At those holiday family dinners, Polo and I would eat till we wanted to throw up. My mother would worry a little but my dad would just laugh and tell us about the time he and a friend hunted, roasted and ate an entire lamb. He’d call for another scotch and tell us about his work trying to identify strains of HIV in a remote northern village back when he was a scientist for the government, before he built the factory where sweaty men loaded steel rods into big, whirring machines. I’d stop eating when he’d describe carrying pails of infected blood by hand—‘precious research material, we couldn’t leave it behind’—when their van broke down in the middle of a deserted countryside, and worry about it for the rest of the trip. When the waiters came to clear our plates, he’d tell them to wait till we got the cutlery placement just right. We’d straighten our forks and make sure that our knife edges faced inwards, angling them both to five o’clock.

I preferred these short family vacations, filled with unicorns and their stories, than the longer summer ones when Polo and I were shipped off to Delhi to spend time with my mom’s side of the family.

During the days, when my parents would be napping and my brother would be conducting a brisk beachside trade in Pokemon cards, I’d linger around the unicorns, haunt spaces near vacationing families. I talked to them, sometimes, but it was only rarely that I could think of something perfect to say. Mostly, I would just watch them till my mother came and got me from the beach or pool.

You could always tell which ones were the Americans, because they had a lot of things with them. A profusion of caps and creams and toys and sweaters and stuffed animals— an army of things to battle the slightest sign of sun or cold or boredom.

I befriended a Sally for a day, on a beach in Goa. She was building a ‘sand-house’ (‘because castles are for princesses and I want to save the whales’) and the freckles across her nose got darker as the day wore on. She didn’t like the Backstreet Boys, but she had a pinging, beeping keychain-toy that she let me play with.

‘It’s a tamagotchi pet. You have to keep it alive, okay?’

It was time for fifth grade, and again, I was in the wrong classroom.

Mrs Gupta read out names from the register and, shaking her head, led me to the class next door. I was embarrassed, but went largely unnoticed because of the general chaos ensuing as teachers configured their classroom seating arrangements, shuffl ing the students around to maximize attentiveness.