Fatigue overtakes me and I doze off in my chair. I am woken up by the sound of shouting coming from the side of the gurdwara. I get up with a start and run out into the garden to see what is going on. It is early dawn but everyone seems to be on their balconies and at their windows looking at the gurdwara. Bhagmati comes heaving herself along as fast as she can and shouting at me.

‘Get inside,’ she screams. I ignore her and peep through the hedge.

I see Budh Singh in the gurdwara courtyard beside the smouldering ashes of the Granth and the Bhai. He has a kirpan in one hand and is whirling about like a dancing dervish, yelling abuse at a gang of young men armed with steel rods who have surrounded him. ‘You madarchods, you bahinchods, may your seed be destroyed! You burn our holy book. May your Vedas and Shastras be burnt!’

The young gangsters play a cat and mouse game with him. They take turns prodding Budh Singh in the back with their rods. The old fellow is getting tired. He can’t fight so many men. As he pauses for breath, an iron rod crashes on his shoulder and brings him down. His kirpan falls out of his hand. One fellow picks it up and pokes it in his bottom. Two lads pounce on him and pin his arms behind his back. One takes out a pair of scissors and begins to clip off budh Singh’s beard. Budh Singh spits in his face. The fellow slaps him on the face, catches him by his long hair and cuts off a hunk. They’ve had their fun. They get down to serious business. A boy gets a car tyre, fills its inside rim with petrol and lights it. It is a fiery garland. Two boys hold it over Budh Singh and slowly bring it down over his head to his shoulders. Budh Singh screams in agony as he crumples down to the ground. The boys laugh and give him the Sikh call of victory: ‘Boley So Nihal! Sat Sri Akal.

A Note from the Author

In this novel I have tried to tell the story of Delhi from its earliest beginnings to the present times. I constructed it from records chronicled by eye-witnesses. Hence most of it is told in the first person. History provided me with the skeleton. I covered it with flesh and injected blood and a lot of seminal fluid into it. It took me twenty-five years to do so. I am not sure whether I have succeeded in my venture.

Some chapters in an earlier draft were published in Evergreen Review of New York and The I llustrated Weekly of India.

New Delhi

15 September 1989

Khushwant Singh

Footnotes

Chapter II

*Acacia arabica