Not a Nice Man to Know Read online

  Hate does not always kill the man who hates, as is maintained by the sanctimonious. Unrepressed hate can often be a catharsis. Shakespeare could gnash his teeth with righteous hatred:

  You common cry of cours whose breath I hate

  As reek O’ the rotten fens, whose loves I prize

  As the dead carcasses of unburied men

  That do corrupt the air.

  Fortunately there are not many people I hate. I could count them on the tips of the fingers of one hand—no more than four or five. And if I told you why I hate them, you may agree that they deserve contempt and hatred.

  I hate name-droppers. I hate self-praisers. I hate arrogant men, I hate liars. Is there anything wrong in hating them? People ask me, why can’t you leave them alone? Why can’t you ignore their existence? Now, that is something I cannot do. I cannot resist making fun of name-droppers, calling liars liars to their faces. And I love abusing the arrogant. I have been in trouble many times because of my inability to resist mocking these types. And since most name-droppers, self-praisers and arrogant men go from success to success, become ministers, Governors and win awards they don’t deserve, my anger often explodes into denouncing them in print. I have been dragged into courts and before the Press Council. This can be a terrible waste of time and money. I think I will have wax images of my pet hates and vent my spleen on them by sticking pins in their effigies. May the fleas of a thousand camels infest their armpits!

  I am not a nice man to know.

  Why I Am an Indian

  Why am I an Indian? I did not have any choice: I was born one. If the good Lord had consulted me on the subject I might have chosen a country more affluent, less crowded, less censorious in matters of food and drink, unconcerned with personal equations and free of religious bigotry.

  Am I proud of being an Indian? I can’t really answer this one. I can scarcely take credit for the achievements of my forefathers. And I have little to be proud of what we are doing today. On balance, I would say, ‘No, I am not proud of being an Indian.’

  ‘Why don’t you get out and settle in some other country?’ Once again I have very little choice. All the countries I might like to live in have restricted quotas for emigrants. Most of them, are white and have a prejudice against coloured people. In any case I feel more relaxed and at home in India.

  I dislike many things in my country, mostly the government. I know the government is not the same thing as the country, but it never stops trying to appear in that garb. This is where I belong and this is where I intend to live and die. Of course I like going abroad. Living is easier, wine and food are better, women more forthcoming—it’s more fun. However, I soon get tired of all those things and want to get back to my dung-heap and be among my loud-mouthed, sweaty, smelly countrymen. I am like my kinsmen in Africa and England and elsewhere. My head tells me it’s better to live abroad, my belly tells me it is more fulfilling to be in ‘phoren’, but my heart tells me ‘get back to India’. Each time I return home, and drive through the stench of bare-bottomed defecators that line the road from Santa Cruz airport to the city, I ask myself:

  Breathes there the man with soul so dead

  Who never to himself hath said

  This is my own, my native land?

  I can scarcely breathe, but I yell, ‘Yeah, this is my native land. I don’t like it, but I love it.’

  Are you an Indian first and a Punjabi or Sikh second? Or is it the other way round? I don’t like the way these questions are framed and if I am denied my Punjabiness or my community tradition, I would refuse to call myself Indian. I am Indian, Punjabi and Sikh. And even so I have a patriotic kinship with one who says I am ‘Indian, Hindu and Haryanvi’ or ‘I am Indian, Moplah Muslim and Malayali.’ I want to retain my religious and linguistic identity without making them exclusive in any way.

  I am convinced that our guaranteed diversity is our strength as a nation. As soon as you try to obliterate regional language in favour of one ‘national’ language or religion, in the name of some one Indian credo, you will destroy the unity of the country. Twice was our Indianness challenged. In 1962 by the Chinese; in 1965 by the Pakistanis. Then, despite our many differences of language, religion and faith, we rose as one to defend our country. In the ultimate analysis, it is the consciousness of frontiers that makes a nation. We have proved that we are one nation.

