I first met Karthika Nair through a common friend, at the World Writers’ Festival in Paris in September 2014. The festival was spread across several venues, linked by the metro and several streets that looked alike, requiring us to wind in and out of stations and alleys whose names few of us could pronounce. Nair was the only festival participant who seemed to know where she was and what she was doing at any given time.As she negotiated directions and languages, I wasn’t sure what