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  ‘[KHUSHWANT SINGH] IS A LITERARY VERSION OF OSHO RAJNEESH… [THE] RUMBUSTIOUS, RABELAISIAN BLACK SHEEP OF THE FLOCK’—THE TIMES OF INDIA

  In this, his fifth novel, one of India’s most widely read authors returns to territories he knows best: twentieth-century Indian history, bogus religion and sexuality.

  After Nehru, Victor Jai Bhagwan is Mahatma Gandhi’s favourite Indian—a brilliant young man with the temperament of a leader and fiercely committed to his country. Though Victor adores and respects Gandhi, he disagrees with the Mahatma’s vision for the future of India. He returns from university in England determined to bring the benefits of modern industry to the subcontinent, and within a few years of India’s independence, becomes the country’s biggest tycoon. But this is not the only ideal of Gandhi’s that he defies: facing a midlife crisis, he falls passionately in love with a tantric god-woman (who keeps a tiger as her pet and has a dubious past). She introduces him to the pleasures of unbridles sexuality, but also becomes the reason for his downfall.

  Comic, tender and erotic by turns, Burial at Sea is vintage Khushwant Singh.

  Cover photograph: ‘An Idea of Three’ by Laurent Goldstein

  Cover design by Bhavi Mehta

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  BURIAL AT SEA

  Khushwant Singh is India’s best-known writer and columnist. He has been founder-editor ofYojna, and editor of the Illustrated Weekly of India, theNational Herald and theHindustan Times. He is also the author of several books, which include the novelsTrain to Pakistan,I Shall Not Hear the Nightingale, Delhi andThe Company of Women; the classic two-volumeA 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.

  Burial at Sea

  * * *

  KHUSHWANT SINGH

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  To Poonam Khaira and Karan Sidhu

  for the gift of friendship

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Acknowledgements

  1

  * * *

  For two days and nights his embalmed body lay in the Darbar Hall of the Governor’s palatial residence overlooking the Arabian Sea. Raj Bhavan had been thrown open to the citizens so they could pay homage to the man who perhaps had done more for their country than anyone else in living memory. Though few people knew him personally, he had become a legend; the line of homage-payers bearing wreaths and flowers stretched over a mile beyond the entrance gate. Protocol had been set aside. The police merely ensured that the mourners kept moving past the bier on which he lay with a triumphant, even defiant, look on his dead face. Those who lingered, hoping to get a glimpse of his daughter and heir to his vast fortune, were disappointed. Only his ageing sisters could be seen in the hall, receiving important visitors.

  In his will, published in the papers the day after he died, he had bequeathed all his property to his only child Bharati and also instructed her to have him buried at sea, close to the spot where his yachtJal Bharatiwas usually anchored between the Gateway of India and Elephanta Island. He had spent half his life on his yacht from where he got a splendid view of Bombay’s skyline without having to put up with the city’s noise and foul odours, and that was where he wanted to end his final journey. He had also specifically mentioned that no religious rites were to be performed at his funeral.

  Bharati was the boss of the show. She told the Governor to arrange for the gun carriage bearing her father’s body to leave Raj Bhavan at 10 a.m. sharp. It would go along Marine Drive, making a ten-minute halt at Jai Bhagwan Towers, the thirty-storeyed building named after her father that was the general office of his many enterprises, so that the staff could bid their last farewell to their employer. It would then proceed towards the Gateway of India whereJal Bharati was anchored. Only five cars were to follow the cortege. Bharati would be alone in the first one; her aunts, their husbands and children in the next two; the fourth was for her guru and yoga teacher Swami Dhananjay Maharaj; and the last car, an open van, would carry her late father’s confidante Ma Durgeshwari, a tantric god-woman, and her pet tiger Sheroo. Only Bharati, her yoga teacher, Ma Durgeshwari and Sheroo would be allowed on board the yacht.

