“Rajah’s Lime and Chili Pickle, sir.”

And Papa went down the entire stock of shelves, blowing his stuffed nose, giving the poor shop assistant hell.

“And this is Shardee’s, yaar?”

“No, sir, this is Sherwood’s. And it isn’t a pickle. It is a Balti curry paste.”

“Is that so? Open a jar. I want to taste.”

The shop assistant looked around for the manager, but the Sikh was out front on Broadway High Street, standing guard over shrink-wrapped stacks of pink toilet paper. With no help on hand, the young boy maneuvered himself safely behind cases of dented chickpea cans before he spoke again. “I am sorry, sir,” he said politely. “We don’t give tastes like that. You must buy the jar.”

*   *   *

“We want proper service,” Papa told Uncle Sami.

Aziza looked at me, signaled we should sneak out the back for a cigarette.

“Not these simple fellows from East Africa,” continued Papa, tapping Uncle Sami’s elbow so the poor fellow had to look up from his newspaper.

“My God. That stupid boy at Shahee’s, like he had a bone through his nose.”

“Yes, yes. Very good,” said Uncle Sami. “Liverpool is up, two-to-one.”

But Papa, he was like a dog after a rat, and “proper service” became our excuse for voyaging to that mysterious place Papa had heard so much about: Harrods Food Hall. It was a memorable event that day the entire family descended on the West End, the hustle and bustle of Knightsbridge momentarily warming us, reminding us of the car-tooting excitement of Bombay. For a few minutes we stood awestruck before the red-stone department store, gaping up at the Royal Warrants bolted to the side of the building. “Very important tings,” Papa told us reverentially. “Means English Royal Family buy chutney here.”

And then we plunged through Harrods’ doors, through the leather handbags and china and past papier-mâché sphinxes, our heads bent all the way back as we stared up with awe at the mock-gold ceiling encrusted with stars.

The Food Hall smelled of roasting guinea fowl and sour pickles. Under a ceiling suitable for a mosque, we found a football pitch devoted entirely to food and engaged in a din of worldly commerce. Around us: Victorian nymphs in clamshells, ceramic boars, a purple-tiled peacock. An oyster bar stood beside hanging slabs of plastic meat, while the grounds were covered in a seemingly endless line of marble-and-glass counters. One entire counter, I recall, was filled with nothing but bacon—“Smoked Streaky,” “Oyster-Back,” and “Suffolk Sweet Cure.”

“Look,” Papa yelled, with a mixture of delight and disgust, at the trays of pig meat under glass. “Pork bellies. Haar. And here, look.”

Papa roared with laughter at the silliness of the English, at the glistening carrots artfully displayed with a yard of their furiously green bush. “Look. Four carrots, £1.39 a bunch. Haahaa. Pay for the bush. Eat the whole ting. Like rabbits.”

We passed from one room to another, under Victorian chandeliers, surveying produce from corners of the globe we had never even heard of, Papa’s guffaws ever less frequent. And it’s the confused expression on his face that I recall, while he tapped the glass, counting thirty-seven different types of goats’ cheese, each with its own exotic name like Pouligny-Saint-Pierre and Sainte-Maure de Touraine.

The world was an awfully big place, we suddenly realized, and here was the evidence before us: gently smoked ostrich from Australia and Italian gnocchi and black potatoes from the Andes and Finnish herring and Cajun sausages. And perhaps, most shocking, but clear as can be, England’s own rich vein of culinary deposits, wonderful-sounding creations like “Duckling, Apple & Calvados Pie” or “Beer-Marinated Rabbit Loins” or “Venison Sausage with Mushroom & Cranberry.”

It was utterly overwhelming. A Harrods security officer, flak-jacketed and with wires in his ears, walked around us.

“Where the Indian sauces, please?” Papa asked meekly.

“Down in Pantry, sir, past Spices.”

Past the Jelly Belly towers in Sweets, down the escalator, through Wines and into Spices. And there, Papa’s hand raised, a brief glimmer of hope in Spices, but quickly dashed at the sight of more such cosmopolitan labels: French Thyme, Italian Marjoram, Dutch Juniper Berries, Egyptian Bay Leaf, English Black Mustard, and even—the ultimate slap—German Chives.

