K ashi Bai led a double life for a time of her asylum in the court of Maharajah Jung Bahadur Rana of Nepal. She was a widow to the world but she never ceased wearing her tika of red vermilion powder on her forehead, clinking glass bangles on her wrists or the kajol decoration around her eyes. Was her husband the Maratha leader Nana Sahib the fugitive from the British Raj really dead as reported by Jung Bahadur to Governor General Lord Canning or did the young wife know better? Maharajah Jung Bahadur Rana had started to make surreptitious sorties to the residence of Kashi Bai adjoining his Thapathali Durbar. Was the widow secretly married to him and was that the reason why she would not wear the traditional white of a Hindu widow? Tongues started to wag. Nana Sahib A few years after the Indian Mutiny of 1857 was quelled by the British the fugitive Maratha rebel leader Nana Sahib sought refuge in Nepal with a retinue of followers including his adoptive mother, the widow of the las