DRY DAY

The Prince awakened with a jerk from a nightmare in which he was being relentlessly pursued by large moustachioed men with swords. Sweat-sodden, swaddled in clean but threadbare bed clothes, he lay limp as a rag doll on a creaky four poster bed that had seen better days. He breathed a sigh of relief when he realised that he was, after all, not going to be decapitated and that it was all just an extremely unpleasant dream.

The relief didn't last long.

A wave of pain seared through his head as if a bewhiskered brute from the dream had actually managed to divide his cranium in half with a scimitar. His tongue felt like sandpaper and his entire body was aflame with thirst. 'Kunwar Pratap Singh,' said the Prince, addressing himself with severity, 'you must try and give up drinking one day.'

'Maybe. But not today. After all it's my birthday!' he said, answering himself with a giggle.

Kunwar Pratap Singh, the Prince, albeit a minor one, of the Principality of Rajpura in Eastern Rajasthan, was not a particularly reflective man. A slight youth of twenty six sweltering desert summers, he lived in an ancestral haveli in the centre of the small, dusty town eponymously called Rajpura. Orphaned at the age of twelve, he had lived alone in the haveli with only his old family retainer Bhure Lal for company.

Bhure Lal, the son of Shyam Lal, the head syce of the royal family, was just a slender lad in his late teens when he joined the retinue of servants at the haveli. Being just a couple of years older to Kunwar Pratap Singh he was assigned to the princeling as a personal valet. The youngsters hit it off right away and soon became inseparable.

Kunwar Pratap's life was the envy of all. Rich and privileged, he indulged his every whim and behaved as he pleased. He would go riding on his favourite stallion through the barren landscape outside Rajpura with Bhure Lal running alongside, holding the stirrup. The young Prince would whip his mount into a thundering gallop in order to see how long Bhure Lal could hold on to the stirrup before letting go. His servant would hold on for dear life but eventually he would fall, often injuring himself. Kunwar Pratap would chuckle victoriously. Bhure would smile ruefully, admitting defeat but he would never reveal the extent of his injuries to his master.

They would play cricket with some local boys with Bhure doing the running and the fielding for the young lord. Sometimes the Kunwar would get into wrestling matches with his much bigger and stronger valet who would find ever more creative ways to allow his master to win.

'You are slippery as a cobra and strong as an ox Kunwar Sa!' Bhure would pant and shake his head in admiration causing his master's slight chest to swell with pride. The prince and Bhure Lal would spend every minute of the day together except when the private tutors came to instruct the Kunwar in his academic lessons. The prince's father, His Highness Raghavendra Vir Singh had decreed that it wouldn't do for the servants to get too educated. 'They should know their place,' he would growl. The Raja was very clear about the treatment of the household help. He also forbade the Kunwar to teach or play chess with Bhure Lal. 'It teaches the servants strategy my boy. And it is too dangerous to teach them that a pawn can kill a King.'

But fate lurks around every corner. And it possesses a very sharp knife. Fate decided to make its pitiless presence felt in young Kunwar Pratap's life on the occasion of his twelfth birthday.

The Kunwar's mother, Rani Durga Devi doted on her wayward son. She had big plans for his twelfth birthday. A large feast was organised with royalty from most neighbouring principalities in glittering attendance. Rolls Royces, Aston Martins and Cadillacs swept regally into the haveli's large circular driveway bearing their cargo of Diwans, Nawabs, Rai Bahadurs and minor Maharajahs, bejewelled spouses and cocky offspring in tow. Servants bustled to and fro attending to the smallest whims and desires of the privileged guests.