Sandow dadu
Every kid should have a bald-headed grandpa with a white moustache and twinkling eyes who is a fount of stories. I had one like that. He was my mother's uncle. He spoke in a low voice as if he was giving away secrets and carried with him a whiff of mystery and adventure. He had had many adventures. Sandow dadu had grown up in Nairobi, Kenya and, in his youth, had been a self-taught geologist who had wandered around in jungles. We went to dinner at his house one or twice a year when we visited my paternal grandparents in Santiniketan. The houses of Santiniketan each sat in a large garden ringed with a flowering hedge. As dusk gathered around the crowns of the trees and shrubs below, the air grew cool and still and fragrant with night scents and the dimly lit houses stood far apart from each other like islands in the darkness. My mother and I would walk up the crunchy gravel path through light and shadow up to the veranda of the Sandow dadu's house. Sandow dadu's wife...