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by a glowing brazier of smoking incense; now the morning azan might rise up from the nearby mosque, a long and sinuous and mysterious call; a cool breeze would waft in through the window beside me, from the open farmland, scented with animal dung and earth. I would shut my eyes again. In the other bed Mansoor would not have stirred. If it was Thursday or Saturday, there would soon come the sounds of singing from the temple, sweet, beautiful, and timeless; intermittently I would follow the tunes of these ginans, as our songs were called, and recall their words, which I had been taught. The percussion would start gently, then increase in its intensity. At some point the singing would have stopped; if I strained my ears perhaps I could hear my father speaking, or perhaps I imagined him, imparting his spiritual teaching to the initiates of the Garden—for it was only they who came to the temple at this hour, to meditate, to sing, and to listen. Some of them were local people, while others had come from various places to show their devotion to the Pir and his Saheb.
    There would come the hoots of vehicle horns, people conversing, crows raucously crowing outside.
    I would jump up abruptly from bed, immediately wide awake, go and brush my teeth at the kitchen tap, then come to wake up my brother with, “Uth havé nakama, wake up you useless!” The look on the little one's face, the most angelic innocence, the most fragile demeanour. His eyes would open: the most beautiful smile, the body motionless, the full day's energy coiled inside, awaiting release.
    At seven o'clock, almost to the dot, after breakfast, I walked out through the side door of the house and into the shrine. Passing the mausoleum, with joined hands I would quickly say my pranaams and salaams to the Pir. I silently prayed to him to bring me success not only in cricket but also in my studies. And as I walked towards the gate and the road, at my own unhurried pace, confident I had time and time, I would beconscious of the gaze of my father upon my back—all his pride and confidence, all his hopes and fears on me.
    At the gate, finally, and I would look around, await a ride to school. A rickshaw might be around, having dropped off devotees at the shrine, ready to pick up a paying passenger; but if I was lucky, a truck would stop in a cloud of diesel and dust, in all its garish glory, horn blaring, saving me the fare. The driver might lean out the passenger side and call—“Eh Baba, school time! Let's go, get in.” And when I was inside his cabin, the truck picking up speed, he might ask conversationally, “So—did you finish homework? Khub kiriket khela, nai?” Too much cricket—but you must work hard, make Nehru Chacha proud!
    One morning as I emerged from our gate into the glare of sun there appeared before me a magical sight.
    A green and orange truck, covered all over with pithy sayings—“Jai Mata Di!” “Horn Please OK!” “Oh Evil-Eyed One, Your Face Black with Shame!” “My India Great!”—and Om signs, in gold and silver script of a glittering florid font. It could have dropped from the heavens, a gift from the gods. My face broke into a grin. Leaning stylishly against the door, beaming, arms crossed, stood a short stocky Sikh with a paunch and a bushy unkempt beard. According to the name on the driver's door: Raja Singh of Bhatinda, Punjab.
    “School time!” he said, as though he knew me.
    He was waiting for me, having just worshipped at the shrine for the first time; in a manner typical of his nature he had chatted up Ma and learned that I went to a Christian school up the road in the town of Goshala. He called his truck Kaleidoscope, but I called it Air India, because he so reminded me of the genial, turbaned maharaja symbol of that airline.
    Every two or three weeks he would be waiting for me at the gate, having come from Bombay, Baroda, Ahmedabad, Rajkot—the names of these cities painted clearly on the back of his truck. The