328. India’s Greatest Rebellion: The Reign of Terror (Part 7)

16:21Anita:You weren't joking when you said this is kind of almost the precursor to trench warfare because how many were lost trying to just get out of their trenches or the ditches and the number of lives they claimed. I think that's fascinating. Okay, so the ones 10 minutes in, you've got the first men who are finally making the run.

16:39William:Into the breach. One of them is this 16-year-old Fred Roberts, who later is a kind of greatest military hero. He's Lord Roberts of Kandahar at the end of his reign. And we met him in the Rudder Kipling episode as an old man talking about Kipling. But he, age 16, is in this first scaling party. And he writes, up went our men beautifully like a pack of hounds. We gunners had done our work so well that the breach was perfect. And we gained the ramparts with comparatively slight loss.

17:13Anita:Okay, so he makes it sound easy, but there are other accounts as well. So I'll just present to you Richard Barter. who's one of the first over the top. He's running forward and he remembers seeing the heads of the defenders, the rebels, sort of popping up over the ramparts. This is what he writes. He says, while along the walls they swarmed thick like bees, the sun shone full upon the white turbans and black faces, sparkling brightly on their swords and their bayonets. Our men cheered madly as we reached the breach. Roberts might have thought it was quite plain sailing. You've got those, you know, probably from a lower socioeconomic background, may I suggest, who are sort of being sent and pushed up front, who are saying, my God, you know, actually, we're getting mowed down.

17:56Anita:There are so many of them. They're thick like bees out there and firing at us. Okay, so what happens then? So they reach the breach. Do they go straight through? I mean, how quickly do they get in?

18:05William:Not quickly. He also writes, three times the ladder party was swept away and three times the ladders were snatched from the dead and the wounded. It was hard work getting up the breach, which is like sloping bank of sea sand from the pounding of the shot. So they're stumbling down this thing, trying to get up this incredibly steep. You've got ladders, men holding the ladders being shot, people there replacing them.

18:29Anita:Well, not just shot. I mean, it's medieval, isn't it? Because he also writes, and we have a lot to thank Barter for just for writing his thoughts down afterwards. But, you know, it's like medieval sieges. They're heaving huge blocks of masonry down at the ladder. So every time Barter and his friends are trying to get up, some of them are being brained by this rain of rocks that is coming down.

18:53William:And there's this very sweet final note he says. He says, once he gets up to the top, he and his friend Fitzgerald find themselves standing close up on the bastions. And he said, we shook hands and parted. He down the right of the breach, I along the parapet to the left towards the Kashmiri gate. I never saw him again. He was killed by a discharge of grapeshot inside the walls immediately after I parted from him. So there's massive carnage. These are very, very high casualties. The British have half thought that, as so often in war, they think that they've pelted the other side with artillery and the other side will now just sort of lie down and let Well, they'll run.

19:31Anita:They'll either lie down or run. That's what they'll do. But they don't. And that actually is the next. chapter of this story which is interesting because there's one thing to breach a city. You can blow a hole in a wall, you can send men in through that hole even if it is a costly thing to do. But then you have to keep the city and you have to keep pushing into that city. If it's a city that's filled with people who know that life or death depends upon keeping them out. Also, this is a city that's like a labyrinth, isn't it?

20:06It's

20:06Anita:How do you know where you're going? And how do you know what's above you? And how do you know what's coming around the corner? So it is, I mean, it could be a death trap for these people, couldn't it?

20:14William:So it is a death trap for the most famous of all the British in the attacking force. The party that's been told to sweep right from Kashmiri Gate towards the Maury Bastion is led by none other than John Nicholson, this sort of psychotic, brave madman. and he leads the charge and he gets in the Kashmiri gate successfully and they head right. But it's just after that, that Nicholson is shot down. And I've been to the place where he was shot. It's still there, the little plaque set up by the Victorians that no one's taken down yet. And you can see where he lied because as so often, again, it's bad wounds don't necessarily kill you immediately.

21:00Anita:No, it's almost a blessing if you do go quickly, because actually the lingering and the agonizing of a long, slow, drawn out death is just unbelievably painful. And that's nine days?

21:10William:Nine days dying.

21:12Anita:Wow.

21:12William:And what he lives long enough to see is the hesitation by his nemesis, Archdale Wilson, this very hesitant British commander.

21:22Anita:He hates Wilson.

