Surai hadn’t changed much since the last time he had seen it, over eight years ago. It wasn’t the sort of place that changed much. There was a new supermarket across the street from the old temple and the old movie theatre had been renovated into a new movie theatre with a cafeteria attached to it. Apart from such little cosmetic alterations, however, Surai might as well have been stuck in a time warp that never quite got out of the fifties.

The little town was surrounded by farmland, with small farming villages dotting the peripheries of its border. The sight of the crops swaying gently in the monsoon breeze made Ruban’s heart clench. He had never felt so close, and yet so horribly far away from home.

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He pulled over beside a white, two-storey house close to the edges of the town. He wasn’t entirely sure what he was going to say, or how he was going to say it in a way that made any sense to his audience. But he’d have to start somewhere, and this was as good a starting point as any.