Cirrus@Austlit

Dedication: To the memory of Tarzie Vittachi, ambassador for twenty-five years of the Sovereign Republic of Amnesia, and to my beloved family: Brendon, who charted my journey there, Channa, who updated the craft, Devika, whose judgement saved it many times from shipwreck, my affectionate thanks.

Epigraph: Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than the love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole...It is such a love that reassembles our African and Asiatic fragments, the cracked heirlooms whose restoration shows its white scars. (Derek Walcott, The Antilles: Fragments of Epic Memory, the Nobel Lecture, 1992)