21:24William:So Nicholson lies lingering in a state of near death for nine agonizing days. What he sees is Archdale Wilson, the commander who he hates and thinks is too timid, almost ordering the withdrawal because the Brits get within the walls and they expect that once normally with any siege, once you're within the walls, that's it, the city's taken.

21:49Anita:You've won. Yeah, that's it.

21:50William:But in this case, the sepoys who have anticipated the English coming in because they can see the effect of the siege battering and they know that they can't save the walls, which are just crumbling in front of them. So several days before that, these guys build a set of trenches just 100 yards within the city, opposite St. James's Church. And you can still walk to this day. All these places.

22:18Anita:Oh, I mean, that's really clever, clever warfaring there, Willie, because what you're in effect saying is that, you know, the rebels, what they've done is that they've said, okay, we lose the wall, but we'll make a wall within a wall and then another one, like an onion that you can get through the outer, but then you've got another, you know, another barrier. You shall not pass. You've got to get through those others as well.

22:37William:And for nine whole days, that wall within the wall holds. The British may have got within Kashmiri Gate, but they've only got 100 yards.

22:46Anita:Right.

22:46William:And the whole thing is in the balance because there are no more reinforcements. If this assault fails, it may be another two years before the British gather enough troops to fight this. And this is everything. The fate of India literally hangs in the balance. And at this point, either side could have broken and run. Both sides are in a very bad way. The British have had far more casualties than they expected. Nicholson is clearly dying. And Wilson is seriously pondering whether he should retreat to Simla. And Nicholson's very characteristic last contribution in this before he finally succumbs is when he hears that Archdale Wilson is thinking of withdrawing, he whispers, thank God that I have yet the strength enough to shoot that man.

23:32Anita:That's hilarious. I mean, if true, those are the best dying words I've heard. Okay.

23:41William:He's a great character. And I have to say, I love my villains. And Clive just provided endless material when I was doing the anarchy. And John Nicholson was the brilliant.

23:51Anita:A bloodthirsty monster, but brave till the end. I mean, if you're sort of there on a stretcher in agonizing pain without the kind of painkillers we have today. And the one thing you can think of.

24:01William:Shooting your commander.

24:03Anita:I'm shooting Archdale Wilson. It's the last thing I'd, Archdale. It's almost, I mean, it's comedic and also gory. Okay, so does he do it? Because, you know, Nicholson is not going to shoot him and Nicholson is not much longer for this world. So, I mean, how does that play out then?

24:18William:So there's one other story just before the turning point in this. And this is our old friend Theo Metcalf, the junior magistrate who we've seen move from a sort of near-do-well son of Theophilus Metcalf, who used to be the British resident, too keen on dogs, too keen on horses, too keen on women.

24:41Anita:Playboy about town, basically doesn't do very much, makes up shit. Every time he's asked for any kind of intelligence report, he just goes and…

24:50William:He's Flashman. He's basically a Flashman character.

24:52Anita:He's Flashman. I mean, he's hilarious. So, what he does is he goes and he collects all the gossip and he says, behold, I have an intelligence report for you. But he has undergone something of a transformation because Theo Metcalf, and if you've listened to some of the previous ones in this series, has completely underestimated the feeling of the rebellion. And so, when he finds himself having to beg at the doors of his former friends, please let me in when he's fleeing for his life. And one after the other, they either turn him away or they betray him or they basically set him up to be killed.

25:25Anita:He is getting coarsened and hardened and this sort of like quite a happy-go-lucky kind of charlatan of a man is turning into quite a wounded psyche and getting angrier and more kind of. At this point, Willie, he's almost unrecognizable from the young man that we know who made up shit in intelligence reports.

25:43William:That's right. And he is the one person in the attacking force that really knows Delhi. I mean, everyone else is from elsewhere. Theo had lived in the city. He knows the alleys. He'd gone wandering around to the courtesans and to the jewelers and all this stuff. And he knew the city, which he'd grown up in backwards. So in the initial assault, he is sent to capture the Jammer Masjid. And there's this fantastic scene when they find this area which is not defended, and they get way ahead of any other British force, down right to the street on the edge of the Jammer Masjid, almost within sight of the Red Fort.

26:24William:And it's complete silence, and it's eerie. And he realizes something is wrong because there's no shooting, there's no sniping, there's just complete silence in the street. And he senses that something is happening. And eventually he gets up to the street immediately next to the north gate of the Jammu Masjid, which of course we know is where the jihadis and the Ghazis with their axes, the real fanatics, be waiting. And these guys gingerly move up the street, looking left and right, trying to work out if there's an ambush, seeing where there's complete silence. And it's only when they get to the steps of the Jammu Masjid that there's this eerie creaking noise.

