She had lived on for nine years after Partition – nine years in which her six daughters heard nothing of her – hidden, alone, isolated. In Lahore, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs had lived alongside each other for centuries. “Many of us thought, yes, there will be change, but why should we have to move?” He hadn’t thought political decisions could affect his life and, by the time he understood otherwise, it was too late “I was barely 20 I’d had little education. What would I have done in India? I had no qualifications, no job, nothing to recommend me.”I had enough imagination to understand those reasons.

My grandmother had died in 1956 (the seven of her eight children who lived in India dated her death variously as 1949, 1952 and 1953), and Rana had married a Muslim.Why had he not left with his brother and sisters at Partition?Well, Rana said, like a lot of other people he had never expected Partition to happen in the way it did. Why? What was the good? I felt as though I were betraying her; once in Lahore, it took me three days to pluck up the courage to go to my grandfather’s house. Too far back and the kite lurches backwards, too far forwards, and there is insufficient lift. To secure the spring, take a single hitch round one of its arms as illustrated (fig 6).

Fix a shackle or a substantial key ring on the spring as a fixing point for the kite string.The tail should be long, and have considerable windage; its drag helps keep the kite head to wind. Make the tail from offcuts of the plastic sheet, and make it longer than you think necessary. Cut the tail to length when you first fly the kite: ie if it doesn’t lift, snip off a few feet.Secure all the side seams with parcel tape. At close quarters it looks very amateurish, but at 20,000 feet it doesn’t notice.I made the winder from two 9-inch lengths of 2 x 3/4 inch pine, and two 9-inch lengths of broom handle (fig 9).

You will need tough string to hold this kite; ordinary kite thread will snap. Polypropylene baler twine or garden string is ideal.Fly the kite in a wide open space, miles away from power cables, and thunder clouds. If Defenders and Troopers, and four wheel drive Subarus trundle across the turf to get a clearer view, wave them away. Gentle as a lamb in soft winds, in rough weather the Manta is an unpredictable and short tempered beast, prone to violent changes of altitude It might take a sudden dislike to them, and dent their lids. And grapple tight to any child weighing less than 11 stone to make sure they don’t soar skywards. In an emergency, let go the string; given its freedom, our Manta tumbles gently to earth..

I used to play ping-pong in the nursery at home with my brother, and if we did anything wrong during the day, we weren’t allowed to play. If you dropped your napkin, that was just one of the things that mattered, or if you didn’t eat the fat at lunch It wasn’t my parents, it was the people who looked after us The worst one was the governess

Ping-pong was taken very seriously. I expect I usually lost, because I remember banging the table in a temper Later I player with the painter Euan Uglow. We used to play the best of three, but if Euan lost, he made me play the best of five, so there were huge rows and banging the table. I liked playing with Euan, because he hated losing.
I was always told that I had a cheat’s serve, because you’re meant to do it sideways.