  What then is this talk about Indianizing people who are already Indian? And has anyone any right to arrogate to himself the right to decide who is and who is not a good Indian?

  Farewell to the Illustrated Weekly

  This column, written as Khushwant Singh’s ‘Farewell’ to the Illustrated Weekly, was never published. On 25 July 1978, one week before he was to retire (and the week before this column was scheduled to appear), he was abruptly asked to leave ‘with immediate effect.’ Khushwant quietly got up, collected his umbrella, and without a word to his staff, left the office where he had worked for nine years, raising the Illustrated Weekly’s circulation from 65,000 to 4,00,000. The new edition was installed the same day, and ordered by the Weekly’s management to kill the ‘Farewell’ column.

  I took over as editor of the Illustrated Weekly of India in June 1969. At the time I had no intention of staying at the job for more than two years. I found Bombay too large, too crowded and dirty. I deliberately avoided making friends so that the leaving would not be painful. I have been here nine long years; I thoroughly enjoyed my job and despite my resolution not to get too close to people, I made deep emotional attachments, the closest being to my journal which I nurtured as my own child. And now the time has come to say farewell I am unable to put on a false smile to say it.

  I have no illusions of having been a ‘distinguished’ editor; the epithet is willy-nilly attached to everyone who holds the post. All my predecessors and I have done our jobs to the best of our abilities. Nevertheless each one left the stamp of his personality on the journal. Under the English editors it was a society magazine with a lot of tittle-tattle of cocktail parties and the goings-on in the brown sahibs’ circles. Under its first two Indian editors it became a vehicle of Indian culture, devoting most of its pages to art, sculpture, classical dance and pretty pictures of flowers, birds and dancing belles. It did not touch controversial subjects, was strictly apolitical and asexual (save occasional blurred reproductions of Khajuraho or Konarak). It earned a well-deserved reputation for dull respectability. I changed all that. What was a four-wheeled victoria taking well-draped ladies out to eat the Indian air I made a noisy, rumbustious, jet-propelled vehicle of information, controversy and amusement. I tore up the unwritten norms of gentility, both visual and linguistic. The initial reaction was like that of a maiden whose modesty had been outraged. Many representations were made to the management to sack me, the journal was blacklisted by many institutions and irate parents wrote to tell me that they were embarrassed to leave it lying about the house lest their children were corrupted by its contents. Mercifully, the denigrators were vastly outnumbered by those who were stimulated by the change. And circumstances took a fortuitous turn and there was no one who could have sacked me earlier. By then I was able to establish a rapport even with my detractors. However harsh and unmerited their criticism, I published it. And slowly the circulation built up, till the Weekly did become a weekly habit of the English-reading pseudo-elite of the country. It became the most widely read journal in Asia (barring Japan) because it reflected all the contending points of view on every conceivable subject: politics, economics, religion and the arts. My own views I confined to the one page which I reserved for myself. I did not say anything of world-shattering importance. Some readers were amused, some irritated—most ignored it. It was my ambition to make the Weekly into a national institution with a readership running into tens of millions. And I was supremely confident I could and would do that. Alas! that was not to be.

  What more is there to say in a speech of farewell? Ah! Yes, I will miss Bombay—the sun coming up over Elephanta
and lighting the harbour with its ships and sailing boats; the spectacular display of lights from Malabar Hill round the Bay to Nariman Point and beyond; the turbulent angry sea during the monsoons with waves dashing over Marine Drive; the jingle of dancers’ bells practising into the late hours for the Ganpati immersion; the sun-drenched lawns of Azad and Cross Maidans with cricketers in white flannels like confetti on the green. The full moon shimmering on a placid sea. All these sights and much more: the men and women I cross on my way to the office. We do not know each other, no smiles of recognition are exchanged, but if I don’t cross them at the usual point, I feel something will go wrong that day. It will be the same with mian bhais from whom I buy my fruit and paan, the Makapaw from whom I buy my pao and unda, the Bawaji who presses fresh papaya juice and the old Sardar who fries fish on the pavement. I will miss the ladies and pimps of the Colaba lanes whose bawdy language has enriched my vocabulary and the pye-dogs who wag their tails when they see me.

