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suddenly asking me if I hate your grandmother?’
    ‘You both fight a lot so I was just wondering.’
    Turning back to the mirror, but watching him closely with one kohled eye, she said, ‘Well, it’s not that I hate Nani, it’s just that there comes a point in everyone’s
life when they stop seeing their mother or father as just their mother and father but as people. And sometimes you like those people for who they are, and sometimes you find, well, that you
don’t have much in common with them. Nani and I, for instance, have never had much in common. She didn’t understand me; I couldn’t understand her. We were miles apart. She
believed in God and couldn’t believe she’d produced a daughter who didn’t. I couldn’t believe she believed in a God who cared how long your hair was. I mean was this God a
hairdresser?’
    Rehan laughed loudly. He didn’t mind her insulting her own Sikh god as long as she didn’t begin on the Hindu ones, for which he had acquired an unlikely obsession since his arrival
in India.
    ‘She read Mills and Boons,’ his mother continued, ‘I didn’t. She was forever concerned about respectability; I couldn’t care less. When your aunt got married, she
told me, “Now, it’s too late for you. I’ve told your father to put some money aside, and bas, try and best make do.” I was twenty-five! No, she was horrible!’ Udaya,
now nearly fully made up, smiled as she spoke and it seemed to drain her words of ill feeling. Rehan adored his grandmother, and it was unsettling that his mother, whose voice was like the voice of
truth, could feel differently. He hated to be at odds with her. But whenever he tried to bring her around to his way of thinking, she would irritate him by taking an agree-to-disagree tone.
    ‘I love Nani!’ he said provocatively. ‘And when her ship comes in, she’s going to buy me Castle Grayskull for my gods to live in.’
    ‘So you must,’ his mother replied, reflecting on whether Rehan had been told what his grandmother’s ship coming in would mean. ‘She’s been wonderful to
you.’
    ‘Stop talking in that fake voice!’ Rehan yelled.
    His mother smiled and turned her full attention to putting on her sari. She chose a handbag and, carefully, the things that went in it – all of which angered Rehan so much that he stormed
out.
    Summer power cuts and fluctuations had begun and the light in the corridor was dim. The disc-shaped ceiling light, high above like a white Frisbee, grew fainter and fainter, till its milky glass
barely sustained a glow. Then like a small angry sun burning away a thick bank of clouds, it flared, sending Rehan fleeing down the stairs that separated his grandmother’s section of the
house from his mother’s. Below, where the surge had ended and the light was dull and dusty again, servants were setting the table, lighting the odd white candle. Rehan slipped past his
grandmother’s room in the hope of beginning his favourite mythical movie, The Marriage of Shiva and Parvati , before dinner.
    He had only been watching a few minutes when he heard his grandmother call him.
    ‘No, no, Nani, please. Not now, just come here and see where we are.’
    She wandered in a second later, wearing a loose, faded salwar kameez. Her greying hair was in a thin plait and when she sat down next to Rehan, he could smell Nivea cream on her. Her skin was
smooth and her eyes, though losing colour, still shone. There was something coquettish about her smile of clean-capped teeth, giving, even now, the impression of a once-beautiful woman. Rehan
grabbed her soft stomach and squeezed it. She pretended at first to be indifferent to the drama coming from the old Japanese VCR, but Rehan knew she was riveted. The story had raced ahead and
Parvati, witnessing her father dishonour her husband, a bellied and middle-aged Shiva, was about to commit herself to the sacrificial fire.
    Rehan’s grandmother watched through her large amber-rimmed