Greetings from the Royal Pavilion, a stunning reminder of India in southern England

Mughal arches, onion domes, chhatri-topped towers. Living in India for five years, I'd Instagram my way through a maharaja's palace, Sikh temple or sultan's fort every weekend. I got used to strolling through scalloped arches. How I miss them! Which is why I froze in my tracks last winter when I spotted this building in Brighton, on England's south coast. The day was drizzly gray, I'd gone for a bracing swim in the English Channel, and was walking back to the train station, shivering, when I was flooded with warm memories from India. It's the Royal Pavilion, built in the late 18th century by British royals fascinated by South Asian architecture, as they commandeered the subcontinent. It's funny: In Mumbai, I'd marvel at how many buildings look Victorian, in the same stone and style of my husband's hometown in northern England. Looking up at this pavilion, I realized the British didn't just impose their style on India. They also took India's style home. Queen Victoria herself — who also went by "Empress of India" — lodged in the Royal Pavilion in the 1830s and '40s, before the construction of railways brought the working-class masses to Brighton — spoiling, she complained, her priva...