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Literary Review
Khushwant will be Khushwant
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Sometimes touching but more often embarrassing, Khushwant Singh's autobiography typifies the man: honest, unpretentious and one who pursues his likes and dislikes about people all the way, says AMITA MALIK.
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THOSE of us who have been reading Khushwant Singh's column as far back as we can remember and, of course, his more recent books, will know what exactly to find in his autobiography. Much of it is déjà vu. And the delay over its release, which accompanied his six-year-old legal battle with Maneka Gandhi has taken away a good deal from the surprise of what exactly he had to say about the Gandhis and the Anands. But surprisingly, there is a good deal about his life about which he has not written so far, which makes the book survive.
Singh starts off characteristically by stating: "Though barely four years old. I became an inveterate voyeur." And that, again, by describing in detail the curvaceous contours of a village woman, "When she went out into the open with neighbouring women to defecate". In fact, while severely criticising V.S. Naipaul for his obsession with "defecation, fifth and squalor", Khushwant's own obsession with the way everyone, from dogs to people, defecates is evident on every page, including a distasteful comparative study of the morning visits to the toilet by his wife and himself. Equally embarrassing is his detailed description of his unsuccessful wedding night and the nights that finally led to consummation. Many readers will find not only curious but boring his delight in four-letter words, not of the spicy adult kind, but the proverbial schoolboy ones, like bums and tits. Because here is a writer with ample gifts when describing the beauty of nature in the hills, the turbulent sea, his surprising sojourn at Shantiniketan and even his tender relationship with his dog Simba, indulging in what can only be described as verbal exhibitionism most of the time. Mercilessly tearing close friends to bits, with more than a little malice, listening with glee to or watching, sometimes with the aid of binoculars, couples making love in the next room or on the beach from his hotel window. Perhaps this kind of voyeurism has got him his faithful readership down the years, but also distressed a good many of his colleagues, friends and well wishers.
At the same time, the author's self-flagellation can be disarming. He says of his first book on the history of the Sikhs: "I realised that in the highly competitive world of writing, one had to specialise in some subject... I decided my best bet was Sikh religion and history, no Sikh had published anything on the subject... I went on to write a short history of the Sikhs entirely based on published works but brought up to date." Then he makes no secret of how his loyalty to Mrs. Gandhi and Sanjay during the Emergency paid off: "As I said, I expected to be rewarded by the Gandhi family. Sanjay asked me if I would be interested in a diplomatic assignment. He had the post of High Commissioner in London in mind. I turned it down without hesitation. Then he offered me a nomination to the Rajya Sabha and the editorship of The Hindustan Times." He, of course, got both. In fact, his stints with various newspapers in India, including The Illustrated Weekly is a long saga of politicians, including Morarji Desai and son, getting him hired and then fired, larded with office gossip of the most banal kind. It, unfortunately, gives one a most depressing insight into how our media barons run their newspapers. And we get similar peeps, again larded with office gossip, into office feuds and far-from-unbiased character analyses of his bosses and colleagues. This stretches to his diplomatic life in London and Ottawa, including tiffs with Krishna Menon, reprimands by Nehru, office romances, then UNESCO, and All India Radio. His many fellowships from Rockefeller onwards, his stints at foreign universities on varied assignments, his freebie trips which he enjoyed with unashamed joie de vivre, at times repulses as, at times, it endears because of the total lack of pretensions, even about carrying tales from one friend to another promising not to and then lying brazenly after betraying a confidence.
Also interesting because of its several nuances is his prolonged description of his life as a Sikh although far from an orthodox one, his relationship with different groups, different parties, different Sikhs, his spirited opposition to Operation Blue Star and the reaction of Giani Zail Singh, who was President of India at the time. Again, his trips to Pakistan, his keeping up friendships and visits to old friends and their children from the old Lahore days, can be very touching. Also, something he has not written about before, his growing up as a lonely child with his grandmother in a small Punjab village, then coming to Delhi a total misfit, ragged by his city born and bred fellow students at Modern School. Obviously, a deeply felt and humiliating experience which he recounts with no pretensions, although he cannot resist jibes, which he carried into later life, about people who distinguished themselves in public life, like Pratap Lal, Ashok Sen and several others. Khushwant simply cannot resist pursuing both likes and dislikes about people all the way. This is carried to extremes in later chapters, like "Oddballs and Screwballs."
However, what many people, including this reviewer, will find boring are his not-so-lofty homilies on "Wrestling with the Almighty'' and "Writing and Writers,'' the first, the sort of routine self-searching which overtakes people who have second thoughts in their old age about being rational or being agnostic. The thoughts on writing and writers also seemed pretty trite to me. But Khushwant Singh's vast army of faithful readers will no doubt lap them up.
The very last lines of the book, where Khushwant describes the tragic last illness of his wife, and obviously written before she passed away, tend to be as significant as his opening sentences about being a voyeur. He says: "I was always certain she would outlast me by many years, I am no longer so sure that she will. But I have a gut feeling that if she goes before me, I will put away my pen and write no more."
Fortunately for those of us who still love him, warts and all, and the army of readers he has built up over several decades with India's most widely syndicated column and his rapid succession of books, he has not given up and continues with his column. His autobiography was released a few weeks after his wife's passing. One is glad Khushwant Singh still enjoys writing as much as he enjoys life.
Truth, Love and a Little Malice: An Autobiography, Khushwant Singh, Viking, in association with Ravi Dayal, Rs. 450.
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