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his head; planned dinners, impromptu walks, bedtime conversations. He would take her hand, in these visions, and reveal in quiet, reasonable tones how their family could be. She, in turn, would nod, smile, signal by the touch of her hand on his that her desires concurred with his own. But somehow the correct moment kept slipping away. They seemed to waste so much time at parties, fundraising events and functions. Did they really spend so little time alone? Whatever the reason, Hari failed to find the courage to speak. He waited until he had cancelled their holiday in Paris, had moved paintings and furniture out of storage to their house in New Delhi, had booked their tickets to India – and still he hadn’t told her. It wasn’t until the morning of Professor Chaturvedi’s lecture in New York – after Ram rang to inform him it was taking place – that Hari knew he could delay no longer.
    Standing at the window, looking out over the garden, listening to the sad song reach its climax, Hari thought with another pang about his wife. She had never wanted to return to India; staying away from this country was the one thing she had asked of him in twenty years of marriage. And yet, here they were.
    But the doorbell rang at just this moment, and Hari, who knew that his nephew had arrived, turned away from the window with his usual resolve. Tonight, Ram Sharma would return here as Hari’s son. Tonight, Leela and he would become parents. Tonight, Hariprasad’s family would begin to function in the way he had always intended. Everything rested on the filial alliance.

It is with great pleasure and evident facility that I begin my portion of these pages. Not a moment too soon. (Even a mite too late? I should see about getting the order changed.) For words come naturally to me.
    Allow me to introduce myself. I am Ganesh, elephant-headed god, misshapen son of Lord Shiva and Parvati; beheaded by my father for protecting my mother’s honour; abusively given this flippant elephant replacement; too-long-term resident of Kailash, that icy and unfriendly mountain where my family chose to live; befriended only by my faithful Rat (divine vahana, godly mode of transport). I freely admit that my sworn enemy is Vyasa, pedestrian composer of India’s too-long epic, a poem called the Mahabharata, every word of which I wrote.
    Even as a very young elephant, I could feel words building up inside me, pressing against the end of my trunk, fighting to get out – and all at once I would lose control, as a great trumpeting, ear-popping tirade came shooting out into the air to disturb the concentration of that self-obsessed meditation hillock they called Kailash. Before my family could reproach me, I would run off to my side of the mountain, crouch over my peacock-feather pen like a guilty adolescent, and write without stopping.
    What did I write about? I hear you ask. Well, the inner lives of others, whose experiences jumped, unbidden, into my mind. It brings me to the point of tears to remember how my father Shiva – the famous ascetic – would thwack me with his trident as I sat chattering during his meditation class, transcribing the thoughts that passed through his mind ( Parvati, come to me, honey-thighed princess ); to recall the ill-tempered curses that met my efforts at indicating to my family the folly of their ways; to recollect those long, brave sessions in the solitary company of my dear little Rat – the only member of our household who would prick up his ears and listen, truly listen, as I poured out my woes.
    I was certainly brought up very badly. It is indeed nothing short of a miracle – given the unfavourable circumstances of my early elevation – that I was able to maintain my integrity, believe in my bent, and trust in my trueborn knack of telling a good story.
    The danger was that, having had it drummed into me that what I did was wrong , I would come to believe that what my family said was true: I would start to interpret