It was odd to be in India again. He had expected to feel at home; instead he felt unspeakably awkward. He could appreciate now, as he hadn't as a child, the privilege of having a British father who married his Indian mother. The rat catcher he passed had blue eyes in a mahogany face; that little girl in the gutter had red curls peeping from under her scarf.
On the other hand, there was the time he walked the streets of Karachi in uniform and heard one native mutter behind his back what might politely be translated as "sodding English."