New Delhi, Sept. 19 -- If you're Indian, you are in all likelihood familiar with the concept of double lives hidden in plain sight. Due to the entrenchment of sociopolitical orthodoxies, people resort to the most comically transparent ruses. Your mother uses separate utensils for certain guests because she's organised and fastidious. The lads from the mohalla are definitely not drinking away the chanda (donations) they collected for Durga Puja. And your widower uncle is simply a "well-wisher", wink-wink, of the woman he visits like clockwork on weekend evenings.

We Indians don't need narrative crutches like Santa Claus or storks dropping babies off-right from birth, we operate in far more sophisticated realms of hypocrisy and cultivated ...