Twenty-five approached, and then passed, and suddenly being Indian was suddenly something more: a source of immense solace. Being Indian offered so much comfort, so many answers: in the practice of yoga, and the casual perusal of ancient texts, in the willingness to split the bill equally (no matter what each of us had ordered), in the sense that not having much money didn’t make you a failure (as it does in America, where the very existence of poverty and homelessness feels like a dangerous, possibly contagious, rebuttal of the American dream).