“You inherited your Uncle George’s feet,” said my mother. Clearly, this was not a good thing. In case I had missed the point, she added, “He had ugly feet too.” I looked down at my twelve year old toes and tried to picture Uncle George in them. Many years later I took a photo of my feet in Varanasi. Feet that had got me around more than half the world over the course of half a century. “Thanks, Uncle George,” I said, and my left big toe nodded in reserved acknowledgement.