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proverbial black sheep (and there have been quite a few over the years in various shades of darkness) to be penned in a distant city until a safe and unobtrusive return was judged to be desirable.
    We Alams were landowners with a rich cultural background and a way of life that distinguished us from the graceless nouveaux riches , whose only claim to recognition was the tasteless vulgarity their money could buy. The elders in our family were constipated in their acknowledgement of the political and social realities ofthe subcontinent after partition. I remember, it was as though we were determined to live in a world crowded with yesterdays, fortified by the belief that divinity had granted us immunity against change.
    ‘Anyone who has to work every day to make a living is an insult to zamindars ,’ Uncle Musa had scornfully declared when Zia and I entered university. ‘We learn from life and from each other. Not from books!’ He had never forgiven Abba for abandoning a life of indolent luxury for the sake of practising medicine.
    Even after we were relegated to the ranks of commoners by the political upheavals in the subcontinent, we retained a supercilious pride about the generosity of our family. We’d rather go broke, pretending to be rich and charitable, than demonstrate any signs of niggardliness. As far back as I can recall, we were regularly selling off assets to pay our debts. Banks were our greatest enemies, and no creditor could claim to have had a legitimate birth. The Alams developed the ploy of pretence to the extent of painless self-deception. There were, of course, the traitorous oddities like my father and his younger son, who regularly let down the defences of feudalistic hierarchy: both of us were the subjects of much derision for expressing alarming egalitarian views that were entirely against the family’s interests.
    The Alams were eventually dragged into the postpartition world of nationalistic fervour, transitional chaos and lost privileges. We would have much preferred to continue dealing with the Raj, rather than with the native upstarts who then whittled away our benefits and selfindulgentway of living with a vengeful haste. The British had tacitly approved of our ruling-class mentality, respected our musty elegance, ignored our excesses and treated us courteously. In return, we had obliged by inadvertently grafting ourselves to the services of the imperial bureaucracy. The Alams had been among the de facto administrators of rural India, highly effective in establishing a dictatorial order in the countryside without being a financial imposition on the white sahibs.
    August 1947 was an ill-fated month for us.
    T HE GULF OF a lengthy separation is too expansive to cross immediately. Beyond the facetious, now Zia and I flounder for words. We resort to trivia—the crowd, the noise and the oppressive weather. Nothing that’s unusual in this part of the world. I’m nervous about the presence of the large number of security guards.
    A bomb was recently detonated inside one of the side gates of the airport, Zia informs me casually. ‘The guards arrive in truckloads every day after dawn, and by sunset most of them have disappeared, as if safety’s been ensured until the next morning.’
    ‘What happens at night?’
    ‘So far nothing’s happened. But it’s potentially the prime time for mischief.’
    I inquire about Abba’s health.
    ‘He’s deteriorating rapidly,’ Zia says ruefully. ‘Alzheimer’s is a cruel disease.’
    Outside, it’s muggy. The monsoon rains can only be a few weeks away.
    Zia helps me with the luggage and we battle our way past a gang of ragged-looking boys, who tug at our clothes and offer discount rates for carrying my suitcase. We’re peppered with hard-luck stories. If it wasn’t for Zia’s firmness, I might weaken and succumb to the guilt that beggar children can adroitly evoke. I wonder how long it will take me this time to adjust to the broken people I see