This will be my final sanction from the New Jewel in the Crown, as the successful repatriation of India under The Flag renders my work here done. I should not say that it has been easy, but I will because it has. In truth, the natives put up very little opposition to my demands and not once reverted to their customary oppugnant civil disobedience. This may be largely due to my adroitness in deception and concealment, for it is my belief that whilst India is now once again proudly British, it may not be altogether aware of it. As the new Viceroy, I have been rather more discreet than erstwhile sovereign patriarchs by simply not informing anyone of my position. This way I rule the roost uncontested and the unfortunate bondservants of The Crown are none the wiser.

So as New Viceroy I will be able to preside over affairs from home soil while the Indians furnish me with a host of spices, silks and other riches, unable to see me putting my feet up and drinking Gordon’s and angostura. I will of course be returning East on occasion to meet with the unsuspecting parliamentary potentates to ensure their allegiance is assured, but these will be leisurely trips where I will do little more than pilfer whatever is available and indulge myself in fine spicy dining. I will be returning to England in the spring, until which time I will sequester at Penedo Da Soudade and do jolly bugger all.

Since my last correspondence, Julie and I have seen the coming and going of numerous guests. The Thurlow-Cook party arrived on the charter and immediately settled in. They became au courant with egg burgi at a roadside dhaba and, as beer was taken, Young Thurlow and I discussed our collective pullulating passion for taxidermy. Indeed, Mr Thurlow has been busy, most recently apprehending an inanimate aviary containing some twenty ‘umming birds’, as he puts it. He told me of his attempts to donate the thing to Tring Museum in the hope of being noted on a placard bearing his name, but as he spoke the word ‘placard’, he used the American enunciation. I recoiled and we did not speak for some hours.

In order to facilitate all-over brownness, Mr Thurlow elected to have his hair severely cut – ‘all off’, ‘loads on the floor’, ‘down to the wood’ so to speak. I was able to provide electric clippers and Ms Cook and I took turns in trying to shear and prune the sturdy locks. As you are aware, electricity supply in India is sporadic at best and hallucinatory at worst, and on this day the power was strong enough to half cut, half tear the hair for a few minutes but did not remain strong enough to finish the job. With half a haircut we headed out to enlist a local barber. Said coiffeur engaged his tonsorial equipment with some speed but as the haircut was nearing completion the power failed. The industrious barber shrugged his shoulders, took up the scissors and finished the job in darkness. The next morning yielded many laughs.

Two weeks later, strangely undeterred, Mr Thurlow visited another barber near our former Candolim residence. Were I in accompaniment, I would have advised Mr Thurlow to avoid this salon de beaute pas at all costs, having had a previous run-in with the destroyer therein wherein he gave me a number three crew cut on top and then inexplicably started shaving off the sides with no comb attached. I did not hit the man nearly as hard as I should have. Mr Thurlow’s experience was predictably not enjoyable. The clippers snapped at the half haircut juncture and although Julie attacked the man with fists, the clippers could not be fixed. After bilious expletives from a furious Julie, the bewildered Mr Thurlow was whisked away to our saviour barber who, upon seeing Mr Thurlow with half a haircut for the second time in as many weeks, batted no eyelids and asked for no explanations, simply doing what he could with his clippers until the power went off and finishing off badly with scissors. Mr Thurlow asked me later why Indians found it necessary to always give two haircuts instead of the conventional one. I simply patted his bemused, wonky hair in consolation.

The Whitings arrived and a real holiday atmosphere ensued. We gave the other British here a few lessons in the art and etiquette of consumption (not TB, the Brits don’t have that, its mostly the Indians). One notable occasion on a ‘drinking boat’ saw vigorous dancing actions to the excellent ‘Birdie Song’, which has by all accounts become unfashionable among British tourists these days. I am certain that we have again made this song fashionable, particularly the bit where you all join arms raised aloft and go round in a circle, the bit where it goes ‘der ner ner ner, ner nerr, der ner ner…’ everyone else had forgotten that bit.

Sitting in the summerhouse writing postcards, Mr Thurlow was appraised angrily by a Cobra. A seven foot long Cobra. He left the summerhouse and wrote no more cards.

