"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven…" So begins a Biblical passage. The last line: "…A time for war, and a time for peace."  ‘The Cottage" - nestled in the Kumaon region of the Himalayan Indian state of Uttara-khand—is where the two World Wars were nonchalantly swept under the carpet, while peace reigned supreme. But that was the ‘Raj’ era. “So what?” asks Bhuvan Kumari, the aristocratic owner of this red roofed ‘Kipling-era’ cosy cottage. “ Peace still reigns supreme here,” she emphasizes with a glint in her eye. “ Ask the trees, ask the birds, ask the bees, ask the rafters, the doors and the windows… but don’t ask the panthers…These blighters prowl around at night, trying to make a meal of poor little stray dogs…”

A ‘dyed in the wool’ charming hostess, Bhuvan Kumari hails from the Bundel-Khand( ‘the land of the free, and home of the brave’) region of Central India . It is difficult to figure out whether she blends with the cottage, or vice-versa. Probably both!