But as an 11-year-old experiencing the death throes of apartheid in South Africa I’m not sure I fully grasped the events unfolding. When history was happening around me I was, mostly, just spoiling for a bike ride.
he said, “if you want India with pain, go to the North, for India without pain, come to the South where I live.” Our Indian visas were good for one year, so we decided to take the painless route, and visit Fletcher in Fort Cochin, in the state of Kerala. We’d visit the North on a subsequent trip, we told ourselves— it’s only a four-hour flight from Dubai, where we lived at the time. This proved incorrect, at least so far, as our daughter was born about nine months after that trip, and India with pain and a baby didn’t sound very attractive.
