Vish Athwal got filthy rich selling diamonds and opium. He made enough to get to America and build the the Jaipur Royal. An Indian palace transplanted wholesale to the edge of the mangroves. Two square miles of walled garden, a jungle arboretum. A palace at the head of it all: marble and bright tiles and fountain squares. He died in 1925, happy and fat in the land of the free. With the endowment he left, the Jaipur Royal became a centre of the arts.
**The Juice of it on sleeping eye-lids laid**
**Will make or man or woman madly dote…**
You hold the ticket in your hand in the line outside the gate, under a high wall, stuccoed red, flaking. Voices hum low, expectant. The air is as hot as the subcontinent. Moths dance about the round lamps. A bat flits past and picks off one of the bugs. *A Dream of Midsummer*, that’s what the event is called. One night only.