  At exactly 10 a.m. a cannon was fired from Raj Bhavan. Its boom echoed over the city. Flocks of pigeons took to their wings and wheeled around above the buildings before settling back on their perches. Thousands of crows rose in the air cawing angrily. Then silence returned. Faint notes of a military band playing the Funeral March led the procession to the bottom of Walkeshwar Hill at Chowpatty. Crowds lined both sides of Marine Drive. People stood on their balconies showering rose petals on the bier as it passed below them; women sobbed and shed silent tears for a man most of them had never seen but whose presence they had felt around them all their lives.

  After the scheduled stop at Jai Bhagwan Towers, the cortege proceeded to the Gateway of India. There was a huge crowd packing the open space and the roads leading to it. Bharati stepped out of her car. She was draped in a white sari and wore dark glasses to hide her swollen eyes. The open coffin was taken off the gun carriage; six soldiers bore it on their shoulders and slowly marched through the massive gate to the yacht. Jai Bhagwan’s sisters and their families bowed to the coffin and turned back like obedient orderlies. Swami Dhananjay Maharaj, tall and statuesque, clad in a white muslin lungi and a length of similar cloth wrapped round his torso, walked on beside Bharati. As did Ma Durgeshwari, in a tiger-skin skirt and a saffron silk kurta, leading Sheroo on a silver chain. As they disappeared from view the crowd broke into loud slogans:Jai Bhagwan zindabad! Jai Bhagwan amar rahen! (Jai Bhagwan be praised! May he be immortal!)

  The small party boarded the yacht. It pulled away slowly from its mooring and headed for the open sea, grey-green under an overcast sky.

  ~

  What transpired at the spot where Jai Bhagwan’s body was lowered into the sea is known only to Bharati, Swamiji, Ma Durgeshwari, and possibly Sheroo. People made conjectures: if Jai Bhagwan did not want any religious ritual at his funeral, what were Swamiji and the tantric woman doing there? They had heard Swamiji on their radio sets describe yoga asanas and quote shlokas from ancient Sanskrit texts. They weren’t sure what he was all about. How close was he to Jai Bhagwan and Bharati? The presence of Ma Durgeshwari, leading a live tiger, was even more puzzling. Rumour had it that though Jai Bhagwan was an agnostic he had fallen to the dark charms of the tantric woman. But what could a rustic god-woman and a sophisticated tycoon have in common? The questions and conjectures grew with every passing week, and then years, but there were no clear answers.

  Only the two women, the tiger and the swami knew that contrary to Jai Bhagwan’s wishes, there was a prayer said for the peace of his soul and holy Ganga water sprinkled on his body before it was surrendered to the Arabian Sea. Only they knew that thereafter one of them turned away with a vow never to return to ‘Bambai nagri’ and the words ‘Sukhi raho. Sab tumhara hai, apni bus Ganga mai aur uski yaad (Be happy. Everything is yours; for me there’s Mother Ganga and his memory).’

  But of what happened in Jai Bhagwan’s private cabin in the yacht minutes be
fore his body was lowered into the sea, not even Bharati and Swamiji were aware. Bharati had kept her promise to allow Ma Durgeshwari a private moment with Jai Bhagwan. Ma Durgeshwari shut the door behind her, approached the open coffin and stood still for a minute. Then she bent down and kissed the dead man full on his lips. Before she opened the door, she pulled out a small pair of scissors from her kurta and snipped three strands of Jai Bhagwan’s sparse blue-black hair. She had something to remember him by.

  ~

  Jai Bhagwan’s memoirs published three decades earlier largely dealt with his political and social views and his plans to make India a great country. He revealed very little about his family, his friends or his emotional life. Most of what was published about these aspects of his life was based on current gossip: Why was he so reclusive? Why hadn’t he ever remarried? What kind of hold did Durgeshwari have on him?

  It was the same with Bharati. There were a couple of patchy biographies said to be based on interviews given by her. In none of these did she give any of her personal equations with other members of her family or her emotional relationships. She did not subscribe to any political, social or economic school of thought. Although she had been to schools in India and Switzerland, she had passed no exams and had no degrees to her credit. Whenever questioned about future plans she gave the simple answer, ‘To carry on my father’s legacy as best I can.’ Like her father, she too was a very private person. She had inherited her good looks from her handsome father and her sickly but beautiful mother, and naturally people made conjectures of her love life. Some said she suffered from an acute father-fixation and found no man good enough to be her husband; others said she was frigid and had no desire for sex. As a matter of fact, no one really knew much about her except that she was haughty, arrogant and unforgiving towards anyone who crossed her path.

