Lal Mahal (Pune)

A traditionally wood-frame window in this royal mansion built in 1630, where Shivaji, founder of the Maratha Empire, spent his childhood. The Lal Mahal is also famous for an encounter between Shivaji and Shaista Khan where Shivaji cut off four fingers of the latter's when he was trying to escape from the first-floor window of the Lal Mahal. This was part of a surreptitious guerrilla attack on the massive and entrenched Mughal army that had camped in Pune with Shaista Khan provcatively occupying Shivaji's childhood home.