a blow, not totally unexpected. If he himself were dead in this world, what guarantee had he that his son would be alive? Indeed, he may not even have been born! He thanked the girl politely and came out.
It was characteristic of him not to worry about where he would stay. His main concern was to make his way to the library of the Asiatic Society to solve the riddle of history. Grabbing a quick lunch at a restaurant, he made his way to the Town Hall. Yes, to his relief, the Town Hall was there, and it did house the library.
He entered the reading room and asked for a list of history books including his own. His five volumes duly arrived on his table. He started from the beginning. Volume one took the history up to the period of Ashoka, volume two up to Samudragupta, volume three up to Mohammad Ghori and volume four up to the death of Aurangzeb.
Up to this period history was as he knew it. The change evidently had occurred in the last volume. Reading volume five from both ends inwards, Gangadharpant finally converged on the precise moment where history had taken a different turn. That page in the book described the Battle of Panipat, and it mentioned that the Marathas won it handsomely.
Abdali was routed and he was chased back to Kabul by the triumphant Maratha army led by Sadashivrao Bhau and his nephew, the young Vishwasrao. The book did not go into a blow-by-blow account of the battle itself. Rather, it elaborated in detail its consequences for the power struggle in India. Gangadharpant read through the account avidly.
The style of writing was unmistakably his, yet he was reading the account for the first time! Their victory in the battle was not only a great morale booster to the Marathas but it also established their supremacy in northern India. The East India Company, which had been watching these developments from the sidelines, got the message and temporarily shelved its expansionist programme. For the Peshwas the immediate result