THE SUPERINTENDENT

I was born at Western Railway’s Jagjivan Ram Hospital in the city that was then called Bombay. At two minutes to three on the first morning of 1981, the obstetrician slipped his hands around me, catching me as I fell from fabulous forests of butterflies, and placed me in my mother’s hands, in her arms. My eyes opened: small dark eyes with a blue sheen.

Here’s what I’ve been told: I peed, I cried, and I tried to find the breast — in that order. Aunt Sharma and her daughter Neelam were present at my birth. Men weren’t allowed in the delivery room. My father was 6,852 kilometres away, at the Van Ghent Barracks in Rotterdam. He was doing his national service, which he’d previously postponed, as first lieutenant with the military blood transfusion service. While I screamed open my lungs, my father worked on monoclonal antibodies against the house dust mite.

Aunt Sharma’s husband phoned the barracks in Rotterdam. Uncle Sharma, that is. Somewhere halfway something went wrong: birds on the line — twittering sparrows. At one end, in the scorching heat of Bombay, Uncle Sharma announced the arrival of a son; in the harsh winter at the other end, I became a girl. My father was thrilled with the news. After two sons, he finally had a daughter. And her name would be Eva Maria van der Kwast. The name had been chosen months ago. Congratulations from the officers, from men in green, hugging and drinking sparkling wine they’d smuggled in. Birth announcement cards were ordered: handmade paper with an illustration of a stork carrying a pink-and-white check cloth.

Then came the second phone call: my mother from the hot city. There was screeching in the background — my screeching. Birds flew up from the line.

My father asked how things were going, how Eva Maria was doing.

‘Who?’ An arrow shot up the long line.

‘Our Eva, our dear daughter. Oh, I can’t tell you how pleased I am.’

‘Ernest,’ my mother said curtly. This name had also been picked long ago; this time my parents were well-prepared. Ernest Roelof Arend van der Kwast. A small being with wrinkles and creases, little hands and feet, and a willy. In a word: a boy.

‘Oh,’ came the response from the other end. Perhaps it was the same surprise my father experienced at the birth of my eldest brother. He couldn’t get his head around it yet.

‘A son.’ Another arrow. It hit the bull’s eye this time, and a pink cloud burst.

I screamed in confirmation. Here I was, here was Ernest.

My father cleared his throat. He mentioned the birth announcement card that had been dispatched to the printer’s. It said Eva Maria, in curly letters, and featured my data: 01-01-1981, 02:58, 3,254 grams.

It took a while for the scale of the disaster to sink in at the other end. Later, my mother would tell me that during this silence she considered her options, the potential ways of undoing the catastrophe. The birth announcement cards were being printed; she wouldn’t be able to recoup the costs. Maybe they could swap me — for a girl. In that case, they could go ahead and use the cards.

‘Everybody in India wants a son,’ my mother said years later. ‘We had three.’

We were arguing, as we did nearly every day. But this was something I hadn’t heard before. I was lost for words.

‘We could have easily swapped you for a girl. Plenty of choice.’

It sounded like a missed opportunity. My father would be better off as a rat in Delhi; I was convinced I would’ve been better off as a boy in Bombay.

‘Are you still there?’ my father asked from Rotterdam in 1981, in a barracks where men were fighting dust mites.

You bet my mother was still there. How could my father have been so stupid?! Since when was he entitled to do anything other than breathe? She began to shout and swear in Hindi. If there were any birds left on the line, they’d be dropping dead with fright now.

When the contractions started coming at ten-minute intervals, my mother drove to the Jagjivan Ram Hospital with her sister and her niece. Out in the street, firecrackers were exploding, and flowers of gold burst open against the dark sky. These fireworks had now burned up, but in a white house in a Bombay suburb, a blazing row continued for a long time.

I spent the first few weeks of my life in Uncle Sharma’s house, amid limestone walls and delicate light, where the mornings began in the middle of the night.

There are stories — fragments of stories, really. I’m a restless baby and sleep little. I cry and shriek a lot. The family — Aunt Sharma’s children, my brothers, and my mother — have nicknamed me Tutto baby.

