Mrs. Taneja (Meera’s mother) sat with her shawl wrapped tight. She was not complaining about her knees. She was smiling, a small bewildered smile. “Meera came home early yesterday,” she said softly. The circle leaned in. “Early? Was she sick?” asked Mr. Gupta, whose son had not visited in two years. “No,” Mrs. Taneja shook her head. “She came home to cook. Not because the maid was absent. She said she wanted to learn how to make kheer. My mother’s recipe.” A hush fell over the group. In the modern lexicon of their children, cooking was something you outsourced to apps. Time was money. For a CEO like Meera to stand by a stove and stir milk for an hour was an anomaly. It was a miracle. “She sat with me,” Mrs. Taneja continued, her eyes misting. “She did not look at her phone. She looked at me. She asked about my arthritis. And she listened to the answer. For the first time in ten years, I did not feel like a burden. I felt like her mother.”