In the centre of Moslem Delhi, not far from the old city is a shrine in which the great Sufi, Nizzamudin, is buried. We have always gone at night, when the naked bulbs in the shops and restaurants shine their eerie pointed light onto the streets.

If we’re really lucky, there’s a power cut and the entrance to the market is bathed in the soft redolence of candle and petrol lamp light. You may have thought you were in the heart of one of the world’s great capitals, but here you are in an impoverished village.

The street leading into the quarter is narrow, but soon even it peters out to a system of narrow alleyways, and soon enough walking becomes an intimate affair. You are rubbing shoulders, watching your bag, and sharing breath with beggars, pan chewers and the heady crowd energy of the Indian subcontinent.

For some reason, the Moslems of Delhi are even poorer than the Hindus, although before Partition they formed the elite. If in the rest of the city you are approached at red lights by beggar children with hungry eyes showing you they want to eat or by old men who will kiss your feet if you’re in a rickshaw, here in Nizzamudin you are swamped, drowning in beggars.

The entire place is like a Cour des Miracles complete with lepers and open sores; your status as ferengi, or foreigner, means money and lots of it. In the rest of Delhi you may try to ignore beggar children put on the streets by a Mafia of beggar pimps. Here you are at the centre of attention for dozens of sick, deformed and desperate people.

The approach to the shrine is down the narrowest alleyway of them all, with shops selling sweet smelling rose petals. At the end of the alley is a dead end where you are required to take off your shoes and leave them with a guardian (baksheesh! baksheesh!). Forget foot hygiene.

The tomb of the great man is in a marble mausoleum, and on the tomb itself are the thousands of rose petals bought in the shops leading to the shrine. Women are not allowed inside the shrine and so they attach bits of tissue to the lattice work outside, each one saying, ‘I was here. Pray for me’.

Thursday night is Qawali night, the night when traditional Sufi singers work themselves into a trance. We sat on the floor, tightly packed. Off to the sides of the major shrine are the tombs of other mystics and it is in them that men and – mostly – women possessed by djiins gather to wail and beat their heads against the walls, waiting for the djiins to depart.

The Qawali lasts for hours. The rhythm is subtle and dank, ecstatic and friendly. As a ferengi all eyes are on you, but all you’ve got to do is sway to the music to be one of the family. To fight the heat, an old man goes throughout the crowd with a large wicker fan, giving bursts of warm air and collecting baksheesh.