Paradise and Other Stories Read online

  ‘HIS TONGUE-IN-CHEEK STYLE IS ENOUGH TO GUARANTEE A MEMORABLE READ’—THE WEEK

  In this sparkling collection of stories, India’s best-known writer addresses some pertinent questions: Why do we believe in miracles? Can a horoscope guarantee the perfect wife? Is the Kamasutra a useful manual for newlyweds?

  Margaret Bloom arrives in Haridwar from New York to save her soul. But she soon discovers that there are temptations even on the banks of the holy Ganga. Madan Mohan Pandey, amateur astrologer and scholar of ancient Hindu texts, finds to his horror that his doe-like bride is not quite what he had expected. Pious Zora Singh, Pride of the Nation, rumoured to be a chaar sau bees and a womanizer, silences his detractors by earning the Bharat Ratna. Devi Lal Makes his peace with a fickle God when his daughter-in-law delivers a son, following secret visits to the Peer Sahib’s tomb. And Vijay Lall, emboldened by his miraculous escape from death, decides to act upon his silent obsession with Karuna Chaudhury, which takes him to a shifty soothsayer behind the Khan Market loo.

  Khushwant Singh returns to the short story after decades to deliver a truly memorable collection—humorous, provocative, ribald and even, at times, tender.

  Cover photograph by Philippe Pache

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  PARADISE AND OTHER STORIES

  Khushwant Singh is India’s best-known writer and columnist. He has been founder-editor of Yojna, and editor of the Illustrated Weekly of India, the National Herald and the Hindustan Times. He is also the author of several books, which include the novels Train to Pakistan, I Shall Not Hear the Nightingale, Delhi and The Company of Women; the classic two-volume A History of the Sikhs; and a number of translations and non-fiction books on Sikh religion and culture, Delhi, nature and current affairs. His autobiography, Truth, Love and a Little Malice, was published in 2002.

  Khushwant Singh was a Member of Parliament from 1980 to 1986. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1974, but returned the decoration in 1984 in protest against the storming of the Golden Temple by the Indian Army.

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  Published by the Penguin Group

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  First published in Viking by Penguin Books India and Ravi Dayal Publisher 2004

  Published in Penguin Books India 2005

  This edition published by Penguin Books India 2010

  Copyright © Khushwant Singh 2004

  All rights reserved

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to any actual person, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN 978-01-4341-515-2

  This Digital Edition published 2011. e-ISBN: 978-81-8475-049-2

  Digital conversion prepared by DK Digital Media, India.

  This e-book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser and without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above-mentioned publisher of this e-book.

  To Naina,

  the apple of my eye

  Contents

  copyright

  author’s note

  paradise

  life’s horoscope

  zora singh

  wanted: a son

  the mulberry tree

  acknowledgements

  author’s note

  In 1962 Indian astrologers, without a single exception, forecast the end of life on earth on 3 February at 5.30 p.m. because at that precise moment eight planets would be in conjunction (ashtagraha). Tonnes of ghee were burnt in havan kunds midst the chanting of prayers. Schools and colleges remained closed; buses, trains and planes went empty. People stayed in their homes to be together, awaiting the apocalypse (pralaya).

  February 3rd came and went. Nothing happened. The rest of the world laughed at us.

  I hoped this experience would finally rid Indians of belief in astrology and other equally ridiculous methods of forecasting the future—palmistry, numerology, gemology, tarot cards and whatnot. My hopes were belied. There was a resurgence of belief in the occult, together with an upsurge of bigotry and intolerance. Exaggerated piety became a façade for personal advancement. India steadily declined to become a nation of humbugs and hypocrites.

  I began writing these stories two years ago, when my cup of patience with irrationality and self-righteousness was full to the brim.

  paradise

  Pune, 1982

  What brought me here is partly recorded in my ‘Dear Diary’, a blue leather-bound notebook in which I put down my day’s activities and thoughts right through high school and the two years I was in college. Then I felt it was a bit childish, and in any case, what I did after I grew out of my teens was not worth recording. Most of them were wasted years. I am now thirty, still single and American—at least that is what my passport says. But things have changed enough for me to want to return to my diary. The wasted years are well and truly behind me. And I am where I should have been in the formative years of my life—India.

  I am the second child and the only daughter of my parents. My father is a Jew, my mother, ten years younger than he, is a High Church Anglican. Neither was particular about his or her faith. There was a mezuzah by the entrance of our large apartment and a menorah on the mantelpiece of our sitting room. Once a year, on Yom Kippur, we accompanied our father to the synagogue and my mother bought meat from a kosher butcher. And once a year we went to mass on Christmas Eve with our mother, put up a Christmas tree in our living room and had friends over for drinks, roast turkey and Christmas pudding. As far as religion was concerned, that was about all we did about it.

