by
KHUSHWANTH SINGH
1. About the Author :
Khushwant Singh is India' s best-known writer and columnist. He has been founder editor of Yojana, and editor of the Illustrated Weekly of India, the National Herald and the Hindustan Times. His autobiography, Truth, Love and a Little Malice, was published by Penguin Books 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. In 2007 he was awarded the Padma Vibhushan.
2. Veteran author-columnist Khushwant Singh recently unveiled his latest work of fiction which chronicles the twilight years of three elderly friends while simultaneously giving an insight into life in India.. .
His new novel is truer to life than fiction, discovering more paradoxes in the grand old man of journalism' and it's writing that leaves his readers gasping.
Lust and love constitute a significant theme of the novel. In the end it is all lust, says Singh, as long as youth allows you to indulge it — love is just an aura given by the romantics — and after that it is all fantasy. Even if he says it with the solemnity of a social scientist, it is not easy to sit before the veteran journalist without squirming in sheer embarrassment. But hasn't one always known the no-holds-barred author to be a combination of erudition and downright crassness, political savvy and an endearing naiveté, lashing pen and gentle smile?
So he discounts the romantic angle even as he quotes romantic poetry and has titled the chapters of “Analects…” like lines from an ode to Delhi.
3. The book too talks about contradictions we Indians as a whole revel in, and which make us “interesting”.
Interesting, yes, but perhaps also hypocritical? “Oh yes, they're a lot of humbugs,” he agrees, adding his own existential contradictions to the list. A confirmed “agnostic”, he points to the objects in his home that seem to suggest otherwise. A plate with “Allah” written on it, a number of Ganesha statues, images of the Buddha. And then every morning, like his protagonist Boota Singh, one of the members of the Sunset Club, he recites the Gayatri mantra. Incidentally, he has done a free translation of the mantra considered a maha (foremost or greatest) mantra of Hinduism, in the book. It sounds rather like the Lord's prayer from the Bible. For all his agnosticism he is certainly thorough with the scriptures.
4. I taught comparative religions, three of them, in the United States,” he notes. His studies and life have only served to convince him that Marx was right in calling religion the opiate of the masses. “There are no answers to questions like where we come from, what happens to us when we die,” he says.
5 ,The factual events of January 26, 2009, to January 26, 2010 that form the backdrop of “The Sunset Club”, are accurately taken from his diary. “I keep a very detailed diary,” he says.
Plus, he admits, he has “plagiarised” from his own earlier writing on nature. Each chapter begins with a fond description of the mood each month brings to the city. In fact, his meticulous diary notes proved an invaluable resource when he was writing The Sunset Club, which takes us through a year in the life of three friends who meet every evening in Delhi’s Lodhi Gardens.
For each episode of his novel, all he had to do was turn to the relevant page of his diary. “The earliest episode was about Chander Mohan aka Chand Mohammed and that woman. It gave me an excuse to write about love and lust through my three characters.”
Referring to the 2009 elections., thanks to his diary entry, “I was able to write about Varun Gandhi’s speech about cutting off the hands of Muslims with frightful names ending with ullah.”
6. What excited him into writing The Sunset Club, he says, is that through the three characters, all in their eighties, “I could pass judgements on events that were happening in the country, or were happening last year. And one being Hindu, one Muslim and Sikh, I was able to give different points of view on different topics like love, lust, religion, laughter clubs, artificial mourning like the Shias do on Moharram, but mainly the fear of death and all the conjectures about what happens afterwards.”
7. Despite having cheerfully claimed the label of “India’s Dirty Old Man” that others have thrust on him, Khushwant confesses now that he has always had “a kind of missionary purpose” in his writing: to debunk religious beliefs that had no foundation whatsoever in reason.
It’s that same mission which spurred him into writing" The Sunset Club: “Religion has been my main target because the religions we practise are pure mythology.
Nobody knows if there’s one god or three gods, or a hundred gods. Nobody has a clue who created the world, where we came from, where we go after we die. I felt it was time somebody had the courage to say: ‘I don’t know and I will only concern myself with the existence of life: not where I came from, nor where I go after I die.’”
“You have to formulate for yourself your relations with other human beings and also the man-made laws that seem to be utterly flawed. Like monogamy, for instance. It doesn’t work; we know it doesn’t. Muslim laws are even more antiquated. A man may marry four wives, a woman may not marry more than one. If she’s caught in adultery, she must be stoned to death; cut off the hands of criminals and kill people who are against the Shariat law. These are extreme laws and you have to raise your voice against them and take the consequences.”
There’s another reason, he says, why he has so passionately opposed resurgence of fundamentalism in all religions, particularly in India: “Because I fear that if they are allowed to get away with it, they will tear the secular fabric of this country built by people like Gandhi, Nehru, Azad and Indira Gandhi.”
8. With such accurate chronology and description, and considering the book evolved from a suggestion that he record memories of his friends now dead, why did he need to turn it into a novel instead of retaining a memoir format? A factual life is “very dreary,” he says. “You have to add mirch masala to it.”
