The others had ginger mochas, a Western invention with a glaze of Ayurveda that our middle classes had fallen for – what better way to show you were at once modern but also in touch with your roots, your culture? That was the business I should go into when all this was done, I thought.

Piles of dusty Western DVDs crowded the shelves, crap some relative had probably hauled over from Canada back when that had been impressive, something you could show off to your neighbours, how life was so wonderful for our family in Amrika. That was before social media, when we could all see how stupid the Americans actually were, in real time.

The great social movements passed us by. Independence, socialism, capitalism, everything was the same. My life was grinding spices for tea.

If you got Top Thousand, your future was assured. The McMansion in New Jersey awaited, along with the Chevrolet SUV and the kids’ violin recitals you never attended. Top Hundred finishers had their faces plastered on the buildings of the schools that had produced them. Their teachers got interviewed on TV, like they had overseen successful Siamese

‘You’re alive,’ he said. He tried to compose himself, tried to pull out words, continued to scratch, then opened his arms wide to show how wonderful this all was, that we were back, that we would be welcomed like sons returning without white girlfriends from MIT.

Up went Rudi, unsteady after too much whisky and coke. ‘We are the future, I am the future, this man,’ he said, grasping the minister, whose name he did not know but whose body fat percentage showed importance, ‘is the future, aren’t you?’ He started jabbing the man’s stomach, and kept repeating, ‘Aren’t you, aren’t you?’ Then he jumped off the sta

All my clients had the usual background of middle-class petty larceny. A few bribes paid here and there for construction permits, to private schools for exam-less admission, to the government to pass off their kids as low-caste for the quota admissions, the usual scum shit that makes this great country what it is, like the pesticides in the milk th

Ramesh Kumar – Educational Consultant. That is what my business card says. You want your little darling to get 99.4 per cent and become an IITian and lord it over the rest of us? You come to me. You want your little rasgulla to top the state boards, start his inevitable march to the corner office in Wall Street or London or, God forbid, if everythi

Everyone knows what makes India great. China has the communists in charge, Xi Dada and his cronies, Europe has piazzas and art galleries, America has beef and tits and money. We have democracy. We argue, endlessly. We speak eight thousand different kinds of shit, we insult each other, we make things happen. This is the country of deals. This is the