  My father was a big-built man of Polish descent. He spoke English with a guttural, American accent. My mother was of genteel ancestry. She was small and extremely attractive, with golden brown hair, dark blue eyes and boobs to die for. Why she agreed to marry my father, who was a coarse man, I was never able to understand. He was the chief sales manager of a large, Jewish-owned department store; she the personal secretary of a member of the Board of Directors who wanted her to be his mistress. The man hounded her, so she told him where to get off and becam
e the secretary of another member of the Board. She also agreed to marry my father who had been making passes at her for a long time.

  It was a bad match from the start. My father was a philanderer. He was often away from New York on business and thought nothing of laying women willing to be laid. There were plenty of them wherever he went. He was also careless and left evidence of his philandering on the lapels of his coats and in his pockets. There were angry quarrels every time he came home. By the time I was four years old, my parents’ marriage was all but over. They hardly spoke to each other. He continued womanizing; my mother found lovers. Ultimately she sued for divorce, got the apartment, custody of both her children and a hefty alimony. My father moved out and my mother began entertaining her lovers in our home.

  I take after both my parents. Like my father, I’m tall; I inherited my mother’s golden brown hair, her dark blue eyes and her big bust. I was voted the best-looking girl in school and was greatly sought after by the boys. I was sixteen when I lost my virginity to the captain of the school baseball team. We continued dating each other for a few months. Then he found other girls to take out and I was happy dating other boys.

  So it went on through high school and college, where I did a secretarial course. I landed a well-paid job as the secretary of the owner of a publishing house. I could afford to rent an apartment of my own, but for some reason carried on living with my mother. My brother had by then passed out of college and got a job in Chicago. My mother continued entertaining her gentleman friends as and when she wanted. I went my way, inviting my boyfriends over for the night. My mother and I never got in each other’s way. There were times when she had her friends in her part of the apartment and I had my friends in mine. When we ran into each other in the kitchen while getting some beer or coffee or something to eat, she would ask, ‘Howya doin’, hon?’ I would reply, ‘Fine,’ and we’d return to our respective friends.

  I started drinking while I was still at high school. Later, I did crack and smoked pot. I was often high and didn’t even know the boys I ended up sleeping with. At times there would be six of us, drinking and smoking pot together. We’d shed our clothes and take turns having sex with different partners. This was usually on Saturday evenings so we had Sunday to shake off the effects of the booze and drugs. This went on for some years till I started feeling an emptiness inside. My enthusiasm for partying began to wane. I started hating myself for my indulgences and for making my body available to anyone who wanted it. I often went into depression. At times I contemplated suicide.

  Then an incident finally convinced me that I should change my way of living or else I would go crazy.

  I was alone in my part of the apartment one evening, reading in bed. My mother had a boyfriend visiting her. Their voices got louder and louder; I heard my mother shout, ‘Get the hell out of my house or I’ll call the police!’ Seconds later a stocky, middle-aged man with bloodshot eyes staggered into my room, pulled down his trousers and held out his erect penis at me. ‘Want my dick in your pussy, darlin’?’ he said coming towards me. ‘Your Ma is mad at me and won’t have any of it. So—’ Before he could take another step I flung my book at his crotch and screamed, ‘Get out, you fucking bastard or I’ll strangle you with my bare hands!’ The book hit him on his balls. He doubled up in pain and stumbled out yelling, ‘Fucking whores! I’ll teach you both a lesson soon!’ I bolted my bedroom door and went back to bed but I couldn’t sleep. I knew that if I didn’t put an end to this sort of lifestyle, it would be the end of me.

  It was around then that I discovered India. I don’t remember exactly how it happened except that one of my girlfriends told me that she had been to attend a few lectures delivered by some swami or the other at the Ramakrishna Centre, which was a few blocks away from where I lived in Manhattan. She had been very impressed with the speaker, and I asked her to take me with her the next time she went.

  It was a large room with about a hundred chairs. Almost half the audience were Indians, the rest Caucasians of different nationalities, including Americans. It was unlike any religious gathering I had attended. The platform was bare except for a white cotton sheet spread over a carpet and an incense burner sending up spirals of fragrant smoke. A young man dressed in white shirt and pyjamas came in. He had close-cropped hair and looked clean as though he had just had his bath. He greeted us by joining the palms of his hands and with a slight bow said, ‘Namastey.’ Some of the audience responded with ‘Namastey’.

  The man sat down on the white sheet in the lotus position and closed his eyes. He sat still for a while, then raised his hands and in a deep, resonant voice chanted, ‘Om.’ Many in the audience joined him. It was not a short, two-letter word they chanted but a prolonged A-U-M that echoed through the hall. I did not know what it meant but I found it very soothing.