That’s all that’s been passed down. Those days are shrouded in a milky haze for me. I try to see more, to use my imagination to turn the fragments into proper stories. But everything is so small: my own arms and legs, my hands and feet. There’s nothing really, except movement and sound, hunger and thirst. Maybe that’s the way it should be: the first few pages of life unwritten, blank as the oblivion of which we drink. Words are inappropriate — too big, and too heavy. Stones creating large circles in the water.

A month after my birth, the suitcases were packed again. Two taxis pulled up in front of the door: one for our luggage, one for us. During the last couple of days, my mother had been combing the shops in search of things that cost tenfold in the Netherlands: pans, scouring pads, tubes of toothpaste, toilet paper, and — of course — more suitcases to fit everything in.

Taxis were also cheaper than they were in the Netherlands, but they were against my mother’s religion — a faith that always decreed the cheapest alternative, in this case the bus. ‘Walking is even cheaper,’ my mother once said. ‘But that’s just an illusion. Because if you walk, you need more food. And your shoes suffer more wear and tear, too.’

My uncle had booked the taxis. Uncle Sharma and my mother were poles apart. He spent his money on expensive clothes, ate out quite often, and always travelled by taxi. Four years later, during our first visit after my birth, I walked straight up to Uncle Sharma and rummaged around in his pockets, but I couldn’t find the holes my mother had told me about.

It was a nine-hour flight, straight through the dark, through the void. I drank from the breast and forgot everything that lay behind me. A story lost.

Upon arrival in the Netherlands, we were met by a white man in a green uniform: my father. I was asleep when I was thrust into his arms. But not for long, if my mother is to be believed. As soon as I smelled the stench of corpses, I started crying.

‘They’re dust mites,’ my father said.

To which my mother replied: ‘Why don’t you carry the suitcases.’

Over Easter, the whole family spent a night at the Van Ghent Barracks. The barracks were deserted; my father was the duty officer. By now the house mite had bitten the dust, and the battle was on with a Chinese variant of the IgE molecule. The Cold War had the world in its grip.

Family members weren’t allowed to stay over at the barracks, but my mother insisted that my father had a sleepless night at Easter. I wasn’t one of those babies who sleep through the night after only three months. I was one of those babies who drive their parents to distraction. Perhaps I was a bomb even then; a bomb that would one day blow apart our family. As the Polish poet Czesław Miłosz puts it: ‘When a writer is born into a family, the family is finished.’

That night, from Easter Sunday into Monday, my parents decided not to expand their brood. The total would remain at three — three sons — even though three is an unlucky number in India. Three is a harbinger of doom, of ruin. When we were children, our school lunchboxes would always contain either two or four sandwiches, and we were never allowed to play noughts and crosses. But at the Van Ghent Barracks, in the dead of night, my mother announced resolutely: ‘Three’s enough! Three’s fine!’

Perhaps this exclamation, these words, ought to preface the written pages of my life. From now on, it can rain stones, since the wind has already disturbed the water surface. With the world on high alert, the imagination conjures up disaster scenarios.

My fantasy adds the innocent explosions of a sneezing fit. The entire barracks may have been free of house dust mites, but that didn’t stop Ashirwad from sneezing through the night. Only Johan slept the sleep of the innocent, humming softly, far away in the land of dreams. I probably owed my life to him. He was the kind of baby, the kind of child, of which you wouldn’t mind another ten. But then I came along: not the gift from God, but the number three, spelling doom, ruin.

For sixteen months, I sucked the breast that soothed and nourished me. Then my mother called it a day. She tried to keep me away from her breast by daubing sambal chilli paste on her nipples, but as a half-Indian I liked it with sambal, too. She finally weaned me off with toothpaste, squeezed from a tube purchased in Bombay. The thick, white paste was something we had plenty of. It was as bitter as rhubarb.

