rooms on the ground floor, and these he kept warm with a small fire, and a basic bar heater. The roofs leaked and many of the chimneys were blocked. He was too old to be bothered to repair anything, he said. A neighbourhood handyman was called in to patch up whatever was absolutely necessary and the rest was left to the elements and the monkeys that danced on the roof each afternoon. In the monsoon, buckets, tubs, and even gilded soup bowls from a fine porcelain dinner set, were planted all over the house to catch dripping rainwater. In winter Himmat Singh, who was only a little younger than Diwan Sahib, tottered about blocking broken window panes with pieces of cardboard, as a result of which the inner rooms were as dark as night in the daytime.
I had heard that before my time here, Diwan Sahib used to drive around in a temperamental blue Morris Minor that passers-by were accustomed to pushing to revive the engine when it lost interest. One afternoon, when it stalled thrice, he got out of it, gave it a parting kick, and left it to tip, handbrake-free, over Ranikhet’s steep western ridge. You could still see its rusted ruin trapped in the rocks below. Foxes lived in the shell. Mr Qureshi, the man who owned the town’s garage, and had repaired it for all of its life, could not stop mourning its brutal end. “That is no way to say goodbye to a car that has served you faithfully, to the best of its ability,” he said, and Diwan Sahib scowled, “Its best was appalling.” Mr Qureshi muttered, “Diwan Sahib is not himself after a few … Allah was wise to forbid alcohol.” Yet I often saw them together in the garden on folding aluminium chairs, Diwan Sahib squeezing lemon into gin, and Mr Qureshi holding a steel glass with both hands, sipping cautiously, as if it contained hot tea. He had a kind, bald face as round as a pumpkin, and as on a pumpkin all its lines radiated towards its centre, which was his small, cherry-like nose. The cherry grew redder as he sipped, but he persisted in deceiving himself that nobody could tell what he was drinking.
Diwan Sahib’s drinking sessions were his durbar. The table next to him had a bottle of gin on it before lunch, and rum if it was evening. Next to the gin on an old walnut-wood tray stood a bottle of bitters, a saucerful of lime quarters, a glass jug of water covered with a beaded white napkin and a silver cigarette case. Diwan Sahib no longer smoked, but the cigarette case had been his constant companion for decades and he liked having it nearby. The case was shaped as a Rolls Royce Silver Ghost, with every detail of the car intricately worked into the metal. The only moveable part, other than the wheels, was the car’s bonnet. Instead of carburettors and pistons, what was revealed when the bonnet was lifted was a compartment for cigarettes. Mr Qureshi coveted the case like a child, but Diwan Sahib would not part with it. His only concession was to allow Mr Qureshi to use it whenever he came. Mr Qureshi would place five of his own cigarettes within it as soon as he arrived. He would click the bonnet open when he wanted to smoke one, and quite often even when he did not. Diwan Sahib disliked the strong, filterless cigarettes Mr Qureshi smoked and would wave the smoke away saying, “I’m not going to let you use that case after today. Never.”
Diwan Sahib looked royal: his worn, brown dressing gown was his robe, and the woollen cap Charu had knitted for him his crown, while his immense height, his great age, and the whiteness of his hair and beard made everyone around him deferential. In the morning, if he was in a good temper, he allowed entry to visitors, and in summer they were frequent. Apart from Mr Qureshi and the elderly General who lived on the next estate, scholars of Indian history and wildlife made the long journey by train and road up from the plains to meet him and ask him questions about the princely state of Surajgarh. Where the Nawab had wanted Surajgarh to become a part of Pakistan at Partition, Diwan Sahib had opposed it, even getting into clandestine negotiations with political high-ups in Delhi to make sure Surajgarh fell to India’s share. Eventually