“Is this your idea of discovering India? Marveling at American cleaning products in a market? And have you seen the price? It’s madness. Come. We have everything you need at home.”

“But, look. They even have cat food.”

“Do you have a cat?”

“No.”

“Then chalo,” she said. “I want to get to Kayani Bakery before the Shrewsbury biscuits are finished.”

It was just 3:00, the hour when Kayani’s reopened after lunch. Sushmita assured me the Shrewsbury biscuits wouldn’t last long. I volunteered to go inside to get the coveted treats, and she stayed with the car. This turned out to be my first true experience with Indian life. Yes, I’d been to luxury hotels, ridden first- and third-class trains, and even visited Bombay’s red-light district and rubbed elbows with prostitutes on Falkland Road. But jockeying for position among the customers at Kayani Bakery was the real thing. Whereas, in general, most people tended to give foreigners a pass and the right of way in India, that wasn’t how it worked at Kayani’s. I was nothing more than an obstacle to be shoved aside. If I hadn’t the backbone to hold my place in the sea of customers jostling to give their orders, then I might well be hustled out the door and end up on the pavement.

There was no queue. It was an amorphous mob, a fluid mass that inched forward even as it stood still. After losing ground for several minutes, I managed to put my large size to good use and began a slow advance toward the ten clerks who were taking and fulfilling orders. In the end, an old Parsee man behind the counter took pity on the only fireng in the place and pointed to me. Sushmita had told me I’d better be ready to order when my turn came, so I held up two fingers and asked for two dozen Shrewsbury biscuits, please. He grabbed a couple of cardboard boxes tied with string from the shelves behind him and dropped them at the register. Having indicated to the cashier that the order was mine, he moved on to the next customer. I swam forward through the crowd and paid, at which point I was promptly shoved aside.

Back in the car, Sushmita was thrilled with my purchase, almost as if she’d expected me to come back empty-handed.

“I could gobble up three of them right here,” she said. “But we must get back now. We’ve missed tea. At least we had biryani and now Shrewsburys.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

MONDAY, AUGUST 4, 1975, 8:29 A.M.