Indian Distractions

The East as a source of romantic replenishment: Livia Manera Sambuy begins her story along hackneyed lines.

In the aftermath of a breakup 15 years ago, Sambuy, an Italian journalist, had traveled to Bombay—never “Mumbai,” not for those of us who know that the city’s name was changed by a violent and xenophobic local government in 1995—where she spotted a “full-length portrait” of a Sikh princess in a museum: “A slender young woman, whose grace … shone like a ray of light.”