women dressed in styles popular in the 1960s. They are sitting on easy chairs somewhere in the open. Tennis racquets of the old world, glasses and bottles strewn on the grass. The sun in their eyes is making some of them squint. Diwan Sahib is not squinting: he is looking at the camera, and his chin is raised, his face has a kind of triumphant elation. His eyes have that sparkle I knew so well, but otherwise he looks quite different: no wrinkles and no beard, short hair brushed back in a widow’s peak: a clear-eyed, handsome, young face. He has a toddler in the crook of his arm and his other hand rests on the head of a large golden retriever.
There are three women in the group, all in fashionable chiffon saris and sleeveless blouses. One of three is not looking at the camera. She is looking at Diwan Sahib and the toddler with a hunger that leaps out from the picture even decades later.
I open the letter that is clipped to the picture. The envelope is addressed to Veer. It is in Diwan Sahib’s handwriting and I find it difficult to read despite knowing its words.
Dear Veer, my very dear Veer,
What I could not call you in my lifetime, I can say when wiped away by death: my son. I could not own you as my son. I tell myself there were reasons, and many times over these last years I have been on the brink of telling you and begging you, as an adult man, to understand why I did what I did. But I didn’t have the nerve – and after such crime, what forgiveness or reparation? Things happen and deeds are done in a long life for which there are no explanations that will satisfy anyone. Anything beyond is wasted words.
I ask your forgiveness nevertheless.
In grief,
Your father,
Suraj Singh
The will is clipped to the envelope. Diwan Sahib does not repeat his revelation about his son Veer in the will, but its intention is to make amends, to take a step towards healing with the gift of an ancestral home, his son’s rightful inheritance. The will is in Diwan Sahib’s handwriting, and the signatures of witnesses flow across the bottom of the page. It has a date, it has everything that makes it legally valid. It is brief and clear:
RAI BAHADUR SURAJ KISHAN SINGH, EX-DIWAN OF
SURAJGARH, HIS LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT.
NOW MAY IT BE NOTED AS FOLLOWS THAT
CONSEQUENT UPON MY DEATH:
1. Whatever alcohol is left over is to go to Najeeb Qureshi. He is also to get my Rolls Royce Silver Ghost cigarette case, an object he has longed for all the years we have known each other, and one that, as a lover of motorcars, he considers his by right.
2. My newspaper clippings file must go to General Bisht, so that he begins to read, at whatever age.
3. My tenant, Ms Maya Secuira, is to inherit the papers pertaining to Edward James Corbett. She is also to have the enclosed letters of Edwina Mountbatten and J. L. Nehru.
4. The money in my bank account is to be divided equally between Himmat Singh and Puran Singh, Charu and Dharma Devi.
5. All my household goods and clothes are to go to Himmat Singh, to sell, dispose of, or keep, as he pleases.
6. The house and all its grounds are to go to Ranveer Singh Rathore, provided he undertakes to allow lifelong rent-free cottages on the estate to Dharma Devi, her son Puran Singh, and her grand-daughter Charu Devi; and also allow Maya Secuira to occupy her cottage as long as she pleases. The original deed is enclosed, showing the boundaries of the estate Ranveer Singh Rathore is to inherit from me.
Signed and witnessed.
I hold the will and letter up to shade my eyes and look at the jumbled shadows of the words through the sunlight. I think back to those early conversations with Veer when he told me in bitter tones about the way he was sent from the house of one relative to another as a child, parcelled out between them on school holidays. How none of them ever had time for him. How he grew attached to one or two of them, and hoped they would announce all of a sudden that they were his parents. How, by magic, he would know where he belonged and would have a real home. How Diwan Sahib had imitated leopards and thrushes for him sometimes, but returned in five