Papi went on to study geotechnical and building engineering at the polytechnic in Turin. He promised my Nonno Danilo and Nonna Rosa that he would return to run the pharmacy, but had secretly relinquished his rights to his brother Fulvio, who, being unimaginative and overly attached to the town of his birth, was only too happy to take over a thriving business. Papi’s ambitions were taken as a sign of courage, and when he set off to work for Eni, first in Rome, then Egypt, and finally India, he was treated with even greater respect, a modern poster child for the kind of fearless Vicentini who had gone before him – writers and explorers like Trissino and Pigafetta, who gave their names to Vicenza’s statues and streets.

I think Papi must have been terribly lonely when he arrived in India. He was stationed in Tharangambadi, or Tranquebar, as it was known then – one of the first places where Christianity and the printing press entered India. A small coastal town in Tamil Nadu with a warren of streets and a biscuit-coloured Danish fort, it was overrun by flocks of crows and white-socked goats. After a long day at his offshore site, he would walk from the fort along the seafront, picking his way across the rocks, past the fishermen fixing their nets and the coy young schoolgirls with ribbons in their hair. Outside the crumbling wreck of what used to be the Governor’s Bungalow there was an ancient Shiva temple on the beach, where he’d loiter, smoking cigarettes, wondering how long it would be before he could leave this wretched place.

The story of how my father met my mother is an unreliable one. To hear my mother talk about it, she was the one who made the first move. My father claimed the opposite. When I was a teenager, rifling through the drawers of my father’s cupboard, I discovered his diary, written in unintelligible Italian, and found a few terse notes written by my mother.

20 Dec, 1971

Hello Mister,

My friends and I would appreciate it if you could teach us how to smoke. Meet us at the abandoned temple at six?

Meera Andrews

22 December, 1971

Hello again,

I think perhaps you have the wrong impression. Probably in Italy there is a different way to go about such things, but here in India, we don’t go making loud announcements of wanting to make love to people.

Kindly abide by the rules.

Meera Andrews

26 December, 1971

Dear Mr Giacinto,

I really don’t know what you were thinking, showing up at my house on Christmas Day. You cannot imagine the embarrassment it caused me and my family. My teachers at college sometimes scold us by saying, ‘Were you mad, dead or drunk when you came to class today?’ and I feel I must say that you must have been mad, dead and drunk when you decided to knock on our door with your cock-and-bull story. In any case, my father is on to you. And my mother, despite having fed you to the gills (which is in any case her great mission in life), said that if I ever tried to see you alone she would skin me like a chicken. These are not empty threats. Seriously, are you deranged? You should know I’m least interested in you.