I gave the girl a gold ashrafi. ‘This is for you. Don’t tell your old woman or the pimp.’ She took it, put her head in my lap and began to sob. I stroked her long hair, then bare back. I slipped my hand in her garara and stroked her rounded buttocks. My sex was roused. She undid the cord of my pyjamas. I laid her on the bed and entered her. Was I being unfaithful to Qamar? No. In this little girl I recreated her and relived the times we had lain together. Drink and the paan loaded with aphrodisiac made me stay in for an hour. She climaxed over and over again and was drenched in sweat by the time I spent myself in her.

She washed herself and then with a wet rag wiped my middle. Then she sat down beside me: ‘That Chappan fellow says you are a famous poet,’ she said. ‘Give this maidservant a couplet as a gift.’ I was not in a mood to compose poetry but did not want to hurt the girl’s feelings. ‘Give me a piece of paper, pen and ink and I’ll scribble something for you.’ She tore out a page from a notebook and gave me a reed pen and held an earthen inkpot in her hand. After thinking for a while I wrote:

The season of clouds, a flask of wine too.
Roses in the rose garden, as well as you.

When I got to my home in Fatehpuri, the dawn was about to break. My head throbbed with pain, my mouth was parched. It was when I was changing my clothes that I noticed that all the gold and silver coins I had received were gone. Who could it have been except the sixteen-year-old girl passing for a Mughal princess! Meer, better look after your terrain, this is no ordinary habitation! This is Delhi!

I was in ill-humour when I presented myself before Nawab Samsamuddaulah. So it seemed was the Nawab Sahib. His nephew Mohammed Wasit pleaded with him to fix an allowance for me. The Nawab Sahib regarded me with his bloodshot eyes and said: ‘Yes, we heard him last night. He is a deserving case. Besides we are beholden to his late father. Let him be paid one rupee a day. Next!’

Before the next supplicant could open his mouth, I presented a parchment before him and said: ‘Nawab Sahib may be pleased to put his order in writing.’ Though young in years, I knew the ways of civil servants who never did anything without demanding proof in writing.

My simple request put the Nawab Sahib out of composure. He snapped in Farsee, ‘Waqt-e-Qalaam Daan ne’st—this is not the time of the pen-and-inkholder.’ I stood my ground. ‘Sir, I do not understand the way you have framed your sentence,’ I said. ‘If your honour had said, “This is not the time for signing,” or that “the pen-and-ink-bearer is not on duty,” I would have understood. But to say that “pen-and-inkholder have no time” sounds extremely odd. It is not an animate object and therefore does not have proper or improper times; it can be brought at your honour’s command.’