It is March. Fragrant dawn. The morning star shines brighter than the dying moon. The block of apartments is lit by the headlights of a car. A truck thunders by. Again the silence and the morning star and the fresh morning breeze. The eastern horizon gets lighter. Big bats wing their way home. Another car. And another. My watch says 5.40. My temper begins to rise. I could have had another half-an-hour in bed. The glare of headlights blind me. A Rolls-Royce rolls up and a flunky in red and white uniform steps out and asks whether I am I. Yes. He opens the front door. I find myself wedged between the chauffeur and the flunky. I take a quick look back; a vast seat occupied by a diminutive figure wrapped in fur. She nods her colourless white face and asks, ‘Are you the guide?’

‘Yes Madam,’ I reply gruffly. When she discovers who I am she will feel very silly. The thought soothes my temper.

‘Purana Qila,’ I order the chauffeur.

‘No,’ she squawks from the rear. ‘Tilpat. He’s been told where to go.’ So she knows Delhi! What am I supposed to do? Act the court jester to Her Royal Bitchiness of Kennelpore!

We go along the Mathura-Agra Road, cross the ancient Barapulla bridge. The Rolls-Royce switches off its headlights. The morning light reveals scores of defecating bottoms. We go over the railway bridge, past Friends Colony and through the stench exuded by the sewage disposal farm. We bump past the Road Research Institute. We go through the village Badarpur, turn off the main highway and ride into the rising sun. The fields are littered with defecators; some face us with their penises dangling between their haunches; others display their buttocks—barely an inch above pyramids of shit. The Indian peasant is the world’s champion shitter. Stacks of chappaties and mounds of mustard leaf-mash down the hatch twice a day; stacks of shit a.m. and p.m. We cross the western Jamna canal. Tilpat hoves into view rising on a hillock above a sea of young wheat. The chauffeur announces, ‘Tilpat, Madam.’

‘We’re there, are we!’ she exclaims. Her voice is hoarse, asthmatic. ‘Pull up somewhere. I’d like some breakfast.’

I tell the chauffeur to drive on to the end of the road. I switch on my Oxbridge. ‘There’s a palm grove beyond the village. Your Ladyship can have breakfast in peace without half of Tilpat gaping at you.’

She winces at my haw haw.

‘Sounds lovely! I am dying for a cup of hot coffee. Bet you are too!’

I ignore her invitation. I’ll punish her till she says sorry. We skirt round Tilpat. The road ends abruptly beside a temple in a grove of date-palms. The flunky hurls himself out to open the rear door. I follow him.