New Delhi, Sept. 19 -- Some vessels hold food. Others hold time.

Mine is a small reddish terracotta matka, blackened by fire and marked by years of cooking. Once a water urn, it now has a lid we fashioned for it. When wet, it releases the scent of earth meeting water.

It came to Charlie, my partner and spouse for 20 years, and me after dinner at our friend Malvika Singh's home in Sujan Singh Park, Delhi. Malvika, the publisher of Seminar magazine, has one of those tables people long to sit around. There were six of us. Richard Holkar, the maharaja of Holkar, was there and I remember the conversation wandering towards Maheshwar, the restoration of the palace, and the curious inheritance of being a maharaja who was mostly American and a l...