As the car swerved into the driveway of the Loharu House, I could understand why Jayant said it belonged to a descendant of a royalty. The gardens were pruned to perfection. The flowers on the trees swayed in the gentle breeze as I opened the car door. The place smelled fresh.
An Indian man came to the driveway where Lakhbir had stopped his car. “Miss Deborah?” he asked. I smiled. They had expected my arrival.
“Would you like to have lunch?”
The aroma emerging from the dining room was too strong to resist. A whiff of it was enough to help me make my decision. “That will be wonderful!”
Another Indian man, significantly of the lower end of the hierarchy came by and offered to carry my backpack. He led me up the marbled staircase, lined with family pictures of royalty. We then came to a rooftop garden that led to a few rooms. He opened one of them and showed me in. He then told me to come down to the dining room anytime I was ready for my lunch.
My Room
The key to my room. Most keys to the guest rooms are like that. I love that it's so antique!
I took a while to settle myself down before heading down to the dining room. There was an elderly man and a kind looking woman having their lunch as well.
“Welcome! Sorry, we didn’t know you’d be arriving so early or we’d have waited for you.” she said. I thanked her and told her I was early, as she busied herself telling the servers to bring me my plate. Before I knew it, I was served hot chapatti. I helped myself to the servings of curry at the small buffet table.
“This is my husband.” I wished I had caught the name, but I didn’t, and smiled at him instead.
“You have a beautiful place,” I commented, trying to strike a conversation.
“Thank you,” the lady smiled with pride.
“And how may I address you?” I asked.
“You can call me Fauziah,” she smiled at me kindly.
“Oh.. So you are Mrs Fauziah! I’m so sorry. It’s so nice to meet you. Jayant has been talking to me about you!”
“Oh yes,” she continued. “Danialle called this morning to check if you had already checked in.”
“Try some chutneys. This is nice… Do you eat this?” She pointed to small bowl of deep-fried okra. “Go on, taste it and see if you like it.”
I took a spoonful of the surprisingly light vegetable and crunched on it. The mix of spices cooked with the okra made it a wonderful dish to eat with the rice and curry. Just as I thought I had finished the chapatti on my plate, another hot one came.
Fauziah was known as Begum, a title conferred upon the women of royalty. It was obvious during my lunch that it was so. She bossed her manager and servers around in a kind but firm manner that saw them in silent reverence of her.
After pointing me to some sweet dates and Indian candies, I was left to have my lunch on my own, something I appreciated.
I walked around the place after lunch, and realized the gardens were far bigger than what I saw. She had a few gardeners working on her greenery, explaining why it was so immaculately pruned.
As I walked round the porch, I saw Lakhbir cleaning the car, clearing out the leaves from inside the car and polishing the windows. I had asked him to go have his lunch (since I knew he didn’t have breakfast) and pick me up some 3 hours later before I had checked in, but there he was. He couldn’t have possibly come back so soon. “Did he have lunch at all?” I wondered.
I went back to my room and realized that there wasn’t a TV in the room. Neither was there any radio or entertainment to speak of. The room was quiet except for the droning of the ceiling fans. Maybe the quietness was nice, and so I took out my book that I had bought in Delhi and started reading it. After a while, I got bored and decided to update my PDA with the happenings of the day. When that was done, there was still some two hours before I was to head down to MI Road for some shopping. That was when I decided to indulge on a phone call overseas.
I called Wendy, but she didn’t pick up her call so I called Grace and spoke to her for a while. It was nice to hear a familiar voice finally! I was concerned about the phone bills and asked Grace to check and send me a text message to tell me how much it would cost. It worked out to around S$1 a minute, which I thought was quite manageable since I spoke to her for some 15 minutes only. (I was billed later and found out it cost me almost S$4 a minute after charges from the Indian telco!).
After I put down the phone with Grace, I called Jun then Wendy. Again, it was wonderful speaking to them. That added some bulk to the final phone bill! But I guess I missed my friends as much as I was enjoying the time on my own in India.
