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But making arrows in an atlas is too easy,insufficient. Sometimes you need to take the next flight out of your present and land in Delhi airport at 3 am. Vassanji,known for his novels and short stories such as The Gunny Sack,The Uhuru Street,The In-Between World of Vikram Lall and The Assassin’s Song,did that in 1993 — “to get to know the India part of me”. Sixteen years and 10 notebooks of journal entries later,he has brought out his first non-fiction book A Place Within (Viking,Rs 599).

Sitting in a bleakish blue cane chair at the India International Centre,turning away from the spring sunshine,the 59-year-old speaks softly: “This is a necessary book for me,to establish continuity with the country,to place myself historically.” He breaks into a wide smile,goes back to a day from his childhood in Dar es Salam,where he sang Gujarati songs,played dandiya ras and watched Mother India at Odeon cinema. “India was there and wasn’t there,” he says epigrammatically. And thus the journeys – through the ruins of Delhi,the bylanes of Gujarat,searching for Ghalib’s haveli and Irfan Pathan’s home,meeting Mulk Raj Anand “trapped in the past” and Bhishm Sahni “singing IPTA songs”.

The year 1993,when Vassanji arrived,was significant. Babri Masjid had fallen,Bombay was burning. Even a taxi driver in Delhi guffawed when asked to be driven to Humayun’s Tomb. And Moyez Gulamhussein Vassanji,who till then had hidden his identity behind two stern initials,saw madness and fear around. And felt his own fear: “I was scared that a mob would surround me in a train and ask for physical proof of my religious identity. I was disillusioned. It must have been naiveté,but for me this was the land of Gandhi and all I saw was unimaginable violence. I could have turned away from it but I didn’t.”

Instead,he went to history and searched for the fanaticism of another age. He would not be tagged,he says,although many of his Delhi friends expected him “to speak Urdu and courteously pointed to the non-veg section in menus” and Bhishm Sahni’s wife Sheila called him “such a good Muslim”. If you do need to tag him,he belongs to the Ismaili Khojas. “For me,it is a Gujarati Vaishnavite tradition transformed by a pir from Iran. There are strands of two religions in it,” he says. “In Dar es Salam we had no rigid structure. And I still refuse to be branded as part of any global system.” His irritation is visible and,in the land of new Gandhis,his hopes for syncretism might seem rather far-fetched,if not entirely naïve. But Vassanji is moving on. He has rolled up the map. He is going back to writing a novel,set in Africa.