  ‘Friends,’ he began, ‘in this series of lectures you have heard me talk on various subjects. This evening I will talk about the way Hindus look at life. The Westerner views life very differently. Here you are motivated to achieve material success, which is seen as the ultimate aim of existence. You are fiercely competitive, you work very hard so that creature comforts last you till the end of your lives. Your lives are filled with tension, and many of you consult psychiatrists to help you cope with stress. You try to drown your worries in high living—drinking, taking drugs and indulging in promiscuous sex. You think high living and having fun is the be all and end all of existence. But soon you begin to feel empty inside and begin to question yourself, “Is this all that life on earth was meant to be?”’

  The man’s words touched me deeply. It was as if he had been reading my mind. He had used almost the same words I used when I reflected on my own life. He continued, ‘My friends, there is a bit more to life than making money and having a good time. To find the purpose of life, you have to look within yourself. Ask yourself, why was I born? What is this world all about? Where will I go after I die? Ponder over these questions in silence and in solitude, meditate on them after emptying your mind of all thoughts. The truth is within you. God is within you.’ I did not understand all that he said but it set me thinking. Somehow partying, drinking, smoking pot and sleeping around didn’t seem that much fun any more. I felt more disturbed than I already was. I made it a point to attend all the lectures at the Centre, where I got to know some Indians. I asked them about meditation centres in their country. They told me about ashrams, where men and women lived in communes, prayed and meditated together. Drinking, smoking and sex were taboo there. The food was vegetarian, as killing animals was regarded a sin. It was the spartan existence which intrigued me. I wanted to try it out, at least for a month or two.

  The Ramakrishna Centre had many branches in India, but these were more into social work than meditation. Indians I befriended suggested different ashrams—the Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry, Sai Baba’s ashram in Puttaparti, the Osho Commune in Pune, the Radha Soamis’ in Punjab and a number of other places along the Ganga. I wrote to many of them and received printed brochures with their terms and conditions. The board and lodging was very cheap by American standards, no more than five dollars a day. I looked up the Indian map to locate exactly where these places were before deciding on Vaikunth Dhaam in the Himalayas, along the western bank of the Ganga near Haridwar. I liked the name Vaikunth Dhaam, earthly paradise. I liked its picture in the catalogue they sent me: a small temple with a large courtyard around which ran a verandah with rooms for residents, a large meditation hall and a dining room with a long table and wooden benches. But what I liked most was what they had written against ‘cost of stay’. It said, Give as much as you like or as little as you can afford.

  My mind was made up. I told my mother I was going on a two-month vacation to India.

  ‘Why India of all places, for Christ’s sake?’ she asked. ‘Full of beggars and all kinds of diseases and weird people.’

  ‘It has something no other country in the world has. If I don’t find it I’ll be back sooner,�
� I replied.

  I bought myself an English-Hindi dictionary and learnt a few Hindi words and phrases to get by. Wanting to get a taste of the country before I got there I decided to fly Air India, New York-London-Delhi. At Kennedy Airport, I had to join a long line of Indians at the economy class counter. A man at the desk spotted me, took me from the end of the queue to the counter, checked in my valise and gave me a boarding pass. ‘Madam, the economy class is full; we are upgrading you to the business class. Have a pleasant flight.’ It paid to be White and blonde among browns and Blacks.

  The halt at Heathrow was spent in the swanky Maharajah’s lounge, being served breakfast and strolling around the shopping arcades. A new lot of passengers joined the flight to Delhi, and I got talking to some of them. They were curious to know what I was going to do in India. When I said ‘Nothing, just be by myself and meditate on the purpose of life’, word got around in the aircraft and I became the subject of discussion. One of the passengers, who was from Dehra Dun, came over to talk to me.

  ‘I’ve never been to Vaikunth Dhaam but I’ve heard a lot about it. It’s not very far from where I live. I’m told it’s a very beautiful ashram in the mountains through which the Ganga flows. The person who heads the ashram is said to be a very learned man. He maintains a strict discipline of daily prayer and meditation. How will you be going there?’

  ‘Train? Bus, car? I have no idea. I’ll find out from a travel agent at the hotel where I plan on staying three or four days,’ I replied.

  ‘I can tell you right now,’ the man said. ‘In Delhi, hire a taxi. It will take you five hours to get to Haridwar. After that you go along the Ganga on a road winding through the hills. In two hours you will reach Vaikunth Dhaam. Leave Delhi early morning, you will reach your destination by the afternoon. The taxi should not cost you more than two thousand rupees.’