‘It’s going to be difficult to get used to living without all this, Dickie. I’m going to miss it.’

‘Hmm. It certainly will be hard to get by in England without a home that is larger than the Palace of Versailles and has eight tennis courts, a swimming pool, billiards rooms, a nine-hole golf course, a cricket pitch, stables and kennels. Do you think we’ll cope?’

Edwina sighed deeply, unmoved by her husband’s attempt at humour.

Lord Mountbatten took a look at his watch. ‘I’m late,’ he said. ‘There’s a problem with the handover date that needs sorting, apparently. I’ll see you at supper.’

His wife sighed again and returned her attention to the magnificent view of Raisina Hill from her window seat.

‘Cheer up, darling. I’ve managed to get my hands on the Bob Hope film that we wanted to watch,’ said Lord Mountbatten. ‘My Favourite Brunette—how does that sound?’

Edwina gave her husband a watery smile, ‘That makes it all so much better, Dickie.’

Fifteen minutes later in a conference room nearby, the handover date was being sorted rather animatedly. A small, mousy looking official pointed to some charts that he had laid out on Mountbatten’s desk.

‘Sir, our pundits say that 15 August is an inauspicious date. According to the alignment of the planets, it’s a very bad mahurat, sir,’ he said, shaking his head in disapproval.

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake. That’s a load of waffle!’ exclaimed Mountbatten. ‘We honestly can’t be deciding dates based on luck or other such hocus-pocus! Please say something to help me here, Jawahar.’

Seated across him, Jawaharlal Nehru nodded wearily, ‘Don’t worry, Dickie. We’ll work something out.’

The creases in the official’s forehead seemed to sharpen, as his mind ticked. He looked around the table and hesitantly cleared his throat. ‘Sir, perhaps we can time the hand over for midnight? Because, according to the English calendar, the day starts after midnight, but according to the Hindu astronomical calendar—the panchang—the day starts at sunrise. That way, we could perhaps mitigate the inauspicious nature of events?’

This suggestion was met with a murmur of assent from all present. The official jumped to his feet, relieved to finally have something that everyone agreed on, especially in these tediously fickle times. He was tired of the endless submissions and rejections of proposals, which merely added to his paperwork, with little being achieved. What with the Mahatma having vehemently opposed the very idea of Partition and with Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Nehru in deadlock about most issues.

‘I’ll start making the necessary arrangements, sir,’ he said, quickly exiting the room.

As expected, Lord Mountbatten wanted to be present in both Karachi and Delhi to hand over power (and face the shutterbugs, as the world watched). But even a viceroy couldn’t be in two places at the same time.

‘I could transfer power to Pakistan on 14 August,’ he suggested. ‘And then I could fly back to Delhi to do the honours on the 15th.’