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.

The Old Man is his own doctor. He takes no medicines or injections or anything. ‘The name of Rama is my nature cure,’ he says. It is taken down on paper by a dozen scribes. It is, as I said before, a put-up tamasha.

Hymns, recitations from the Ramayana, the Gita, the Quran and the Granth go on all day. And all day there is a continuous stream of people with the sorrows of the world on their long-drawn, stupid faces. Nehru is in tears. He says if Gandhi dies, India’s soul will die with him. Maulana Azad is in tears (later in the day he blabbers to 1,00,000 people for one hour. He loves his own voice).

In the evening the Lord Sahib Viceroy Mountbatten, his Lady Sahiba and Missy Baba come to Birla House. The Old Man makes some joke about his fast bringing the mountain to Mohammed. The tall handsome Maharaja of Patiala comes and says he saved thousands of Muslims. The Old Man does not believe him. The Nawab of Malerkotla comes and says he saved the lives of thousands of Sikhs and Hindus by threatening to kill ten Muslims for each Sikh or Hindu killed. The Old Man believes him.

Everyone in Delhi has turned a Mussalman-lover. A procession of 1,00,000 come to Birla House chanting:

Hindu, Muslim; Sikh, Isaee
Bharat mein hain bhai-bhai.