Impotent rancour at sunset

How does one go about reviewing a novel written by a 96-year-old? Does one discount the inadequacies and put the flaws down to old age and excusable oversight? Or does one join the ranks of co
The Sunset Club is the kind of book where almost nothing happens. ENS
The Sunset Club is the kind of book where almost nothing happens. ENS

How does one go about reviewing a novel written by a 96-year-old? Does one discount the inadequacies and put the flaws down to old age and excusable oversight? Or does one join the ranks of congratulatory celebrators, lauding the ageing writer for his resilience and fortitude? Given that Khushwant Singh seems to be the kind of man who would be offended by charitable excesses, anything short of an honest appraisal of his latest and perhaps last offering would be a disservice.  For long, Singh has enjoyed the reputation of being the country’s dirtiest old man, its official provocateur, the enfant terrible of Indian writing, and though his admirers may argue that he has sealed his notoriety with The Sunset Club, his detractors are the ones who need to be heard. It seems clear that Khushwant Singh now no longer deserves his once enviable standing.

The Sunset Club is the kind of book where almost nothing happens. Three octogenarians meet in Delhi’s Lodhi Gardens every evening and discuss everything from the weather and religion to politics and sex. Of the three men, one is a retired civil servant, Pandit Preetam Sharma, whose view of the world is infuriatingly conservative and saffron. Then we have Nawab Barkatullah Baig, whose main task is to play catalyst and mediator between the often-warring Pandit Sharma and Sardar Boota Singh, an unmistakable caricature of Khushwant himself. Together they sit on the ‘Boorha Binch’, which by dint of both their religious identities and animated conversation becomes that clichéd metaphor for a secular India, a nation that bickers about its differences, but is somehow held together by imagined friendliness.

Very early into the book, you realise that this is more a journal than a novel. There is absolutely no narrative to speak of and the pages are more a collection of diatribes and debates about events that shaped 2009, an arguably significant year in the country’s history. You jump from the infamous Mangalore pub to Varun Gandhi’s hate speech and then on to the UPA’s thumping general elections win. But not for one of these incidents do the characters have any new insight to provide. Despite the availability of three starkly different voices, Singh analyses incidents the way a headline would. On the odd occasion that he does give one of his characters the opportunity to gain ground in a verbal duel, the result is comical or outright unnerving.

At one point, Pandit Sharma turns to Nawab Baig and says, “You Muslims wanted Pakistan and got it. And yet more of you are living in India than in Pakistan. If we did what Pakistanis did to Hindus and Sikhs, you would all be driven out of this country.” Much like this drivel that is considered irrefutable by the members of the Sunset Club, Boota Singh’s unconventional views on the amendment of Article 377 are readily corroborated – “All of us go through a phase of homosexuality. Most get over it when they get access to women. However, a minority remain homosexual and call themselves gay.” It might of course be foolish to accuse a provocateur of political incorrectness, but it’s Singh’s method that has started to seem tired and contrived.

One of the first things that Singh does in his novel is to describe the dome of one of Lodhi Garden’s mosques. The Bara Gumbad (Big Dome), he tells us, “is an exact replica of a young woman’s bosom including the areola and the nipple”. And since this is the sight that the three old men train their sights on every day, it is perhaps only fitting that sex is a frequent topic of discussion. Nawab Baig and Boota Singh, in particular, love swapping stories of sexual conquests. Aunts, maids, prostitutes, yoga instructors, middle-aged tourists — each escapade is described in lurid detail. The trouble, however, is that with each encounter, the explicitness seems even more gratuitous and prurient, seeing that none of it has any bearing on the story or our understanding of the characters. The question that one needs to ask is this — if titillation is key, then should one choose Khushwant Singh or opt for Letters to Penthouse instead?

Though there are sections of the book that are further made tedious by the

unregulated dropping of Ghalib couplets and several boring litanies of Delhi’s flowers and trees, it does have one redemptive quality. In parts, it seems like an honest depiction of old age and infirmity, of walking sticks and wheelchairs, of nostalgia and death. The most memorable portions of the novel are not when the three friends sit on the Boorha Binch, but when they each return home to drink their scotch in solitude and fret about their bowel movements. Khushwant Singh has said that he plans to hang up his boots with this book, and though one can appreciate his need for rest, one secretly hopes that he gives us something juicier before the sun finally begins to set.

— Advaita is a Creative Writing  major and is working on a  collection of short stories called  The Conversationalists.

Related Stories

No stories found.
The New Indian Express
www.newindianexpress.com