[...] The most beautiful woman in the world had become, after some years, the woman she found most beautiful, and the woman she found most beautiful had become, after a while, merely beautiful, merely nice-looking, turning, eventually, around the time Navini was sixteen or seventeen, into just another middle-aged Tamil woman in the neighborhood, just another aging immigrant whose appearance was unworthy of remark.
see this is sentimental in the most annoying cut fruit diaspora way. 'aging immigrant' is cheap.