Besides, breaking off from the Mistrie firm would inevitably have entailed a change of residence as well – and Bahram knew that Shireenbai would never agree to leave the family mansion. Every time he had ever suggested it, she had burst into tears. How can you speak of leaving? Ay apru gher nathi? Isn’t this our house too? You know my mother wouldn’t survive it if I left. And what would I do during those months and years when you’re away in China – alone on my own, with no man by my side? It would be different of course if gher ma deekra hote – if there was a son in the house, but …

So Bahram had been content to remain within the Mistrie fold, quietly building up his part of the business, grooming it into a worthy sibling for the family’s shipyard. But strangely, Bahram’s success did nothing to soften Shireenbai’s brothers’ view of him: on the contrary, it added an element of fear to their long-held suspicions, for they now began to resent their father’s growing reliance on him.

If the younger Mistries’ attitude was puzzling to Bahram, it was not so to his mother, who accounted for it by reaching into her ditty-bag of proverbs. Don’t you understand why they’re afraid? she said. What they’re saying to each other is: palelo kutro peg kedde – it’s the pet dog that bites you in the leg …

As so often before, Bahram had laughed at her homespun wisdom – but in the end it was she who was proved right.

Through all his years of working for Mistrie & Sons Bahram had assumed, with his father-in-law’s encouragement, that he would one day be given full control of the division he had founded and nurtured. But then, unexpectedly, the Seth had a stroke that left him paralysed and unable to speak. For many months he hovered between life and death, throwing the family, and the firm, into turmoil. The will that he was rumoured to have made was never found, and after his death his sons and grandsons quickly came to be embroiled in a struggle over the future of the firm. Neither Bahram nor Shireenbai played any part in this tussle, for her inheritance was held in trusteeship by her brothers, and Bahram himself did not possess enough of an equity stake to be considered a principal.

Bahram’s first inkling of what was afoot came when he was summoned to a meeting with his brothers-in-law. Sitting around him in a semicircle, they told him that they had come to a decision about the future of their company; the shipbuilding business had been in decline for a long time and they had now resolved to liquidate the whole firm in order to provide the brothers and their children with seed capital to start other businesses. Since the export division, and the fleet, were now the most valuable parts of the company, they would be the first to be sold. It was unfortunate of course that he, Bahram, would have to go into retirement; but in recognition of his contribution, the firm would certainly award him an extremely generous financial settlement – and it was true after all, that he was in his fifties now, with both his daughters married and well provided for. Had he not reached a point in his life when a luxurious retirement would seem like a fitting end to a brilliant career?