The long, suffocating heat of the summer finally broke as the first dark clouds of the monsoon season rolled over the village. The sky turned a deep, heavy gray, and a cool, wet wind swept through the trees, bending the branches of the big banyan tree in the courtyard. Within hours, the heavy rains began to fall, turning the dusty dirt roads into thick, wet mud and washing the stone walls of the grand Haveli clean.

Inside the estate, the sound of the pouring rain was incredibly loud, drumming against the clay roof tiles and flooding the central courtyard.