Rabin wasn’t a favourite in our circle. And he couldn’t write for toffee. So, when he went off on one of his trips to uncharted islands in the Sunderbans, nobody missed him. He followed a policy of “Rule or Sulk”. And most of the time he sulked. We had decided, all of us, to go for a week to Almora up in Kumaon to stay at a place which during the Raj had been the residence of a Brit called Campion. He returned to England, however, after his wife had died of cholera during an epidemic and put the fully furnished bungalow up for sale. It was turned into a holiday home for visitors to the hills. It was a charming old place but what recommended it the most to us was the library – rows and rows of priceless books, some in first and second editions, beautifully bound in…