I greeted solid food with my mouth shut, lips pressed tightly together. Carrots, fennel, beetroot — I wouldn’t have any of it. Ashirwad ate everything I didn’t touch, the way he’d do later on as well, when I reached the terrible twos and threes and the horrible fours. Maybe that’s why he’s the tallest of us all.

The only food I ate willingly as a child was mango. There are images of this — the first distinct images. Memories.

The same limestone walls, the same delicate light. But this time the haze isn’t made of milk, but of smoke: a whirling ribbon, traced in the air by an invisible hand; mysterious, floating lines.

Uncle Sharma was the only man we knew, far and wide, who smoked Benson & Hedges cigarettes. He bought them off a stranded British officer, who had them shipped over especially from the United Kingdom each month. Rumour had it that the officer lived off the proceeds of the cigarettes my uncle bought. He chain-smoked them. In fact, sometimes Uncle Sharma smoked two cigarettes at once. Absent-mindedness or wistfulness — it must have been one or the other. It happened when his eyes alighted on something in the distance and furrows appeared in his forehead. With his cigarette smouldering in the ashtray, his right hand would slip down to his trouser pocket, pull out the white packet of Benson & Hedges, tap out another cigarette, and light it. Uncle Sharma would inhale deeply and exhale the smoke through his O-shaped mouth. When his gaze unlocked from the distance and the lines in his forehead relaxed, his free hand would take the cigarette from the ashtray again and bring it to his mouth, and so, smiling, he’d take a drag from one cigarette, and a drag from the other.

My mother hated my uncle’s habit. We weren’t allowed anywhere near him. ‘Smoking is dangerous,’ she told us. ‘It can kill you.’ But all that’s prohibited, all that’s not allowed, is beguiling. And so I’d stand beside the chair in which Uncle Sharma sat, in which he stared into the distance and smoked one cigarette after another. My two brothers stood next to me. Together, we tried to read the white, whirling lines in the air, the surtitles of his thoughts.

On one occasion, I managed to snatch a cigarette from the ashtray. We ran away as fast as we could, like cowboys who’ve captured a treasure from the Red Indians. Uncle Sharma seemed oblivious, and simply pulled the packet of Benson & Hedges out of his pocket and lit a new cigarette.

I handed the cigarette to Ashirwad. It might be less of a shock if he were killed. He stuck it in his mouth, but no smoke emerged.

‘You need to make an O with your lips,’ I said.

Ashirwad opened his mouth wide, and the cigarette fell to the floor.

Johan picked it up again. ‘It’s gone out,’ he said.

Then, out of the blue, we heard my mother’s footsteps. I ran off at once. Ashirwad followed. Johan stayed put, the cigarette in his hand. While hiding in the garden, I heard my mother yelling, and Johan bawling. He got tikkie. Johan is also taller than me; he was the one who always got my thrashings.

When I returned to Uncle Sharma’s chair, he wiggled his index finger at me. ‘Tutto baby,’ he said. ‘Very naughty.’ Then he cut me a slice of mango. Although it was too big, I stuck it all into my mouth at once. With the juice running down my face, I watched the ribbons in the air grow thinner and wispier until they dissolved completely. What words, what lines were hidden in that transparent script? What hand was writing them?

Even now, I experience the same enchantment, making me want to peek behind the curtain of smoke. By now, thousands of lines have been written — sentences that form a story, a life in the air. This is what I see, what I read, what I inhale:

Abhimanyu Sharma was born on 5 September 1928 in Bijnor, a small town in the state of Uttar Pradesh, a long way from Bombay. His father was a cobbler, his mother looked after the children. Abhimanyu was also a third son, but he was followed by four more daughters. His childhood was made of sun, dust, and rice. That’s all there was — poverty with no prospect of escape, unless you had dreams.

Once a month, a man with a film projector travelled to Bijnor from the big city. The man wore white trousers and white shirts, and he had flashy rings on each of his fingers. He cut a flamboyant figure in this barren landscape. Chairs were set up in front of the wall of the police station in large, semi-circular rows. The projector was hoisted onto the roof of the house opposite — an event that attracted more spectators than a wedding between a doctor’s son and a judge’s daughter. All the children in the neighbourhood looked on with bated breath as the contraption was winched up with a rope, and when the first images, blurry and faded by the sun, appeared on the wall, they knew: there was life outside Bijnor. There was a way out.

