The shadows lengthen. The newspaper boy shoves The Evening News under my door. Banner headlines: ‘Indira Gandhi Shot by Her own Sikh Guards.’ One of them has been killed; the other badly wounded. At the All India Medical Institute, teams of surgeons are taking out bullets and pumping in blood into Indira Gandhi’s body and trying desperately to save her. Stale news. By then most foreign radio stations are saying she died on the operating table. What now?

The bell rings. Followed by slapping on the door. I peep through the Judas hole. Some fat old woman I cannot recognize in the dim hallway light. She bangs on the door with her fist. I open the door. It is Bhagmati. Sparse hair daubed with henna. No teeth. Squashed mouth. Hair-bristle about her chin. Is this the same Bhagmati I had lusted after most of my lustful years? ‘Hai Laam! Hai Laam!’ She says with her toothless mouth. She holds her ears with her hands, sticks out her yellow tongue, ‘Toba! Toba! what I have seen with my own eyes, may no one ever behold! They are killing every Sikh they see on the road, burning their taxis, trucks, scooters. Connaught Place is on fire. They are looting every Sikh shop, office, hotel. And you are sitting here waiting for them to come and kill you! Hain? I am going to take you to Lal Kuan. Nobody will bend a hair on a hijda’s head. Chalo,’ she orders.

‘Patience!’ I tell her as I open the door to let her in. ‘If they are killing every Sikh they find, how do you think we will get to Lal Kuan? It is best to stay where you are. The police is bound to stop it in time.’

‘Police?’ she asks contemptuously. ‘Those bahinchods are with the mobs. “We give you thirty-six hours to finish every Sikh in the city,” they tell them.’ She sinks down on the sofa, covers her face with her hands and is convulsed with sobs. It is my turn to comfort her. I put my hand on her shoulder, ‘It can’t be all that bad. This is a civilized country,’ I tell her.

She looks up with her tear-stained eyes. ‘You want to see it with your own eyes? Come up on the roof and look.’ She takes my hand and heaves herself up from the sofa. We climb up the four storeys of my apartment building and go on the roof. She points northwards towards Connaught Circus. The sky is aglow: not with electric lights but with flames. In the dusk I can see clouds of smoke rising from different points. I look around in other directions. There are bonfires and smoke on many roads. ‘Sikhs’ taxis and trucks,’ Bhagmati informs me. The evening breeze wafts across the voice of crowds roaring in unison, ‘Indira Gandhi zindabad (Long live Indira Gandhi). Sikh hatyaron ko khatam karo (finish the murderous Sikhs).’ A mob is moving up the road towards my apartment. Bhagmati panics. ‘Chalo, chalo,’ she screams. ‘I’ll cut your hair and beard quickly. Then we can get out safely. All they can burn will be your books. They are of no use to Dilliwallas.’