March 20. “Come, Button. I’ll show you the Queen’s Necklace.”

“What’s that?”

“That’s the stretch of Marine Drive starting from Chowpatty and ending at Nariman Point. It’s the seafront and, at night, when the lights come on, the entire stretch looks like a long pearl necklace. Hence the name. When we lived on Walkeshwar Road 30 years back, this view was much closer home.”

“Both your children must have been very young.”

“The elder one was 3 and the younger one 2 and, every evening, as the sun set, we’d sit out in the balcony and have our evening cuppa. Bombay (that’s what it was called then) was much prettier, much cleaner, less crowded and much safer then. Remind me to show you some black and white photographs of the old Mumbai sometime. Our earlier house was half the size of this one and, yet, it was magical. Dost had just joined the biggest media house as their Publishing Director. You must listen to some of the stories he tells us from time to time about his encounters.”