‘The Nizams have been thrown out of Hyderabad, but they won’t give up. I am working with them through international channels. I need your help to convince Daata and others to join the fight, Abhi. We have the Nizam with us! The rightful ruler of Hyderabad will not—’

‘Vihaan, you are barking up the wrong tree. I wish to rest. Now please leave me alone.’

As Vihaan made his exit, angrily and unceremoniously lambasting his elder brother for inaction, Meera was trudging along Fifth Avenue, battling a blizzard. Twenty inches of white, powdery snow had engulfed the city, and Meera was on the road, taking one step at a time. Her forty-minute walk on a normal day had taken her three hours, even though hundreds of men all over the city were ploughing the snow relentlessly.

‘It’s your big day! I have tickets to a Broadway show!’ she said as soon as she entered Abhimanyu’s hospital room. She was shivering and dusting snow off her heavy winter coat, clueless about the two brothers’ recent and contentious reunion. Abhimanyu smiled at her excitement, grateful once more that she was by his side, though he was almost immediately consumed by guilt when he remembered that he was keeping her in the dark. But this was Meera’s first Broadway show and he didn’t want to play spoilsport, and so he gamely went along with her.

But on his first night outside the sterile room of Mount Sinai, the prince could hardly focus. He couldn’t recall the plot or the songs of Kiss Me Kate, a story about love lost and found, even if his life depended on it. Instead, he found himself wondering whether the veritable theatre – the same one where Orson Welles and his troupe had once performed in defiance of an actors’ strike in the mid 1930s – would stand the test of time. He learned from the posters hanging in the waiting hall that the New Century Theatre was established in 1921, first as Jolson’s 59th Street Theatre. It had then changed hands and was rechristened numerous times through the following decades, till the original owners bought it back from the brink of total failure, and again named it the New Century Theatre. As the actors on stage danced to the title song, Abhimanyu couldn’t help but notice the similarities between the theatre and India. How many times would the structure change hands, similar to how India had been invaded, captured, lost and reclaimed again for centuries. Years later, during one of his rare trips to America, he found himself unusually sad when he read that the shutters of the New Century Theatre had come down in 1954, and the building was demolished in 1962.

For Meera, though, the night was a brief respite from the difficult times since the accident. She hadn’t allowed herself a moment to breathe easy lest she miss any aspect of Abhimanyu’s care and recovery. The last few months had also been the longest gap in her riyaz; her heart was heavy and she hadn’t thought about singing even a single verse since she boarded the flight to America. But at the theatre, she was fascinated by the performance, an experience that would stay with her for a long time as she started drawing inspiration from Western classical traditions, masterfully borrowing the unique traits of opera singing in her own signature modulations.