What hurt me very much was the way my parents changed towards me—their only remaining child. I knew the reason. They had spent all their money. My mother’s gold bangles and ear-rings had to be sold as my father’s wages were not enough to feed the three of us. If I asked for another chappati, my mother would ask, ‘Have you a belly or a well?’ My father started calling me mushtanda (lout). One day both turned on me and told me to go out and look for work. So I was thrown out into the strange world of this strange city.

Where was I to start? My father told me to go to peoples’ houses and ask if they wanted a servant. Delhi was full of Punjabi refugees looking for work. Every house I went to had a man at the gate who asked me my business. When I told him, he would order me to move on. I got to know Delhi, both the old city and the new; the big buildings where big officials went to work in their big motor cars and clerks on their bicycles. I got to know all the bazaars and what was sold where. But I found no work. My father got very harsh with me. My mother had to shield me from his temper. I began to come back after dark and slip into the garage when my father was doing his rounds. My mother would then give me food and press my legs till I fell asleep.

I often dreamt of Hadali with its stretch of treeless expanse and the sands on which I used to play on moonlit nights. I dreamt of the tall Mussalman women with pitchers on their heads, the black points of their nipples showing beneath their wet muslin shirts and the joy of being crushed between their legs. Sometimes the dreams turned into nightmares. I saw the Mussalman men menace me with their penises the size of randy donkeys’. I would start moaning. My mother would shake me up, take me in her arms and rock me back to sleep.

My father stopped talking to me. My mother tried to make up for his behaviour. She would ask me what I had seen. ‘Why don’t you take your mother with you some time?’ she would say.

One Tuesday she took permission of her mistress to come with me. I showed her the government Secretariats and the Parliament House. She gasped with wonder as if she was a little girl. She asked me all sorts of questions; I made up all sorts of answers. She made me feel very important. She took my hand when she got nervous of buses and motor cars; she made me feel like a strong, grown-up man. I took her to the Birla temple. She prayed to Shiva and Parbati and Ganesh; to Vishnu and Lakshmi; to Krishna and Radha, and then to Rama and Sita and all the other gods and goddesses. She prayed for Lachmi. She waved a copper paisa round my head and gave it to the pandit. She asked him to smear my forehead with sacred ash and bless me so I could get a job.