Since Davis was on my dissertation committee, I reluctantly decided to go over and mingle. Ever since my conversation with Margaret, I had more or less avoided the office. I never had been comfortable there, but lately it had gotten worse. I felt like an imposter, as though I might be exposed at any moment and arrested for impersonating a legitimate fellow. It was almost nine when I arrived. The guard let me through the gate and I walked unobtrusively into the lounge, where the party was already well underway. There must have been forty or fifty people in all, mostly other American scholars, either new arrivals in India or those stationed in Delhi. Their Indian colleagues and research associates were scattered here and there among the group, several of them poised uncomfortably at the periphery of small circles of men and women who were talking and laughing loudly. It was evident that people were drinking hard. Waiters dressed in regal white coats festooned with rows of brass buttons circulated through the room bearing silver trays stacked with pakoras, samosas, and other South Asian hors d’oeuvres.