  Despite these shortcomings we can fill in the gaps in our information from what people who came closest to the father and daughter had to say about them. And from some intelligent guesswork. We cannot lay claim to being authentic; at best it makes for interesting reading.

  2

  * * *

  Jai Bhagwan’s father, Krishan Lal Mattoo, wanted to bring up his only son as an English aristocrat. He often told his wife (semi-literate to him since she could only read and write Hindi) and children that in order to deal with the British, one had to speak English like them, mix with them socially as an equal, learn to eat their kind of food on expensive China using silver forks and knives, and serve them premium Scotch and vintage French wines of better quality than they could afford. Then one should tell them to their faces that it was time for them to buzz off from India and let Indians manage their own affairs.

  Mattoo could afford to hold such views. He had made a tidy fortune as a practising lawyer in the Delhi and other High Courts of India. Many a time he had confronted English barristers and got the better of them because of his grasp of the law and oratory. Indian princes, zamindars and industrialists engaged him as their counsel and paid him whatever he asked for as fees. So formidable was his reputation that people said that if you got Mattoo to appear for you, you won half the battle even before he had opened his mouth. Early in his career, Mattoo had built himself a double-storeyed mansion in Delhi’s Civil Lines with an annexe for his office, a two-bedroom villa for his guests, and a spacious garden growing exotic flowers, including varieties of roses no one had seen in India before. He named it Shanti Bhavan. It was his grandest possession and he enjoyed showing it off to the rich and powerful, both Indian and English, whom he entertained as often as he could. He was a generous host. Princes of royal blood and English Governors of provinces were eager to be invited by him, for he served the best of food and wine and sometimes, as a bonus and with admirable discretion, arranged for the most cultured whores from the city’s old quarter to perform mujra songs and dances for them.

  Among the many people who stayed with Mattoo whenever he was in Delhi was Mahatma Gandhi. The two men shared a special bond. Mattoo had at first been amused and faintly irritated by news of a half-naked nationalist leader come from South Africa who went about preaching non-violence, celibacy and the boycott of everything foreign. He was even said to have a fetish for fasting and enemas and personally cleaning latrines! When they first met at the house of an Indian National Congress leader in Delhi, Mattoo was prepared for self-righteous lecturing. To his immense surprise, Gandhi praised him for bringing honour and self-respect to India by worsting the British in their own law. ‘Mattoo sahib, this too is fighting for freedom,’ he said. Mattoo had suffered for years from a vague guilt because people who resented his success accused him of being anti-Indian and a slave to English custom. Gandhi’s words came as a balm. He became an open admirer of Gandhi, though he never gave up his expensive tastes or English ways.

  On one of Gandhi’s visits to Delhi, Mattoo put to him his views on anglicizing his children. He expected him to have strong reservations against it. The Mahatma listened to him in silence, then said, ‘I agree. We have to have some Indians who can tell the English when to get out in a language they can understand. But don’t take it so far that they are ashamed of being Indian. Their roots must remain firmly embedded in Indian soil.’ Mattoo was delighted. He brought his family to be blessed by Gandhi. The Mahatma took the five-year-old Jai Bhagwan in his lap and asked, ‘Beta, what do you want to be when you grow up?’ The boy replied without hesitation, ‘Bapu, I want to become a Mahatma like you.’

  The Mahatma hugged the boy close to his chest. ‘You will become a bigger man than your Bapu. May Ishwara give you a long life!’

  Shortly afterwards, Mattoo put in an ad inThe Timesof London: ‘Wanted a nanny-governess for an Indian family comprising four children, three girls and a boy. Full board and lodging with a salary of £450 a year. Minimum stay three years. Travel fare England-India-England will be provided. Apply with credentials, references and a photograph if possible.’

