Do join us for the annual monsoon lunch which we are hosting this year. There will be khichudi, beguni and ileesh maachh bhaja,” Mrs Banerjee was insistent with her invitation, as I got out of the car, a Saab fitted with a fabulous music system from whose unseen speakers Hemanta Mukherjee's digitised voice wafted out, warm and mellifluous, untouched by the icicle-forming chill of the air conditioner on full blast. Even at this late hour, almost close to midnight, the heat outside was blistering.

Summer in this part of the US can be as bad as what we have to suffer in the dust bowl of India, also known as the National Capital Region. It had been a hot and humid day and I had sweated profusely, walking from one building to another in the sprawling university campus. I had looked forward to an easy, boozy evening of casual banter at the house of a professor of Cinema, a laid back child of the sixties — now approaching middle-age — with vivid memories of Woodstock, who was hosting a reception for me to meet Indian American members of the faculty. Nearly all of them turned out to be Bengalis, barring a professor of Mathematics, whose father had fled to the US when Brahmins were banished from Tamil Nadu.