The Khwaja Sahib’s sainted dust was interred in the centre of the mosque courtyard. Some people placed oil-lamps on the grave; others lit joss-sticks in the fresh earth. People put their ears to the grave to catch sounds that might come out of it.

Khusrau has returned from Lakhnauti. A huge mob has collected to see how he will conduct himself and whether the Khwaja Sahib will rise from his grave to embrace him. Khusrau has come to the hospice wailing and beating his breast like a woman who has lost her husband. Hazrat Roshan Chiragh holds him in a tight embrace. After he has wept his heart out the dervish tells him that the Khwaja Sahib had forbidden him from going to the graveside. Khusrau stops by a kewra bush a few yards away from the grave and fixes his eyes on the spot where his departed friend sleeps. Tears run down his eyes into his beard; he sobs like a child crying for its mother. In a wailing voice he recites:

On her couch sleeps my fair one

Her black hair is scattered over her face.

O Khusrau! ‘tis time thou too the homeward path did tread,

The shades of twilight over the earth are spread.

Khusrau shaved his head just as Hindus do on the death of their parents. He gave away his property. He began to wear a coarse cloak of black wool prescribed for the Sufis. As he had prophesied for himself, a few weeks later he took the homeward path. We buried him beside the kewra bush.

I come to the last chapter of the book of my life. I hasten to write these lines before my right eye, which has also developed cataract, loses its light and I am no longer able to put pen to paper.

After many weeks of absence Kamal has brought his wife and two children to be left in our care. He says Sultan Mohammed Tughlak has gone mad. For many years we have been hearing of his eccentric habits. In fits of generosity he gives away lakhs of tankas, in fits of madness he cuts off lakhs of heads. He issues copper coins to represent silver rupees and gold tankas. Cunning people forge copper coins and take their value in silver and gold till there is nothing left in the treasury. Kamal says that the sultan has been talking of conquering China and then the rest of Asia. And now he has issued a proclamation transferring his capital from Delhi to Daulatabad 700 miles down towards gehennum. He has ordered every man, woman and child to evacuate Tughlakabad and travel southwards with him. This is indeed madness! Delhi by whatever name it is known—Lal kot, Mehrauli, Shahr-i-Nau or Tughlakabad—has always been the seat of the emperors of Hindustan. Delhiwallas would rather die than live in any other city in the world. Poor Kamal as a government servant must comply with the order; but no sultan’s writ has ever extended to the sacred precincts of the mausoleum of Hazrat Khwaja Nizamuddin.