Life has gone by faster than I thought possible. When was it that I found Bhagmati lying on the road under the noonday sun? How many times had we lain together? Countless. And in between while she had plied her trade, I coupled with scores of women from countries known only to the Secretariat of the United Nations. Today I can recall only a few names and faces. I am not ashamed of what I did but can do no more. Bhagmati does not seem to mind my diminishing appetite for her. Her visits have become rarer and rarer. From dropping in once in two or three months when she needed money, for the last three or four years she has visited me only on Diwali. She no longer talks of her hijda husband (perhaps he is dead) or of sex but of Ramji and of Hindu temples and Muslim dargahs she visits. (Despite the years she consorted with me she has never displayed more than a cursory interest in Sikhism; she has certainly never bothered to go inside a Sikh gurdwara). She says she would like to spend her remaining years on the banks of the Ganga at Hardwar or Varanasi. At times she also talks of going on Haj (or is it Umra?) to Mecca and Medina. ‘If only I could tear myself away from the lanes and bazaars of Delhi,’ she says. ‘But I think I will die in Delhi.’ Sometimes she adds, ‘I hope you will take my ashes and throw them in the Ganga.’ At others she says, ‘Buy a two-yard plot of land near the mausoleum of Hazrat Nizamuddin for my grave.’ I tell her that I am likely to go before her and she should throw my body into the Jamna. Both of us know that we may not hear of the other’s demise till months after it has taken place.

Budh Singh has turned very hostile. After the incident of ‘eve-teasing’, he sank into deep melancholia. I took him to the mental ward of the Medical Institute. The doctor gave him some electric shocks which upset him very much. He was more upset at the doctor’s suggestion that I should have him admitted to an asylum in Agra or Ranchi. Budh Singh snapped out of his melancholia and turned aggressive. He called the doctor bahinchod and nearly hit me when I restrained him from hitting the doctor. He sits in front of my apartment and growls at me every time I come in or go out. He has made friends with the Bhai of the gurdwara behind my apartment and the two have devised ways of torturing me. The Bhai switches on his microphone at full blast at four in the morning and starts chanting prayers with the loudspeakers turned towards my bedroom. When I remonstrate with him, he tells me to mind my own business. Once when I reported him to the police, he told the sub-inspector that it was the wish of the sangat (congregation) and who was I to object? His only sangat was, and is, Budh Singh. When the sub-inspector left, the Bhai warned me that the next time I reported him to the police he would get Sant Bhindranwale’s followers to put me on the right path. Budh Singh yelled: Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale zindabad!’