What the painter had not known was that Abhimanyu had seen the Indian flag the moment he had laid eyes on the painting. The painter had indeed captured the reality of Ranakpour. For the artist and Meera were not the only representatives of free India in the palace that night. Present in the Durbar Hall were also the members of the Indian Civil Services and Vallabhbhai Patel’s able diplomats armed with carrots and sticks, ready to ratify the final deal with Uday Singh to merge the princely state of Ranakpour with the Union of India. As part of their negotiations, the former king was presented with a relatively meager privy purse and annual payments that would not suffice for the lavish royal lifestyle they were used to. The payments would have been even lesser, had it not been for a secret arrangement that sweetened the offer. The officers had enlisted Uday Singh’s help to reign in his good friend, Paramveer Bhanj, the last ruling head of Bilwara. The agreement was that if Uday Singh would convince Bhanj to join the Indian dominion, in return, Singh would get the backing of the Indian National Congress in his run for a seat in the parliament.

This deal within a deal would unravel in the coming decades and end with Bhanj shot dead on the steps of his own palace. Even the privy purse was cancelled unceremoniously in the 70s. All that was left of royalty were their old forts and palaces sitting as white elephants. Centuries-old jagirs that were then turned into hotels. Ranakpour’s storied customs and traditions, and even Bilwara’s royal steps where Bhanj breathed his last, were now packaged and pimped into a seven-star resort experience – a business that was barely enough to cover the cost of maintaining the palaces.

It’s not as if the princely states had any leverage. Junagadh, Hyderabad and Kashmir were the last of the princely states to accede to the Indian dominion. Talks had broken down between the states and Sardar Patel’s men, having run out of carrots, had resorted to sticks, guns rather, to force them to join the Union of India. Secret political and military firestorms had engulfed parts of the newly-found India, and Uday Singh didn’t want to be a part of that theatre. In his mind, it was the best Ranakpour could do in the new India.

That notion of India would be litigated in every election cycle. The cat and mouse game of the subcontinent had been going on for centuries. The Mauryans and Chalukyas were followed by the Tughlaqs, and then the Bahmani Sultanate was thrown out by the Mughals, and so on. But the war of ideas continued well into Independence, across India, as states continued to be split up by leaders who jostled to hold on to power. Democracy and the powerplays that were the elections would ensure that the country kept transforming – a living, breathing, shape-shifting entity for years and years to come. One where the maps would change the nature of the land and the names on those maps would also change – from Bombay to Mumbai, Madras to Chennai, and so on – to reinforce identities, as if changing a name could erase their history.