Desperate people began emigrating with their livestock and belongings. Many wandered in search of food and clean water until they died from starvation. People who stayed put were not much better off as cholera broke out among the vulnerable population. A year into the famine, hope floated as the autumn harvest of 1842 promised to be abundant, but swarms of locusts descended upon the fields and destroyed the young crops. Then came the malaria. One-third of the population of Ranakpour was wiped out, and the rest did not know where their next meal was going to come from. The fact that the British had mandated opium farming in the neighbouring states didn’t help either.

Finally, Abhimanyu’s great-great-grandfather, Durlabh Singh III, swallowed his pride and reached out to the British authorities for help. He knew they were sitting on 100 million pounds of rice and that they could move it quickly to Ranakpour. After some diplomacy, Sir Arthur Muir, the lieutenant-governor of the province, promised that he’d help the king, but only after he had taken care of a similar situation in Ajmer, a British territory that was given priority.

Durlabh Singh knew that his kingdom was weeks away from total decimation when he received a strange offer from the king of Manda. Not only did the latter promise to direct food and relief to Ranakpour in a matter of days, but he also promised a considerable chunk of Manda’s wealth to Ranakpour’s royal coffers if Durlabh Singh agreed to marry his eldest son to Manda’s princess, a young girl who was all of 3’3”. All hell broke loose when Durlabh Singh explained the offer to his family. The queen was livid, and the son in question was offended that his father was even considering the offer. The royal family, of course, had just enough food supplies to last them till help arrived from the British. But that required the family to stay cocooned in their palace while people died outside. This could very well mean an uprising.

In the end, with no other way out, Durlabh Singh ordered his son to marry the little princess, as she came to be known in the family. The prince had no say in the matter, and begrudgingly rode in his new wife as his subjects reveled to the tune of the wedding brass band. A calamity had been averted – Ranakpour had food on the table. The princess gave birth to a healthy son who grew up to be a strapping and handsome man, and the prince married again soon after.

That’s what marriages meant in the first family of Ranakpour for ages – inheritance, diplomacy, politics. A lot was considered before marrying off sons and daughters, the least of which was love. And marrying a commoner was something that was never to be even discussed. For as long as anyone could remember, a Ranakpour royal had never married a commoner. There was Manvendra Singh, the fourteenth century prince who married a Mughal princess to keep her father from invading Ranakpour. Outside the walls of the palace, the spin given to this move was that the Ranakpour royals had championed a symbiotic Hindu–Muslim relationship, but inside the palace, it was known and recognized for what it was – a compromise; a defeat. The head priest had died under mysterious circumstances just before the wedding. There were murmurings that the family had him killed as he had turned vocal against the decision to bring a Muslim into the palace.