In September 1990 – five years after Sachin and Gita’s return – the family came apart. It began with Mohit’s participation in the anti – affirmative action protests sweeping the country. Mohit was now eighteen, a fresher in college. Gita had just returned to A‑19 from her work at St. Xavier’s School when she heard that Mohit had been grievously injured at a protest and was in the hospital. She phoned Sachin at his office. ‘Should we go there?’ she asked. ‘Or will Karishma get angry?’ What had happened was this: A month earlier, in August, India’s prime minister, V. P. Singh, had undertaken a controversial, populist move, pressing into law the Mandal Commission Report, which gave twenty‑seven percent reservations in government jobs to ‘other backward castes’ – OBCs. Government jobs were one of the few paths to security and upward mobility in socialist India; and so the upper‑caste students – the majority of college students – responded with fury to this affirmative action.…