As a notice at the gate prominently announced, the bungalow was now the Office of the Chief Engineer of the Northern Railways Board (Construction Department), Government of India. Presumably suspecting me of being a Pakistani agent intent on sabotage - the famous Foreign Hand invoked by Indian politicians to explain all manner of Indian disasters from train crashes and burst water mains to late monsoons and lost test matches - the heavily armed guards at the gate refused even to let me set foot within the gates.
