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it must have been noon by now, there was very little light here.
    Except, I was astonished to find, what the collection itself radiated. The chamber we had entered was hung, draped, laid and overlaid with rugs in the splendid colours of royalty—plum, wine, mulberry and pomegranate—woven into intricate patterns. I hesitated to step on one, they were surely precious and, besides, had not been touched in ages by hand, still less by foot. Only a raja might recline on one, with his rani, while listening to the music of sitar and sarod, tabla and tanpura. I could imagine these invisible potentates and pashas lifting goblets in their ringed hands or, better still, the chased silver mouthpiece of a hookah. Lives lived in such a setting could only have been noble and luxurious—not of this poor, hardworked land around.
    It was only when I lowered my eyes to examine them more closely that I noted what the imperial colours concealed: patches that were faded, threadbare, some even darned and mended, clumsily.
    My guide watched my reactions as they flickered across my face—I'm sure my expressions gave me away—and seemed gratified, a small smile lifting the corners of his compressed lips. But before I could bend and examine more closely these Persian, Turkish, Afghan, Moroccan and Kashmiri treasures, he ushered me into the next room.
    And this was even more richly rewarding, for here hung the miniature paintings of Turkey, Persia, Moghul India, Rajasthan and Kangra. I was not enough of a connoisseur to identify them and it would have taken days, even a lifetime, to examine each separately and study the clues enclosed by the gilt margins. Here were jewel-like illustrations of floral and avian life, tiny figures mounted on curvaceous horses in pursuit of lions and gazelles, or kneeling before bearded saints in mountain caves. I glimpsed a pair of cranes performing a mating dance on a green hillock before passing on to a young maiden conversing with her pet parrot in a cage and another penning a letter to a distant beloved, and so to a sly young man spying from behind a tree on a bevy of young girls bathing in a river, clothed, but transparently. Here elephants with gilded howdahs on their backs carried noblemen up bare hills to crenellated forts on the summits, and now blue storm clouds appeared, driving white egrets before them; a dancing girl performed in a walled courtyard; a prince posed with a pink rose in his hand, another proudly exhibited a hawk upon his wrist. Hunting dogs streamed after deer in a forest, a hunter following them with a bow and arrow. A ship set sail. Lightning struck. Lines of exquisite script curled through the borders, naming their names, telling their tales.
    I could not read them, partly from the unfamiliarity of the scripts, but also because the glass that separated these wonderful worlds from the spectator was filmed with dust. No hand had touched them since they were framed and hung. There were no visitors to admire them, just the old caretaker who seemed more proud than knowledgeable, and I who could say nothing but 'Ah!' and 'Ahh!'
     
    If I had been shown just these two chambers, I should have felt satisfied and certain of the value of this collection, but we did not stop here. The caretaker, bowing slightly, was showing me through the door to another chamber, this one filled with fans and kimonos. Disembodied, they contrived somehow to beckon and flirt. It was easy to imagine the fine tapered fingers that must have wielded these fans of carved ivory and pleated silk painted with scenes of gardens and festivals, or the slender figures that had worn these silk gowns, opulent and elaborate with sweeping sleeves and trailing borders of indigo and verdigris, bronze and jade, amethyst and azure. They seemed to plead for their glass cases to be opened so they might step out of these frozen tableaux and assume the roles of queens and courtesans to which they were born.
    But such exposure might have