Bibiji, my neighbour, a warm, attractive woman in her early thirties, is fond of odd, macabre stories, most of which have their setting in her village near Mathura (Uttar Pradesh, India). The other night Bibiji launched into an account of various types of ghosts she had known – the ghosts of immoral women – churels -who appeared naked with their …

Down the main road passed big yellow buses, cars, pony-drawn tongas, motorcycles and bullock-carts. This steady flow of traffic seemed, somehow, to form a barrier between the city on one side of trunk road, and the distant sleepy villages on the other. It seemed to cut India in half – the India Kamla knew slightly, and the India she had …