The waiting commenced: for the sun to go down; for the sky to go red and then purple; for the dark-blue hour when all colour slowly drains from things. And then it was dark. Every month, it took an eternity. Yet the waiting brought joy to the village. Those who wait know why they’re alive.

At the age of four, Abhimanyu saw his first film: Cinema Girl. He was sitting on a hill, 100 metres from the wall. He didn’t see much — perhaps only the magic of cinema: moving images and beautiful people. He’d never forget the face of Prithviraj Kapoor — the actor my mother was to look after on his deathbed, but who was then projected onto the wall of Bijnor police station, incredibly handsome and forever young.

When Abhimanyu came home late that night, he was met by his mother. She smacked him until her hands hurt. Later, lying on the floor between two sisters, Abhimanyu couldn’t sleep. But not because of his burning skin. He kept seeing Prithviraj Kapoor’s face: a smile of pearly white teeth, jet-black hair with a perfectly straight parting. Abhimanyu wiped the tears from his face and combed his wet fingers through his hair, from left to right. A smile stole over his face. Abhimanyu Sharma had a dream.

The following morning, he was the first to wake. Sitting up with a jolt, he exclaimed: ‘I’m going to be an actor!’

His little sisters rubbed their eyes and called him crazy.

The father woke up and asked irritably: ‘What’s going on?’

‘Abhimanyu wants to be an actor,’ one of the sisters said with a giggle.

‘Chup ho djao,’ their mother shouted.

Abhimanyu remembered her hard hands and decided to keep quiet. He ate his rice and went out into the street. At the water pump, he stuck his head under the tap and combed his hair into a parting. Then he ran over to the man with the mirror. It cost one rupee to look at yourself.

‘I’m going to be an actor,’ Abhimanyu said. ‘I’ll pay you a hundred rupees later.’

The man shook his head.

‘A thousand rupees.’

For an instant, the mirror was brought out and reflected Abhimanyu’s face: his wet, black hair, his smile with the three missing teeth.

For the rest of the day — and indeed, throughout the days of dust and sunshine — he walked back and forth to the water pump with this smile on his face.

When, a month later, the man with the film projector came to wake the village again, Abhimanyu was the first to put down a chair on the square in front of the police station wall. Older boys kept chasing him away, but he kept coming back.

‘I’m going to be an actor!’ Abhimanyu exclaimed. ‘I’m going to be just as famous as Prithviraj Kapoor.’

People laughed; people always laughed.

That evening, he saw the film from the roof of a house where he’d managed to secure a spot among the older boys. That night, he was given another spanking. Abhimanyu cried and begged for mercy, but his mother’s hands were merciless. Maybe he pictured her hands, later, all those years later, when his eyes alighted on something in the distance.

And then there was sound. It came from large black boxes brought along by the man with the film projector. During the day, Abhimanyu had helped to put down chairs and had gazed in astonishment at the boxes that were lifted from large wooden crates. He wanted to lift one too, but felt a hand on his shoulder — a hand with a golden ring on each finger.

‘Later,’ the film-projector man said. ‘When you’re all grown up.’

It was the first time he spoke to the boy. Abhimanyu combed his fingers through his hair, from left to right, and flashed a smile that could lose its final milk tooth any moment now.

The man smiled, too, and pulled a photo from his breast pocket. It had a wavy border.

‘Prithviraj Kapoor!’ Abhimanyu exclaimed. Only afterwards did he notice that there was a black scribble on it: the actor’s autograph. He almost cried with happiness.

