The sports I like are all completely made up, usually by the English or Scottish, and would be completely alien to foreign invaders. Boxing is easy to understand, but I’m not a big fan. I need complicated, convoluted rules which can only be passed down through the generations by watching or playing the sport.

Arj had found a kindred spirit at last. Not only was he impressed with her courage and swimming skills, but on that day when he saw her, he thought he had seen a phenomenon even more stunning and radiant than the sun that he had gone up to look at. It was a vision of shining loveliness that set his heart pounding.

“She wouldn’t tell me her name, and she was heavily veiled, so, I couldn’t see her face. When I tried to find out who she was, she warned me that if she didn’t speak to you guys, our country would be reduced to rubble. That’s when I came looking for you. Oh, and she spoke to me in Arabic.”

‘Sir, Jai Hind. Asaram is trying to deceive us! Sir, the man has asked his son to collect more of his supporters during the night and block his departure in the morning!’

As communal relations between Hindus and Muslims deteriorated and rioting became a recurrent feature of public life in many parts of India, the space for Hindu nationalism reopened. But it was a space that the Congress never vacated.