We loaded innumerable elephants and camels with the wealth of Delhi and with thousands upon thousands of slaves in our train began our slow march homewards. We crossed the river Jamna, ransacked Meerut and proceeded along the foothills. We destroyed, as we had undertaken to do, many temples of idolatry. At one place the Brahmins warned us not to touch the image of their god, Krishna, who was said to be so powerful that he could in one night impregnate 1600 women. His image which was made of gold stood as high as ourselves. Under the eyes of the pleading, wailing priests we smashed the idol with our own hands and ordered the priests to be beheaded.
A month later we and our victorious armies were back in Samarkand.
We received sad tidings from Delhi. We were informed that after our departure there was no one to bury the dead. The rotting corpses had spread pestilence and the few who had survived had succumbed to disease. For many months the towns of Delhi were deserted save for crows, kites and vultures by day and owls, jackals and hyaenas by night...
But we had fulfilled our life’s mission. We had realized early in our youth that just as there is one God in heaven, so the earth can support only one king. In the years granted to us by Allah we strove to bring the nations of the world under our rule. In order to preserve our sovereignty, we took justice in one hand and equity in the other and by the light of these two lamps kept our royal palace illuminated. Many people blamed us for the blood we had spilt. At one time the ill-informed Khwaja Obeyd forbade Muslims to recite the
khutba
in our name because we had also shed the blood of Mussalmans. That night the Holy Prophet (peace be upon Him) had visited Khwaja Obeyd in his dream, refused to acknowledge his salutations and reprimanded him in the following words: ‘Although Taimur has shed much blood of my followers, as he has been a friend, the supporter and respecter of my posterity and descendants, why dost him forbid the people to pray and bless him?’
May Allah forgive us for any sins we may have committed.
It has rained in the night and the damp fragrance of the earth steals into my bedroom as I wake. It is cold. The hot-water-bottle at my feet has lost its warmth and I shiver under my quilt. Sounds of muffled voices pass along my apartment like the babble of a stream. I switch on the table-lamp. It is 4.30 a.m. I switch off the light, tuck my hands between my thighs and try to go back to sleep. The stream of voices continue. What on earth are these people up to on this cold, winter morning?
I am woken with finality by my cook-bearer with a steaming mug of tea. He switches on the electric radiator; the bedroom has a glow of pink warmth. ‘It’s very cold,’ I tell him.
‘Yes,’ he agrees. ‘It rained during the night. Can I serve your
chota hazri
soon? I’d like to get away early.’
‘What for?’
‘To see the parade; it is Republic Day. People have been leaving their homes since the early hours to find a place in front to get a good view. Budh Singh also wants leave for the day.’
What could be better than having both out of the way. If only that stupid Bhagmati would know it is a holiday and get to this side of the city before the police put up barricades on the roads (to mark off the route of the parade) we could celebrate
gantantra divas
on the carpet by the fireside. But she never reads newspapers nor listens to anything on the transistor I gave her except film music on Vividh Bharati. However, there is hoping. I haven’t had sex for many weeks and it’s accumulated to explosion point. I ask the cook-bearer to put the breakfast on the table and light a fire in the sitting-room before he and Budh Singh take off.
By the time I come into the sitting-room there is a blazing log fire in the grate. The sky is clear and the sun is streaming through the windows. A regular procession of men, women and children wrapped in shawls, and mufflers goes by on its way to Rajpath and Connaught Circus. I feel very superior in my singular isolation. I can read about it in the papers, hear the commentary on my radio, and, if that Bhagmati has any sense, sing the national anthem and hoist the tri-colour flag atop her quivering torso. There is reason to hope because she seldom misses a holiday.
The stream of humanity ceases to flow. The block of apartments becomes strangely deserted. Everyone has gone to see the caparisoned elephants, camels of the desert patrol, tanks and troupes of folk-dancers. The President, Prime Minister and everyone else who is anybody in Delhi will be there. My window-panes rattle. I switch on the radio and hear the deafening roar of cannon. Twenty-one salvos in honour of the Rashtrapati! He will take the salute of the units of the Army, Navy, Air Force and then proceed to tell the world of Gandhi, his message of non-violence and peace. And there will be Nehru kissing children, being
chacha
(uncle) to all the snivelling little bastards.