As soon as the stars appeared in the sky, the film came on: Alam Ara (The Light of the World). It was the first Indian film with sound: talking, singing, and dancing. When it was shown in Bombay, the police had to step in to calm the audience. Likewise, in Bijnor people didn’t know what hit them. Spectators looked around in surprise; some got up and went in search of the sound, while others burst into a thunderous applause. The odd person stuck his fingers in his ears. Abhimanyu loved the songs and stared open-mouthed at the dancing actors. Unable to stop himself, he began to move, too. He lifted his feet and shook his hips. He was dancing on the roof.

The following day, the cheerful melodies from Alam Ara were everywhere. It was as if Bijnor had become an altogether different place, set in a different world. On every street corner, in every shop, in every house, the film’s opening song, ‘De De Khuda Ke Naam Pe Pyaare’, could be heard. Abhimanyu sang it at home, too. It was sung all over India.

One by one, the family’s daughters left home. They got married, had children, and gave them names they’d be yelling day and night in rooms and kitchens, at markets and squares, trying to make themselves heard over the street noise. But one day, those yells would no longer get through to the children, and these daughters would be all alone in the world.

Abhimanyu was seventeen when he left Bijnor with no more than a comb in his back pocket. He’d grown into a strapping lad. His brothers worked the land, walking twelve kilometres to the plot every morning before sunrise. They arrived back home in the evening, worn out and black with soil.

‘Bombay,’ the man with the film projector had said. ‘That’s where it’s all happening; that’s where you need to be going.’ Abhimanyu wasn’t the only Indian boy with dreams of the silver screen: millions had the same dream and were pursuing it. ‘Go,’ the man had told him. ‘But if you do, go for it unreservedly. Even if it means you won’t have anything to eat, no place to sleep, and nothing to fall back on as you sink deeper and deeper into despair. Either you really go for it, or you stay here and stop dreaming.’

His mother yelled his name on the platform — the last time he’d ever hear her voice. Abhimanyu Sharma was going, and he was really going for it.

Although he’d never lay eyes on his mother again, it was not so the other way around. Six years after his departure, one starry night in March, a wave of joy swept through Bijnor, from the front to the second, third, fourth row, all the way to the final row, and from there up to the roofs and hills before finally reaching the Sharma family home.

The film was stopped. And rewound. And then stopped again. His face was as big as the wall of the police station. ‘Abhimanyu!’ the people shouted with one voice. ‘Abhimanyu!’

His mother was given a seat in the front row, from where she saw her son singing and dancing. Waterfalls of sound accompanied him, as did beautiful, bare-bellied women, princesses in glittering gold. ‘Abhimanyu,’ she muttered, and then the tears came because her voice would never reach him again.

But before he was to go through life talking, singing, and dancing, Abhimanyu went hungry and slept with countless others on the beaches of Dadar and Versova. Here, in these Bombay suburbs, they dreamed the same dream, the young men from all over India, the men who had all but drowned already.

In Bombay, Abhimanyu went to every casting and audition and tried to speak to every known director and important producer: Ardeshir Irani, V. Shantaram, Sohrab Modi — big names at Bollywood’s final resting place.

Again, there are stories. This time, they’re not just fragments, but an epic narrative. My uncle, the man who announced my arrival against the backdrop of bird song, is thought to have been discovered by Gum Dutt, the actor, director, and producer, living legend, and bulk consumer of women and alcohol. The young Abhimanyu is rumoured to have made an ‘indelible impression’ in the studios of the Prabhat Film Company, where Gum Dutt worked as an assistant director at the time. The epic, sung by nephews and nieces and a large chorus of aunts and neighbouring women, also praises his smile ‘without a single tooth missing’ and ‘the gleaming black hair with a parting as straight as the fold in The Times of India’. But IMDb, the internet movie database, doesn’t list Abhimanyu Sharma as one of the cast of Pyaasa or Kaagaz Ke Phool, both Gum Dutt classics. As I watch these films, I try to identify my uncle among the sea of actors in mass scene after mass scene. But they all look alike: identical smiles, identical partings.

