even. The job she had in high school hadn’t been out of necessity, it had been because Appa and Amma had wanted her to know the value of a dollar, and they’d never questioned how she spent her earnings or the generous allowance they also gave her. She’d had more restrictions placed on her in high school than her white friends, it was true, but far fewer than many of her brown ones. All in all, it had been as idyllic a childhood as a daughter of immigrants could hope to have.

Looking back, Amita thinks that Berkeley was where things had started to unravel. She has to fight to go, since her parents want her to go to CalSci or Caltech, stay at home and commute like a good Indian girl. But a full ride scholarship is hard to argue with, especially with Charu Athai right across the bay in San Francisco if anything goes wrong, so in the end Amita packs her bags for NorCal.

Amita’s not a rebellious person by nature, but her parents sidestepped even the potential for any teenage drama by the simple expedient of keeping her busy as hell all through middle and high school, between AP classes, extracurriculars, work, and family stuff. Berkeley is the first time in years she’s actually felt like she can breathe.

So Amita sleeps in sometimes and eats junk food more than she really should, goes to parties that go on until all hours in the morning and even gets drunk at a few. Dates a few nice boys and a few not so nice ones, including the one she went to that Pink Floyd concert with it. (Him, she dumped immediately after). Stays up a little too late playing Primacy and chugs a little too much coffee making up the study time she lost to it.

And she learns.

The thing with growing up like Amita has is that you can be both brilliant and honestly kind of dumb at the same time. Sure, she can code complex programs in her sleep and do harder math than some upperclassmen, but she doesn’t even know how much she doesn’t know outside the comfortable bubble she grew up in until Berkeley forces her to leave it. She’s glad that her AP classes let her test out of as many courses as they do, and that math and astrophysics have so many overlapping classes, because it means spare credits to spend studying psychology and sociology and literature. The friends she makes in these classes teach her as much if not more than the actual classwork does, pulling Amita into all kinds of discussions she could never have imagined growing up, broadening her mind in ways she knows would never have happened back in L.A.

She learns, too, that while her parents might have dreams for her it doesn’t mean that has to be her reality. That just because she isn’t the son nobody outright says she was supposed to be, she doesn’t have to be their perfect daughter.

And that’s how things fall apart between them.

Because Sanjay and Tapti do love her and want the best for her. Their idea of the best.

Which is a master’s degree, then marriage to a good Indian boy, and then grandchildren to spoil.

They don’t know what to do with a daughter who wants to shine on her own rather than orbit someone else’s star.

So the conversations get shorter and shorter, the trips to S.F. and L.A. from wherever they’re consulting rarer and rarer, especially once she throws Nate over and grandchildren are no longer in reasonably quick prospect.

Amita tries not to let it hurt her, tells herself that she has Paati and Athai and her cousins, that just because her parents want something different for her doesn’t mean they don’t love her.

Most days she even believes it.

XIX.

It’s not something she brings up often, but for a chunk of her life, Amita was almost bilingual. Her parents, determined their daughter wouldn’t lose the language of her ancestors like many of her cousins have, make a plan - Amma and Paati will speak to her only in Tamil, while Appa and Venky Chittapa will speak only in English. And it works pretty well, especially with the reinforcement of regular visits to Charu Athai and a tradition of Tamil movie nights.

Berkeley is good for Amita, undoubtedly, but moving out of her childhood home means the daily Tamil practise stops. Charu Athai is just down the coast, it’s true, but a busy schedule and a forty-five minute drive means Amita usually only makes it there every other week. And what little Indian culture there is at Berkeley tends to be Bollywood, which Amita wouldn’t be interested in even if she did speak Hindi, which she doesn’t. (That people, especially North Indians, assume she does, and somehow should, is a minor but perpetual irritation.)

She does feel bad about how bad her Tamil is getting, but… she’s busy, and getting busier and busier, and the older she gets, the less tolerant she gets of the base misogyny and overwrought dramatics of Tamil movies, and honestly, it’s not like she particularly wants to talk to most of the other Tamil speakers at her job. The years pass, and Amita’s Tamil slips away more and more, and she doesn’t really think that much of it until she’s faced with a desperate young woman she can’t help. (The interpreter, when she comes, will reassure Amita that the village Tamil Shanti speaks is hard even for her to understand; this only makes Amita feel a little better.)

