Chapter 1: Amritsar ke Din — 1978

The Golden Temple at dawn was the closest thing to God that I ever experienced, and I say that as a man who has spent most of his life unsure whether God exists.

I was eighteen. The year was 1978, and Amritsar was still — for a few more years, before everything changed — a city that could hold its contradictions without breaking. Hindu and Sikh and Muslim lived side by side in the narrow galis of the old city, the boundaries between communities visible but permeable, marked by temple and gurdwara and mosque rather than by barbed wire and burning tyres. The tensions were there — they were always there, simmering beneath the surface like water heating in a vessel whose lid was on too tight — but in 1978, the lid held. Mostly.

Balli and I walked to the Harmandir Sahib every Tuesday morning. Not for religious reasons — Balli was a devout Sikh who prayed with the sincerity of a person for whom faith was as natural as breathing, but I went for the light. The way the sun hit the gold of the temple's dome, reflected off the Amrit Sarovar's still water, and turned the entire complex into something that existed simultaneously in the physical world and somewhere else entirely — that was the thing I wanted to paint. Had wanted to paint since I was twelve. Would spend my life trying to paint and would never quite succeed, because the light at the Harmandir Sahib was not a colour. It was an experience. And experiences resist canvas.

"You're staring again," Balli said. He was eating a parantha from the langar — the community kitchen that fed thousands daily, the food simple and perfect, the act of sharing it across caste and creed the temple's quiet revolution. Balli ate paranthas the way he did everything: with total commitment and zero self-consciousness. He was seventeen, built like a kabaddi player — broad shoulders, thick arms, a turban that he tied with the particular precision of a boy whose mother checked it every morning and whose father would notice if a single fold was wrong — and he was my best friend in a way that only childhood friends can be: the friendship that predates personality, that exists in the bone rather than the brain.

"I'm not staring. I'm observing. There's a difference."

"The difference is that staring is free and observing costs tuition fees. Have you told Bauji about Fergusson College yet?"

I had not told Bauji. Bauji — my father, a man whose emotional range extended from stoic to slightly less stoic — knew that I wanted to study English literature. He did not know that I had applied to Fergusson College in Pune, which was eight hundred kilometres away, in a state where nobody spoke Punjabi, in a city that Bauji had never visited and regarded with the particular suspicion that Amritsaris reserved for places that were not Amritsar.

"I'll tell him when the acceptance comes."

"If the acceptance comes."

"When."

"Your confidence is inspiring and completely unfounded. You got sixty-two percent in your boards."

"Sixty-four. And Fergusson's cutoff for English Literature was sixty last year."

"For reserved category."

"I'm applying on merit."

"Farhan." Balli put down the parantha. When Balli put down food, the situation was serious. "You are a Sikh boy from a working-class family in Amritsar who wants to study English Literature in Pune. Your father is a retired havildar who believes that the only legitimate professions are the army, medicine, and running a kirana store. Your mother, who is wonderful, still thinks Pune is in a foreign country. And you want to go there to study books. Books, Farhan. Not engineering. Not medicine. Books."

"And painting."

"Oh, that's much better. Books and painting. Bauji will be thrilled."

He was right, of course. Balli was always right about the practical things, which was why I needed him — not to change my mind but to prepare me for the resistance I'd face when I tried to change everyone else's. The Oberoi family did not produce artists. The Oberoi family produced soldiers (Bauji, retired Havildar, 4th Battalion Sikh Regiment), shopkeepers (Taya-ji, who ran the kirana store on Katra Ahluwalia), and — in Madan's case — professional disappointments. The idea that the eldest son would pursue English Literature and painting was, in Bauji's worldview, not a career plan but a cry for help.

"I'll handle Bauji," I said. "I always do."

"You handle Bauji by avoiding Bauji. That's not handling. That's geography."

We walked through the old city. The morning was cool — February in Amritsar, the tail end of winter, the air carrying the particular sharpness that preceded the Punjab spring: the smell of mustard fields from the outskirts, the smoke from morning chulhas, the sweetness of jalebi frying in the halwai's shop near Hall Bazaar. The galis were narrow — barely wide enough for a cycle rickshaw, the buildings pressing in from both sides, the upper floors nearly touching, the laundry strung between them like colourful flags marking territory that belonged to everyone and no one.

Esha was waiting at the Dhaba.

The Dhaba — officially "Sharma ji ka Dhaba," a misleading name since Sharma-ji had died in 1971 and the establishment was now run by his daughter-in-law, a formidable woman named Pushpa who made the best chai in Amritsar and tolerated college students the way a tiger tolerates birds on its back: with indifferent sufferance — was our gathering place. A dozen plastic chairs, four metal tables, a counter that had been wiped so many times the laminate showed its plywood soul, and a menu that consisted of chai, samosa, and whatever Pushpa felt like making that day, which was always exactly what you wanted because Pushpa was either psychic or observant enough that the distinction didn't matter.

