The Queen and I As early as age thirteen, I had a thing about the two princesses, Elizabeth, and Margaret. Somebody gave me a coffee table book about the princesses, and I spent hours looking at them. In black and white of course, this was 1950. At College, I read Russell and Joad and Laski and all persons in between, and became staunchly left-wing. And there I have stayed, Left, but peaceable Left, not Kerala communist blood-letting Left. In the fifties there was a lot of murder and mayhem in North Malabar. When, eventually, I ended up in the U K in the seventies, I knew I was anti-monarchy. I had lived through the unedifying reign of George VIth, when many Indians, including my father, had ended up in prison for demanding independence for India. But perversely, I admired and loved Queen Elizabeth, the second. She was only nine years older than me. Her poise, elegance, devotion to duty and wisdom enchanted me. What a woman! Living in Britain has only reinforced my view. The grace with which she has managed the many conundrums in her life – Charles and Diana’s chaotic marriage, the anti-monarchy upsurges now and then, Andrew’s unsavoury shenanigans, to name a few. But there she is, consistently dignified, fair and gracious. This country is impoverished without her; we are, at the moment, lost without her.