‘Whitefish. Botanically boosted by nettle, cranberries, fennel and chamomile. Yuck! Do cats even like this stuff?’

Jai barely heard her, consumed as he was with an idea that had refused to leave his head.

‘Listen Inaya, I’ve been thinking . . . ’

Inaya grimaced at these words. She really didn’t need Jai’s thoughts at this time. She had enough of her own to grapple with. Besides, she needed to be at practice rather than be Daada’s chaperone while he met his long-lost sister to plot about how they were going to break the news to the rest of the family.

Jai, oblivious to all of Inaya’s woes, was still talking. ‘I’ve been thinking that we should start Peace-ing It Together,’ he said.

‘Start piecing what together?’

‘You know—start a club that does the opposite of what the Partition did.’

Inaya looked at him, all at sea. ‘What are you on about, Jai?’

‘Peace-ing spelt with P-E-A-C-E, not P-I-E-C-E. We could start a movement, build a bridge, you know, to bring us together again,’ said Jai. He was getting really excited now with his seedling notion and began pacing rapidly between the cans of cat and dog food. It was when he reached the section with hamster food that he got truly inspired.

‘This is what we’d do. We’d get people from both sides of the border who have relatives and friends and homes and memories on the other side to get to meet each other again and revisit what they left behind. Imagine how happy it would make them.’

‘Okay, but first, can you stop moving like a ball in a tennis match? Watching you is giving me a headache,’ said Inaya. ‘And secondly, how would we manage to do this without getting arrested? Are you planning on smuggling people across, wrapped in carpets? Because I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but our countries’ governments haven’t been the best of friends for a very long time.’

‘Yes, but that’s the governments, right? Let them carry on with their own agendas—and let’s get on with ours.’

‘Yeah, like that’s so simple, right?’

Jai stared hard at the fish food section, and it dawned on him that it wasn’t all that hard.

‘Things are easier now with the internet. This is going to be an online movement, Inaya,’ he said. ‘We’re going to begin with Facebook and it’s going to gradually spread and grow—just you wait and see.’

‘Whatever,’ said Inaya. To her, this sounded like a hare-brained scheme, but she decided to humour Jai, since he had promised to help her meet Jhulan Goswami.

‘I’m going to start tomorrow. Maybe we can ask Nabeel Said to help us?’ said Jai, looking hopefully at Inaya.

‘Did you know that cats like nettle?’ asked Inaya, pretending that she hadn’t heard him. ‘Or that hamster food has locust beans added in it for flavour?’

‘Locust beans?’ said Jai, thrown off the track. ‘What on earth are they?’

‘Result,’ thought Inaya. Boys were so easy to manipulate.