In the cinema hall, my mother transformed from an overworked, underappreciated mother and wife to a bawdy, full-bodied woman

The first few times in the ladies’ locker room in the US were a shock, to put it mildly. Coming as I did from Nepal, I was not very familiar with nudity. What familiarity I had, came from Western movies, Sidney Sheldon novels, and my own imagination.

I step out the waiting room and through the building housing the Intensive Care Unit. It is dark already and there is a chill in the air. I have been at the hospital for nearly eleven hours and should be tired but I am not.

I am sure my childhood was not as amusing as my recollection makes it out to be, but even so, when I think of the early eighties, of the years before I turned ten, I remember a delicious chaos. Streets were not yet crowded with vehicles, parents had not yet learnt to be afraid of every stranger walking the roads, and most nine-year-olds ambled to school without a chaperone or a care in the world.

Parenting is a fine juggle. Take this as a point in case. There is a rage in our house and neighbourhood over a game my son and his pals have named Pen Fight. Essentially, Pen Fight is playing gucchas, or marbles, with pens-- one pen knocks another off the table, and the person with the strongest pen (read, heaviest pen) wins.

White sounds of unceasing rain land on the puddles that look like small lakes. Fish could live in them. My father-in-law is in the room with me, drinking tea and staring out the window. Tea, they say, originated in China. Has to be. I am restless as I sip, like I want to jump off the window and take a vigorous swim in the Arabian Sea frothing somewhere behind us.