‘Thirty-five years ago,’ Rajan said, ‘I took your grandmother to the cinema seven times to see it. We were much younger then.’

Nala tried to hide her tears from her husband. Smrithi had to look away.

‘I bought one for you too,’ he said softly.

London, 2000

Smrithi’s leg shook under the table as she waited for her coffee. Prashanth reached forward and put his hand on her knee, steadying it. He moved his hand up a little, but she pulled away.

‘Careful, someone might see you,’ she looked around nervously.

‘It’s an overpriced cafe at an even more overpriced yoga centre in an extortionately priced suburb of north London. No self-respecting Sri Lankan Tamil would come here,’ he replied.

‘Except us,’ she laughed, taking his hand under the table and placing it tentatively back on her knee.

‘Yes, but we’re not very good Sri Lankan Tamils are we?’ he reached over the table and took her other hand in his. It was liberating to do that in public. Primrose Hill was far enough away from Strathfield or even Walthamstow where her extended family lived.

‘Speak for yourself,’ she laughed again. An impossibly limber looking waitress brought two mugs to the table. She placed the chai latte and fair-trade decaf cappuccino between them and smiled, her pottu moving with her blonde eyebrows as she said, ‘Namaste, enjoy,’ and left.

‘My father would die if he saw me here,’ she said, looking around the cafe and waiting room. ‘He’s been trying to teach me to meditate for years.’

Men and women milled about in designer yoga gear, stretching, reading or meditating. Aromatherapy candles scented the room with lemongrass.

‘He’d probably tell me that we invented the Sun Salute and now these vellakaran hippies are making a fortune out of it.’

‘He’s right; didn’t you just pay twenty pounds for a forty-five minute jyothi meditation class your father could have given you for free?’

‘Yes, but for some reason I’m more likely to do it when my father isn’t making me.’

‘Is that why you won’t marry me? Because you know your father would want you to?’ he took both her hands in his.

‘No, we’ve been over this already, Prashanth,’ she didn’t want to talk about it again.

‘No, you’ve been over it with me, but I still don’t understand how a nice Sri Lankan Tamil girl like you doesn’t want to have five hundred to eight hundred of her parents’ closest friends over to the local community hall for a massive curry-fest and a five-hour ceremony that nobody listens to anyway.’

‘Maybe that’s it. Nobody listens to the ceremony; they just do it because they have to, because it’s what we’ve always done.’

‘Okay, Smrithi, what did you do with your first pay cheque?’ he asked.

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’