Astrologers - I have no doubt - sounded the alarums

Astrologers - I have no doubt - sounded the alarums; in a black folder labelled M.C.C., names were gathered from extant records; but there was more to it than that. There were also betrayals and confessions; there were knees and a nose - a nose, and also knees.
Scraps, shreds, fragments: it seems to me that, immediately before 1 awoke with the scent of danger in my nostrils, I had dreamed that I was sleeping. I awoke, in this most unnerving of dreams, to find a stranger in my shack: a poetic-looking fellow with lank hair that wormed over his ears (but who was very thin on top). Yes: during my last sleep before what-has-to-be-described, I was visited by the shade of Nadir Khan, who was staring perplexedly at a silver spittoon, inlaid with lapis lazuli, asking absurdly, 'Did you steal this? - Because otherwise, you must be - is it possible? - my Mumtaz's little boy?' And when I confirmed, 'Yes, none other,link, I am he -,' the dream-spectre of Nadir-Qasim issued a warning: 'Hide. There is little time. Hide while you can.'
Nadir, who had hidden under my grandfather's carpet, came to advise me to do likewise; but too late, too late, because now I came properly awake, and smelled the scent of danger blaring like trumpets in my nose ... afraid without knowing why, I got to my feet; and is it my imagination or did Aadam Sinai open blue eyes to stare gravely into mine? Were my son's eyes also filled with alarm? Had flap-ears heard what a nose had sniffed out? Did father and son commune wordlessly in that instant before it all began? I must leave the question-marks hanging, unanswered; but what is certain is that Parvati, my Laylah Sinai,replica gucci wallets, awoke also and asked, 'What's up, mister? What's got your goat?' - And I, without fully knowing the reason: 'Hide; stay in here and don't come out.'
Then I went outside.
It must have been morning, although the gloom of the endless midnight hung over the ghetto like a fog ,knockoff handbags... through the murky light of the Emergency, I saw children playing seven-tiles, and Picture Singh, with his umbrella folded under his left armpit, urinating against the walls of the Friday Mosque; a tiny bald illusionist was practising driving knives through the neck of his ten-year-old apprentice, and already a conjurer had found an audience, and was persuading large woollen balls to drop from the armpits of strangers; while in another corner of the ghetto, Chand Sahib the musician was practising his trumpet-playing, placing the ancient mouthpiece of a battered horn against his neck and playing it simply by exercising his throat-muscles ... there, over there, were the three contortionist triplets, balancing surahis of water on their heads as they returned to their huts from the colony's single stand-pipe ... in short, everything seemed in order. I began to chide myself for my dreams and nasal alarums; but then it started.
The vans and bulldozers came first, rumbling along the main road; they stopped opposite the ghetto of the magicians. A loudspeaker began to blare: 'Civic beautification programme ... authorized operation of Sanjay Youth Central Committee ... prepare instantly for evacuation to new site ... this slum is a public eyesore, can no longer be tolerated ... all persons will follow orders without dissent.' And while a loudspeaker blared, there were figures descending from vans: a brightly-coloured tent was being hastily erected, and there were camp beds and surgical equipment... and now from the vans there poured a stream of finely-dressed young ladies of high birth and foreign education, and then a second river of equally-well-dressed young men: volunteers, Sanjay Youth volunteers, doing their bit for society,ugg bailey button triplet 1873 boots... but then I realized no, not volunteers, because all the men had the same curly hair and lips-like-women's-labia, and the elegant ladies were all identical, too, their features corresponding precisely to those of Sanjay's Menaka, whom news-scraps had described as a 'lanky beauty', and who had once modelled nighties for a mattress company ... standing in the chaos of the slum clearance programme, I was shown once again that the ruling dynasty of India had learned how to replicate itself; but then there was no time to think, the numberless labia-lips and lanky-beauties were seizing magicians and old beggars, people were being dragged towards the vans, and now a rumour spread through the colony of magicians: 'They are doing nasbandi - sterilization is being performed!' - And a second cry: 'Save your women and children!' - And a riot is beginning, children who were just now playing seven-tiles are hurling stones at the elegant invaders, and here is Picture Singh rallying the magicians to his side, waving a furious umbrella, which had once been a creator of harmony but was now transmuted into a weapon, a flapping quixotic lance, and the magicians have become a defending army, Molotov cocktails are magically produced and hurled, bricks are drawn out of conjurers' bags, the air is thick with yells and missiles and the elegant labia-lips and lanky-beauties are retreating before the harsh fury of the illusionists; and there goes Picture Singh, leading the assault against the tent of vasectomy ... Parvati or Laylah, disobeying orders, is at my side now, saying, 'My God, what are they - ', and at this moment a new and more formidable assault is unleashed upon the slum: troops are sent in against magicians, women and children.