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Mohisha Varma was an Indian maidservant in Restoration England, who was secretly an astronomer.
She had come to London from Kerala, and knew Kalaripayat, the Keralan art of self defense, which she said was "very handy when you're crossing the Indian Ocean on a boat full of men". She kept books of Sappho's poetry hidden under her mattress.
By mid-February 1661 she was working as the maidservant of Frances, Duchess of Winchester. Shortly before the events of The Restored (audio story), she had assisted the Duchess in locating a pair of resurrection gauntlets in Windsor Castle, which they used in experiments with plants and small animals.
On 16 February, 1661, she accompanied the Duchess to the Tower of London when Charles II moved his court there. She brought her telescope with her, and had at the time been observing a light in the sky which she believed to be a vessel rather than a star or a planet (actually John Hart's ship). When the dead began to rise again, she teamed up with John to retrieve the gauntlets so he could stop their malfunction, and when they found out that the Duchess was secretly working against Charles II by using the gauntlets to resurrect her dead father, Mohisha kicked her off the tower.
Afterwards, John Hart gave her a bag of diamonds he had stolen from the Crown jewels. She sold them and used the money to buy a townhouse overlooking the river in Greenwich. She had a library filled with many books, an observatory in the attic, and household staff, including a woman named Kitty (The Restored). Slightly under a year after she bought this house, she was visited by Jack Harkness, who was trying to find John.