As I said before, I did not like this work. I did not like to shout dom, dom whenever I went out with the cartload of corpses. I did not like people covering their children’s eyes against me and blocking there nostrils against the smelly load I carried. Even the sentries at the city gates would draw aside to let me pass. I used to console myself by recalling my Bapu’s words: ‘Son, only two people can pass through the gates of Shahjahnabad without being questioned: the King and the untouchable!’

It was on one of his visits to Dilli that Badshah Shah Jahan was taken ill. They tried to keep it secret but within a few hours everyone knew about the sultan’s ailment mainly through the badshah’s doctor who was a gossip. This is how it happened. The badshah had got up at night and complained of pain in his belly. The queen had sent for the hakeem who lived in Ballimaran. The hakeem told many people of having had no sleep because he had to stay up all night with a patient whose name he could not disclose—which is how news of the badshah’s ailment spread.

When I came to work one of the doms shouted ‘Chhuttee (holiday)! Orders from the palace, no executions today.’ Executions were only stopped on religious holidays or if the king or one of his queens or their princes was ill and desired to earn merit and good health. By the time the sun had risen over the walls of Red Fort people were gathering in groups and speaking in whispers. Butchers were forbidden to slaughter animals; mullahs were ordered to pray to Allah to restore the king to good health; priests were ordered to clang their temple bells. Shops closed. People hurried to their homes and barricaded their doors. At night they dug holes under their hearths to bury their gold and silver.

The king it turned out was constipated. The hakeem gave him a purgative made of laburnum pods. For two days and nights the king emptied his bowels till there was nothing left in them and he started shitting blood. But big people’s illnesses are always made to sound big. The simple shutting and opening of the royal arse-hole was made to sound as if the world was coming to an end. At first he was said to be dying of constipation; then he was said to be dying of dysentery.