The last time I saw Uncle Sharma was in Rotterdam, on Tiberiaslaan, during the summer of 1990. Our family had borrowed a stack of videotapes from the neighbours across the street to get us through the long evenings. One of the tapes was Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. We watched the film out on the patio, with the extension cord snaking across the flagstones, and the sounds from the adjacent tennis courts — balls being thwacked back and forth — in the background. And over and above that, the snoring of my mother and her sister, Aunt Sharma. The affliction appears to run in the family, although my mother’s sister also rabidly denies that she snores.

Uncle Sharma was sitting next to me on the couch. His hair was thinner now, and slicked back. Yet his clothes were as white as ever, and he still smoked the same Benson & Hedges cigarettes. A veil of smoke enveloped him wherever he went. He’d given me a signed photograph and told me it was worth a lot of money — not in Dutch guilders, but in Indian rupees. The currency wasn’t on the exchange rate board at the local bank.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is set in India, or rather, against a backdrop that’s meant to depict India. It was actually filmed in Sri Lanka, because the filmmakers had been denied permission from the Indian government to shoot in North India. The authorities considered the script ‘racist’ and demanded all manner of revisions and the right to veto the final edit. But we didn’t know that when we slid the videotape into the VCR.

It went wrong the moment the film started, when Indiana crashes in the Himalayas and the inhabitants of a remote village believe he’s been sent by the Hindu god Shiva. Uncle Sharma shook his head. ‘Indiana Jones sent by Shiva?’ I heard him growl. ‘Out of the question.’ A little later, he jumped to his feet when the film showed people being offered to the goddess Kali. ‘Out of the question,’ he repeated. ‘Completely out of the question.’ And he wagged his finger at the television screen when Indiana Jones grinned at the imminent danger. Then he sat down again and lit a cigarette.

Ashirwad woke my mother and her sister to say that he couldn’t hear the film. Both denied they’d been asleep. ‘I’m watching the film, too,’ my mother said.

‘You’re snoring,’ Ashirwad said. ‘And so are you.’ He pointed to Aunt Sharma.

‘What’s he saying?’ she asked her sister in Hindi. My mother interpreted for her.

Aunt Sharma shook her head furiously and spat out a curse in Hindi, sounding like an old car that was having trouble starting.

Uncle Sharma weighed in: ‘Ashirwad is right.’

‘No, he’s not,’ shouted my mother. ‘We don’t snore.’

An object came flying over my head. For a moment I thought it was a tennis ball, but no, it was a slipper.

My father pressed the pause button on the remote. It had become impossible to watch the film. We had things to discuss first.

Aunt Sharma rattled off words to her husband that I was familiar with; the only Indian words I was familiar with. The vintage car had been started.

‘You are snoring!’ Ashirwad shouted. ‘You are snoring!’

And who knows, perhaps the discussion would have gone on until well past midnight, had the VCR not spontaneously switched to ‘play’ again and the screen showed a severed monkey’s head with an Indian man eating the brains.

Uncle Sharma jumped up from the couch again, and this time he went and stood in front of the television. He looked at us, stern like a teacher, and said: ‘Out of the question.’

I don’t remember the exact words of the monologue that followed, only the gist of it: India had a population of one billion, but of all those inhabitants, not a single one ate monkey brains. Ashirwad was the only one to react: ‘My favourite food is snakies.’

Uncle Sharma refused to let it distract him. He stood in front of the television for at least another minute, rigid as a statue. Even the cigarette in his right hand seemed frozen in time; no ribbons of smoke came trailing out, as I remember it. Then he calmly walked inside and we watched the rest of the film without him.

The curtain, the veil of smoke, had opened. But perhaps the metaphor is wearing thin. The way Uncle Sharma had stood in front of the television is how I would first see him on celluloid during a Hindu festival. I recognised him instantly: the large physique, the smooth forehead, the slicked-back hair. He was playing ‘Superintendent of Police’ in Janam Janam, a drama that utilises the device of the flashback to dizzying effect, and in which Uncle Sharma makes a sudden appearance. He enters the film with measured, calm steps, looking authoritative and dignified. The scenes starring my uncle can be counted on the fingers of one hand, and they don’t feature much dialogue. The Superintendent is economical with words. His presence is supposed to do the job; it’s the presence of someone who can’t be ignored. Halfway through the final scene, he folds his arms. Job done.

