Twenty-two years ago I had the good fortune to spend a summer in the French Pyrenees. First in the town of Foix and then in various mountain villages populated mostly by the elderly; the youngsters had migrated to Paris, returning with their children only for the summer vacations. On vacation from college in America, homesick for Bombay, I saw my grandparents in every wrinkled face. In my mind, French peasants and old Parsis resembled each other. This Parsi spoke no French. The French peasants spoke no English. But nobody objected to the camera. On the contrary, they were amused by their solitary visitor from l’Inde. After living an unnatural student life in Cambridge/Boston, where there were few families, only countless other students, life in a French village was comforting in its daily routines, its natural rhythms. Every morning, Madame Cassee my neighbour, who was probably close to 90, would wake up early and hang up her laundry. Everybody (men and women in their 80s) tended their own patch of land on which they grew vegetables. Further up the mountain, shepherds looked after their sheep in Biblical fashion. I’d wander around the peaceful cemetery, silent except for the rustle of leaves, looking at the photographs of the deceased on the gravestones. Curiously alive, their eyes stared back at me over the passage of years. On market day the villagers would descend from their mountain homes to the valley town of Foix with their produce; flowers, vegetables, cheeses, particularly goat cheese, the speciality of the region, sausages and poultry, both dead and alive. Fairs were on Sundays after church in different mountain villages. Everybody from neighbouring villages and from Foix, would arrive in cars, vans, mopeds, tractors. An intergenerational celebration. Children, their parents, their grandparents, their great-grandparents, all dancing in the village square. That was 1979.