When Gursharan Kaur turned up at the release of his latest book, Khushwant Singh said — “As usual, I did not invite her, but she always comes.” Referring to Mrs Manmohan Singh as a perpetual gate-crasher is a liberty that perhaps only he can take. It is with good reason that his collection of musings has been titled Absolute Khushwant .
In chapters that cover everything from happiness, sex and death, to the Partition, communalism and the Gandhis, the 95-year-old has something to say about everything and everyone. Thankfully for our uninvited First Lady, she got to return home with a boxful of praise for her husband. In his book, Singh speaks of Manmohan as the best Prime Minister we’ve had, and further proves his integrity by recounting how the PM had promptly returned two lakhs he’d once borrowed.
Delivering judgments and doling out anecdotes comes easy to this lender to Prime Ministers, confidante to the high and mighty. There is mention in the book of him bravely driving Sanjay Gandhi to the Bombay airport during the Emergency, of playing an emissary between Indira Gandhi and Zulfikar Bhutto, and then between her and her daughter-in-law Maneka. Nehru, we are told, was curt when he encountered Singh, while his great grandson Rahul was agreeable when he came around for afternoon tea. These stories do more than emphasise Khushwant Singh’s role as the wandering raconteur in the corridors of power, they help re-establish his worth as witness to the chequered histories of our nation. The trouble, however, is that even while these retellings make a compelling read in parts, you are often left thinking that these stories of truth, love and a little malice have all been heard before.
For a man who has already penned a tell-all autobiography, it must be difficult to say something strikingly new about one’s life. And if this someone also writes two politically charged and provocative columns a week, there would inevitably be something tired about his reflections. But even if one desperately tries hard to give India’s grand old man of letters the benefit of the doubt, one would have to conclude that this collection of opinions and observations, his “low-down on life, death and most things in-between”, falls far short of its mark. Its bite-sized chapters just don’t have enough crunch, incidents get narrated twice over and sometimes meander along, going nowhere.
The blame for this lacklustre output, however, is not Singh’s alone. He shares this with freelance journalist Humra Quraishi, co-author of the book. It was compiled from a series of interviews that Quraishi conducted, in which Khushwant took care of the ideas and Quraishi looked after the writing. The end product, sadly, comes across as the living room-ramblings of a whimsical and greying man, and it is in this regard that the book remains true to life. Quraishi’s haphazard and questionable compilation skills, though, are unable to restrain glib Khushwant, who delivers one witticism after another — “A partner once bedded becomes a bore” or “Nobody has invented a condom for the pen. My pen is still sexy”. One can only wish that we had seen some more of that sexiness exemplified here, but alas, what one sees is a writer in the winter of his life, unaware of his own hypocrisies.
With a book titled Absolute Khushwant, one almost desperately wants its author to do two things — defend the Emergency and then live up to his “dirty old man” image. Singh delivers on both counts. He praises Sanjay Gandhi and admits to a certain gratitude. (It was Sanjay who had called the proprietor of Hindustan Times, asking him to give Singh the editor’s job.) As for the sex — once he has boasted about having been to bed with women of almost
every nationality, Singh attempts to regale his readers with accounts of his first sexual encounter in a brothel, a peek up his teacher’s sari, and his surrender to the able hands of a school nurse. Though the charge of gratuitousness might tantamount to taking him too seriously, Singh can undeniably be held guilty of double standards. While he thinks it courageous to brag about his sexual triumphs, he vehemently opposes public mention of anyone else’s proclivities. He says of Vikram Seth leaving the closet — “(He) has openly declared that he is gay — he didn’t have to publicise something that is so private — it was unnecessary.” It is with great pain that one has to confess this, but much of Absolute Khushwant seems unnecessary too.
— The writer is a Creative Writing major and is working on a collection of short stories called The Conversationalists.