She was well known in the university, as much for her free- thinking as for having been around a long time. She’d first done a BSc then a postgrad in education and now having completed the fifth year of her medical studies was in intern training. Not a serial degree-gatherer, she had enrolled in these classes in order to prolong her stay in India. A Pakistani national, she had stayed in Karachi with her father (estranged from her mother) since the age of five, and had now come to live in Aligarh with her mother, a much-loved teacher in the university. Experiencing maternal attention for the first time and liking the life there she took advantage of her student visa to extend her stay, doing one course after another. Not on the greatest of terms with her father, she had absolutely no wish to return to him but the bell had begun to toll, her medical studies were coming to an end now and there weren’t too many other courses she could pursue.She had been an object of some fascination for me from the time I first set eyes on her which, incidentally, had been at Tasveer Mahal movie house, while I was hanging around staring at the posters as I often did.
What do You think about And Then One Day: A Memoir?