The day before his departure Mr Thurlow and I were strolling along the river at the end of the lane and caught sight of a herdsman as he walked barefoot into the river, dutifully pursued by his fifteen lolloping buffalo. He crossed the river without even acknowledging that he had got wet, just as if he were crossing the road. The filthy buffalo were much more enthusiastic, bellowing brays as they marched through the water and emerged clean. Simultaneously a flock of rose ringed parakeets descended squabbling upon the palms. The sky was cloudless and the sun shone directly above. Mr Thurlow said he didn’t want to leave the next day.

On the work front, things have come to a grinding halt while I have a holiday. There is still talk of my continuing to get paid for doing next to nothing when I return home. This talk is cheap but my wages are not. Who can tell what will happen? I am quite bored with the whole thing now and might just drop it like unwanted litter (I don’t drop litter of course, but Indians do, oh yes, they are experts at it).

Julie and I took a recent trip to northern India in an effort to cover as much ground as possible in the short time we have left. The irrepressible Marlon of Travel Inn, Calangute contrived a punishing itinerary that saw us flying from Bombay to Delhi and then taking trains to Chandigarh, Shimla and Agra before flying back again. In Delhi we were entertained by the fabulously wealthy Khanna family whose six bedroom mock Tudor mansion would not be at all out of place in the county of Essex. Punjabis through and through, their money has not affected their class in any way, and each of their ensuite bathrooms contains a jacuzzi bath with gold taps. Their hospitality was superlative, unsurpassed. I have genuinely never received better, not even in England.

A Mercedes and driver was placed at our disposal, and our first stop had to be the Sulabh Toilet Museum on the outskirts of Delhi. The driver was somewhat confused as to the location but after some three hours of gridlock we arrived. The driver’s eyes nearly popped out when he read the sign saying Museum of Toilets. The place is a marvel – the tireless work done by the organisation to lift the dignity of the human refuse (by which I mean shit and piss) collecting Dalits is outstanding. Fee paying public toilets (Rupees 1) fund a school for ‘untouchable’ kids – and all in English. We spoke to them, and while I couldn’t understand them at all, Julie was able to converse freely (women are so much better at dealing with the awkward lower classes). The International Museum of Toilets houses all manner of lavatorial porcelain and is most interesting. While we were having the tour, our driver came in to check that his eyes had not deceived him and that we had genuinely come to a museum of toilets. He left in bemused giggles. When we finally returned to the house, the driver rushed off to the servants quarters to tell them all where we’d been. Laughter could be heard through the house until the cordial and avuncular Mr K boomed his displeasure from atop the sweeping staircase.

After a few excellent nights out, including a superb dinner at the golf club, we headed up to Chandigarh for a look at the Punjabi capital. After Goa, the hugeness of the Punjabis was momentarily frightening, that is until I got hold of myself and remembered my own stock. But they are impressive, if a little deaf (this was a joke that I made to Julie which refers to the turban covering the ears, literally ‘cloth ears’, she seemed to think there was some element of ‘racism’ in this, honestly, whatever next?). Chandigarh was purpose built as the showy new capital of Indian Punjab after partition. After a false start, Le Corbusier was awarded the task of taming India with Modernism. As I see it he succeeded completely. There is order among Indians here that is almost reminiscent of the Raj. We met a large number of young Punjabi men from Birmingham with a keen interest in beer and a strong dislike for Indian food, they seemed to enjoy watching me dismount from my cycle rickshaw which I never find easy. They seemed less happy when I clouted the driver for asking for a tip.

Recent initiatives toward peace between India and Pakistan have been most encouraging, and central to these instigations has been cricket. India were playing Pakistan in a one day international for the first time in the Punjab for fifteen years the day after we left Chandigarh, and we had the good fortune to meet the great Abdul Razzaq in the street. The Pakistanis were on a heavy shopping mission and were certainly enjoying the bars, but the papers would never tell you that.

