‘We have long forgotten the ritual by which the house of our life was erected. But when it is under assault and enemy bombs are already taking their toll, what enervated, perverse antiquities do they not lay bare in the foundations! What things were interred and sacrificed amid magic incantations, what horrible cabinet of curiosities lies there below, where the deepest shafts are reserved for what is most commonplace? In a night of despair I dreamed I was with my first friend from my schooldays, whom I had not seen for decades and had scarcely ever remembered in that time, tempestuously renewing our friendship and brotherhood. But when I awoke it became clear that what despair had brought to light like a detonation was the corpse of that boy, who had been immured as a warning: that whoever one day lives here may in no respect resemble him.’

I think of Ramu when I read these lines. It’s of him I think when I reread them. I have no idea why. For one thing, Ramu isn’t ‘my first friend from my schooldays’ – though he’s the only surviving school friend I’ll see when I visit Bombay. Bombay: the city I grew up in. The city I grew up in but knew very little. That is, a pretty limited number of roads; specific clusters of buildings.

I feel a deep sadness reading these lines – I can’t say why.

When I arrive into Bombay, I make phone calls. This is in the taxi, or the car that’s come to receive me from the airport and reach me to wherever it is I’m staying: club or hotel. All the while, I’m registering the unfamiliar: the new flyovers; the disappearance of certain things which weren’t quite landmarks but which helped you orient your