The twenty-first cannon explodes. My doorbell rings. Bhagmati has not let me down. ‘How wonderful! I thought you’d forgotten. How did you manage to cross over the traffic barriers?’ I ask her with unconcealed pleasure.
‘The mortal who can stop your faithful servant going where she wants is yet to be born,’ she replies, spreading her hands in front of the fire. ‘The ice has got into my bones. What kind of
chootias
are these Dilliwallas. Year after year they go out in the cold to see the same parade!’
I make her a cup of coffee and put a slug of rum in it. She is so involved in talking she doesn’t notice the smell or the difference in the taste. By the time she has drained the mug she is as warm inside as she is toasted on the outside. And I am possessed by the urge to celebrate
gantantra divas.
I get to the job with an adolescent eagerness. A minute later I lunge into an exultant cry of ‘
]ai Hind
’. A million Delhiwallas echo ‘
]ai Hind
’ over my radio. It’s all over in sixty seconds.
I would like Bhagmati to return to Lal Kuan. But Bhagmati has no intention of obliging me. She is disappointed with me and she is not the sort of person to spare my feelings. ‘So many lessons I have taught you but you have forgotten even the first one: patience. How can I get to the second lesson; consideration for the
mashooka
? Lesson three in also very important: when you light a fire, you must see that you put it out before going
phut
. While your
mashooka
is like Sri Lanka burning on Dassehra you are like a fire brigade hose with no water in it,
hain
?’
Horrible bitch! She will give me no peace till I dowse the fire I’ve lit in her body. She must cool off and I must re-warm myself. I mumble an apology and suggest that we go out before the millions start moving back to their homes. She is in a sulk. She throws up her hands and sighs.
The breeze is cold but the sun is warm. The world looks washed, clean and green. Delhi is at its best and saying it with flowers: roses, poinsettias and bougainvilleas. I drive to the zoo to show her the family of white tigers. Other people have had the same idea and the entrance is crowded. So we opt for the Purana Qila towering over the northern end of the zoo. It is deserted. I take her down the steps of the
baoli
(well) and touch the icy cold water. Then back into the sunlight to Sher Shah’s mosque. She covers her head with a scarf. Even after the years I have known her I am not sure whether she is a Muslim or Hindu. She says she is both—and more, because now she is also Sikh. We stroll about in the sunshine. I tell her about this being the site of Indraprastha, the first city of Delhi built by the Pandavas. That invites trouble because she knows all about Draupadi and her five husbands. She remarks acidly, ‘Seeing what the men of today are like, every woman should have five husbands.’
Indian Air Force jets scream across the blue sky leaving streaks of white ribbons behind them. Then follow a clutch of helicopters showering rose and marigold-petals. The Republic Day parade is over. We go up the Sher Mandal tower to get a better view. I tell her that it was a library built by Sher Shah Suri. ‘But it has no books,’ she remarks waving to the empty octagonal-shaped room on the top. I tell her that the library existed more than 450 years ago. She understands.
We watch the lines of buses, cars and scooters honking, hooting and spluttering down Mathura Road. It is cold and breezy at the western end so we go to the sunny eastern side. ‘I know that one,’ she says pointing to the marble dome, half-a-mile away from us, ‘that is the mausoleum of Humayun Badshah. His begum built it over his tomb. Will you build a tomb like that for me when I die?’
Her irritation is over. She takes my hand in her’s. We descend the narrow dark steps together. I miss a step and fall heavily on my bottom. ‘
Ya Allah
! Be more careful of these murderous steps. If you had fallen on your face, you would have broken your head.’
‘That’s right,’ I tell her cheerfully. ‘That’s exactly what Emperor Humayun did on these very steps exactly 430 years ago to this day–on 26 January 1530.’
Bhagmati is now impressed with my learning. But she cannot resist a back-hander. ‘He must have been running down to meet his begum. I tell you an impatient lover always comes to grief.’
‘No he wasn’t impatient to bed his begum. He heard the call to prayer and was impatient to meet Allah, so Allah sent for him.’
Bhagmati raises both her hands in front of her face and mumbles something for the soul of the departed emperor. We return home to fan the dead embers of lust and make them glow.
