Back To Forward: A blunt man with a sharp nib

The sheer scale and intensity of grief over the passing of Khushwant Singh, together with the size of the crowd at his funeral, underscore how popular this eminent author and journalist, as well as a man of many parts, was. This, one must add, was entirely well deserved. For, all through his long and strictly disciplined life he had endeared himself to a staggering number of people in diverse sections of society at home and abroad. His countless mourners regret that providence didn’t give him one more year so that he could have gone as a centenarian. With the sole exception of Nirad C. Chaudhuri, I cannot think of anyone who kept writing even in mid-90s. Of late, however, his faculties had begun to fail.

A remarkable measure of Khushwant’s personality and style was that he treated himself as he liked to treat others: to deflate everyone somewhat. The title of his most popular column, printed by nearly a hundred newspapers, With Malice Towards One and All, says it all. Appropriately, it is accompanied by Mario Miranda’s sketch of the Sardar inside an electric bulb with his bottle of booze beside him. This perhaps explains his constant attempt to make himself out to be something he most certainly wasn’t: a drunkard and a ladies’ man. A tad truthfully, Khushwant also loved to boast that he was India’s “greatest freeloader”. This was so because too many foreign governments and institutions used to invite him on visits with all expenses paid.

The number of books he wrote is so large that they would occupy a sizeable shelf in any library. But it is no exaggeration that if he had written only three books — a two-volume A History of the Sikhs and his first novel, Train to Pakistan — his impact on the literary scene would have been as great as it is now.

Born in a very wealthy family — his father, Sir Sobha Singh, was one of the dozen contractors who built Lutyens’ Delhi and was later made a member of the Central Legislative Assembly — Khushwant really didn’t need a job. But he insisted that he would earn his own keep and not live on inherited wealth. For this reason, like most Indians those days, he went to London for higher education. At the family’s insistence he competed for the much envied, heaven-born Indian Civil Service (ICS), the steel frame of the British Raj, but couldn’t make it. He was called to the Bar, of course, and stayed in London longer than necessary. Consequently, on the day he returned home, Sir Sobha said to the family, in chaste Punjabi, “I don’t know what examinations he has passed, but certainly has passed a very long time there”.

Khushwant started his career in Lahore as a teacher at the Law College. Soon, however, fate took him back to London to be press attache at independent India’s high commission. The brilliant but waspish high commissioner, Krishna Menon, and Khushwant disliked each other. Some of Khushwant’s withering writing is on Menon.

After a while he resigned from the government and took up a job at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris where he wrote his first book of short stories. Shortly after its publication he decided to return home and make writing his whole-time vocation. He worked with the All India Radio for a while and then edited the Planning Commission’s weekly journal, Yojna.

It was as editor of the Illustrated Weekly of India, one of the magazines in the Times of India group, that Khushwant earned international fame. Before him the magazine was famous only for publishing the pictures of newly-wed couples and some articles on Indian culture. In a very short time, he made it the most influential newsweekly with constantly rising circulation. He did not have to look back.

In 1971 I had joined the Times of India in Bombay (now Mumbai) and Khushwant was delighted. On every working day, we had coffee together in his office that was a floor above mine. We also had occasion to dine together twice or thrice a week, largely because Khushwant had become a social lion of Bombay and was invited out every night. He not only named the guests to be invited but also made it a strict rule that drinks — only Scotch — should be served at 7 pm sharp, dinner must begin at 8 pm and end at 9 pm. The same rules applied when he invited guests to his house, in Bombay and Delhi. With the same strictness he woke up 4.30 in the morning and started his work after a cup of coffee over which he heard the BBC news.

Suddenly a rough patch appeared in Khushwant’s much-envied career. During his masterly innings, he had not only supported the Emergency but also given a big boost to Sanjay Gandhi and the forced vasectomies he had unleashed. The Janata Party that came to power after Indira Gandhi’s humiliating defeat in the 1977 elections did not like Khushwant and the management of the newspaper chain got rid him rather rudely. Soon enough Indira Gandhi was back in power and Khushwant was both editor of Hindustan Times and a nominated member of the Rajya Sabha.

Finally, a personal observation may, please, be forgiven. I have read practically everything Khushwant has written, including a few hundred obituaries he has penned. In almost each one of these he has given a go-by to the principle of saying nothing disparaging about the dead. One day I said to him that even though he was 15 years older than one, the longevity in his family was much greater than in mine. So, would he please depart at least one day before me. He inquired why. I replied that I dreaded the prospect of my obituary being written by him. Sadly, I have had to write his.