(I should mention that, while I stayed in the Marine Drive apartment, my testicles, forsaking the protection of pelvic bone, decided prematurely and without warning to drop into their little sacs. This event, too, played its part in what followed.)

My mumani-my aunty-the divine Pia Aziz: to live with her was to exist in the hot sticky heart of a Bombay talkie. In those days, my uncle's career in the cinema had entered a dizzy decline, and, for such is the way of the world, Pia's star had gone into decline along with his. In her presence, however, thoughts of failure were impossible. Deprived of film roles, Pia had turned her life into a feature picture, in which I was cast in an increasing number of bit-parts. I was the Faithful Body-Servant: Pia in petticoats, soft hips rounding towards my desperately-averted eyes, giggling while her eyes, bright with antimony, flashed imperiously-'Come on, boy, what are you shy for, holds these pleats in my sari while I fold.' I was her Trusted Confidant, too. While my uncle sat on chlorophyll-striped sofa pounding out scripts which nobody would ever film, I listened to the nostalgic soliloquy of my aunt, trying to keep my eyes away from two impossible orbs, spherical as melons, golden as mangoes: I refer, you will have guessed, to the adorable breasts of Pia mumani. While she, sitting on her bed, one arm flung across her brow, declaimed: 'Boy, you know, I am great actress; I have interpreted several major roles! But look, what fate will do! Once, boy, goodness knows who would beg absolutely to come to this flat; once the reporters of Filmfare and Screen Goddess would pay black-money to get inside! Yes, and dancing, and I was well-known at Venice restaurant-all of those great jazzmen came to sit at my feet, yes, even that Braz. Boy, after Lovers of Kashmir, who was a bigger star? Not Poppy; not Vyjayantimala; not one person!' And I, nodding emphatically, no-naturally-nobody, while her wondrous skin-wrapped melons heaved and… With a dramatic cry, she went on: 'But even then, in the time of our world-beating fame, every picture a golden jubilee movie, this uncle of yours wants to live in a two-room flat like a clerk! So I make no fuss; I am not like some of your cheap-type actresses; I live simply and ask for no Cadillacs or air-conditioners or Dunlopillo beds from England; no swimming pools shaped like bikinis like that Roxy Vishwanatham's! Here, like a wife of the masses, I have stayed; here, now, I am rotting! Rotting, absolutely. But I know this: my face is my fortune; after that, what riches do I need?' And I, anxiously agreeing: 'Mumani, none; none at all.' She shrieked wildly; even my slap-deafened ear was penetrated. 'Yes, of course, you also want me to be poor! All the world wants Pia to be in rags! Even that one, your uncle, writing his boring-boring scripts! О my God, I tell him, put in dances, or exotic locations! Make your villains villainous, why not, make heroes like men! But he says, no, all that is rubbish, he sees that now-although once he was not so proud! Now he must write about ordinary people and social problems! And I say, yes, Hanif, do that, that is good; but put in a little comedy routine, a little dance for your Pia to do, and tragedy and drama also; that is what the Public is wanting!' Her eyes were brimming with tears. 'So you know what he is writing now? About…' she looked as if her heart would break '… the Ordinary Life of a Pickle Factory!'

'Shh, mumani, shh,' I beg, 'Hanif mamu will hear!'

'Let him hear!' she stormed, weeping copiously now; 'Let his mother hear also, in Agra; they will make me die for shame!'

Reverend Mother had never liked her actress daughter-in-law. I overheard her once telling my mother: 'To marry an actress, whatsits-name, my son has made his bed in the gutter, soon, whatsitsname, she will be making him drink alcohol and also eat some pig.' Eventually, she accepted the inevitability of the match with bad grace; but she took to writing improving epistles to Pia. 'Listen, daughter,' she wrote, 'don't do this actressy thing. Why to do such shameless behaviour? Work, yes, you girls have modern ideas, but to dance naked on the screen! When for a small sum only you could acquire the concession on a good petrol pump. From my own pocket I would get it for you in two minutes. Sit in an office, hire attendants; that is proper work.' None of us ever knew whence Reverend Mother acquired her dream of petrol pumps, which would be the growing obsession of her old age; but she bombarded Pia with it, to the actress's disgust.