Papa let out his breath. And the sound, it broke my heart.

Squashed in the corner, almost hidden behind packages of Japanese seaweed and pink ginger, just token contributions from culinary India. Some bottles of Curry Club. A few baggies of chapatis. Papa’s entire world reduced to next to nothing.

“Let’s go,” he said listlessly.

And that was that. The English schemes. Finished.

Harrods totally undid Papa, and shortly thereafter he succumbed to the depression that must have been lurking just below his manic search for a new occupation. Because from then on, right until we left, Papa spent his time in England sitting like a turnip on the Southall couch, wordlessly watching Urdu videos.

Chapter Four

When the low-hanging skies of Southall became too gray and oppressive and we craved the color and life of Mumbai, Umar and I took the tube into Central London, switched trains, and headed out to the Camden Locks of North London. The journey was quite long and uncomfortable, but emerging from the cavernous tunnels of the Northern Line, into the crowded streets of Camden, it was like being reborn.

Here the buildings were painted tarty pinks and blues, and under the row of saggy awnings were tattoo parlors and body-piercers, Dr. Martens boot dealers and handmade hippie jewelry, and musty little holes from which blared head-banging music from the Clash or the Eurythmics. As we walked down the High Street, a little bounce back in our walk, greasy-haired barkers tried to lure us into shops selling secondhand CDs and aromatherapy oils, vinyl miniskirts, and skateboards and tie-dye T-shirts. And the strange people thronging and jostling on the sidewalks—the ring-studded Goths in black leather and green Mohawks, the posh girls from private Hampstead day schools down for a bit of slumming, the winos lurching from rubbish bin to pub—all this sea of humanity reassured me that as alien as I felt, there were always others in the world far odder than I.

On this particular day, just over the central canal, Umar and I turned left into the covered markets for lunch, where the former brick warehouses along the locks, the stalls, the cobblestone lanes, were all jammed with inexpensive food stalls from around the globe. Asian girls wearing thick eyeglasses and paper hats called out—“Come here, boys, come”—beckoning us over to their tofu and green beans, to their Thai chicken skewers in satay, to the woks where a cross-looking chef was repeatedly plopping steamy portions of sweet-sour pork onto rice. We would wander in awe, peering, like at the zoo, into stalls selling Iranian barbecue, fish stews from Brazil, Caribbean pots of plantain and goat, and thick wedges of Italian pizza.

But my older brother, Umar, whom I followed sheeplike on these outings, led us straight to the Mumbai Grill, where laminated copies of Bollywood film posters, 1950s classics such as Awara or Mother India, decorated the booth. And from the vats of lamb Madras or chicken curry on the counter we would get a delicious dollop of rice and okra and chicken vindaloo, all unceremoniously smacked, for £2.80, into a Styrofoam pouch.

So, plastic forks and vindaloo in our hot hands, shoveling food in our mouths as we walked, we wandered deeper into the bowels of the Camden markets, drifting against our will to the stalls that would have drawn Mummy. There, the necklaces of colored glass beads; the Suzie Wong cocktail dresses in black-and-red satin; and the prayer shawls, pashmina silk, the Jamawars, all hanging like diaphanous vines from pegs, a riot of glittering colors that made us think of Mummy and Mumbai. At a corner stall, under an awning that was saggy and tired, I stopped to study rack upon rack of cheap cotton carryalls from India, each for just ninety-nine pence, that were a lively rust and maroon and aquamarine, embroidered with dainty little flowers or stitched with beads and bits of glass. They drew me in under the awning, under the elaborate cotton chandeliers with silk tassels and tubular insides, from which a low-watt bulb cast a yellow light. And there were the scarves, the dupatta, draped over racks or knotted and hanging like thick rope from pegs, pink and floral, psychedelic and striped. Up on the wall a fantastic quilt of colorful scarves, stitched together and hung across the entire shop, displaying the entire universe of dupatta on offer.