I sat down on the wet ground and wept. These were the peacock-killing mother-fuckers we were fighting for! What do these white bunderlogs know of the rains? Their women do not have black hair to remind them of dark monsoon skies. Nor do they have large-rounded bosoms which would remind them of billowing white clouds. Their girls do not know how to make swings on mango trees and sing songs to the monsoon. Have you ever heard goralog sing? I heard them in their church at Ambala: the mems screaming hee, hee, hoo, hoo; men braying bhaw bhaw like donkeys. How could they appreciate the ragas of rain and the dancing of peacocks? When all the world around was green and beautiful these goras thought only of killing. When I got up to give Hodson Sahib his morning mug of chai he said, ‘Now is the time to strike! Get the men ready for battle.’

Heavy cannon are hauled out by elephants. Camels and oxen are yoked to lighter guns. The ground is slippery. So we go barefoot. Only Hodson Sahib is on horseback. The rain slows down to a drizzle. The rocky ridge is all right, but near Sabzi Mandi we are knee-deep in slush. An elephant slithers and falls on its side with a great splash. Its mahout leaps clear but the cannon rolls over and its nozzle is stuck in the ground. The elephant manages to get on its feet and meekly raises one of its front legs to let the mahout clamber up. It takes twenty men to get the cannon back on its wheels. A slithering elephant is funny enough, a slithering camel is even funnier. It tries to sit on its bottom and gets its long legs entangled. The camel gets very gussa if you laugh at him.

We push on through the drizzle—slithering and falling as we go. It takes us two hours to cover a mile-and-a-half to get to Sabzi Mandi. We get there without attracting the enemy’s attention. He is enjoying the first day of the monsoon drinking bhang with his mashooka.

The rain stops. Patches of blue appear in the sky. Soon the sky over Dilli city is full of mutlicoloured kites. They battle in the air and as one has its string snapped it wafts down in majestic sweeps. We hear boys yelling ‘Vo kata. I see men waving scarves and whistling while flocks of black, white and brown pigeons wheel in the sky. From some house in Sabzi Mandi comes the jingle of dancers’ bells and the beating of tabla drums. It seems as if everyone in Dilli has given himself up to merry-making.