Unaccustomed Earth

The story opens with Sudha, the older sister of Rahul. Sudha is 24 and Rahul is about 18. The narrator tells us that Sudha is the person who introduced Rahul to alcohol, while he was visiting her at Penn during his junior year in high school. When she came home the proceeding summer, he asked her to buy him some six-packs for a party, and she obliged. They hid the beers in their respective rooms in order to avoid detection. Later, they sipped on beers while listening to the Rolling Stones and the Doors and smoking cigarettes out the window. Rahul had gone through a growth spurt, quickly dwarfing Sudha. It was then that Sudha felt a new connection blossoming with her brother, whom she had mostly regarded as simply a child before this time. They made a habit of sharing alcohol in this manner.

Sudha had stayed within the expectations of her parents during her childhood, and waited until she went to college to rebel. There, she began attending parties, drinking, and having sex, while still studiously attending to her double-major in economics and math. Her parents were stridently opposed to alcohol, even frowning on the Bengali friends in their social circle who liked to indulge in whiskey during gatherings.