And so on to Shimla (or Simla as our fathers knew and loved it), the summer capital of the Raj. Of all the hill stations and their inherent Britishness, Shimla is the most reminiscent, the spires of Christchurch reach up into the Himalayan sky saying ‘Oxford, Oxford, Oxford’. It is said that at the heyday of the Empire, one third of the world was governed from Simla. We elected to take the toy train up as our forefathers had done. Legroom was none. The six hour journey in too close proximity with honeymooning couples, singing awfully and throwing litter out into the national park as Indians love to do was a horrible experience. You must have got it on a quiet day old man, really, this was a piece of advice from you I could have done without. One great bonus however was the sighting of a number of Himachal pheasants, wonderfully strange birds and the proverbial hen’s teeth. We stayed with the Royal Family of Jubbal at their residence, Woodville Palace. A wonderful place to stay, not least because Dirty Den from Eastenders had stayed there some years before. I always love seeing the tiger’s heads mounted in splendor, oh, I don’t condone it you understand, but I would love to have lived back then…

The bird life was excellent, and the quietness of Shimla and the way that white people are not a novelty is so refreshing. Watching a tree creeper twitching on the bark of an altitudinous Deodar tree brought a clarity and calmness long forgotten. The quietness of home perhaps.

After Shimla there was one place left to go, one obvious outstanding sight to see before we headed back home. We couldn’t leave India having never seen the Taj Mahal. We had expected to run the gauntlet of beggars as we approached, but like many other hassle hotspots (Chandni Chowk, Colaba, Anjuna), Agra has been cleaned up, the limbless, diseased and inflicted turfed out to aid tourism, and a bloody good job too. They don’t even allow mobile phones inside the Taj grounds, so Julie and I deposited ours with two men who sat behind a table of laid out with hundreds of deposited mobile phones, all turned on, and all ringing. I asked the man how he coped with the din, “I must be happy, it is music, I sing along see, La La La La La La …” Indians never cease to inspire.

One’s first view of the Great White Mausoleum is pretty spine chilling. It’s such a familiar image that it feels something like coming home. But I have to say it soon wears off. After obligatory photographs and a little poking about, we were wondering what else to do. We thought we’d better go in, so we gave our shoes to the attendant and stepped inside. WHAM, the lingering smell of three million smelly feet every year punched us full in the face. Yes, the Taj Mahal looks nice but it smells like the Neal’s Yard Cheese Shop.

Wondering what else to do we stretched out on the lawns and I contemplated what was left to see of India. A great deal, no doubt. It occurred to me that we have been all over and seen very little, but then again we had seen quite a bit, certainly we had seen pretty much every bird in the book, every bird that is apart from the Hoopoe, a bird which is apparently common but despite great efforts, had evaded us. As I was contemplating how looking for birds is a great metaphor for looking at foreign lands, how seeking them out is very much like seeking out the real aspects of any unfamiliar place, and how being eluded by often the most common species is much akin to missing the point in new cultural exchanges, two Hoopoes swooped in and landed on the lawn in front of us. Two magnificent Hoopoes to round off the entire set. Two plump orange, black and white woodpeckers scurrying about the turf as if on tiny bicycles, pecking at the ground by the Taj Mahal. I clapped. I couldn’t do anything else.

So that’s my India Carruthers my old friend. I thank you for your influence in my posting as New Viceroy, and for all your advice, but most of all I thank you for what your family has given the world. India, as presided over by your father and his father before him is truly still the Jewel it always was. I am delighted that I have been able to re-colonise and that we are now again in charge. I hope my influence is appreciated by the New British, but I don’t care if it is not. India needs Britain, it is nowhere without us, the booming economy and pending superpower has nothing to do with it, the largest democracy in the world? So what? They’re still nothing without Britain, nothing at all. Perhaps I may have been a little harsh with the Indian people at times, and yes, I’ve clouted a good many people along the way, but it has been for the good of India and I am holding my head high.

I will miss our correspondence Carruthers, I have enjoyed our exchanges very much. Perhaps we could keep things going? My wife and I are returning to reside in Yorkshire of all places – from my understanding a place of fatuous know-all farming types with proletariat visions of posterity. And the accent? Can anyone understand Yorkshiremen? And by God they like the sound of their own voices, don’t they? Perhaps I should sort them out? Put them right on a few things? Hmmmn. Yes, Yorkshire will benefit from my input, no doubt, perhaps its time start a little charity work closer to home…

So over and out old man. Good luck with the towelheads, bag one for me.

To arms.

Curzon Jr.