Bhagmati

May. The lid is off the fires of gehennum. Searing heat, spiralling dust devils, eye-scorching glare, tarmac on the road shimmering like quicksilver. Not a breath of life. No mad dogs, no nothing. Only the noonday sun.

The car seat burns. ‘Hai Ram!’ groans Bhagmati and raises her bottom to let the seat get cooler. ‘Ouch!’ I cry in my wog style. ‘Just touch the steering wheel.’ I grab her hand and put it on the steering wheel. She withdraws it with a jerk. ‘Has some doctor ordered us to go out and get sunstroke?’

We take the Qutub road. Past the mausoleum of Safdar Jang, through the rash of bungalows that have smothered Yusuf Sarai and all the Khilji, Tughlak and Mughal monuments that once dominated the landscape. At Qutub Minar we turn sharp left and go through village Lado Sarai. There is a lot of activity at the well. Jat women vigorously hauling up buckets of water and pouring them into pitchers lined on the parapet. Two young ones bathing. Not a stitch on them. They see our car. They put their hands between their thighs and turn their large buttocks towards us. I slow down to have a good look. A woman picks up a clod of mud and hurls it at us. I laugh. They laugh. These Jat women are tall, full-bosomed, slender-waisted, well-stacked. They carry their pitchers on their heads and stride along flouncing their skirts like the queens of Amazonia. I ask Bhagmati, ‘Don’t you think these Jat females are the most beddable women in Hindustan?’

‘Other men’s wives and sisters are always more fuckable than one’s own. A home-bred chicken tastes no better than lentils.’ Bhagmati believes in the wisdom of clichés.

We are out of Lado Sarai. And again the hot, shimmering tarmac and an expanse of dun-coloured plains. The shadow of the car speeds ahead of us. A tumulus on our left gradually becomes a stone wall, the stone wall becomes a massive battlement of grey and red rock towering sixty feet or more above the ground. We go along an avenue of ancient banyans. I pull up under the shade. On my left is an arched gateway leading into the citadel of Tughlakabad; on my right a viaduct leads to the tomb of the builder Ghiasuddin Tughlak. Its sloping red walls and white marble dome rise above its fortress-like enclosure.

What’s happened to all the urchins who hang around to look after visitors’ cars? Midweek, midsummer. No visitors, no urchins. Calls for a celebration. We celebrate.

‘What’s that?’ shouts Bhagmati pointing to a furry hand with black, tapering fingers clutching the rim of the windscreen. Up comes the face of a rhesus monkey with a request for food—kho-kho-kho-kho. Bhagmati screams and clings to me. The monkey takes fright, scampers away across the road displaying its bright red posterior.

Bhagmati nestles in my arms, I push her away. There is another somebody at the door. ‘Sahib, I’ll look after your car.’