My lifestyle changed. I began to wear European clothes. On formal occasions I wore a black frock-coat, grey striped trousers and spats on my shoes. I was amongst the select few Indians allowed membership in the Gymkhana Club. I never learnt to dance and sensed that Englishmen did not like Indians dancing with their women unless they brought their wives to dance with them. My wife, despite my attempts to get her to learn English from an Anglo-Indian woman, failed to pick up more than a few words and would even confuse ‘good-morning’ with ‘good-bye’. As for dancing, she would have sunk into the ballroom floor if asked to fox-trot. I went to the Gymkhana Club once every week to keep up appearances. I offered drinks to English members who cared to accept them. They seldom returned the hospitality. For relaxation I sought the company of Indians. I felt more at home with my Muslim and Hindu friends than with Sikhs. A Muslim engineer had Delhi’s most famous singer as his mistress. I found her a flat to live in and was often invited to listen to her singing. Another Hindu friend had the prettiest Muslim girl as his concubine. We often met in her apartment for drinks and a chat. As far as possible I avoided going to parties in the prostitutes’ quarter.

Lord Chelmsford was succeeded by a sixty-year-old, Lord Reading, as Viceroy. He had no picchha (breeding) being the son of a fruit-seller and a deck-hand on a ship. Being a jew, he had brains. Also being a Jew he wanted to prove he was more British than the English. When he arrived in India in 1921 there was an agitation amongst the Sikhs to liberate their gurdwaras from hereditary priests. Gandhi and his Congresswallas were also demanding self-rule and the Muslim Moplahs of Malabar had risen against Hindu money-lenders. Reading first invited Gandhi over for a cup of tea to be able to size him up. A few months later he jailed him as well as the two Nehurs, Motilal and his son, Jawaharlal. All of them had called for a boycott of the visit of the Prince of Wales. (Incidentally, with the Prince came the last Viceroy of India, Lord Mountabatten, who became engaged to Edwina Ashley at a party given by Reading). He sent the army to Malabar to crush the Moplahs. Reading was that kind of man: he only befriended Indian politicians to know their minds. However, he couldn’t do much to stem the Congress tide. The party swept the polls in the 1923 elections and Motilal Nehru became its main spokesman in the Central Assembly.

Reading was more interested in Indian politics than in the building of New Delhi. Nevertheless, it was during his tenure that the city began to take shape. The Viceregal palace was completed and only needed furniture and fittings. The two Secretariats were in the last stages of completion; so were a large number of bungalows and clerks’ quarters. I had built a block of shops with apartments above them and was well on the way to giving New Delhi its first cinema house, restaurants and department stores.