My grandmother insists on affectionately calling my brother's young British friend saa'ip, the term used by Malayalis to refer to the erstwhile colonial masters. When I give her a hug she says 'thank you, thank you, after the saa'ip came I say thank you'. She can't contain her laughter. The saa'ip is a nice guy, she says. She actually uses the the word 'guy', one of the words that she has received through the osmosis of vocabulary via intergenerational cross-flows. British people are nice, she mutters and then pauses, they did turn us into a colony however. Hers must be the last generation to carry living memories of that period, for whom the moment of Independence isn't a chapter in a textbook but a personal memory. My grandmother was thirteen and remembers the parade in her small town. She pumps her fist and in falsetto cries, 'gandhiji ki jai! jawaharlal nehru ki jai!' You know, I even remember seeing your grandfather's face in the crowd. He was nineteen. Of course I didn't talk to him. Who would talk to him anyway? She laughs, pleased with her joke about his rather grim demeanour. When I the marriage proposal came, I thought, why not? There was no reason to decline. And the horoscopes matched like crazy, promising perfect compatibility and what not...she breaks her ramble only to say that she also remembers Mr. Jones, her English teacher, whose accent she could understand.