Budh Singh is becoming impossible. I try to shut the door. He sticks out one foot and prevents me from doing so. ‘You think Budh Singh mad? You think Budh Singh lie? Listen to radio BBC.’ He turns about and marches off swinging his arms and yelling: ‘Khalistan zindabad! Indira Gandhi Murdabad! Sant Bhindranwale amar rahey.’ I switch on my transistor. All India Radio Stations merrily play film music, programmes for farmers, youth of the land. Half-an-hour later I get the BBC. Indira Gandhi has been shot by her Sikh bodyguard and has been rushed to the All India Medical Institute. There will be no official statement on her condition till President Zail Singh and her son Rajiv Gandhi return to Delhi. Indira is unlikely to survive the volley of stengun fire and pistol shots pumped into her frail body etc. etc.

I sit in my chair. Head between hands. Dazed. Look blankly from bookshelves to ceiling, ceiling to bookshelves. The bell rings again. I tiptoe to the door and peer through the Judas Hole. Not Budh Singh but the Bhai of the neighbouring gurdwara. I open the door. He dips his hand in a bowl he is carrying and takes out a palmful of flour pudding. ‘Pershad,’ he says, ‘the desecration of the Golden Temple has been avenged. The Sikh Panth has won a victory. Indira kutti (bitch) is dead.’

Without replying I slam the door in his face and return to my chair. Celebrating the murder of a frail, little woman! What have the Sikhs come down to? If only the stupid woman had owned up her mistake, gone to the Temple and said, ‘My Sikh brothers and sisters I am sorry, I made a big mistake, forgive me,’ they would have forgiven her. But to get one demented monk and his gang of armed goons she let the army slay a thousand innocent pilgrims: grey-beards, blackbeards, no beards, women and babies-in-arms. Blasted the Akal Takht, seat of Sikh spiritual and temporal authority. Let the army loot cash, utensils and burn down the archives. In short, to kill a rat, she pulled down the house. One crime is followed by another. One lie by a bigger lie. The entire country pays the price for these blunders and lies.

I fiddle with my transistor switching from All India Radio to the BBC, to the Voice of America to Radio Germany to Radio Moscow. AIR says she is still alive. The BBC and the Voice of America say she is dead. Moscow simply quotes Delhi. Hours pass. Not a soul on the lawn in front. Not a soul on the road facing the gurdwara. A few buses run by without their usual hooting, a few cyclists hurry homewards bent double over their handlebars as if facing a strong wind. An eerie quiet spreads like a pestilent fog.