She may not be able to help with words but she can with numbers, and they solve the case and rescue Shanti’s sister. And that weekend, when Amita calls Paati, she says, slow and halting, ‘Eppadi irukkai, Paati?’

It’s not much, but it’s a start. And the surprised delight on Paati’s face makes Amita determined that it will be much more.

XX.

When Amita tells her parents about the job at CalSci, her mom’s reaction, after congratulating her, is to inform Amita that her present for landing such a prestigious job is a few sessions with a personal stylist.

Amita bristles at the implied judgement of her own fashion sense… at least, until Tapti says, “Amita. Do you know how often I get taken for a nurse when I wear scrubs?”

That stops Amita short. Her mother may have made the choice to let her father’s job take precedence over her own career as an eye surgeon, but she knows Tapti is fiercely proud of the work she does do.

Her mother nods. “Exactly. Kanna, you’re a professor now. You need to dress for the job. Otherwise everyone is going to think you’re still a student. And treat you that way.”

Amita has to admit her mother has a point. So she consents to the sessions, and on impulse, asks if her mother would like to join her one of the times the stylist will be bringing her clothes to try. Tapti’s delighted yes is enough to set aside any misgivings Amita might have at the prospect.

Having a personal stylist is… eye-opening. Amita has always loved fashion, has never been of the opinion that just because you’re smart it means you shouldn’t care about looking good. But for all of that, she had no idea just how much there is to it. Amanda, her stylist, teaches her what colours and styles work for her, about the importance of cost per wear, and how to dress like Professor Ramanujan without losing Amita.

And to her surprise, it winds up being a wonderful bonding moment between her and her mother, too. Tapti doesn’t understand what Amita actually consults on, but she’s well aware how important image is when you’re talking to governments, whether they’re Indian or American, so one of the two shopping sessions the stylist has been hired for is for Dr Ramanujan, consultant. And it’s… nice, nicer than Amita expected, to go shopping with her mom, to hear stories about Tapti’s own professional life as Amita prepares to restart her own. She will always be her mother’s daughter, but this feels like an important step on the way to a more adult relationship.

At the end of it all, she winds up with a whole new wardrobe, a greater sense of confidence in herself, and a reminder that for all their differences, her mother really does love her. Not at all bad for the cost of a personal stylist.

XXI.

Amita hoped that after the disasters with Suresh, Nate, and Jai, her parents would be happy enough that she’s found someone to overlook the fact that he’s not Indian.

She really should have known better.

Bad enough Colby’s white. He also only has a B.A., and in history at that, and not even from an Ivy League. Even worse, rather than redeeming himself with a prestigious office job of some kind, he’s a cop. (There are days when Amita wishes her parents were more American. Despite all her opinions about carceral justice and the prison-industrial complex, this is one of them.)

All of that would have been hard enough for them to get past. And then they find out about the undercover thing, which leads to a screaming argument the likes of which hasn’t happened since she was a teenager and Amita telling them bluntly that until they apologize? She’s hanging up the phone. And she does, every single time, for months after, even if it breaks her heart to do it.

Paati and Charu Athai are on her side, at least, but even if they weren’t, it wouldn’t change Amita’s mind.

Colby may not have the right skin tone or the appropriate qualifications. But he takes Amita's work seriously and leaves snacks and her favorite tea when she’s deep in coding or Primacy binges, packs her lunches and puts dumb jokes in the box to make her smile, is happy to sit on the couch doing paperwork or reading his own books while she grades and rubs her hands after. Cheers her on, enthusiastically, genuinely, when she succeeds and is fierce in her defence when she’s being her own worst enemy. Doesn’t care that she’ll always make more than he will or that she’s smarter than him in a lot of ways. The sex is great, not that she’s ever telling her parents that, but more than that… it’s not just that Colby loves her. It’s that he respects her, and doesn’t need, or want, her to change for him. Loves her just as she is, in all her sometimes-moody, busy-as-hell, not-good-wife-material glory.