  Then there are my colleagues with whom I have spent most hours of the day. All of us became members of the Weekly joint family of which I was karta for all these years. I will recall their sense of belonging and dedication with nostalgia for it was they more than I who took the Illustrated Weekly from the doctors’-dentists’-barbers’ waiting-rooms into the homes of people who matter. I wish I was with them when the journal celebrates its centenary in 1980.

  And I will miss my readers. Their letters of abuse, criticism and praise were my daily sustenance. It is curious that though I got to know only a few personally I was aware of their censorious and applauding presence all the time. Whatever success the Weekly achieved was largely due to the readers feeling that it was their magazine and they could say whatever they liked or disliked about it.

  The old order changeth, yielding place to new, and god fulfils himself in many ways lest one editor perpetuate himself beyond the years prescribed to him. I had a good innings for which I give thanks to those who let me play it. I opened my score with an invocation to the god of auspicious beginnings, Sri Ganesheya Namah; I end with a reminder from the Mahabharata:

  As two pieces of wood floating in the ocean come together at one time and are again separated, even such is the union of living creatures in this world.

  So farewell! I switch off the bulb in which I have sat with my Scotch and my scribbling pad.

  The Haunted Simla Road

  Many years ago the bells of St Crispins woke up the people of Mashobra on Sunday mornings. We threw open our windows and let the chimes flood into the room along with the sunlight. We watched the English folk coming from the hotels and houses for service. It was the only day in the week they were up before the local inhabitants. All morning, visitors continued to pour in from Simla in rickshaws, on horseback and on foot. At evensong when the religious were at prayer once more, the road to Simla echoed with the songs and laughter of people returning to the city.

  The bells of St Crispins do not toll any more. The lychgate is padlocked and there is mildew on the golden letters of the church notice board. The haunts of the English holiday-makers, ‘Wild Flower Hall’ and ‘Gables’, have not had their shutters up since they were put down in the autumn of 1947. The only white people around are a couple of elderly missionary ladies who walk about briskly, stopping occasionally to inspect a wild flower, inhale the crisp mountain air holding their arms stiff at their sides with beatific expressions on their upturned faces. There is a young English writer in khaki shorts and sandals getting the feel of the country at the country liquor shop. Sometimes Italian priests from the monastery of San Damiano stray into the bazar to buy provisions.

  Apart from the people little else has changed. There is the deckle-edged snow-line beyond the peaks of Shali in the north, and the vast plains of Hindustan towards the south; one can see the Sutlej winding its silvery serpentine course through the orange haze. There are the dense forests of deodar, fir and mountain hemlocks. There are the terraced fields with clusters of villages in their midst—and flat roofs with corn drying on them. All day long the lammergeyers circle in the deep blue of the sky or sit on crags amongst the rhododendrons, sunning themselves with their wings stretched out. Barbets call in the valleys and the cicadas drown the distant roar of the stream with their chirpings. Convoys of mules bell their way endlessly into the Himalayas with the muleteer’s plaintive flute receding in the distance. A hill-woman’s song rises above all other sounds and for one ecstatic minute fills the hills and valleys with its long melodious monotone. It ends abruptly and there again are the barbet, cicada, mule bells, the flute and the roar of the stream.

  There are things that make you pause and wonder whether the British have really left. Houses which look like English country homes are still unoccupied and give the impression that they await their departed masters. Local inhabitants never tire of gassing about memsahibs who did their shopping in the bazar. Even now the bania will slip into quoting price for the pound instead of the seer or kilogram. An asthmatic old Sinhalese who made jams and pickles for hotel residents still refers wheezily to England as home and presses his syrupy rhubarb wines on his listeners with a toothless ‘doch and dorres’. One comes across names and pierced hearts on trunks of trees that tell tales of romance which lichen and moss have not obliterated. Then there is the cuckoo—the English cuckoo—with its two distinct notes which people say was imported by an Englishman in a fit of nostalgia.

