‘You know, the songs in advertisements.’

‘Are you serious?’ Meera raised her voice. Some of the men looked their way. She didn’t particularly enjoy their rendezvous in rundown restaurants, but acknowledged that it was the best way to keep their relationship under wraps. No one would expect a prince from Ranakpour and a middle-class Bombay girl to be at Lucky’s together.

‘What’s wrong with that? They pay well, I hear,’ he said, puzzled by her reaction.

‘It’s not about the money.’

‘Then what is it?’

‘Look at them, Meera,’ Abhimanyu said, gesturing at the workers outside. ‘You think this is what they aspire to be in life? Doing odd jobs? Yet, they go on, day after day. There’s dignity in all work!’ he announced. The grit of Bombay was rubbing off of him.

Meera let out a chuckle.

‘What?’ Abhimanyu asked her.

‘It’s easy for you to say that. Romanticizing work is simple for someone who …’ Meera stopped abruptly.

‘Someone who?’

‘Never mind.’

‘Hasn’t worked a day in his whole life? Go on, say it.’

‘Abhimanyu, I am sorry. I didn’t mean to say that.’ She put her palm over his mouth – a bold move given where they were seated, and that she was the only woman in the restaurant. ‘It’s just that … I thought being on stage with Pandit Bhairo would amount to something.’

‘It will. You did very well.’

‘You’re too kind to me.’

Far from it. Abhimanyu demanded more from her. Partly because he knew her potential and partly because he wanted to live vicariously through her, with her, as they charted a future together. It was Abhimanyu who yearned for the dignity of achieving something of his own. He projected his deepest desires on Meera in the hope that her success would inspire him to reach for the skies.

Slowly, doing well in his chosen game was no longer enough. He recognized that he had to change the way cricket was played in India. That way, he could achieve what he really wanted – making a contribution to this new Indian society that was so willing to discard him like a relic of the past. He became more proactive and began building connections beyond Bombay. From the idyllic grounds of the Orient Club grew a rudimentary domestic circuit of western India. With some help from Ranjit Singh, he reached out to teams as near and far as Pune, Baroda and Rajkot. Calls were made and good players hunted down. Abhimanyu paid for the best batsmen and bowlers to come down to the Orient Club as trainees and play with his team. When people turned down his offers to come to Bombay, he, along with Ranjit Singh, Kamal and others, visited them where they lived. The disparate group set about building a real Indian team from the ground up as the national team of nawabs and merchants travelled the world with moderate success. To him, the time had come to build a team that represented the raw, chaotic energy of the new nation. It wasn’t lost on him that the real irony lay in the fact that he, the royal prince was aiming to build a people’s team.