According to various family sources, Abhimanyu Sharma featured in more than 200 Bollywood films. But IMDb lists only 25, all post-1960. The time between 1945 and 1960 is eternal smoke. But those with enough imagination can also see him in films by Ardeshir Irani, V. Shantaram, and Sohrab Modi, dancing among a sea of actors, lost in the credits. My hand likes to add him.

(Sometimes I can picture myself in a film, one more recent, more modern, and even sweeter. In my arms, a slender, gorgeous woman with glittering jewellery around her ankles, arms, and neck. We twist and turn through streets and palaces. It’s the life I missed out on, the actor I could have been had I been swapped for a girl: Eva Maria. This, too, is a story I’d like to write. It takes no effort on my part, as if the enchanting blue still covers my eyes and I always see more than meets the eye, and remember more than actually happened.)

Uncle Sharma would never become as famous as Prithviraj Kapoor, but he did play with all the great actors of his day. He was recognised in the street, and people often asked for his autograph — they even had him sign 100-rupee notes. In thousands of cities, the little boy from Bijnor appeared like a giant on the silver screen: sometimes in a police uniform, sometimes in a pristine white doctor’s coat.

Indian cinema has a limited number of roles: the hero, the bad guy, the beauty, and the in-laws. These all come with an entourage, consisting largely of neurotic characters that talk nineteen to the dozen. What they say doesn’t really matter. Then there are the countless dancers who lip-sync as if their lives depend on it. But each film also has an actor playing a big shot, an influential person, a bigwig: Uncle Sharma.

In the films I order online, and that sometimes take up to seven months to arrive, I see him as ‘Superintendent of Police’ on three occasions, as well as in the role of ‘Prosecuting lawyer’, ‘Doctor Sharma’, ‘Inspector Sharma’, and ‘Diwan’s guest’. In other films, which I get hold of through relatives, he plays roles such as ‘Hotel manager’, ‘Construction superintendent’, ‘Judge Sharma’, and ‘Restaurant owner’.

There’s always a problem between the lead characters, which prompts my uncle to walk on out of nowhere — always with the same steady gait, the same solemn gaze. He listens to the other characters, nods quietly, and then adjudicates, arranges a separate table, or prescribes medication. That done, he folds his arms. The deus ex machina of Indian film has accomplished his task.

After Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, we never met again, although we came very close in 2001. Uncle Sharma owned a flat in London and had invited us to stay with him and his wife for a week. A free holiday certainly appealed to my mother.

Uncle Sharma’s daughter Neelam came to pick us up at the station. My entire immediate family had come along, so we set a new luggage record. Neelam insisted on taking a cab, but my mother thought it was too expensive. First she got into an argument with the cab driver, who refused to lower his price, then with Neelam, who shouted that we weren’t in India.

Perhaps Uncle Sharma could have intervened as the big shot who suddenly appears on screen. But he’d stopped acting by then. Seven hours later, we were back home. My father collapsed on the doorstep, a holdall around his neck.

The final act: 27 April 2003, Leicester Square Theatre, London. Actors from Mumbai are performing a lavish show, talking, singing, and dancing in colourful outfits, on a magnificent stage. Uncle Sharma and his daughter are in the front row — by special invitation from the actors. There’s a 300-strong audience in the theatre, virtually all Indians. They’re singing, clapping, and emoting along.

At the end of the show, Neelam feels her father’s head on her shoulder. Uncle Sharma has fallen asleep. It’s not uncommon for him these days to fall asleep during films and plays. It all becomes too much for him. But when the audience rises for a standing ovation, he doesn’t wake up. Uncle Sharma remains seated, his face immobile, his arms folded.

‘Jeena yahan marna yahan,’ Indians say. ‘You live here, you die here.’ Uncle Sharma lived and died on stage.

Then the curtain falls.