I help myself to a second, a third. She eyes me banefully while she shakes her empty glass. I take a fourth and give her another smaller one. ‘Don’t gulp it down; learn to drink like a lady.’

‘Lady be buggered!’ she replies. She is her old self. ‘What’s happened to that mad Sikh you had? What was his name? Buddhoo or something like that.’

‘Budh Singh. He was around this morning. Raving like a lunatic. If these fellows lay their hands on him, they will make a seekh kabab of him. If he comes round, we must lock him up in a room.’

I empty a packet of cheese crackers on a plate and put it before her. ‘This is all I have at home,’ I tell her. She picks up one and feels its texture. ‘How can I eat wooden biscuits? I have no teeth.’ She soaks one in her scotch and cola till it turns soggy and pops it in her mouth. She eats up the entire packet without bothering to find out if there is anything left for me. In any case I have no appetite for food. I tell her to sleep in my bed while I sleep on the sofa. She accepts my offer and waddles into the bedroom. A few minutes later I hear her belch, snore and break wind.

I switch on my radio and tune it to foreign stations. All give detailed news about Indira Gandhi’s assassination at the hands of her own Sikh bodyguards. And very briefly talk of anti-Sikh violence. Only Radio Pakistan talks of hundreds of Sikhs massacred and hundreds of gurdwaras burnt in Delhi. The telephone rings: ‘Is that you?’ it asks. ‘Yes.’ The caller proceeds to abuse me. ‘Bloody bastard you murdered your mother.’ I hit back. ‘Bloody mother-fucker, bastard yourself. You murdered your Bapu Gandhi, who are you to buk buk?’

The abuse upsets me. The telephone rings again. This time it is someone very polite. ‘Don’t drink water out of your tap. It’s been poisoned by the Sikhs.’ He puts down his receiver.

A few minutes later another ring. ‘Trainloads of dead Hindus massacred by Sikhs in Punjab have arrived in Delhi. Hindus will avenge these killings.’ Again the receiver is put down before I can say a word.

I sit and wait for the phone to ring again. It is dead. At midnight there is another hubbub. Slogans, yelling, people running from somewhere to somewhere. Everyone is awake. Another truckload of boys arrives. They burn another couple of cars and disappear. People peer through their windows to see the conflagration. Policemen armed with rifles stop by for a few minutes and then walk away.