While the servants spread durries in the gardens and laid out the food, we went up the Minar, climbed all its steps and looked down at the ruins lying below us. I came down and walked round the mosque and tried to embrace the Iron Pillar standing in its midst. I did not know much history, the names of the builders or the things based on the place. My elder son told us about the first Muslim city of Delhi, of Qutubuddin, Altamash and Alauddin. I was pleased he had learnt so much in so short a time at school.

We ate our potato-stuffed parathas. The children went round looking at the monuments. I lay on my back on the durri gazing at the Minar which seemed to sway as wisps of clouds blew past it. I wondered how much the contractors had made out of the job. It was obvious they had stolen a lot of stone and marble from older buildings. Did they pass it off as new? Did they have to bribe architects and overseers to get their bills passed? How was it that without cement or concrete they had been able to make buildings last a thousand years? Would the buildings I was making last five hundred years? Would anyone know I had made them? Or would they only be known as the handiwork of Lutyens and Baker and the Viceroys in whose times they were begun or ended. Somehow these thoughts did not depress me because for me it was a day on which one of my ambitions had been fulfilled. I had driven to the Qutub in my own car. Soon I would be able to buy a new car every year. I was well on the way to becoming a rich man, a millionaire. What more could anyone aspire to in Life?

In January 1921, the king’s uncle, the Duke of Connaught, came to visit New Delhi. At this time Delhi did not look like an inhabited city. All it had were a few bungalows along broad avenues lined by young trees. The Viceregal palace, the two Secretariats and the War Memorial Arch were well behind schedule. Nevertheless the Viceroy was anxious to commemorate the Duke’s visit in some permanent way. So he was asked to lay the foundation stone of the new legislative building which included the Princes Chamber and was to be located close to the Secretariat. It was also announced that new Delhi’s main shopping centre half–a–mile northwards of the Secretariat would be named Connaught Place. At the time there was only a circular road without a single building. I was among the contractors presented by the Viceroy to the Duke. The Viceroy had been informed that I had bought more land in the future city centre than anyone else. So he told the Duke in front of me, ‘This man is going to build the first shopping arcade, cinemas and restaurants in the shopping centre to be named after Your Grace.’ Till then I had no idea what I was going to do with the land. There were not enough people in New Delhi for it to have shops or restaurants. But I knew that so broad a hint dropped by no less a person than the Viceroy was a command which had to be obeyed. As if to encourage me, at the king’s next birthday I was given the title of Sardar Sahib.