After school, Button and I irritated the chauffeur by playing Aerosmith’s Greatest Hits CD at a resounding volume. He turned it down after ten minutes with an angry grunt. We glanced at each other but didn’t say anything. Crabby old Groucho was perfectly capable of snitching to The Wolf, and that meant a knee-knocking shout reprimanding us for behaving like ‘nouveau-riche young brats’. My grandfather, who never loosened his tie before bedtime, reserved the accusation of acting ‘nouveau riche’ as the master grenade in his impressive arsenal of put-downs.

Stuck in parked traffi c outside my brother’s school, Groucho said he was going to go look for Polo and got himself the hell away from Steven Tyler.

Calcutta has never been very big on demarcated parking space. Cars settled themselves in wherever they could and waited with the lazy patience of true Bengalis. It sometimes took hours to get out after they had been jammed in by the spontaneous parking lots that invariably formed around busy ports of education, but the languorous nature of life in Marxist Bengal made that de rigueur.

Alone together in the car, Button and I turned the music back up.

‘Janie’s got a gun . . . BANG!’ we shouted, thumping at the windows. ‘Her whole world’s come undone . . . BANG!’

Boys in uniform, of all ages, stared at us as they passed the car. But we didn’t care. This was Brothers of the Divine Cross, not St Jude’s. BDC was the academic king of Calcutta’s closed ring of private schools, true, but it was also home to nerdy boys, with hair parted down the middle and a remarkable proclivity towards pimples and pit stains.

Polo slid into the front passenger seat, turning down the music at once.

Immediately, I donned the mantle requisite of an older sister. ‘Why does it take you an hour after school gives out to get out, huh?’

‘You’re just in a hurry to get to Shamiana and stare at boys.’

‘How do you even know about Shamiana, stupid kid?’

‘You’re the one who’s stupid because obviously we see the big boys missing classes for rehearsals and stuff, don’t we?’

Button asked, ‘What’re they playing, do you know?’

‘Of course I do.’

I snorted. ‘Liar.’

‘They’re singing “Bed of Roses”. I heard them practising during recess.’

Button spent the rest of the ride home raging about wormy BDC boys thinking they could take on the Gods of Rock. I pointed out that Bon Jovi was really just pop/rock, at best, and she punched a red dent into my arm.