  In the evening when the mules are tethered and muleteers sip tea or smoke their hookahs they tell of the many foreigners who had lived in and around Mashobra. The eccentric American missionary who converted the whole of the apple-growing valley of Kotgarh to Christianity and then converted them back to Hinduism; of an ayah who still haunts the house in which she was murdered by her master’s wife; of the people who had simply abandoned homes they had built and lived in for many years because they could not be bothered to come back from England; of phantom rickshaws and phantom ladies riding side-saddle on phantom horses.

  It is a long walk back from Mashobra to Simla. The road is deserted after sunset and only the lights of the city scattered in profusion on Jacko Hill keep your spirits up. On the right is the Koti Valley with its stream glistening like quick-silver and the soft glow of oil lamps that come on unnoticed in distant farmsteads. There is something which makes you keep looking back over your shoulder. You hear the stamp of rickshaw-pullers’ feet and whiffs of perfume and cigar-smoke steal mysteriously across the moon-flecked road—and your heart is too full for words.

  Me and My Filthy Lucre

  I did not know why money is called filthy lucre. There is nothing filthy about a wad of crisp, new currency notes; nor shining silver rupee or five-rupee coins. Now I know. At the first World Punjabi Conference in Chandigarh, the convenors gave me a copy of the citation stating why I had been among the chosen Punjabis of the millennium, a silver plaque with two coins of the earliest Sikh currency depicting both sides with inscriptions in Persian. And a blue velvet pouch with a golden string—it contained the prize money of Rs 1,00,000. I expected it to be a crossed cheque; it was cash, a bundle of 500-rupee notes. My troubles began. I hurried back to Hotel Shivalik View, I had invited A.S. Deepak and Vandana Shukla to join me for lunch. I put the velvet bag containing the notes on the table so that I could keep my eyes on it.

  ‘You want me to count them?’ asked Deepak. ‘It may be more than one lakh.’

  I declined his offer. ‘It will take you all afternoon to do so. It may be less than the promised one lakh.’

  After lunch, I went to my room to have a siesta. I locked the room door from the inside, put my things in my bag but held the velvet bag under my pillow and dozed off. I woke up to make sure the bag was still there. And then dozed off again.

  The room bell rang. I opened the door to let in two janitors. They said they had come to check if all the light bulbs were functioning. I had not complained about any having fused. They changed one bulb. I became suspicious.

  I had to
go to dine with the Kaushiks—Anil, who was in the Indian police service, and his wife, Sharda. I took the money with me. I could not put all of it in my pockets and so gave some of it to Deepak, who had come to fetch me, to put in his coat pocket.

  In the Kaushiks’s home, I mentioned the problem of having so much cash on my person. ‘Let’s have a look,’ said Anil. He felt the wad of currency notes. ‘Have you counted them?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ I replied, ‘I will do that in Delhi.’

  Back in my hotel room, I bolted the door from the inside, put the velvet pouch under my pillow and switched off the lights. I slept fitfully. Every little noise outside woke me up. I switched on the lights to make sure no one had broken into my room. I felt under my pillow to make sure the velvet pouch was still there. I must have got up at least four times that night, the longest of the year. I was finally woken up by the operator announcing it was 6 a.m. and the room bearer bringing in a tray with a glass of fresh orange juice and coffee. My throat was sore. I went down with a heavy cold. It was the one lakh rupees in cash which brought it on.

  On the train to Delhi, I hugged the pouch against my chest. It was very awkward with a running nose and streaming eyes. However, I managed to get the money safely home. I dumped the pouch in my granddaughter’s lap and said, ‘Take the bloody lucre as a New Year gift.’ And soon my nose stopped dripping and my eyes stopped watering. That proves how filthy lucre can be.