On the day I met my father’s family for the first time, a strange coincidence occurred on a train. It was October 2006, a year after the great earthquake in Kashmir. I was travelling south from that troubled region, when a young man burst into my cabin.
He wore flared jeans and a faded denim jacket. His long, well-brushed hair was tied back and there was something of the Frontier in his dark sunburned features. He gave me no explanation for barging in. He simply dropped into the facing seat, loosened the coloured bands of his ponytail, and began talking.