Kureishi was born in Bromley, South London to a Pakistani father, Rafiushan (Shanoo) Kureishi, and an English mother, Audrey Buss.Emily Ballou, "Whims of the father", The Australia, 15 November 2008. His father was from a wealthy Madras family, whose members moved to Pakistan after the Partition of India in 1947. Rafiushan came to the UK in 1950 to study law but once he ran out of money it was necessary to take a desk job at the Pakistani embassy instead. Here he met his wife-to-be, Buss, "a young lower-middle-class suburban woman". He wanted to be a writer but his ambitions were frustrated, "eking out a life of permanent disappointment, writing novels on the kitchen table, but getting turned down." The couple were married, the family settled in Bromley where Kureishi was born. In an interview, Kureishi notes:My [paternal] grandfather, an army doctor, was a colonel in the Indian army. Big family. Servants. Tennis court. Cricket. Everything. My father went to the Cathedral School that Salman Rushdie went to. Later, in Pakistan, my family were close to the Bhuttos. My uncle Omar was a newspaper columnist and the manager of the Pakistan cricket team...My grandfather, the colonel, was terrifying. A hard-living, hard-drinking gambler. Womanising. Around him it was like The Godfather. They drank and they gossiped. The women would come and go.
