Khushwant Singh - Malicious Gossip

To my friend of half a century
P.N. KIRPAL
lover of all things beautiful, loved by
everyone, and somewhat of a bore

Contents

T his is the second of Khushwant Singhs books that I have had the pleasure of editing. At both times, though I have thoroughly enjoyed reading his writings, I have faced one major problemthe selection of pieces to be finally included in the book has cost me many sleepless nights. This is not only because Khushwants effortless prose spiked by his characteristically acerbic wit and spontaneity makes many of his pieces worth preserving but also because his writings span such a vast range. His columns are a happy blend of some topical event, an introduction to some very well-known or perhaps totally unknown personality a review of a book read, a seminar, dance or music recital attended, a travelogue, or perhaps a description of some facet of nature, one of Khushwants loves. I must admit at the outset that this book lays no claim to containing all his best written worksto include all of them would have needed many such volumes. I have taken the easy way out by confining this book to three subjects close to Khushwants heartPakistan, people and places. The selections have been taken from his columns, With Malice Towards One and All, Gossip: Sweet and Sour and This Above All, and from his writings in The Illustrated Weekly of India and New Delhi.

Khushwants writings on Pakistan are impassioned and emotional. As one who was born there and who feels the pull of his roots, he has always fervently sought to remind his readers, particularly in the bad times, of the enormous fund of goodwill that exists between the two peoples. He has just as fervently believed that they can never be divided by boundaries, wars, and political machinations. As he says in one of his articles, I am notorious for my bias in favour of Pakistan and am proud of it. But my pro-Pak leanings come from the conviction that friendship with Pakistan must take top priority in Indias international dealings, because an inimical Pakistan not only retards progress in both our countries but also slows the pace of integration of Indian Muslims into the mainstream of Indianism. I am convinced we can win back the goodwill of Pakistan by showing more understanding of their problems and anxieties ... I have paid the price for airing my views by being dubbed by stupid people as a Pakistani agent. He portrayed the traumatic times of the Partition days in his successful novel, Train to Pakistan. Since then, he has been back oftenin good times, sad times and changing times. He was the only Indian delegate present at the Quaid-e-Azams birth centenary celebrations, and was present in Pakistan on the day Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was hanged. Exhaustive accounts of those tension-filled days were published on his return, in the Illustrated Weekly. With details gathered from people who were eyewitnesses to the final scenes in the life of Bhutto, including versions of two men who actually saw the hanging, the article probes behind the facts of history into the cell and the mind of Bhutto the mandesperate, brave, condemned. This article is included in this collection along with accounts of other visits, including one particularly sentimental one, in which Khushwant mourns the passing away of Manzur Qadir, one of his closest college friends, the successor to his home in Lahore and the man who rose to become Pakistans Foreign Minister and Chief Justice. His obituary is one of the most emotional Khushwant has ever written.

In the section comprising personalities, there are some more obituaries. On rereading the pieces I had selected, I realized that, quite unwittingly, I had picked on more of the dead than the living. Refreshingly, in Khushwants characterizations, death does not imbue the departed with virtuous perfection. Khushwant writes about them as they really were, warts and all. He brings them to life, if one could call it that. Perceptive of human foibles, observant of details, Khushwants caricatures of people he has known, befriended, or fallen out with, have the ring of truth. I am sure many have irked and annoyed, but if there is one person who can afford to be malicious, it is Khushwant, for he often turns the same telescope on himself. If he knows how to enjoy a laugh at other peoples expense, he also does it with just as much mirth at his own.

Reading travelogues is much like looking at other peoples photographsyou flip through them hastily, feigning a polite interest, unable to identify with the distant people in far-away places. Khushwants travelogues are an exception. Though he admits that he is now weary of travelling and feels that there is little worth seeing that he hasnt seen already, his pieces throb with the curiosity of a tourist eager to see, hear, and discover as much as he can. His pieces bring you the feel, the sights, and the sounds of a place with details of its economy its flora and fauna, and the eating habits, hobbies, and cultural diversions of its people. He quotes their poetry and describes their art. What makes his pieces most readable, however, is that he candidly tells you of his own experiences, be they bizarre, humorous, pleasurable, or lecherous. One section in this book includes Khushwants descriptions of his travels in India and abroad.

Unlike many famous men, Khushwant did not excel or show any special inclination towards writing in his early years. Like many famous men, he was an academic failure. He dreaded school, often bunked it and barely managed to scrape through his yearly exams. His record remained much the same at St Stephens College and Government College, Lahore, except that at the latter, at the annual college debate, instead of being hooted, as most speakers were, he was heard with rapt attention, his jokes evoked a lot of laughter and he got away with the first prize, the only one he ever won in any university. He passed his BA in the third division and decided to qualify for the bar at Kings College, London, which, in those days, required no more than dining at the Inns of Court for three years and paying a fee which gave you a licence to practise law in any court. He got it but no clientele to go with it. He returned to India, married, but his practice never picked up. In 1947, when India and Pakistan were partitioned, he left Lahore, never to return to live again in his ancestral house or to ever practise law. Back at Delhi, he joined the Foreign Service but it soon bored him and he left it to turn to serious writing.

Khushwant maintains that his earliest foray into the world of fiction was bragging, when he came home for vacations from England, of his exploits with English girls. His first works appeared in print, however, in the Canadian Forum, Saturday Night and Harpers. Soon after, his first collection of short stories, The Mark of Vishnu, was published by Saturn Press. Later, he translated the Japji, the Sikhs Morning Prayer for Probsthain and also wrote a short history of the Sikhs for Allen and Unwin. This was to later earn him an offer from the Rockefeller Foundation to do a more definitive work on the same theme, the publication of which made him recognized as an authority on the subject. His lectures on Comparative Religion delivered at Swarthmore and Princeton universities were published under the title Vision of India. It was at Swarthmore that he was offered the editorship of the Illustrated Weeklyan assignment which made him the most-talked-about editor in the country, which took his writings to thousands of Indian homes and which raised the circulation of the