27:04William:and the gates swing open. And these fanatical jihadis come racing down the steps with their axes. None of them, for some reason, seem to have firearms. The jihadis just got the kind of traditional swords, spears, arrows, and particularly battle axes. And these guys go down and they drive Theo back, despite the fact they've got this antiquated weaponry. So Theo survives this jihadi break, if you like, this sort of extraordinary eruption of the Ghazis out of the Jammer Masjid, makes it back to the British front line at St. James's Church. And for the next eight days, there is this complete stalemate.

27:48William:The sepoys are in their trenches. The British can't go forwards. They don't want to go back. Archdale Wilson's considering retreat, but Nicholson's threatening to shoot him if he does. And what both sides have forgotten is the lunar cycle. So it's a total stalemate. The sepoys are in their trenches, the British are facing them. Archdale Wilson is thinking of retreating, but Nicholson's going to shoot him if he does. And it looks like this could go on for months.

28:16Anita:But, but, but William, look up. Just look up because something from the heavens is going to change everything. Let's take a break. Join us after the break.

28:34Anita:This episode is brought to you by the Folio Society and it's Tabby and Dominic here from The Book Club, Goalhanger's latest show.

28:43William:Now, Tabby, as you know, there are some books that you read once, but there are others you especially return to again and again. And those second kind of books, they really deserve to last, don't they?

28:53Anita:That's what the Folio Society does. They are an independent, employee-owned publisher based in London.

29:00William:Every book is produced with specially commissioned, beautiful artwork and a specially commissioned introduction that puts the story in its context.

29:09Anita:Folio Society publishes the books we love from Bronte to Dickens, from Margaret Atwood to Tom Holland. The books can feel like works of art in their own right. They're built around the text, the stories that last in books that are made to last. If a story matters, keep it properly. Find it at foliosociety.com slash the book club. That's foliosociety.com slash the book club.

29:39William:This episode is brought to you by White Claw Surge. Great podcast pick, friend. No surprises there. After all, you're all about finding the tastiest flavors out there, just like White Claw Surge. And with big, bold flavors to enjoy, like blood orange, blackberry, cranberry, and more, it's time to go all in on taste. Unleash the flavor. Unleash White Claw Surge. Please drink responsibly. Hard seltzer with flavors. 8 % alcohol by volume. White Claw Seltzer Works. Chicago, Illinois.

30:10Anita:Welcome back. So just before the break, everyone's exhausted. Nobody knows how this is going to end. It looks like it's going to go on and on for months, but then it's almost as if the heavens speak. What do I mean by that, Willie? I haven't lost my mind because the answer is writ large in the sky, isn't it?

30:28William:So exactly. On the morning of the 18th of September, the sun is completely eclipsed for five whole minutes. Now, this is a surprise for everyone because no one, they've been looking at their almanacs to see when there's going to be an eclipse happening in the middle of all this fun and games. But it has a particular significance for the Hindus. Remember, the Hindus are the majority of the sepoys. Even today in India, an eclipse is considered to be a moment of incredibly bad luck. And I've got conservative friends in Rajasthan who will not go out on the day before or after an eclipse. They will stay inside and keep their curtains even today.

31:16Anita:I will see your friends and I'll raise you members of family, shall I? Because there are members of family who've told me stories about cows shouldn't be milked on eclipse day because the milk will be poisonous. You can't look up at the sky directly to have a look at it. Also, you can only look at it in a bucket of water, only the reflection, otherwise the evil spirits will enter you. I mean, there is so much superstition that surrounds an eclipse that this is only going to be seen, particularly as you say by the Hindus, as a portent of great evil, that something wicked this way comes, that God is not on their side anymore.

31:51William:Exactly. So what happens is that the following morning, the British wake up and they've forgotten about the eclipse, it doesn't mean more than a little astronomical quirk to them. But for the Hindus, it means the change of a dynasty. It means the end of everything. And they flee. So when the following morning, on the morning of the 19th September, the British wake up, and they're suddenly aware that there's no shooting from the opposite trenches. And a few people pop their heads up and realize there's no shooting. And then they get up and they clamber out of their trenches. And the sepoys have all gone.

