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might explain, in some small way, why the lunchtime rush had numbered five people, one of whom had brought his own drink. Everybody agreed the Happy Dine had gone downhill since the old regime.
    A motorcycle went past, braked, and turned back. It kicked up a dust storm. The waitress pulled up her T-shirt to cover her nose and exposed her belly. The proprietor looked down forlornly at his once white shirt. Dr Siri emerged from the cloud and cast a faint shadow across both of them. He quickly explained that he’d already eaten lunch, thus curtailing their excitement before it got out of hand.
    “I’m here to see your chef,” he said.
    “We have nobody here of that name,” said the proprietor. He was one of the southern Indians who had weathered the takeover of ‘75. His accent was so thick, it would have stuck to the wall if you’d thrown it. Siri wasn’t absolutely sure it was Lao he was hearing.
    “The father of the crazy man who walks around the streets?” Siri tried again.
    “My chef is not available for other positions. He is bonded,” said the proprietor.
    Siri stared at him.
    “He’s out the back, uncle,” said the waitress. The young man glared at her, but she ignored him.
    Out the back actually meant ‘out the back’.
    The kitchen was at the rear of the restaurant in the yard roofed over by a large green tarpaulin with grease stains. Attached to a cross beam were two remarkable fans. Someone had come up with the bright idea of removing the covers and attaching long streamers to the blades. The intention had obviously been to keep insects away from the food and keep the cook cool at the same time. But the weight of the streamers had slowed the rotors to such a pace that the device merely stirred the hot air and the flies together like ingredients in a large stew. A fat man in a navy blue undershirt and long black trousers was on the far side of the small yard washing dishes in a bucket.
    “Excuse me,” Siri said.
    The man looked over his shoulder with a shocked expression. His was a bulbous chocolaty face with a nose that looked like it might pop. He dropped the dishes into the unsoapy water and hurried over to Siri, wiping his hands on his belly. He crouched as he walked in order to keep his head below the visitor’s. He smiled broadly and rocked his head and performed a very wobbly version of the Lao, hands-together nop . Siri was afraid the man might drop to his knees.
    “Yes, sir? Yes, sir?” he said, apparently delighted to see Siri. This out-of-shape Indian was in his fifties, and Siri doubted the man had known a year of those fifty when he wasn’t being bossed or bullied. He had the air of a man whose idea of Nirvana was a place where the canes were shorter and the whips merely made of horsehair.
    “Do you speak Lao?” Siri asked.
    The man nodded several times. “Yes, sir. How can I help you?”
    “You could stop bobbing up and down for a start. I’m getting motion sickness.”
    “Very well. Yes, sir.”
    Siri pulled over two bathroom stools and signalled for the man to sit on one. But as soon as Siri sat on the other, the Indian dropped to the floor like a sack of soft noodles. It appeared to be familiar territory for him so the doctor conceded.
    “What’s your name?” Siri asked.
    “Yes, sir. I am Bhiku David Tickoo.”
    “May I call you Bhiku?”
    “Sir, I would be an honoree.”
    “Very well, I’m here about Rajid.” Bhiku smiled silently. “You don’t know who that is, do you?”
    “No, sir.”
    “Thought not. It’s the name we’ve given to the young man who walks half naked around the streets.”
    “Ah, sir. Then that would be my son, Jogendranath, as named after the great reformist.”
    “Really, well that’s quite a mouthful. Could I just call him Rajid for now?”
    “As you wish, sir.”
    Without warning, Bhiku climbed uneasily to his feet and hurried into the shop. Siri wondered whether he’d offended him by renaming his son, but he returned in seconds