When I had first told him the name we'd chosen for our daughter, Abe had suggested that it was a pretty damn waspy title for the offspring of an Indian princess and a Chicago pollock.- - -

I never would have chosen the name "Victoria" but was secretly delighted by it. Amrita first suggested it one hot day in July and we treated it as a joke. It seemed that one of her earliest memories was of arriving by train at Victoria Station in Bombay. That huge edifice - one of the remnants of the British Raj, which evidently still defines India - had always filled Amrita with a sense of awe. Since that time, the name Victoria had evoked an echo of beauty, elegance and mystery in her.