Khushwant Singh [Singh - Me, The Jokerman: Enthusiasms, Rants & Obsessions

EDITORS NOTE

Khushwant Singh, the writer of joke books? the shopkeeper in Nainital asked, when we enquired if he had any books by the author. The perception of the Nainital shopkeeper was not only based on the authors popular joke books but also on Khushwant Singhs witty, light-hearted, engaging weekly columns.

This aspect of the man has often overshadowed his considerable contribution as a writer of memorable fictionTrain to Pakistan, I Shall Not Hear the Nightingale (now renamed The Lost Victory), Delhi: a Novelshort stories and non-fiction. The seminal two-volume A History of the Sikhs is even today essential reading for anyone interested in the Sikhs or Sikh history.

This collection, culled from the articles and columns that he wrote in the magazines and newspapers he edited and contributed tothe Illustrated Weekly of India, New Delhi, the Hindustan Times, The Tribune, etc.reflects his intense concern about growing fundamentalism, curiosity about godmen and women and the state of the country and its people. There are also evocative pieces on nature and amusing vignettes on the cities he lived inDelhi and Bombay and the hill station he escaped to in the summer, Kasauli. Included is a diary from January to November of the traumatic year 1984. Inevitably, the book concludes with Sex Matters and a selection of jokes.

Mala Dayal,

New Delhi,

July 2016

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For Naina,

who her grandfather hoped would

write more and better stories than him.

My housekeeper in Kasauli had two dogs to keep uninvited visitors and monkeys at bay-Neelo and Joojoo. Neither could claim any pedigree and had been picked out of the litters of bitches living in the vicinity. Both were ill-tempered but their barks were stronger than their bites. They were never known to bite anyone, but everyone, including the postman, shouted his arrival from a distance. When they had no one to bark at, they growled at each other and often had a scuffle. Their ill temper was more in evidence when I happened to be in Kasauli. As is common to most dogs, they sense who is the master of the house and attach themselves to him rather than those who feed them. No sooner would I arrive, the two would vie with each other to claim closeness to me. Neelo being the younger and tougher of the two would sit by my chair and snarl at Joojoo if he came anywhere near me. But Joojoo found ways to get round his rival. Neelo did not like to go for a stroll in the evening and would wait for me at the gate. I did not like Joojoo coming with me because he was prone to pick quarrels with any dog we met on our walks. I did my best to shoo him back home but he found footpaths on the hillside to catch up with me. While going through the small stretch of the bazaar, Joojoo would fight half a dozen dogs belonging to shopkeepers. However, over the years I got used to the temperaments of the two dogs and stopped fussing about them.

This went on for fourteen years. Both Neelo and Joojoo aged but not very gracefully. White hair sprouted round their mouths, they became slower in their movements, Joojoo stopped dogging my footsteps during my evening strolls. I noticed signs of ageing in the two dogs but refused to admit to myself that I too had aged and was often reluctant to step out of the house.

When I returned to Kasauli in June, Neelo was missing. My servant told me that the dog-men in the employ of the Cantonment Board had fed him poison because he wore no collar. Joojoo, who had spent his lifetime quarrelling with Neelo, looked older than ever before. His skin sagged over his bones, his genitals hung like a dilapidated sack under his belly, his legs trembled as he walked and his eyes looked bleary and unseeing. He would join me at teatime to beg for a biscuit or two because he could not chew anything harder. One morning he came and sat by me while I was having my morning tea. When I got up, he stood up on his trembling legs and looked pleadingly at me. I spoke to him gently: Joojoo tu budhdha ho gaya. Joojoo main bhee budhdha ho gaya (Joojoo you have got old, so have I). He looked at me with uncomprehending eyes and slowly went away. An hour later, one of the boys living in the house came and told me: Joojoo mar gaya (Joojoo is dead). I saw him lying by the club house. The Cantonment Board took his body away in a cart. So ended our fifteen-year-long friendship.

(2002)

Many friends of my university days have made good in the films. There is Balraj Sahni (and his son Parikshit); Chetan Anand and his brother Dev Anand; my own cousin Achala Sachdev; and Kamini Kaushal whose father, Professor Kashyap, was my tutor. There is also Rajbans Krishen Khanna, an associate from the halcyon days of passionate leftism. It is good to see them prosper, to enjoy their lavish hospitality, to bask in the sunshine of their popularity. What a vicarious thrill to be seated alongside a friend and hear a pretty teenager scream with excitement: Thats Balraj Sahni! Sometimes I get envious. Why doesnt someone jump with joy and yell, Theres the editor of the Illustrated Weekly!

Envy is the mother of malice and malice can let loose barbed shafts. This one is aimed at Rajbans Khanna. He has launched a most laudable venture, viz., a film on the epic voyage of the Komagata Marua Japanese vessel chartered by Sikh emigrants on their way to Canada in 1914. After much violence the ship was turned back, over thirty of its passengers were killed in a fracas at Budge Budge harbour near Calcutta; the remnants became the nucleus of the Ghadr rebellion in the Punjab. Later many turned Communists. Its just the theme for Rajbans who is a Punjabi, a dedicated Marxist and, I presume, an atheist.

Rajbans invited me to a religious ceremony prior to the shooting of the film. The one-foot-long card was very appropriately dyed in revolutionary red. It had an equally appropriate quotation from Iqbal exhorting the poor of the world to rise and destroy the mansions of the rich, burn down the crops of those who do not feed the hungry. The function was to be presided over by the chief minister of the Punjab, Gurnam Singh, an ardent Akali, passionately anti-Communist and almost certainly a non-participant in a Hindu muhurat. However, he had given money for the enterprise. And although he was unable to be present, the ceremony was duly performed with the chanting of mantras and cracking of coconuts. And why not! It is truly said ours is not a secular but a