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We chose this as the working title for his memoirs in Indore in circa 2000. Raj Singh Dungarpur had been invited as chief guest by his alma mater Daly College, and I (his ‘ghost’) had been invited by him to meet several members of his family and old school associates who would fill me in on his early years.

He had only recently finished his term as president of the BCCI, and I could sense that Rajbhai’s resolve to remain in the country’s cricket politics, for which he was terribly ill-equipped in any case, was waning. He was still supremo of the CCI, and his one vote was still priceless, but he was clearly losing his grip over how the game was being run.

Wanting to write his memoirs, I suspect, was subliminal resignation to the disorientation he was experiencing then. “I don’t know if that’s the right title, though’’ he said that evening in Indore with a guffaw that was his trademark. “As it is, many people think I am a relic of the Raj’’. I brushed aside his objection because his experiences which, as anybody who has spent even brief time with him would attest, were richer than several hundred books put together.

His knowledge of the game was encyclopaedic because he was a seeker. In his bachelor’s pad when he stayed opposite the Wankhede Stadium he had shown mehis memorabilia with pride: eight mm films of old matches and masters, rare photographs preserved with the care of a manicurist, scores of books, many of them out of print, among hundreds and hundreds of ties and miniature bats.

But it was the personal anecdotes that were the more compelling. From Bradman to Bedser to Borde — so to speak — he had a story on everybody. From his father he learnt about the deeds ofDB Deodhar and CK Nayudu and Mushtaq Ali. He met Duleepsinh in his youth, and gained rare insights into Ranjitsinhji from him. He saw enough of Lala Amarnath, Vijay Hazare and particularly Vinoo Mankad to become their diehard fan. He gave ten-on-ten for Gavaskar’s technical perfection even if he disagreed with him on several issues, was an unapologetic fan of Pataudi and besotted by Tendulkar.

Rajbhai could also be a man of strong opinion, sometimes hastily projected, and would find himself caught on the wrong foot. His dropping of Mohinder Amarnath in 1989 was clumsy and earned him a lot of flak. In the late 90s, he became strangely disdainful of Rahul Dravid as a one-day player (“he can’t hit the ball of the square’’) and had to eat humble pie. He also became overly critical of Saurav Ganguly towards the latter half of his captaincy, which I suspect was because of his resentment of Jagmohan Dalmiya.

At his core, though, Rajbhai was an unadulterated romantic, in many ways a denizen of some other world in which cricket was not just a game, but life itself. He would easily shed his patrician ways and become a plebian where cricket was concerned.

But I am digressing. The Indore trip became unproductive because he had too many commitments. Over the next few years, we met in Pune (where he had relocated), or the CCI (where he still had his room), or in Willingdon Sports Club whose ambience he loved.

We discussed issues old and contemporary, and worked out a list of chapters that included the Merchant and Hazare era, Pataudi’s reign, the Bedi-Gavaskar imbroglio, the tug-o-war between Kapil and Gavaskar, Azhar’s elevation to the captaincy, why the Team of the 90s remained an unfulfilled dream for him, the match-fixing scandal, the shenanigans in the BCCI, the way ahead for Indian cricket. The book was gathering momentum.

A little less than two years ago, having heard that he had got a touch of Alzeimher’s I went to the CCI to meet him. He stared back at me vacantly. “Who are you?’’ he asked in a low voice. Bitter battles in the CCI, had apparently taken their toll. His disconnect with the world seemed complete. I am now left with enough memories to write a book on Raj Singh Dungarpur, but ‘Tales from the Raj’, alas must be stillborn.