In my family, nobody was especially mature. My mother, whom I loved very much and who had a kind heart, was a little bit like a child in that she was excitable and talkative and somewhat vain. I remember that when my brother and I were children and we still lived in India, my mother would sit at our dining table on Sunday afternoons and have my brother and me search her head for white hairs. Birju, my brother, was around twelve then and, in the irritated, put-upon way he had, he would warn, 'One day I will pull out your last hair and then you will be bald.'

We left India in 1979, when I was eight. During the days before our departure, my mother, because she couldn't help herself, dressed me and my brother in new clothes so that people would see us and think about our luck.

I liked America immediately. Among the things I liked most was the television show The Love Boat. I had never seen women in bikinis before. I also liked elevators. Elevators were rare in India and to me there was something thrilling about how my pressing a button meant the elevator would shut its doors and pull itself up floor by floor. My brother Birju also liked America. 'America is so clean,' he said. 'In India if anybody sees a clean spot, he thinks, let me spit there before somebody else gets a chance.' Birju had a long face with a round fat chin and he was someone who could say a bad thing about almost any topic.

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'Mother and Son' will be printed in full in Granta 97: Best of Young American Novelists 2. To subscribe to Granta and receive the entire issue free, or to buy a copy of Granta 97, click here.