The turning point in the father-and-son relationship had come seven years ago, on Nusswan’s sixteenth birthday. Uncles and aunts had been invited to dinner, and someone said, “Well, Nusswan, you will soon be studying to become a doctor, just like your father.”

“I don’t want to be a doctor,” Nusswan answered. “I’ll be going into business — import and export.”

Some of the uncles and aunts nodded approvingly. Others recoiled in mock horror, turning to Dr. Shroff. “Is this true? No father-son partnership?”

“Of course it’s true,” he said. “My children are free to do whatever they please.”

But five-year-old Dina had seen the hurt on her father’s face before he could hide it. She ran to him and clambered onto his lap. “Daddy, I want to be a doctor, just like you, when I grow up.”

Everyone laughed and applauded, and said, Smart little girl, knows how to get what she wants. Later, they whispered that the son was obviously not made of the same solid stuff as the father — no ambition, wouldn’t amount to much.

Dina had repeated her wish in the years to come, continuing to regard her father as some kind of god who gave people good health, who struggled against illness, and who, sometimes, succeeded in temporarily thwarting death. And Dr. Shroff was delighted with his bright child. On parents’ night at the convent school, the principal and teachers always had the highest praise for her. She would succeed if she wanted to, Dr. Shroff knew it for certain.

Mrs. Shroff also knew, for certain, that her daughter was the one to recruit in the campaign against Dr. Shroff’s foolish philanthropic plan of working in remote, Godforsaken villages. But Dina refused to cooperate; she did not approve of devious means to keep her beloved father home.

Then Mrs. Shroff resorted to other methods, using not money or his personal safety or his family to persuade him, for she knew these would fail hopelessly. Instead, she invoked his patients, claiming he was abandoning them, old and frail and helpless. “What will they do if you go so far away? They trust you and rely on you. How can you be so cruel? You have no idea how much you mean to them.”