life. She had also seen her wedding jewels pawned to loan sharks.
None of this mattered. What mattered to my mother, the Rani Sahiba
of Dumraon, was respect.
‘Beyond a point, people want money to buy respect,’ she would tell
me when I was a kid. ‘Respect, however, can’t be bought.You have to
earn it.
‘Live with dignity. Live for others, that is how one earns respect,'
she used to say She was right. Dumraon’s people loved her. Not
because she was the Rani Sahiba, but because she was the Rani Sahiba
who cared. For the past fifteen years, she had given her all to the
Dumraon Royal School in Nandan village, on the outskirts of
Dumraon.
I felt homesick. The dusty lanes of Dumraon felt more enticing
than the colonial lawns of St. Stephen's. I couldn't wait to be home.