She’d be a fool if she ever let that go. And Amita Ramanujan is many things, but a fool is not one of them.

XXII.

Amita adores her little red VW Beetle convertible.

Sure, the Bug’s got its problems - it’s not the fastest car out there, the trunk space is a joke, and the drop top gets stuck more often than she’d like. But it parallel parks like a dream, is easy for Amita to maneuver even in L.A. traffic, and is surprisingly comfortable on those six-hour drives up to San Francisco, top down and music blasting

The biggest reason, though? It makes her happy.

She fell hard and fast for Jai, so much so she never saw all the way he was moulding her into his perfect wife until later. The way his gifts of pretty baubles and shopping sprees at high-end boutiques were less a show of affection and more gilding the lily in the colours he wanted. The way he introduced her to expensive wine and fine Scotch, had her listen to classical music and watch opera, traded out food trucks and holes in the wall for Michelin stars and celebrity galas, all of it in preparation for a lifetime on his arm and never mind all his talk of CERN. That the BMW he insisted on leasing for her as a birthday present post their engagement was only the first of the delicate golden handcuffs he had planned for her.

The heartbreak of their breakup aside, it leaves Amita in need of a car. She doesn’t intend on a Beetle, had planned on getting something solid and sensible like a Corolla or a Jetta, but then she sees the bright red convertible at the dealership and a couple of hours later she’s walking out with keys in hand. It’s nothing that Jai would have approved of her driving, between the colour and the lack of oomph and the freaking flower vase, and there’s a small, petty part of Amita that loves it all the more for that.

XXIII.

Amita has been lucky in her mentors.

Right from when she was a child, Paati has been there, never pushing, always supportive, even if she didn’t understand, fiercely defensive of Amita’s right to be herself. (Well, except the cheerleading thing, but Amita gets the logic there.) Venky Chittappa was the indulgent uncle, sneaking Amita sweets and arguing against bedtime while being shepherd and guide to the world of geekdom.

In high school, Mr. Evans shuts down any questions about girls and math, and it’s in his class rather than in history that Amita learns about Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper. (Katherine Johnson, Amita learns about in Space Camp, at least.) Ms. Xavier, her guidance counselor, is the one who suggests Berkeley, points out that a well-rounded education will serve Amita better than sticking to just math and science, whatever her family may say.

Amita has been warned about the dangers of what might be lurking on the internet since she first had access to it, but it also has people she only knows by username who take the time to answer a stranger’s questions about code, some of whom became friends as well as mentors. Even now, Amita still has those first, clumsily coded programs, carefully stored away on floppy disks and backed up onto the Internet.

At Berkeley, the academics come as easily as they always have, but that doesn’t mean Amita isn’t challenged. Ms. Stevens, her academic advisor, pushes her away from staying in the comfortable cocoon of math and science, making sure Amita makes the most of UC Berkeley’s breadth requirements. Ms. Pasternak at the library always has a smile for Amita, no matter what time of year, and teaches her as much about research methodologies as her actual class on the subject does. Professor Staedler is the one who introduces Amita to combinatorics, shows her that just because she won’t be going to space doesn’t mean she can’t study the stars.

She adores Charlie and always will, but as the years pass, Amita finds herself more drawn to Larry. His off-beat exterior hides one of the most remarkable minds she’s ever seen. Even after they become colleagues, Amita never ceases to be amazed at how much there is to learn from him.

There’s a saying in Indian culture - Mata, Pita, Guru, Deivam. Mother, Father, Teacher, God. Amita’s not sure about her relationship with God, and things with her parents are complicated, but she can’t deny how blessed she’s been in her teachers.

XXIV.

Growing up, Christmas wasn’t really a big deal for Amita. Starting when she was seven, every other winter holiday was spent in India, and the ones they do stay in California, her parents and Paati and Venky Chittappa work to keep it low-key, at least within the family. Sure, Amita gets gifts, and on Christmas Day they have a nice dinner and plum cake because Sanjay and Tapti both have fond memories of it, but otherwise Amita’s memories of Christmas are mostly being left with Venky Chittappa while her parents do the rounds of holiday parties with friends until she’s old enough to attend herself, and opening a few gifts ‘from Santa’ on Christmas morning so she won’t feel left out at school.

