Days go by. I am less and less awake when I get out of bed and drag myself to my study. One morning I kicked the stool on which I keep my electric kettle. I was lucky—only a few drops of boiling water fell on my foot. At times I doze off listening to the keertan from the Golden Temple. It is becoming a bore. I listen to it because at that hour there is nothing better to tune into. Ever since that fellow Bhindranwale started spouting hateful wards against Hindus from the precincts of the Golden Temple, something seems to have gone out of the keertan. The Bhai and Budh Singh call him a saint. I feel a lesser Sikh because I think he is a bhoot (incarnation of Satan).

On the first of June 1984 the morning service from the Golden Temple is somewhat erratic. I am not sure whether the tabla drums have been put too close to the microphone or it is something else. The beat sounds like gunfire. Papers say that the army has been ordered to get Bhindrawale dead or alive; perhaps it is trying to frighten him to surrender. Mrs Gandhi has been assuring the Sikhs that she will never order the army into the Temple. Sensible woman! She knows that mounting an invasion on the Temple will turn it into a bloody battlefield. No Sikh will ever forgive her.

I read newspapers more carefully. And listen to the morning services more intently. The 3rd of June is the anniversary of the martyrdom of the builder of the temple. Thousands of pilgrims have come from distant villages to bathe in the sacred pool.

I can hear the hubbub of their voices behind the keertan. And the crying of babies roused from their slumbers. And their mothers bribing them with their breasts to keep silent. Roars of Wah Gurus! during the invocation include women’s voices. Foolish people! What are they doing in the Temple with Bhindranwale’s men and the army trading shots! Curfew has been imposed on the city. Punjab has been handed over to the army and sealed off from the rest of the world. On the morning of the 5th of June I hear gunfire more clearly than the keertan. The next morning there is silence, Papers carry triumphant headlines: ‘Tanks of the Indian army blast Bhindranwale’s stronghold.’ The BBC says well over a thousand including Bhindranwale have been killed. The bullet-ridden corpses of women and infants-in-arms float in the sacred pool. What made Indira Gandhi do such a stupid thing?

A deep depression enters my soul. I ask myself over and over again, am I Sikh? I am certainly not the Bhindranwale brand nor the gurdwara Bhai brand. Bhindranwale was loonier than Budh Singh. I cannot remember when I last went to a gurdwara. I have not prayed in fifty years.