At three, my little brother was an irresistible cutie. He was playing in a sandpit beside a construction site one hot June afternoon when a little girl joined him. She was called Joya and was looking for friends. Her parents were visiting from Bombay and living in an enormous whitewashed bungalow beside our grandfather’s newly built house in Allahabad. She was a few years older to him and since his conversation skills were limited, he brought her over to meet his older sisters. And since friendships formed quite spontaneously without much profiling those days, we all became friends, accessing open fields and each other’s compounds freely. My grandmother didn’t like…