Khushwant Singh - Why I Supported the Emergency

Fourteen years ago, when I was a reporter for the Asian Age, my editor, M.J. Akbar, sent me to interview Khushwant Singh. I had met Khushwant once years ago when I was trying to make a precarious living as a young freelance journalist. At that time I had duly pounded the pavements of Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, better known in my circle of freshly arrived immigrants to Delhi as the Fleet Street of India. The first editors door that I could get past was that of an unknown tabloid called the Sun. I had an article with meon Barbara Cartlands visit to Hyderabadthat I had written and typed out. It was accepted and the editor asked me if I could also interview Khushwant Singh for the Sun. I had no idea why he wanted a feature on Khushwant Singh after Barbara Cartland, but I accepted the assignment with alacrity.

Khushwant was certainly easier to meet than Barbara Cartland, whose gatekeepers included a five-star hotel staff, the organizers of her event in Hyderabad and finally her husbands cold voice on the phone. Khushwants number was listed in the telephone directory and he answered the phone himself. Come at four oclock today, he said briskly, without even asking which newspaper I was reporting for. It brought him down a little in my young rank-conscious eyes. He was already a legend by then, churning out his two weekly columns for over a dozen English and fifteen language dailies across the country. And these columns were collected into books almost as fast as he wrote them. Then, as now, you couldnt go to a single railway station, no matter how small, and not find a paperback written by him at the A.H. Wheeler stall. Another reason for my disdain was that my father, a retired railway engineer who read only newspapers, the Illustrated Weekly before it folded up and Perry Mason thrillers by Erle Stanley Gardner, read him religiously every week.

Khushwant opened the door himself, a barefoot, sloppy, bespectacled sardar with a beard dyed jet black, in shorts and a T-shirt that was once white but was now stained with what looked like ketchup but turned out to be the Pan Parag he chewed all day. He led me into his little den, which made me a little nervous: he had a reputation and I couldnt see if anyone else was in the house besides him. All four walls of the study were lined with books. Just as we settled down, he in a comfortably worn black leather sofa, his bare feet up on a moda, a servant arrived with a tray carrying two large mugs of tea and two or three generous slices of fruit cake. The cake was for me, Khushwant said, and deftly led me into my interview without wasting time on further preambles. Ive forgotten now what the interview was about, but I recall being lulled by his avuncular kindness into asking questions I wouldnt have dared to ask anyone else of his age and stature. He answered in very simple, plain words, with an openness I had rarely encountered, considering each question I put to him with a gravity that made me feel as if I was a veteran journalist instead of a cub reporter for an unknown tabloid, which, incidentally, closed down very soon after this incident. He waited till Id finished, before starting his own grilling: where was I from? Was I single or married? What did my parents do? And my husband? But his probing was very skilful, disguised under the cover of many amusing anecdotes and stories about people whom Id vaguely heard of even though they were from Hyderabad, the city where I grew up. I got the impression even then that behind his benign gaze, he didnt miss a thing. And I left feeling flattered by his rapt attention. I was convinced I had made a lasting impression on him.