‘This more or less guarantees a seat in the new cabinet for Daata,’ Avantika announced in the dimly lit Darbar Hall. Uday Singh and his eldest and middle sons, Ajay and Abhimanyu, looked at her incredulously.

‘Is this a joke?’ Ajay Singh did his best, but could not suppress his exasperation. ‘We are months away from the elections.’

‘And two years into a campaign where we’ve been brandishing the Congress flag in every district,’ Abhimanyu added.

‘Avantika,’ the king uttered in a slow, deliberate manner, ‘You know me well. I do not accept this offer. In fact, you could have rejected it up front in Delhi. There was no need to give this any breathing space.’

‘Daata, it’s not an offer,’ said Avantika. She was wearing a white sari, an outfit that would become her trademark in the coming years. Delhi had changed her. Her words lingered, echoing from one majestic wall to another, as though they were going up to each painting of Ranakpour’s previous rulers announcing to them individually that their time was up. The word from the national capital had spelled doom for Ranakpour. True, it was not an offer – far from it. What Avantika had conveyed to them was an order. The Party had wilted under pressure from a key vocal faction of their party – the freedom fighters, men and women who had sacrificed their lives to fight for India’s Independence. While the princely states were happy to sit back and deal with the colonial powers to further their own agendas, the freedom fighters had relentlessly fought them with blood, sweat and tears for a better deal. Through lathi charges, massacres and hunger strikes, they had staged a revolution with nothing to protect them but the khadi on their backs. Now, it was time for them to take their hard-won place at the table and have a say in the building and character of the new nation. Uday Singh had transferred his ruling powers to the Union of India in a quid-pro-quo agreement with Patel’s men, saying he would be backed by the Congress Party as their candidate from Ranakpour. However, months before the 1952 elections, Avantika got word from the top brass of the party that they would be backing the local freedom fighters instead. The Congress Party had no choice but to accept their demand to run in the elections; else, they risked an uprising that would break up the party before even a single vote was cast. Uday Singh would have to step down and he would be thanked with an administrative role within the party – not a public-facing leadership role, but a bureaucratic one deep in the political apparatus.

‘It’s still a good deal,’ protested Avantika. ‘And mind you, we have the privy purses. The party has bent over backwards to cater to our interests.’

‘You can’t be serious, Avantika,’ said Ajay Singh, raising his voice at his sister for the first time in his life.