  Within a month over thirty applications were received. Mattoo examined each with great care and showed photographs of the applicants to his wife and children. They chose one, Valerie Bottomley, aged thirty-five. She had college education and had worked as governess in the family of a French aristocrat in his chateau near Orleans. She was now living with her parents in London, where her father, who had once been a missionary in Africa, was a vicar.

  A month later Valerie Bottomley arrived in Delhi. Mattoo received her at the railway station and drove her to his mansion. The family lined up to welcome her. She looked exactly like her photograph, only more alive, of course, and in colour: auburn hair, grey eyes, a ruddy complexion, a face full of freckles. She was big-boned, brimming with good health and, Mattoo couldn’t but notice, also had a large bosom and generous bottom. For some reason this seemed appropriate to him in a vicar’s daughter. ‘I am happy to be here,’ she said in answer to their greetings. ‘I know I am going to love India and I am going to love all of you.’

  Valerie Bottomley’s induction into the Mattoo household brought about a change in the style of living and the family equations at Shanti Bhavan. She spent the first fortnight taking stock of the situation. She was very courteous to everyone, including the servants. She addressed Mattoo as ‘Sir’, his wife as ‘Madam’. With their consent she gave the children English names, as was common among Indian aristocracy. ‘I find your names hard to pronounce,’ she told them. ‘Would you mind if I called you Nancy, you Ruby, you Fiona? And you, young sir, whose name I am told means ‘victory’, I’ll call Victor.’ They agreed enthusiastically and began to call each other by their English names. She taught everyone how to say ‘please’ before they asked for anything and ‘thank you’ after they had been served. The only one left out of the picture was Madam Mattoo. She refused to eat with fork and knife and continued using her fingers. She refused to rinse them in a finger bowl and went to the wash basin to wash her hands, gargle and spit water out of her mouth. Her husband told her she was becoming an embarrassment, so after s
ome time she decided to eat her meals alone. Besides, chapattis had been replaced by slices of bread and for her a meal was not complete without a couple of hot chapattis smeared with ghee.

  Valerie Bottomley took her duties seriously. While the girls were at the convent she taught Victor English, arithmetic, geography and Indian history. He had a maulvi and a pandit to teach him Urdu and Hindi. But he enjoyed neither lesson and looked forward to the next session with Valerie when she would tell him about Plato, Galileo, King Arthur and read to him from the Bible. She even showed him pictures of cars and the early aeroplanes of the time and answered his never-ending questions about how they were put together as best she could. When the girls returned from school she helped them with their homework and ironed out the ‘chi chi’ English they spoke into propah Brit accents. She organized games for them, taught them how to play badminton and tennis. On Sundays she took them to visit the monuments of Delhi—the Red Fort, Purana Qila, Qutub Minar, Humayun’s Tomb, Safdarjung’s Tomb and the tombs of the Lodhi kings in Lodhi Garden. And gradually she began to feel more at home in Delhi and the Mattoo household than she had at any other place where she had worked. She was entitled to return home at the end of three years, but she did not avail of the leave due to her. Mattoo had much to be grateful for to Valerie Bottomley. She had become a member of his family and made his children as thoroughly English as he had wanted them to be.

  After seeing off his clients in the evening Mattoo often went to Valerie’s room to join her for a drink or two. His ambition had first taken him away from his pretty but traditional wife, and now after years of spectacular success among the British officers and westernized Indian royalty, the parting was complete. He, at least, felt no need to pretend otherwise. Valerie understood his need for relaxation and companionship after a hard day, but was tactful at first about what she offered him: good conversation, some feminine charm, some excellent Scotch that he would send across ahead of his visits. She also introduced new kinds of French vintage wines at the dinner table strictly for her and Sir. The children had fizzy drinks in Lalique cut glasses. They raised them to say ‘Cheers’ and ‘To your good health’. Victor was happy to be treated as an adult. He adored Valerie. The girls, older than him and more sensitive to their mother’s ostracism from the family circle, began to have doubts about their governess’s growing closeness to their father. Between them they began referring to her as FBB—Fat Bottomed Bottomley.

 
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