become one, and city and building, reality, conception,

readjust themselves, to become as they’re not.

There are many Bombays; this is one of them.

We spent two nights at the Taj; the fried pomfret

gave me a bad stomach (I was one and a half);

my mother panicked. I can imagine her, combative,

cradling a sick infant inside that hotel room.

For many years, she’d think of that fried pomfret

with dismayed wonder. She was glad to leave

for the company’s furnished flat. For a while, in her new home,

she couldn’t find a cook who would suit her, so

interviewed impostor after impostor, a few of whom

she still remembers, as if they press upon her,

and bother her with their lies and evasions. My father

had come to Bombay after spending twelve years

in England, six of them with my mother. He had

overcome a fallow period, and, with her help,

now swotting at home, now drinking tea at Lyons,

passed the exams that would give him the grand letters

next to his name. He’s a chartered accountant,

and a member of the Institute of Taxation, and a Company

Secretary. These laurels gave him a job

as Assistant Company Secretary of Britannia Biscuits

Company, or BBC. This firm,

whose jobs were among the best in the “private sector,”

was still largely British-owned, a subsidiary

of Huntley & Palmer’s, and Peak Freens. My father started

as a student of English; he had an Honours degree

in English Literature from Calcutta University. He changed

direction later, and went on to study

accountancy; came back from England and took

this job as an expert on taxation law.

Once or twice, I’ve heard him quote, “Heard melodies are sweet,

but those unheard are sweeter,” a little self-consciously.

When I decided to study English, he was pleased. It was a choice

that might have bewildered other parents, but he

had ample warning. Meanwhile, biscuits

dominated our shelves. I never ate them.

Bourbon, Cream-cracker, Nice, I was familiar

with them all, but rarely touched them. I suspected,

during teatimes, that this was not the kind of food

our country needed. I rather wished

my father made bridges, or engines, or ingots,

anything instead of the round things with jam centres—

the only biscuits I liked. (Such are the whims

of fate, or whatever force binds destinies

together, that the woman who is my wife

is, as my mother puts it, a “biscuit junky.”

She dips her Marie in tea; the dipped bit tans,

and, moistened, the biscuit droops like a Dalí clock.

Thus biscuits recur in my life, long after

my father’s retirement, as if they were

reminding me of something.) Both my parents come from Sylhet,

which went to East Pakistan in 1947,

after a referendum; Sylhetis still blame Bordoloi,

then Chief Minister of Assam, for agreeing to the demand

for one. Sixteen years later, they found

—they, who’d known each other since childhood—themselves