‘Why should Wal-Mart come in here? I don’t mind Gucci and Louis Vuitton – they do nothing to disturb the social fabric. But keep Wal-Mart out of here. We were under slavery for seven hundred fucking years. We’ve only been free for sixty. Give us another thirty and we will buy Wal-Mart. I tell you, I was at a party the other day and I had my arms round two white people and I suddenly pushed them away and said, Why are you here? We don’t need you guys any more.’

Twenty-eight years old, well travelled and richer than most people on the planet, MC’s resentment towards white people is unexpectedly intense. I ask him how the world would be different if it were run by Indians.

‘It will be more spiritual,’ he says. But then he thinks for a moment and says, ‘No. It will be exactly the same.’

Yeah, I see them everywhere I go, man, you see the way they walk into the clubs, the way they order their drinks. They’re horrible. The only thing those guys have that’s nice is their cars. The nicest cars pull up and the most horrible people get out. Horrible bodies, horrible teeth, horrible voice modulation.’

This is a Hindu society: I’m back for a million more lives – how much fuss am I going to make about this one? Indian businesspeople might run a school or feed a few orphans, but they’re not interested in reform because they are bent on making the system work for them. Hinduism is very pliable. It rationalizes inequality: if that guy is poor it’s because he deserves it from his previous lives, and it’s not for me to sort out his accounts. Hinduism allows these guys to think that what they get is due to them, and they have absolutely no guilt about it.’

He’s an Indian father, and he’ll protect his son above everything else. A car accident is a matter of perception, it’s a trick of fate, but a father’s duty to his son is absolute. Do you think he’s going to say, Confess to what you have done and pay the price? This isn’t a guilt culture. In the Indian psyche, you dissociate yourself from the bad things you have done, and then they’re not yours any more. That’s why you can never make any accusation stick to a businessman or a politician. They won’t even recognize the crimes you’re accusing them of. They’ll probably have you beaten up for insulting them.’