Deccan Queen English 2024

This concatenation of stories is based on characters from the life of the author, Farrukh Dhondy, in his childhood and boyhood in Poona and Bombay. Among the many personalities we meet are his grandfather, brought to poverty, misery and ruin through a deal with a Maharajah, the young Scottish brothers abandoned by their alcoholic father in Farrukh’s Anglo-Indian school, and his father’s friend and college mate supposed dead in the Second World War—who returns as the undead... But perhaps even more intriguing than the stories are the reactions of the characters’ descendants and relatives, who write back to the author objecting to aspects of the stories, threatening retribution or even importuning for favours. It is to set the record straight that the author decides to publish this ‘second telling’, a Take Two, which includes these communications appended to the tales.