32:26William:Just crazy. Unknown to the British, the sepoys have fled down the road and they're heading off to Lucknow to make their final stand there. They just take it that Delhi is doomed. And one of the people who was aware of all this happening was, of course, poor Zafar. All these sepoys who've been clogging the halls of his palace, even his special hall, the Duani Khas, which should have been only access for the VIPs. these guys have been hanging around making nuisance of themselves but on the night of the 18th September they just all disappear so Zafar realizes that there's no one left to fight and that he will be picked up the following morning by the British so again fatally taking this as a sign of divine judgment he goes into his prayer chamber and he takes out the Mughal's special relics of the prophet.

33:21William:There's a hair from the prophet's beard, and there's various other, there's a footprint of the prophet. Then he gets his boat party to let him out of the water gate on the side of the Red Fort, which is the same gate that the sepoys came to on the morning of the outbreak and begged him to come down and lead them. And he gets into the boat and he floats downstream in the darkness, in the moonlight, to Nizamuddin, to the Sufi shrine, where he deposits the sacred relics and then goes across the road to Humayun's tomb to await the surrender in the tombs of his forebears. It's like the prototype of the Taj Mahal sitting on the edge of the river Jamna.

34:03Anita:It is like a fallen pharaoh going to the pyramids and waiting for his death. I mean, that's the strength of that imagery. He's basically waiting to join the people who've died before him. And so, it passes. It is a route from there on in because there aren't any defenders. People have left, they've gone. Whoever has left, I guess, Willie is cut down without mercy because you've got an angry and tired and frightened, formally out of their wits. They've watched their friends die, like Barker watching his friend die in front of him, the blood is up. So what happens then after those troops have left and the Brits then get in?

34:44William:So what happens is that the Brits surround the city and lock the gates. And there then takes place arguably the most terrible massacre to take place in the entire 250 years British rule in India. And it's odd that in the sense Jalim Wala Bagh, which you've written about so well, has taken the place of this as the sort of supreme British atrocity. Because you could make a very strong case for saying that this is the worst thing the British ever did in India. Every male over the age of 16 is killed. There are one or two exceptions, like Ghalib, who've got special letters and by virtue of their position do not get killed.

35:27William:But anyone in the city over the age of 16 is massacred. And some of the British who see this are as horrified as anyone else. There's a character called Edward Weibart who has written some brilliant letters that I've used the whole way through this book. And Weibart had two sisters in the Bibigar at Kanpur at the massacre that we dealt with two episodes ago. And he is all set on the night before the attack to wreak havoc and revenge. But what he sees now disgusts him. He says, the orders went out to shoot every soul. It was literally murder, and I was perfectly horrified. I've seen many bloody and awful sights lately, but one such as I witnessed yesterday, I pray I never see again.

36:21The women were all spared, but their screams on seeing their husbands

36:25William:and sons butchered were most painful. Heaven knows I feel no pity, but when some old grey-bearded man is brought and shot before your very eyes, hard must be that man's heart, I think, who can look on with indifference."

36:42Anita:I mean, that's just, again, so vividly portrayed. And as you say, by a man who has every reason to have the blood up, as they put it, the blood is up and people do terrible things with their blades and their bullets. There is one person I want to come back to and that's Theo Metcalf. I said he'd undergone this transformation. He'd been hiding in a cave, if you heard some of our previous submissions here in this series, this mini-series, frightened for his life. He spent weeks before thinking he's going to die at any moment and he comes through and he gets to Delhi and then he sees all this carnage.

37:15Anita:When the Brits win and they've got access to Delhi, he turns into this monster. I think the way you put it is like a hanging judge, but he's there and he's got sort of lines of people in front of him and he will walk like some Gestapo villain going, that one, that one. With absolutely no emotion, he condemns scores of people to death.

37:38William:And it's kind of worse than that because he's also making a personal fortune at the same time. He goes straight to the jeweler's quarter and he gets the jeweler's hung and takes all the jewelry. He's a looter and he uses his position to enrich himself as well as to take revenge. And the other thing he does is that his family house, Metcalf House, it's still standing today. It's an Indian Army defense building. His house, which his father had turned into a museum. His father's obsessed with Napoleon. And he had what he called the Napoleon Gallery, full of Napoleon memorabilia, including a statue of Napoleon by Canova that Napoleon himself had sent to William Fraser.

