SINKING INTO THE PRESENT

Hers was a typical upper crust family living in a -plush neighbourhood, with typical upper middleclass biases

- Lakshmi Narayan

Because they had been posted abroad a few times, they considered themselves more Angrez than Hindustani. They spoke to each other only in English. Their maids were made to wear stiff nursy uniforms. They ate Continental food, using forks and knives and starched napkins.

They hated everything about their home city the heat, the dust, the traffic, the pollution, the potholed roads, the surging mass of humanity, spitting and dirty public. The only way to survive in this hellhole was to isolate themselves in a bubble and pretend they were elsewhere. Preferably somewhere abroad, with wide clean green streets and orderly people.

As the girl grew up, her hatred for all things desi multiplied. What set her teeth on edge were the festivals unending, noisy, unmanageable. "It's the revenge of the have-nots