The lambardar ignored Iqbal’s well-mannered protests. He removed his dirty handkerchief from a large brass tumbler and began to stir the milk with his forefinger. ‘It is fresh. I milked the buffalo only an hour back and got the wife to boil it. I know you educated people only drink boiled milk. There is quite a lot of sugar in it; it has settled at the bottom,’ he added with a final stir. To emphasize the quality of the milk, he picked up a slab of clotted cream on his forefinger and slapped it back in the milk.

‘Here, Babuji, drink it before it gets cold.’

‘No! No! No, thank you, no!’ protested Iqbal. He did not know how to get out of his predicament without offending the visitors. ‘I don’t ever drink milk. But if you insist, I will drink it later. I like it cold.’

‘Yes, you drink it as you like, Babuji,’ said the Muslim, coming to his rescue. ‘Banta Singh, leave the tumbler here. Bhai will bring it back in the morning.’

The lambardar covered the tumbler with his handkerchief and put it under Iqbal’s charpoy. There was a long pause, Iqbal had pleasant visions of pouring the milk with all its clotted cream down the drain.

‘Well, Babuji,’ began the Muslim. ‘Tell us something. What is happening in the world? What is all this about Pakistan and Hindustan?’

‘We live in this little village and know nothing,’ the lambardar put in. ‘Babuji, tell us, why did the English leave?’

Iqbal did not know how to answer simple questions like these. Independence meant little or nothing to these people. They did not even realize that it was a step forward and that all they needed to do was to take the next step and turn the make-believe political freedom into a real economic one.

‘They left because they had to. We had hundreds of thousands of young men trained to fight in the war. This time they had the arms too. Haven’t you heard of the mutiny of the Indian sailors? The soldiers would have done the same thing. The English were frightened. They did not shoot any of the Indians who joined the Indian National Army set up by the Japanese, because they thought the whole country would turn against them.’

Iqbal’s thesis did not cut much ice.

‘Babuji, what you say may be right,’ said the lambardar hesitantly. ‘But I was in the last war and fought in Mesopotamia and Gallipoli. We liked English officers. They were better than the Indian.’

‘Yes,’ added Meet Singh, ‘my brother who is a havildar says all sepoys are happier with English officers than with Indian. My brother’s colonel’s mem-sahib still sends my niece things from London. You know, Lambardar Sahib, she even sent money at her wedding. What Indian officers’ wives will do that?’

Iqbal tried to take the offensive. ‘Why, don’t you people want to be free? Do you want to remain slaves all your lives?’