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.

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?’