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strung all around. A pundit arranges prayer materials before small images of Ram, Sita, Lakshman, Hanuman on a raised dais. A few diyas are lit around them, more, being a fire hazard, are not allowed. Myriad women are dressed in saris, Nancy and Lara included. Dr Sharma and Lenny are wearing new clothes.
    On the other side of the hall is a long table, where the vegetarian feast catered by the Taj Mahal restaurant is laid out. The guests eat, wish each other a Happy Diwali, joyously, festively, wistfully, then emerge into the Nova Scotian night, the wind howling around the women’s saris, inflating them like balloons, reaching under their petticoats, chilling their skin before they even reach their cars.
    Another hybrid Diwali over.
    Later Ananda asked his uncle why he participated. This was a man who couldn’t stay three weeks in India.
    ‘To give the children some idea of their background of course, otherwise how will they know our customs?’
    Ananda looked unconvinced. His uncle was a fraud. He went on about Canada, and here he was dressing his women up in saris and devouring vegetarian food on Diwali. His own life would be conducted with more integrity—none of this Indian for a day, and Western for the remaining year. The uncle glanced at his nephew. ‘Beta, I was once like you. I too wanted to leave my country behind when I left its shores.
    ‘Twenty years ago there was no India club. I am one of the founding members. I realised that if I forgot everything of mine, then who was I? When the children came, it became even more important to keep in touch. Nancy thinks like I do, after all there is something so graceful about our rituals. She loves the opportunity to wear her sari. Then at Christmas we all go to church, that is fair, don’t you think?’
    ‘Ji, uncle.’
    It was some time after Diwali, when days were shortening so much one barely caught a glimpse of light, that Dr Sharma decided to partition the laundry room to made a cubicle for his nephew. Ananda was bewildered; he was fine on the sofa bed, quietly watching TV during his free evenings and holidays.
    He tried to prevent his uncle from spending the money, but his uncle explained—as though to a two year old, that this way he could have privacy. He could use the den of course but his clothes, books and all his personal stuff would have their own place in this little room. He would have a cupboard, his own desk with a tube light above it and a tiny alcove fitted with drawers. Wouldn’t that be nice?
    By now Ananda knew that privacy was an important issue in this culture and though he felt wounded, he said nothing. His uncle wanted to shut him up in a cage.
    Workmen came and in ten days it was finished.
    The room had a window near the top of the ceiling that looked onto the skimpy grass of the back lawn. It was this alone that prevented Ananda from dying of claustrophobia. ‘You are lucky to live rent free,’ remarked Nancy. ‘There are many students who pay highly for accommodation in this area, we are so close to Dal.’ Ananda hadn’t realised he had to show gratitude, his instinct was to feel aggrieved.
    ‘Your uncle always said we don’t want strangers in the house, not even a student. He might think differently after you leave.’
    Ananda did not respond, he was busy with his own thoughts. He had always considered himself undemanding, never exceeding his hundred dollar allowance, keeping his discomfort over food unobtrusive, with no special requests for meals, despite the woeful sameness of boiled vegetables. Nobly too, he had ignored that those vegetables were sometimes served to him from the side of the meat platter.
    Yet his uncle thought fit to settle down on the edge of his bed one day, towards the end of his year at Dal, and say that it was time for him to move to a place of his own. He had been around Halifax long enough to know the ropes.
    It then dawned on Ananda that being a relative did not bestow automatic rights, that being an