38:22William:William Fraser, who we've met in other episodes of this podcast, was this white mogul who represented the opposite of this whole sort of Victorian horror show. Fraser loved Mughal Delhi. He commissioned paintings. He commissioned the great Fraser album, which is one of the great masterpieces. But he was also a man of great sort of humanity. When he heard that Napoleon was in St. Helena without any books, he sent his entire library to St. Helena to Napoleon, and it sank on the way, including presumably lots of lovely, movable masterpieces. Oh, wow. But Napoleon heard that this young man, this young officer had sent all these books to him and said, I didn't receive the books because the ship sank.

39:03William:But here is my bust by Canova and my ring. And both of these were inherited by…

39:10Anita:By Theo's father. And so Metcalf, so all of that is in the house. So yes, what happens to the house? What does he do? What does he do?

39:15William:And so the whole house is burnt down. So two things happen now. One is Theo tries to find the bust of Napoleon, which is incredibly valuable, and he finds it in a Shiva temple, being worshipped as Mahadev as… Oh, that is weird. …Shiwa.

39:28Anita:Napoleon's being worshipped as Shivji, the lord of the dance. That is so mad.

39:32William:But the house itself is a ruin. And he is convinced that the villagers, well, I think he had good reason to think that the villagers around the house had looted it. And objects from the house were found in all the village houses. So he gets the whole village around Metcalfe House, which is just outside the walls, and he hangs the village from the rafters. It's horrific. All of the villagers. All the villagers. Everybody.

39:58Anita:Jeez, you know what, Willie? I have been fond of Theo for a long time. You know, his early days. He was a buffoon, but he was likable. You know, he sort of learned the language. He went around sort of mucking around with, you know, the locals.

40:11William:All that.

40:11Anita:Making his way with the least amount of work possible. I approved of that. I thought that was quite fun. But he turns into an absolute...

40:19William:He turns into a war criminal. Straightforward. A monster.

40:22Anita:Monster.

40:23William:And what's interesting is that at this point, there are so many war criminals, obviously, the blood is up, everyone is missing. But Theo Metcalf, I think, is almost the only person in the East India Company's civil service to be dismissed for what he does after the fall of Delhi. It is considered to be so beyond the pale, even at the standards of the time.

40:44Anita:Right. Gosh, and it must have been bad.

40:46William:Yeah. The fact that he personally enriched himself, I think, was the thing that people really minded.

40:50Anita:So, I mean, let's stick a pin in Theo Metcalf and just walk away quickly and avert our eyes. What about Zafar? Because we last left him, he was waiting for his doom in Hermione's tomb. Who comes for him in the end and what happens?

41:02William:So from the kind of end of July, it looks as if Zinat Mahal, who is Zafar's much younger wife, who has got two kids of her own that she wants to inherit, she has traitoriously, in the eyes of the mutineers reached out to the British on the ridge. And Zinat Mahal is in correspondence with William Hodgson, the British intelligence chief. And at this point, she sends a message saying that if you grant our life, we will surrender to you in Humayun's tomb. And Hodgson takes that. So on the 20th of September, he rides out with the party to Humayun's tomb, which is quite a brave thing to do because in Humayun's tomb is not just Safa and all his kids, but quite a lot of the armed court who are surrounding him.

41:49William:So there's 2 ,000 or 3 ,000 people within the garden of whom I instou. It's not a place you'd go in the middle of this uprising. But Hodgson believes that he's got a deal, and he walks in, and he takes the surrender of Zinat Mahal and Bahadur Shazafr, who are promised their life in return for a peaceful surrender. and he marches them up to Delhi and places them not back in the Hall of Audience, which he'd left 10 days earlier, but in the stables. He's lodged where the horses have been kept in a state of imprisonment. Meanwhile, his Duwani Kas, the center of the Mughal palace, is a British officer's meth and they're serving pork and bacon and having a high old time on planters' chairs and that sort thing now in the palace and the famous atrocity takes place the next day when hudson goes back and takes the surrender of the princes of which there are about 10 so the princes have been left without their parents and the next day hudson comes back and arrests them and they say do we get our life promise to and he doesn't give an answer so the prince has got no particular option because Hodgson's got troops with him this time.

43:05William:And so they go with him. And there are, I think, a party of six or seven of them in all their finery. And as they head towards the city, many of the troops and courtiers who'd be hanging around with them and who minds to follow them and then begin to get sort of more nervous about what's going to happen and so crowd around the princes. At that point, Hodgson, in his own account, fears that there's going to be a rescue operation. So he stops the carriage in which the princes are kept. He orders the princes out and he shoots them one by one with his colt revolver in cold blood. He then takes all their jewelry and all their finery, puts it in his pocket, does not report it, and throws the naked bodies of the dead princes at the Kotwal.