It is a bad day. It had an inauspicious start and much as Bhagmati ministers to me, I cannot rise to the occasion. I tell her I am getting old and nothing will rouse me any more. She tells me, again very acidly, that I am not getting old but indifferent and need a memsahib to re-activate me.
Bhagmati has a sixth sense about other women in my life. I try to ward off her pointed enquiries and avoid meeting her eyes. We pass the afternoon bickering over little things. I pretend to make up by offering to drive her around in the evening to see the Republic Day lighting. Once again she shrugs her shoulders and sighs. She takes very little interest in the grand display of the Secretariats and Rashtrapati Bhavan. The crowds make the going very slow. By the time I get through Parliament Street and Connaught Circus to Ajmeri Gate, it is after 9 p.m. I press two ten rupee notes in her hand as I open the door for her. She looks at them disdainfully, throws them on the seat and disappears into the crowd.
Something has happened to Bhagmati. She is becoming jealous and possessive. ‘I know you will ask who I am to object to anything or anyone?’ she says on one occasion. She brushes the back of her hand to wipe tears that are not there and continues, ‘I am like the Purana Qila you have conquered; now you want the Red Fort and its white marble palaces.’
Sarcasm does not suit Bhagmati’s style of speech. She has begun to irritate me. But the more I dodge her, the more she pursues me. Every night after she is through with her chores, she comes to my apartment to see if I am in. If I am not, she questions Budh Singh. And Budh Singh has become something of a mischiefmaker. ‘He’s gone out with that
Amreekan
Missy Baba,’ he tells her.
The American Missy Baba is sixteen-year-old Georgine. Why Bhagmati should worry over a gawky, snub-nosed, freckled, red-headed teenager is beyond me. She never bothered about any of the other women. In any case, what right has a common whore to object to what one of her many patrons does when she is not with him? However Georgine has become an obsession with Bhagmati. I admit that Georgine has also become an obsession with me. I am always talking about her. It was I who first told Bhagmati about her.
*
It had been a bad year for me. I didn’t have many writing assignments and the articles I sold to Indian papers did not get me enough to keep me in the style I was accustomed to. So I registered myself as a guide with the Tourist Department of the Government of India and left my card at foreign embassies and international organizations. During the tourist season between October and March I made quite a bit in tips in foreign currency which I exchanged for rupees at rates higher than the official. I earned commissions from hotels, curio dealers and astrologers for the custom I brought them. Men left me the remains of their bottle of Scotch. Sometimes middle-aged women invited me to their rooms and gave me presents for the services I rendered them.
It was not very hard work. After I had memorized the names of a few dynasties and emperors and the years when they ruled, all I had to do was to pick up a few anecdotes to spice my stories. At the Qutub Minar I told them of the number of suicides that had taken place and how no one could jump clear of the tower and come down in one piece. I told them of Humayun’s father, Babar, going round his son’s sickbed four times praying to Allah to transfer his son’s illness to him and how Humayun had been restored to health and Babar died a few days later. About the Red Fort and its palaces I had picked up a lot of interesting details from the time Shah Jahan had built it—the kings who had sat on the peacock throne and were later blinded or murdered; the British who had taken it after the Mutiny of 1857; the trials of INA officers, down to 15 August 1947 when Lord Mountbatten had lowered the Union Jack and Nehru hoisted the Indian tri-colour on the ramparts. Having once done my homework, there was little more to do than impress the tourists with my learning.
After a while I began to enjoy my work. Although I did not find anyone who would give me a free round-the-world ticket, I could boast that the world came to me. Once a cousin who had found a job as a worker in England told me of the number of white girls he had ‘killed’. They were English girls working in the same factory. I told him that I had ‘killed’ many more Europeans, Americans, Japanese, Arabs and Africans, sitting where I was in Delhi, without having to pay a counterfeit four-anna coin to anyone. The fellow began to drool at the mouth and scratch his testicles with envy.
The only thing that troubled me was that I never got a chance to make friends with anyone. All the Marys, Janes, Francoises and Mikis darlinged and honeyed me for a day or two then vanished for ever. After a few weeks I could not recall their names or faces. All I could recollect was the way they had behaved when I bestrode them. Some had been as lifeless as the bed on which we lay; some had squirmed and screamed as they climaxed. A few had mouthed obscenities, slapped me on the face and told me to fuck off.