‘That’s your mother singing on the radio,’ Veena called out one evening when such a fog had descended upon London, and all we could do was sit in the living room and wait for it to lift up so that we could go to the park.

While I never had any cricketing talents to speak of, singing and playing the tabla were practices I did enjoy and was reasonably good at. Much later, Meera confessed to me the sense of dread she had felt watching me pick up music. She wanted me to be as far from a career in the arts as she was close to it. She worried about the possibility, however miniscule, that I’d take it seriously and follow in her footsteps. ‘It’s a make-believe world for people watching,’ she said, ‘a three-hour-long escape, and they go back to their lives. But we end up living in the house of mirrors till we can’t make out what’s real from what’s just a reflection.’

Despite all her success, she remained disillusioned with the Indian film industry. The rumours mixed with adoration bordering on obsession from her fans reached a breaking point in mid 70s, when she quit and left Bombay for good. She could have withstood all that came with stardom, but when the industry itself took a turn and began making cheap imitations of Spaghetti Westerns, resulting in the deterioration of the caliber of music compositions, and when she was offered to sing half-baked compositions instead of the poetry she was used to, staying tethered to a city she could no longer relate to ceased to make sense. She longed for a new challenge – for creative freedom with which she could experiment and grow as an artiste rather than sell records. And she found it in the one city she could always rely on for new beginnings – New York.

Her move to the US meant that her trips to London would become more frequent. My father, however, got the raw end of the deal. His already-infrequent secret rendezvous with Mum took a hit. A gruelling travel schedule with the team and the lack of a cricket scene in the US meant that they could only meet once a year. Despite this, he was supportive of Mum as always, as he knew she had much more to offer to the world than a few memorable film numbers. Her undying faith in her abilities proved him right in the years to come.