Mirch masala notwithstanding, his life is “very disciplined,” Singh is prone to remarking. That is how he manages to maintain his busy schedule even at 95 and has “never in 60 years missed a deadline”. “The Sunset Club” took him “exactly one year,” says Singh. Referring to his regular columns, book review work, etc., he adds, “And with all I had to do, this is only extra work.”
10 ) Speaking on the occasion of the release of his book by
Mrs Gurusharan Kaur,Manmohan Singh's wife he spoke to the packed audience at the Le Meridien Hotel :
“I am sure this is going to be my last book. No more books… each time I write a book, I promise myself that this is going to be the last. I have said like this about six times.
. With such accurate chronology and description, and considering the book evolved from a suggestion that he record memories of his friends now dead, why did he need to turn it into a novel instead of retaining a memoir format? A factual life is “very dreary,” he says. “You have to add mirch masala to it.”
The writer also utilised the occasion to take his readers through a brief history of his life.
“I was meant to be a lawyer, but I got a job as a diplomat. I found it very boring and then I started writing. My first collection of short stories was published in London …and I threw up my job. Anyhow I started writing books, got little money. Then came the break,” he recalled.
The break gave him sustenance. “I decided upon a three word formula - inform, amuse and provoke… With provoke, I found that anytime I write something about people, they took me to court,” he said.
The years have worn him down - but have not put him down.
“Now at 96, I don’t know how long I can carry on . I am trying to learn how to do nothing. If I make a century, I will be happy,” he said.
11. The writer happily recalled how he kept the flowers sent by Gursharan Kaur and Manmohan Singh atop the pile of his books for people to enquire and know that they came from the prime minister’s home.
The launch was preceded by a short movie themed on, “Not a Nice Man to Know, But A Good One”- a tribute to the “youthful spirit, candour, wit, the honesty of the man and his 20 cats” by his old associates like M.J. Akbar, Vikram Seth, Mani Shankar Aiyer, Nandini Mehra, his cook Chandan and typist Lacchman Dass.
“Sunset Club”, as Khushwant Singh says, is an allusion to death, love and his philosophy of life and revolve around his three friends for over 40 years, Pandit Preetam Singh, Nawab Barkatullah Baig, and Sardar Boota Singh . In their 80s, the three old men sit together on a bench in Lodhi Gardens to exchange news and views on the events of the day.
They wax eloquent about everything - from love, lust, sex and scandal to religion and politics. The writer follows the three men through three grey years of their life to Jan 26, 2010. In this book
Khushwant Singh brings the three to life with his portrayals of foibles, his ear for dialogue and his genius for capturing the flavour and texture of everyday life.
12.. Interwoven with his story is another chronicle, of a year in the life of India - as the country goes through the cycle of seasons, the tumult of general elections, violence natural disasters and corruption in high places.
The book explores friendship, old age and infirmity, India’s paradoxes, complexities and sexuality.“Love fades, lust lasts,” Singh said earlier in the day in an interview.
There’s another reason, he says, why he has so passionately opposed resurgence of fundamentalism in all religions, particularly in India: “Because I fear that if they are allowed to get away with it, they will tear the secular fabric of this country built by people like Gandhi, Nehru, Azad and Indira Gandhi.”
13. And for Khushwant, his life’s biggest achievement is not the long trail of books he’s authored—he’s lost count but the list the American Centre sent him of his books in the Library of Congress was “two yards long, including some I’d fogotten I’d written”, and this was more than ten years and twenty books ago!
What he’s really proud of, though, is that he was about the only Sikh who spoke against Bhindranwale and the demand for Khalistan. For his pains, Bhindranwale put him on his hitlist and even sent people to have him bumped off. Khushwant sums it up simply:
“He failed, I won. I think my single contribution was to persuade the Sikhs that what they were doing was wrong.
It was suicidal in their own interests and fatal to India if they succeeded.
So I feel a sense of achievement.”
14... But it turns out that busy mind is hoping to wind down. “I'm in the last stage now — vanaprastha,” he smiles, borrowing from scriptural terminology again. He is trying eventually to “see no one” and “to stop writing.” Socialising is “such a waste of time”, says the man who has clinked glasses with celebrities of the world. Why then this change? “I hope it will bring peace of mind; it is a daunting task to do nothing,” he says, though conceding he is not disturbed either. That brings to mind the hand on which his forehead always seems to be resting. For a cheerful soul it is an uncharacteristic gesture. “I recall my father used to sit like that,” he offers by way of explanation. “There are so many things I do that my father used to do.” Age does that to us. So how would he like to be remembered?
He amiably offers lines of Hilaire Belloc:
' When I am dead, I hope it is said, .
“His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.”
konthai“
References:
1.REVIEW in ' Hindu Literary Review
2.ARTICLE IN Thaiindian News
3.Review by NilanjanRoy
in Business Standard
4.Review in OUTLOOK by
Mustafa Quraishi
5,Review in THE HINDU
by ANJANA RANJAN .”
.”
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