I slip into Gandhi’s room. He is lying on a charpoy, wrapped up in a shawl with only his bald head and face showing under the light of the table-lamp. The room is full of people. He asks, ‘What are they shouting about?’ Susheilaji replies, ‘Gandhi murdabad!’ and brushes a tear off her cheek.

Gandhi says, ‘Ram, Ram, Ram’ and hides his face under his shawl. So passes another day.

The next morning the Old Man is brought out on a charpoy so that the crowd can see him. The crowd shouts, ‘Mahatma Gandhi ki jai. ‘He joins the palms of his hands and bares his gums. He doesn’t look like a man who has not eaten anything for two days.

The entire government of India is now on the lawns of Birla House. Pandit Nehru and his ministers sit on chairs round a table. They decide to give Pakistan thirty-five crore rupees so it can buy guns and bullets to kill Hindus. They go to Gandhi and say: ‘We have done what you wanted us to do, now will you give up your fast?’ He shakes his head and replies, ‘No, not yet. I want much more. My sole guide, even dictator, is God, the infallible and omnipotent.’

The Ganga has begun to flow in the opposite direction—upstream from the sea towards its source in the mountains. That is the only way I can describe what is happening. Three days ago we were driving the Muslims out of Delhi and everyone was with us. Now the Muslims are coming back to Delhi and everyone seems to be against us. People who looted Muslims’ shops come to Birla House to give up their loot; men bring women they abducted to Birla House and ask them (the women) to forgive them in front of Gandhi. Men who spilled Muslim blood cut their own hands and with their own blood sign petitions asking Gandhi to give up his fast. Everyone is going Gandhi-mad. An old sahib, who has been editor of an English paper, starts to fast and says if Gandhi dies, he will also die. How can anyone fight this kind of madness?

The chief wants me to be at Birla House all the time because something big is to happen. He has given me his residence telephone number so I can ring him at night. As soon as the sun goes down it turns very cold. I curl up on a sofa in the verandah. I have my pullover and coat, warm socks and a shawl over me; yet I shiver so much that I cannot keep my teeth from chattering. The Old Man rises at 3.30 a.m. The sky is black and full of stars. Lights are switched on. Hymns are followed by silent meditation. The old fellow gets to work. I can see him under the light of his table-lamp picking up one letter after another and mumbling something which a fellow takes down on a piece of paper. This goes on for some hours. Then the Old Man has his Bengali lesson. What is the point of learning a new language if he really means to die? By then the sun is up and the sunshine streams into the verandah. I stop shivering. I try to get a little sleep. But there is so much jabbering around me that I have to get up. The doctors are examining the Old Man. They give him orange-juice and waggle their heads. The Old Man joins the palms of his hands and sends them away. You take it from me it is all a put-up show, a tamasha.