A PASSAGE TO INDIA

Chennai, Tamil Nadu, 2001

By the year 2001 Renu had not seen his parents and siblings in nine years. Yet even young men like Renu, who have taught themselves to survive with the loosest familial links, are occasionally obliged to respond to the entreaties of a mother. After much cajoling, he promised her he would find the funds to fly to Tamil Nadu in the south of India to visit the whole family.

Funds, however, were hard to come by. While at Westminster University, Renu had taken a job with Pizza Hut as a delivery man. He worked until about midnight or one o'clock in the morning and then had to get up early to attend his first lecture (although his punctuality slipped steadily as the year went on). The job had given him some extra cash for the first time in his life. But it wasn't sufficient to allow him to save: what he had left over was being absorbed by his drug habit, which now included cocaine and before long would embrace that most devastating narcotic, crack cocaine.

Unable to muster the fare, Renu borrowed it from friends, and for safety purchased £3,000 worth of American Express traveller's cheques before setting off on the long flight to Chennai.

Nobody knew what to expect from the encounter: when he had left his mother, he was still a boy. Now he was a young adult whose life was punctuated by bouts of intense solitude. His social life had picked up since college, but he was given neither to easy talk nor to any great expression of emotion. And, although youthful, he was also rapidly creating a patchy past. There was much that he would not be sharing with his family.