‘We came back. I had a raging fever. After that, there was the bombing in Japan. The war was over. And so was my job.’

‘This fellow had such a long pigtail then,’ Tung Chin’s father joked.

‘Let me tell you that I was considered a handsome youth in China. The day I left, so many young girls cried along with my mother. After I came here, the local girls looked at me too and I thought it was because they found me handsome. But they looked at me from afar and fled.’

‘Then how did you get Saraswati to marry you?’

‘At first she ran away. Then she would laugh. What could I do? I cut my pigtail to please her, but that made her laugh all the more. Now when we quarrel, I threaten to grow my pigtail again,’ Ho Fuk laughed. Everyone joined him.

By the time the wedding ceremony was over, it was late at night. Yiu Yi fell asleep on Ahlin’s lap holding on to Robin’s hand. As soon as the couple had gone inside, Robin picked Yiu Yi up and took her to her mother. Her mother, who was preparing tea, turned around and asked Robin, ‘Is she asleep? Wake her up.’

‘If I wake her up, she won’t let me go.’

‘That is true. She was after me to stop you from leaving. Put her in the other room. Come with me.’

Robin put Yiu Yi on the bed where many other children were asleep. Slowly removing her grip from his hand, Robin came out, smiling gently at her mother. Mei Lin and Pulok were seated in another room surrounded by their friends. Seeing Robin, Mei Lin’s face glowed for a while and clouded over again.

Robin smiled and pulled out a string of beads from his pocket.

‘This is for you. I had asked someone to get them for me. The girls in NEFA wear them.’

With tearful eyes Mei Lin accepted the gift.

‘Let us also see. How beautiful it is,’ the wives of her friends came forward to look at the beads.

Robin stood up and left the room just as Mei Lin’s aunt entered to announce the beginning of the tea ceremony.

‘I will not follow Chinese customs. You go and have the tea,’ Pulok’s father told his wife angrily, who had come to call him.

‘Why? What will happen if you do? Everything has been done the Assamese way. Why can’t we follow one of their customs?’

‘It will be good if you follow them! After some days we will have to follow their rules. We will have to live under them.’