THAT FIRST VISIT to India in February 1972, began with the customs man.

Spindly, bow-legged coolies invaded the SS Karanja as soon as the gangway was put in place. They led the procession down the plank carrying metal trunks and hay-roll bundles of bedding on their turbaned heads, their hungry eyes bulging with strain. They brought us to earth with their guttural commands and untrustworthy haste. Gingerly, I found the uneven treads on the walkway. All the passengers were holding tightly onto their lifebelts for land: sling bags and bundles of money, jewellery, passports and papers.

We entered a dark shed with rows of long, low benches. On these, trunks and bundles had been set out before a handful of customs officers in tired uniforms. I found a space and laid down my offering: a canvas rucksack and green sleeping bag. One of the customs men walked slowly towards my belongings. It was when he spoke that I recognised him. It was Pran, the ubiquitous alcohol swilling, womanising nemesis of every hero in every Hindi movie I had ever seen. The cigar was missing, but the wisps of smoke rose in my imagination.

‘What's in here?’

He had that predatory look of boredom, alertness and pitilessness that has been perfected by customs officers around the world through generations of public service. I mumbled a string of nothings. His nostrils, as they did on screen, flared momentarily. He rocked his head slowly, sipping the fear in my answer.

‘What have you for me?’ His eyebrows and forehead rose with the question.

I gawked at him, immobilised by the clarity with which I could hear him in the cacophony that filled the shed. I had hidden £200 in travellers’ cheques against my right groin in a pocket stitched inside the front of my trousers by an Indian tailor in Mombasa, wise to the embraces of Indian pickpockets. In my normal left-hand side pocket was a bundle of Indian rupee notes stained with history. They had come a long way.

My father had left his village in Punjab at the age of 19 in 1949, with two rupees and a BSc graduation certificate to lose along the way.