The fishermen were here first. Before Mountbattens ticktock, before monsters and public announcements; when underworld marriages were still unimagined and spittoons were unknown; earlier than Mercurochrome; longer ago than lady wrestlers who held up perfor ated sheets; and back and back, beyond Dalhousie and Elphinstone, before the East India Company built its Fort, before the first William Methwold; at the dawn of time, when Bombay was a dumbbell shaped island tapering, at the centre, to a narrow shining strand beyond which could be seen the finest and largest natural harbour in Asia, when Mazagaon and Worli, Matunga and Mahim, Salsette and Colaba were islands, too in short, before reclamation, before tetrapods and sunken piles turned the Seven Isles into a long peninsula like an outstretched, grasping hand, reaching westward into the Arabian Sea; in this primeval world before clocktowers, the fishermen who were called Kolis sailed in Arab dhows, spreading red sails against the setting sun. They caught pomfret and crabs, and made fish lovers of us all. (Or most of us. Padma has succumbed to their piscine sorceries; but in our house, we were infected with the alienness of Kashmiri blood, with the icy reserve of Kashmiri sky, and remained meateaters to a man.)

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