In Sindhi households, everything is veiled. It starts at the heart of the home – the kitchen. The refrigerator handle dare not stand in nudity. The mixer, when not in use, stands gracefully under a crocheted hood. Twenty five years ago, I used to mock this great Sindhi cover-up. Today, I’m the one doing the covering.

In most other places, people welcome Ramzan by hanging lanterns on their windows or lighting up the streets. But in Mumbai’s Byculla, children welcome the holy month by fishing for a battered old pair of badminton racquet and as many shuttlecocks as they can lay their hands on.

Aside from squealing over Baby Taimur’s adventures in micro-fashion, most of us don’t know the first thing about clothes. But on a few special nights of the year, like the Met Gala, even the most fashionably challenged among us become a leading authority on French couture.

People seeped in the homogeneity of English and its pervading usage of “you” may rarely notice the gravitas that pronouns can lend to a language. But in Hindi, pronouns define more than people: They define regions, cultures, levels of civility, and even intimacy.

It’s not just real-life women with whom Chetan Bhagat seems to share a tetchy relationship. The author’s heroines are always one-dimensional, unattainable college girls. They are quite stupid when it comes to matters of the heart — which is why they inevitably end up with one of Bhagat’s douchebag protagonists.