She’s aware distantly that Christmas is a big deal in the Granger family, but she doesn’t realize exactly how much until December rolls around and she and Colby head north for a week to spend Christmas with his family. She knows how much he loves it - she helped decorate his tree the weekend of Thanksgiving, and has seen the homemade Advent calendar his mom sent him hanging on the wall. It turns out, he comes by it honestly, because his mother and sisters are crazy about Christmas, too.

Amita has to admit, she’s a little nervous heading up to small town Idaho, for all Colby’s Mom and sisters have been nothing but welcoming, for all she knows she’s not even the first non-white woman a Granger man is bringing home to meet his family. Colby has Korean aunts and half-Korean cousins, for heaven’s sake, and some of them will even be coming to Winchester for Christmas, too. Knowing that doesn’t actually help, nor does Colby’s steady reassurance or the packages of Tasty Bite and Amita-friendly snacks in his suitcase, but she loves him all the more for trying.

Amita’s a SoCal girl whose experiences of New England in winter have not predisposed her to care much for cold weather. But this cold is a different cold than Harvard or MIT; this cold brings with it warm hugs and delighted exclamations of welcome, we’re so glad to see you, come in and get warm. This cold brings with it sledding and building snowmen and having snowball fights and mugs of homemade cocoa with marshmallows and whipped cream after. This cold brings with it Amita being pulled into Granger family traditions, from sitting by a crackling fire playing board games to watching Christmas movies to helping in the kitchen, although they’re kind and send Amita away if there’s any meat involved. It brings marvelling at an absolutely gorgeous tree, real fir and strung with candy canes and popcorn along with ornaments made by generations of Granger kids. It brings getting to know so many new people, all of whom are delighted their CJ finally found someone, and gentle ribbing of Colby about how a mook like him ended up with a class act like her.

And it brings wrapping up warm (thank goodness for Colby’s sisters, who take one look at her SoCal attempts at dressing for Idaho winters and immediately scramble to find her actual cold weather gear) and walking around Winchester with Colby, listening to him talk about his childhood and the dad he still misses every day. It brings carols in church on Christmas Eve before going home and changing into special Christmas pajamas - Amita tries not to cry when she gets her own set - and reading while NORAD’s Santa tracker plays in the background. It brings the excitement of Christmas morning, being surprised with her very own stocking and a pile of gifts, and the joy of seeing her own gifts met with unabashed delight.

Amita sits at a Christmas table loaded with sides galore, and turkey and bulgogi and a winter vegetable tart she knows Emily insisted on making herself, drinks in the laughter and gentle teasing all around her, and thinks that for all it’s bitterly cold outside, she’s never felt so warm.

XXV.

Amita has always loved mysteries.

She devours every Nancy Drew book the library has, and vacations in India are made less boring with the Secret Seven and the Five-Findouters to solve mysteries with. As a teen, she graduates to Feluda and Poirot and Marple and Holmes, and even as an adult, the old Granada Holmes series is a comfort watch when she doesn’t feel up to reading her favourite fantasies.

So when Charlie asks her to help him track down a serial rapist… she has to work very hard to not actually squeal, because as fun as fictional mysteries are, these are real women dead or in danger.

Sure, her image enhancement algorithms earn her a pretty penny from the FBI, and play a valuable part in helping the Bureau track down pedophiles, among other things, but that’s work done at a distance. The code for this case, she’s done with her own two hands, and the feeling when Charlie tells her it helped, that they caught Haldane... oh, cocaine can’t possibly touch this high, Amita thinks.

Over the next several years, she gets to help more often, on a mind-boggling variety of cases, from financial crimes to kidnapping to that one creepy cult dude with the excessive number of wives. Some cases are harder than others - she still has nightmares about being kidnapped, although waking up in Colby’s arms helps.

Her parents don’t approve - there are better uses for her genius than wasting time playing cops and robbers, they say - but every time her math or computer skills lead to another case solved, another victim rescued, Amita thinks of a quote from the Quran about a life saved is the whole world saved. She’s pretty sure there’s no better use of her genius than that.