There are of course many advantages to passing through half of your life as a misplaced German in a former British colony. At a time when half your countrymen were still queuing for bananas under grey lights, it was a fine thing to live in a country of many religions with many gods with many arms. And what with the heat, and having rarefied skin, and the advantage of knowing how to play volleyball, and the avuncular role you could play towards any given group of girls or children, a fellow could have a whale of a time, building a harem in one quarter of a shantytown and an army in another.

Especially if that fellow was German, for that meant he occupied a position, perhaps unique for a child of Bismarck’s nation, of a western rebel, an enemy of authority, a rival of the former oppressor, imperialist too perhaps, but all the stranger for that. And by whatever pagan god he found succour for in his superstitious soul, Maik did all he could to squeeze the last drops of wine from his position. And for thousands of Indians whose lives he touched over the five years of his adventures across the sub-continent, Germany will always be something more or less than what they were taught it was.