I went to Jasol to meet my grandfather, Zorawar Singhji. The great stables in the House were now nearly empty, not entirely of animals but certainly of spirit; even the few animals that remained appeared to have lost condition. Far fewer people lived in the House now in any case, and with the bustle gone, there reigned over it a certain stillness, a brooding silence that carried in its hollows the echoes of time.
I was immensely saddened and went up to meet grandfather but with no joy in my heart. He was sitting almost slumped, in a patch of sun, in his “fulgar”, his shaven head covered not with his usual turban but a skull cap of his own design, thinly padded and with ear flaps for protection against the cold. We talked of this and that, of the elections that had just concluded, of the changes that were taking place in Sindh.
