‘Time for the kill,’ he muttered to himself, anticipating an in-swinger that would either crash in the stumps or on the pads to get the batsman out, leg-before-wicket. There was a chance the batsman was anticipating the in-coming ball, Abhimanyu thought, so the bowler could completely outfox the bat and go for a fast Yorker and take the stumps. The fielders took their stance as the bowler approached the end of his run up. Instead of an in-swinger or a yorker, the bowler sent down a rising bouncer and the batsman was caught stunned on the crease, trying to fend off the ball while ducking his head. Abhimanyu’s heart skipped a beat as he recalled the vicious bouncer that got his eye. The ball crashed into the batsman’s gloves, something Abhimanyu couldn’t really see — the white blotch in his eye was acting up but he gathered that the ball had looped safely into the hands of a slip catcher. Easy dismissal. The bowler had outfoxed both the batsman and Abhimanyu. After few more minutes of frustrated viewing where he could not catch the intricacies of the play due to his impaired vision, Abhimanyu called it a day and headed back to the palace.

After the family lost the elections, the palace was never the same. Uday Singh rarely left his wing; in fact, barring his staff, nobody had seen him for months. The only people left there lived in the paintings on the walls. Ajay Singh Ranakpour, in his military uniform, looking forlornly down the corridor; a few months ago, he had left Ranakpour for a long army assignment. Avantika was no longer the wide-eyed, silk sari-clad princess as her painting suggested. She had opted for humble khaki clothes, leading India National Congress’ innermost bureaucracy in Delhi. And Vihaan, with his rakish good looks and natural arrogance, had fallen off the face of earth, but was rumoured to be somewhere in Europe. They were all gone now, leaving Abhimanyu to eat dinner alone at the grand dining table, watching seven servants filing in and out of the room to serve a single patron. A table perfectly laid out with crockery and cutlery, bearing the names of each and every family member, in case someone turned up unexpectedly. Abhimanyu looked around, inspecting the arrangement.

‘I’ll eat in my quarters,’ he instructed the staff and walked out without touching his food, heading for the cellar.