Esha Sharma — no relation to the deceased original Sharma-ji — was sitting at the corner table with the crowd she usually hung around with: Meera, Preeti, a boy named Vikram who was studying law and who looked at Esha with the particular hopelessness of a person who had assessed his chances and found them wanting. Esha saw me and smiled. The smile was — I have spent forty years trying to describe this smile and have failed as consistently as I have failed to capture the Golden Temple's light — not extraordinary in its components. Lips curving, eyes crinkling, teeth showing. The mechanics were ordinary. The effect was not. Esha's smile arrived in my nervous system before it arrived in my brain, a warmth that started somewhere in the chest and spread outward until my entire body was aware that it was being smiled at by Esha Sharma and that this was, objectively, the most important thing happening in Amritsar at this moment.

She patted the chair beside her. "Where's Madan? Is he not with you?"

I stiffened. The warmth cooled by two degrees. "He's doing homework. Why do you need to see him?"

"I don't need to see him, I just like to see him. He's funny." She caught sight of Balli behind me. "Oh no. What'd you bring him for?"

Balli, who may or may not have heard her but could read a hostile expression across a crowded bazaar, set two cups of chai on the table. "Peace offering, madam. Pushpa's finest. I even asked for extra elaichi, the way you like it."

"I never told you how I like it."

"You didn't have to. I'm observant. Unlike some people who just stare at things." He glanced at me. I glared at him. He grinned — the particular grin of a best friend who has identified your vulnerability and intends to exploit it for entertainment purposes.

Esha was — and I should describe her properly, because she matters, she matters more than almost anyone in this story except the people who came later — not the most beautiful girl in Amritsar. She would have told you that herself, with the particular honesty of a person who had assessed herself accurately and was comfortable with the assessment. She was small — a full head shorter than me — with dark hair that she wore in a single braid that reached her waist, a face that was more interesting than pretty (wide forehead, sharp chin, eyes that were too large for the face and gave her the permanent expression of a person who was paying more attention than you wanted), and a body that was — I was eighteen, I noticed — compact and curved in ways that her salwar-kameez couldn't entirely conceal.

But what made Esha Esha was not the physical description. It was the energy. She occupied space the way a flame occupies a lamp — completely, intensely, with a brightness that drew everything toward it. When Esha talked, you listened. When Esha laughed, you wanted to be the cause. When Esha was angry — and she was angry often, at injustice, at stupidity, at the particular Pakistani cricket team's particular inability to win consistently, which she took as a personal affront — the anger was magnificent. A force of nature dressed in cotton and moral certainty.

She was Hindu. I was Sikh. In 1978, this mattered less than it would later. But it mattered. Her father — a professor at Khalsa College, ironically — was progressive in the classroom and traditional at the dining table, the particular hypocrisy of educated men who believed in equality as a concept and inequality as a practice. Her mother was — I would learn later — the real power in the household, the woman who made the decisions while her husband made the speeches.

"So," Esha said, sipping her chai with the particular authority of a person who had opinions about chai and was not afraid to deploy them. "When are you telling your father about Pune?"

"How does everyone know about Pune?"

"Balli told Meera. Meera told Preeti. Preeti told Vikram. Vikram told me. Amritsar has a faster communication network than All India Radio." She leaned forward. The too-large eyes were intent. "You should go. You should go and not look back."

"What about you?"

"What about me?"

"Are you applying to Pune?"

She held my gaze. The intent softened into something else — something that I would spend years trying to name and would eventually settle on "the look that meant everything was complicated." "I've applied to Khalsa College. Daddy wants me close. You know how it is."

I knew how it was. The daughter stays. The son goes. The daughter waits. The son pursues. The script was ancient and no one had agreed to follow it, but everyone did, because the script was written not in ink but in obligation, and obligation was the one language that every family in Amritsar spoke fluently.

"Come to Pune," I said. The words were out before I could assess them for wisdom. "Apply to Fergusson. Or SNDT. Or anywhere. Just come."

"And tell Daddy what? That I'm following a Sikh boy to Maharashtra because he asked nicely?" She laughed. The laugh was — like the smile — not extraordinary in its mechanics but devastating in its effect. "Farhan Oberoi, you are the least practical human being I have ever met. And I say that with tremendous affection."

Balli returned with samosas. He distributed them with the fairness of a person who understood that samosa distribution was a political act and that any perceived inequality would result in consequences. Vikram received one. He ate it with the quiet despair of a man who had just watched the woman he loved tell another man to come to Pune.

The morning continued. The chai flowed. Amritsar moved around us — the cycle rickshaws, the shopkeepers opening their shutters with the metallic crash that was the city's alarm clock, the call to prayer from the mosque on Sultanwind Road mixing with the kirtan from the gurdwara, the particular symphony of a city that was still, in 1978, holding its contradictions together.

I didn't know, sitting at Pushpa's Dhaba with Balli's samosa in my hand and Esha's laugh in my ears, that I was living in the last years of something. That the lid on the pressure would not hold. That the contradictions would stop being held and start being weapons. That the city I loved would become a city I fled.

All I knew was the chai was good, the samosa was hot, and Esha Sharma had told me to go to Pune with tremendous affection.

At eighteen, that was enough.