'Why that woman doesn't ask me to be shorthand typist?' Pia wailed to Hanif and Mary and me at breakfast. 'Why not taxi-driver, or handloom weaver? I tell you, this pumpery-shumpery makes me wild.'

My uncle quivered (for once in his life) on the edge of anger. 'There is a child present,' he said, 'and she is your mother; show her respect.'

'Respect she can have,' Pia flounced from the room, 'but she wants gas'… And my most-treasured bit-part of all was played out when during Pia and Hanif's regular card-games with friends, I was promoted to occupy the sacred place of the son she never had. (Child of an unknown union, I have had more mothers than most mothers have children; giving birth to parents has been one of my stranger talents-a form of reverse fertility beyond the control of contraception, and even of the Widow herself.) In the company of visitors, Pia Aziz would cry: 'Look, friends, here's my own crown prince! The jewel in my ring! The pearl in my necklace!' And she would draw me towards her, cradling my head so that my nose was pushed down against her chest and nestled wonderfully between the soft pillows of her indescribable… unable to cope with such delights, I pulled my head away. But I was her slave; and I know now why she permitted herself such familiarity with me. Prematurely testicled, growing rapidly, I nevertheless wore (fraudulently) the badge of sexual innocence: Saleem Sinai, during his sojourn at his uncle's home, was still in shorts. Bare knees proved my childishness to Pia; deceived by ankle-socks, she held my face against her breasts while her sitar-perfect voice whispered in my good ear: 'Child, child, don't fear; your clouds will soon roll by.'

For my uncle, as well as my histrionic aunt, I acted out (with growing polish) the part of the surrogate son. Hanif Aziz was to be found during the day on the striped sofa, pencil and exercise book in hand, writing his pickle epic. He wore his usual lungi wound loosely around his waist and fastened with an enormous safety-pin; his legs protruded hairily from its folds. His fingernails bore the stains of a lifetime of Gold Flakes; his toenails seemed similarly discoloured. I imagined him smoking cigarettes with his toes. Highly impressed by the vision, I asked him if he could, in fact, perform this feat; and without a word, he inserted Gold Flake between big toe and its sidekick and wound himself into bizarre contortions. I clapped wildly, but he seemed to be in some pain for the rest of the day.

I ministered to his needs as a good son should, emptying ashtrays, sharpening pencils, bringing water to drink; while he, who after his fabulist beginnings had remembered that he was his father's son and dedicated himself against everything which smacked of the unreal, scribbled out his ill-fated screenplay.

'Sonny Jim,' he informed me, 'this damn country has been dreaming for five thousand years. It's about time it started waking up.' Hanif was fond of railing against princes and demons, gods and heroes, against, in fact, the entire iconography of the Bombay film; in the temple of illusions, he had become the high priest of reality; while I, conscious of my miraculous nature, which involved me beyond all mitigation in the (Hanif-despised) myth-life of India, bit my lip and didn't know where to look.

Hanif Aziz, the only realistic writer working in the Bombay film industry, was writing the story of a pickle-factory created, run and worked in entirely by women. There were long scenes describing the formation of a trade union; there were detailed descriptions of the pickling process. He would quiz Mary Pereira about recipes; they would discuss, for hours, the perfect blend of lemon, lime and garam masala. It is ironic that this arch-disciple of naturalism should have been so skilful (if unconscious) a prophet of his own family's fortunes; in the indirect kisses of the Lovers of Kashmir he foretold my mother and her Nadir-Qasim's meetings at the Pioneer Cafe; and in his unfilmed chutney scenario, too, there lurked a prophecy of deadly accuracy.