There was only silence. It is said that Uday Singh then stood up, removed his pearl-beaded pagri and placed it on the floor. Untrue. What he did remove were the three Kaisar-i-Hind medals that had been awarded to him by King George VI, for distinguished services in public administration.

*

‘Curse those meddling freedom fighters for putting us in this mess!’ bursted out Avantika, Uday Singh’s only daughter.

‘You call this a mess? Wait till Jinnah’s master plan blows up in our faces,’ chipped in Ajay, sounding more bemused than angry.

It had been a week since the king’s announcement at the Darbar, and the royal family, barring Uday Singh, had regrouped in the chowk on the moonless night of August 14, 1947.

Vihaan blamed Gandhi and his followers. ‘These half-baked Western ideas of democracy have no place in our society,’ he said, his voice loud and angry. ‘Daata shouldn’t accede.’

‘What do you propose then, join with Pakistan?’ Ajay Singh asked rhetorically. ‘None. To hell with both. We stay on our own,’ Vihaan declared without any real authority on the matter.

Such vocal protests on royal grounds were unheard of, even in the king’s absence. But seeing their cushioned lives slipping through their fingers was enough for the princes and princess to shake off any inhibitions. Their uncle, Dushyant Singh, sat on the edge of the pond and watched his squabbling nephews and niece in dismay. ‘Still a few hours to go before independence, but I see you are already enjoying the liberties of freedom,’ he said, locking eyes with each of them.

His quiet words were enough to make them realize that they had spoken out of turn, and the siblings simmered down, hanging their heads low.

‘Abhimanyu, why don’t you go ahead and share your wisdom as well,’ Dushyant called out sarcastically. Abhimanyu, who had been standing a little away from the group, turned and looked at his uncle with his dark, melancholic eyes. Eyes that always gave the impression that he saw the world from a distance, as though he was disinterested in the events that were taking place around him. His siblings watched as Abhimanyu walked towards their uncle, carrying his 6’3” frame with effortless grace.

He stopped in front of Dushyant Singh and, folding his hands in the Ranakpour pranaam, said, ‘Who am I to stab at the tide of history, uncle?’ Abhimanyu was quoting Amir Chishti, his favourite Sufi poet, but that was lost on the gathering.

‘Yes, who are we?’ Dushyant Singh concurred under his breath. It was his final statement on the matter before retiring for the night.

Yaduveer, the youngest brother of the king, was not known for his rousing speeches, but he now tried putting a positive spin on the subject. ‘This is a big loss,’ he began a little stiffly, ‘but it opens up many avenues for all of us.’ Most of the family was present at the grand chowk as he went about listing all the ways in which they could benefit from their situation, but Yaduveer might as well have been standing in the middle of the Thar desert. No one heard him as he suggested that they could take the civil examinations and become bureaucrats. No one paid attention when he told them that there was hardly anyone in the new country who had real administrative experience like they did from being members of the ruling class. No one listened to his idea about joining politics, reaching out to people and, when the time came, asking for their votes. As Yaduveer rattled off his uninspiring list of opportunities with much less grace than the tranquil fountain gushing beside him, everyone else’s thoughts were focused solely on their personal futures. Would their land be taken away from them? Would they be thrown out of their palaces to live among commoners? They could be persecuted. History had shown that it didn’t end well when a king was stripped off of his powers.