One afternoon I find myself at Hauz Khas. Although it is late April and very hot, this old madrasa is so designed that hot winds passing through the maze of its ancient walls turn cool. I am seated on the floor of a colonnaded verandah, reclining against a grey, sandstone column. On my left is a freshly mown lawn with a sprinkler spreading rainbows; the bullock and the lawn-mower both rest in the shade of a neem tree. Facing me is the tomb of Sultan Firoze Shah Tughlak with its lofty plaster-dome black with age. And about fifty feet below me on my right is a muddy pond black with buffaloes. This is all that remains of the huge tank, the Hauz-i-Alai, dug by Sultan Alauddin Khilji to provide water for his new city, Siri. Of the city the only surviving evidence is a litter of disjointed walls and a gate.

The warm breeze-turned-cool drones in my ears. Above my head martins chitter in their mud-feathered nests. From the floor below come the strains of a Hindi film song and the voices of men playing cards. In the lengthening shadow cast by the ancient school of learning, village boys play tipcat. Bhagmati is not with me and the calm and peace of the surroundings are conducive to daydream.

What did they teach at this madrasa? Astronomy, astrology, mathematics, chemistry and the Quran? Boys sitting in rows chanting their tables? Whatever happened to Siri and the great tank which supplied its drinking water? Was it still there when Taimur, the club-footed Mongol, sacked Delhi and slew 50,000 of my citizen-ancestors? How long did it take to repopulate the city?

I see the scenes of horror which must have taken place around Hauz-i-Alai during the massacre. Men sitting on their haunches with their hands tied behind them and necks bent low; the flash of scimitars and heads rolling away from bodies; spurts of blood, the tops of spines sticking out. Shrieking, wailing mothers, wives and sisters. Children benumbed with terror. The Mongolian shadow of God on earth enjoying the scene from somewhere near where I am sitting. If only I had been there, armed with a modern sharpshooter’s rifle fitted with a telescopic sight, I would have climbed a tree beyond bowshot and shot the lame bastard dead. I would have picked out his generals and one after another sent them to hell. I would have created panic in the ranks of the Mongols, Turks, Tartars and all the other Central Asian savages. The Delhiwallas would then have risen against them, slaughtered thousands like goats and sent the rest screaming back to Samarkand.