The entire Raichand family sat in front of me. Not the one from Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham, but the one from Cuffe Parade. The patriarch of the family, 77-year-old Rajeev Raichand, was surrounded by his two sons and their wives. His daughter and her teenage son filled in whatever space remained. They infused the room with a spiffy fragrance. They wore designer handbags, ripped jeans, branded tops 
and expensive jewellery. Fancy glares were perched on their foreheads late into the evening. It felt like I was in a luxury mall in Dubai. The old man himself was dressed in a simple white pair of trousers and shirt.  

“This all started about a year ago, when our dad started having some memory issues,” the daughter began. “He would forget where he kept his glasses or keys, and we didn’t think much of it until he started mixing up the names of family members,” she went on. I do that all the time and I’m only in my early 40s, I mused, refraining from voicing it aloud. “He goes to the club to play cards every evening,” one of the sons continued, “and his friends started telling me that he was getting confused between a diamond and a heart, and that he would call a club a spade and mess up the game.” In these diplomatic times, very few people call a spade a spade, I once again thought to myself, but kept silent, unsure if they were ready for some jocularity. “We finally went to our family physician, who said it was early onset Alzheimer’s or dementia and started him off on some medication,” they said, emptying his medication from a Gucci pouch.