44:01William:And the place where they were shot has been known ever since as Khuni Darwaza, the bloody gate.

44:06Anita:Do you know that doesn't actually translate, it's not bloody gate. Do you know what Khuni Darwaza actually translates to? The murderer's gate.

44:11William:The murderer's gate.

44:12Anita:News of that surely must be rampaging through the country. What's the reaction? I mean, what happens?

44:19William:This is the terrible end of the uprising in Delhi. The rebels have fled. And in the aftermath of this massacre of the princes, the last princes of Mughalai, the descendants of Barbour, the descendants of Timur, the descendants of Genghis Khan, all these people, the blood all converges in this group of young men that have just been massacred. It's at this point that the British order the troops out into pursuit of the rebels. And the last horror before we wrap this up for today and just present Ghalib's elegy on Delhi is the description of Richard Barter, the same guy who, if you remember, had been up on the walls, whose friend had been killed, but he had not.

45:08Anita:He said goodbye to his friend and never saw him again.

45:10William:He is at the front of the troops marching out towards Latina. And he describes the city just covered in corpses from the massacre of the week before. Every male in the city is dead and their bodies are lying up. This is his account. The march out of the city was simply awful. The advance guard, consisting of cavalry and artillery Had burst and squashed the dead bodies Which lay swelled to an enormous size in the Chandni Chowk And the stench was fearful Men and officers were sick all round And I thought I'd never get out of the city It was a ride I don't care ever to take again And the horse felt it as much as I did For he snorted and shook as he slid rather than walked over the abominations with which the street were covered.

46:05William:Dead bodies were strewn about in all directions and every attitude that the death struggle had caused them to assume in every stage of decomposition. In many instances, the positions of the bodies were appallingly lifelike. Some lay with their arms uplifted as if beckoning. And indeed, the whole scene was weird and terrible beyond description. The atmosphere was unimaginably disgusting, laden as it was with the most noxious and sickening odors.

46:34Anita:So the glittering city of Delhi that we've described in previous episodes is now just ruins, ruins and corpses and gore. And one of your favorite people from this time period, Ghalib, the poet, he is a survivor. And why don't we leave his words to sort of end what this all felt like.

46:54William:He is kind of the last survivor of the court. Everyone else is killed, hung, massacred. Of the old elite, he is the last. And one of the great sort of wonders of the historiography of this is that we have Ghalib's account surviving of these horrors. So it's like having Shakespeare describe the Battle of Britain or something. It's like you have the greatest writer in Urdu describing the greatest tragedy in the history of Delhi. And he survives because he's got a sense of humor when he's interviewed by this sort of, you know, intelligence colonel asking why he didn't come to the ridge and present himself and why he shouldn't be shot.

47:30William:The colonel says, are you a Muslim? And Khalib says, half. And the colonel says, what does that mean? And he says, I drink wine, but I don't eat pork. And the colonel laughs and Khalib gets off. He makes him laugh and manages to survive. And so we have his description. And in the months to come, The Muslims have moved out of the city, and a year later, when they're allowed back, he writes this letter. He says, The male descendants of the deposed king, such as survived the sword, draw an allowance of five rupees a month. The female descendants, if old, are boards, if young, prostitutes. The city has become a desert.

48:09William:By God, Delhi is no more a city but a camp, a contunement. No fort, no city, no bazaars, no watercourses. Four things kept Delhi alive. the fort, the crowds of the Jabba Masjid, the weekly walk at the Amna Bridge, and the early fair of the flower men. None of these survive. So how could Delhi survive? Yes, it is said that there was once a city of that name in the realm of India. We smashed the wine cup and the flask. What is it now to us if all the rain that falls from heaven should turn to rose red wine?

48:45Anita:So, with that, the final act of this drama, we're going to circle back to it because I'm aware that we haven't told you what happens to Zafar who has been spared, although his children have not. We'll come back to that in the next episode. We are also going to take you in the next episode to Lucknow, a place you now know fairly well from our podcast. Till the next time we meet, It's goodbye from me, Anita Arnon.

49:12William:And goodbye from me, William Durrump.

49:40William:and pushing your way to greatness. So pick up the Irish flute or those calligraphy pens or that daunting Beef Wellington recipe card and leave the laundry to us. Rinse. It's time to be great.