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Just lately I spent a while with a good friend who occurs to be governor of a state. I used to be at all times curious to know what a governor does, or doesn’t do, and his invitation to ship a lecture got here in very useful. I stayed virtually every week in his hideout, a palace actually, and completed my guide on which I had been working for years.
The state governor’s job in India is probably the cushiest of all of them, and, as I informed my good friend, his invitation is a form of five-star vacation, all bills paid. You’re telling me, he mentioned, as if the job is a form of punishment, however I by no means noticed him do something besides preside over some conferences and entertain assorted company of meals which typically went on for ever. By the way, he had placed on various weight since I had final seen him in a bookshop in Connaught Place, Delhi, haggling with the proprietor over the value, however that was a very long time in the past.
Now he presided over a state from a palace that was strategically positioned over an escarpment, with valleys on both aspect and turbulent rivers by means of them as they poured headlong into the Arabian Sea. There was a lot noise and, in fact, big mountains of spray because the rivers clashed and disappeared into the ocean. Each morning, I noticed the spectacle from my room, although my good friend had no time for such frivolities simply as he had no time for something however politics.
The palace was about 5 hundred years previous, however nicely preserved for all its years. The primary man to overcome a bit of India had lived there however his portraits had now been eliminated, although some issues remained. I used to be informed that the room I slept in was truly his bed room, and so maybe was the large mattress. The concept I used to be sleeping in a international normal’s large rosewood mattress was sufficient to depart me sleepless, however regularly I bought used to it.
I realised in the course of the course of the week that my good friend was truly working a five-star resort, and lots of of his company have been unknown to him.
At supper time, I met all of them — governors of different states, ministers from Delhi, together with one who was not fairly conversant in the knives and forks laid out earlier than him and who begged to instruct him within the niceties of eating room etiquette, and, in fact, the standard crowd of hangers-on who’ve a watch for freebies. I met all of them on the dinner desk, and typically at breakfast, when a few of them gave the impression to be not fairly awake, and weren’t too blissful on the so-called “western” meal served to them which appeared somewhat too mild in energy for the arduous work they’d put in because the day progressed.
Since I had not a lot to do besides go over any guide and proper the proofs, I used to marvel over the governor’s property, and, in fact, the palace, beneath the watchful eyes of the armed constabulary which watched my each step. There have been additionally indicators of the earlier international occupants. There was a church, somewhat misplaced beneath the brand new dispensation, and armloads of weapons and rifles, a few of them going again to the sixteenth century. You felt you had instantly skipped centuries and have been carried again to the instances Vasco da Gama had landed at Calicut seeking spices and the commerce winds had transported him north alongside the Malabar coast to Goa and past. You fest you have been again within the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries, among the many Marathas mendacity in wait within the mountains to take their revenge on the international marauders.
However my good friend had little use for such issues and couldn’t even communicate the native language.
His company have been so busy with their schedules they did not a lot take care of native historical past both. For them, one Raj Bhavan was nearly as good as one other, and the spectable of the 2 rivers on the backside of the valley made no impression. Each time I attempted to attract them into historical past, they regarded the opposite means, and left of their white Ambassadors!
The day I left, I felt I used to be leaving historical past behind, however my good friend was relieved. He may now return to his dinner company and their scented women, and the standard gossip about Delhi. Politicians will at all times be politicians!
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