‘Brother, with all due respect, I—’ Avantika began to counter him; she couldn’t stand the naiveté of her own family, and was ready to lay out her arguments before being cut off by Uday Singh’s raised hand.

‘Akhil Mewad Mahasabha,’ Uday Singh spoke loudly in a way that brooked no interjection. ‘That will be our party. The symbol – a camel. Add a spear.’

The Ranakpour siblings were stunned into silence.

‘A party that will unify the great state of Rajasthan. Apt, isn’t it?’ Uday Singh looked at Avantika.

‘Daata,’ Avantika called out to her father. The word had escaped her mouth involuntarily, like the last breath of someone who was dying. It was a request and a warning, with shades of fear, resentment and love, all wrapped into one breath.

‘The concept of privy purses is not compatible with free India,’ Uday Singh went on, speaking to his daughter as though he was teaching her the alphabet. ‘They’ll dry up before I breathe my last. You are right, Avantika. We have no privilege over the common man, let alone the freedom fighters. To each their own. Tell them we’ll fight our own election.’

‘You,’ said Avantika.

‘Excuse me?’ Ajay Singh knew what she meant, but wanted to hear it from her.

‘You will fight your election. My loyalties lie elsewhere, Daata. To each their own, just like you said.’

Through the years, a million palace intrigue stories would fill the gossip columns dedicated to the Queen of Congress, Avantika. She was written out of her father’s will, some would suggest. Other salacious theories about an affair with Nehru did the rounds as well. But Abhimanyu saw things as they were. Avantika’s decision to break away from her family was rather simple – she had had enough of Ranakpour and its men.

Freedom had achieved what the British could not – breaking up the royal family of Ranakpour. The nation that came together to throw out a foreign empire had broken up into indecipherable pieces in the run-up to the first elections of Independent India. A total of fifty-three parties and 533 independents contested for the 489 seats that were up for grabs. Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the Bolshevik Party of India, the communists, the Marxists, mazdoors, farmers, Schedule Castes, Muslims, Hindus and Anglo-Indians – a thousand geographic, religious and social identities fighting to stake their claim. And joining them was Uday Singh’s and his children’s competing perceptions of self-worth.

‘I wish you luck, my child,’ the erstwhile king said, leaving Avantika in tears on her last night ever in Ranakpour.

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