I must begin this
review with a confession: I am an unabashed admirer of Khushwant Singh. I have
known him for years and enjoyed many a delightful evening in his cozy flat
listening to his yarns and talking about his three great passions: people,
poetry and politics. Ensconced in his favourite armchair, his feet atop a cane
stool, a fire blazing in the hearth, surrounded by piles of new books gifted to
him in equal numbers by aspiring and established authors, he is witty, curious,
engaging; in fact, a very far cry from the ‘dirty old man’ of popular
imagination. Till his health permitted, he would permit two or three or four
(never too many to make a crowd) of his friends and admirers to drop in (always
after taking a prior appointment) at a scheduled time (starting from 7.00 pm
sharp and ending on the dot of 7.45 as he sits down for his dinner at precisely
8.00 pm). Recent years have seen him retreating from public life and meeting
fewer and fewer people; though, as the number of his books continues to grow at
a steady pace and his columns continue to appear, the ‘Sardar in the Bulb’
(immortalised by the cartoonist Mario Miranda) continues to light up the life
of countless Indians with his deep insight into human nature.
After several
best-selling books in a career spanning six decades, comes his newest offering:
The Freethinker’s Prayer Book and Some
Words to Live By (Aleph, 2012). Only someone who does not believe in God
yet recites the Gayatri Mantra
without fail when he gets up before dawn every day, who proclaims to be an
agnostic yet knows large chunks of the Bible and the Holy Quran by heart, who
has consistently tossed his hat at the windmills of the gods yet evidently draws
his strength and inspiration from some hidden source somewhere could have
written such a book. The words of Mother Teresa, Gandhi, Kabir, Marcus
Aurelius, St Thomas Aquinas, Lalan fakir, Shah Abdul Latif and many more merge
seamlessly and effortlessly. Prayers and snippets by poets, philosophers and
prophets ranging from William Blake to Maulana Rumi to Lao Tsu, passages from
religious texts as diverse as the Vedas, Upanishads, Avesta, Granth Sahib, as
well as verses from Tagore, Ghalib and Keats make this an eclectic and
individualistic culling from a man who has sipped long and deep at the fount of
learning. Yet, in a manner typical of Khushwant, he remains characteristically
irreverent:
‘Once
you have decided not to bow to any gods, and if you have a good bullshit
detector, it is possible to separate the sublime from the ridiculous and derive
inspiration from the words of prophets and poets, gurus and rogues, grave men
and clowns. There is a lot to be learned from both the sacred and the profane.
I have done that nearly all my life and put down in my notebooks hundreds of
lines from different sources that appealed to me… I offer them to you as life
codes from an ancient and unrepentant agnostic. Read them with an open mind and
an open heart.’
Justifying this
wide-ranging selection, Khushwant concludes thus:
‘Since
I am not obliged to hold any scripture as sacrosanct, I think I have been able
to cull the valuable and memorable from each holy book, ignoring a lot that is
of indifferent literary quality, illogical or contrary to a humane and liberal
world view.’
At 97, Khushwant has
been saying that it is time for him to hang up his boots and go. But those of
us who have grown up on a steady diet of Khushwant Singh’s writings – be they
in the form of columns, editorials, translations, book reviews, books of
fiction and non-fiction -- can only wish him long life and good health, and
say: ‘Allah kare zor-e-qalam aur ziyada…’
Also
Read:
1.
Train
to Pakistan, Chatto & Windus, 1956: a
historical novel that placed Khushwant among the finest chroniclers of the
partition
2.
A
History of the Sikhs, Princeton University Press, 1963: it
established Khushwant’s reputation as a serious, even scholarly, writer.
3.
Sex,
Scotch and Scholarship, Harper Collins, 1992: the title
says it all; the selection comprises vintage Khushwant with dollops of
readability.
It is amazing that the grand old man is still coming out with books at the ripe old age of 97. We had a common friend, John Lall, who passed away in early 2003. Whenever John and I discussed literature and books, which would invariably be quite often, Khushwant’s name would crop up. John held him in high esteem, though I used to differ with him quite frequently over his (Khushwant’s) unabashed – and rather unsophisticated – writings on sex. However, Khushwant’s short stories of the 1950s and 1960s, which used to appear in the annuals of the Times of India, were my favourite. And I have thoroughly enjoyed his long piece on the ‘Bandit Queen’, Phoolan Devi, as also a piece on his grandmother (who passed away in Model Town, Lahore), and, of course, his non-fiction on Umrao Jan Ada. I reread these from time to time.
ReplyDeleteI remember john lall from the iic; he wasa former director and a lively presence around the iic when i used to work there.
Deleteabt khushwant, yes i agree his early work was probably his best.