Because a Man Was Refused

Sometime in the 1830s a Parsi merchant in Bombay applied to join a Masonic lodge. He was a man of standing. He traded, he later sat as a judge, he campaigned all his life for the education of Indian girls at a time when that was an unpopular thing to campaign for. The...

Following a Summons

Every family keeps papers that nobody reads. Ours kept a summons. It was addressed to my grandfather, V Ramanathan, calling him to a meeting of Lodge in Madurai. I must have read it three or four times. It was formal, short and completely opaque. It gave a date, a...