The Tool Drawer * Growing up in Mumbai in the early-1960s, my sisters and I would sometimes gaze awestruck at the old china and tableware in our dining-room sideboard. We siblings had no idea then about the origins of these artifacts from another time. Nine, four and two, we were too young to be aware of the British retreat from India about a decade earlier, or about the detritus of colonisation they had left behind. Fifty years later, I still don’t know how these objects came into our possession. Today, however, I feel ambivalence, not awe, about these objects that once had such pride of place in our home. Occasionally, my sisters and I were caught handling the china and rebuked by adults in the family. One day, we discovered the top left-hand drawer of the sideboard with its mélange of rough-hewn pieces of metal and wood. The drawer was heavy. My sisters and I held on to the handle and pulled with all our might. The drawer flew out into our hands, we fell backwards, and