EDITOR’S

NOTE

‘Khushwant Singh, the writer of joke books?’ the shopkeeper in Nainital asked,
when we enquired if he had any books by the author. The perception of the
Nainital shopkeeper was not only based on the author’s popular joke books but
also on Khushwant Singh’s witty, light-hearted, engaging weekly columns.
This aspect of the man has often overshadowed his considerable contribution
as a writer of memorable fiction—Train to Pakistan, I Shall Not Hear the
Nightingale (now renamed The Lost Victory), Delhi: a Novel—short stories and
non-fiction. The seminal two-volume A History of the Sikhs is even today
essential reading for anyone interested in the Sikhs or Sikh history.
This collection, culled from the articles and columns that he wrote in the
magazines and newspapers he edited and contributed to—the Illustrated Weekly
of India, New Delhi, the Hindustan Times, The Tribune, etc.—reflects his intense
concern about growing fundamentalism, curiosity about godmen and women and
the state of the country and its people. There are also evocative pieces on nature
and amusing vignettes on the cities he lived in—Delhi and Bombay and the hill
station he escaped to in the summer, Kasauli. Included is a diary from January to
November of the traumatic year 1984. Inevitably, the book concludes with ‘Sex
Matters’ and a selection of jokes.

Mala Dayal,
New Delhi, July 2016


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 For Naina,
who her grandfather hoped would
write more and better stories than him.
 CONTENTS

Editor’s Note

PERSONAL HISTORY
Sentinel Dogs
‘Seculiar’ State
The Poison Pen
1984: A Dark Year
After-dinner Sleep
The Morning After
Rat Race
A Case for Moderate Drinking
Celebrating Old Age
On Being Alone but Not Lonely
Why Bother to Work Hard
Good Life—the Only Religion
Irritation, Anger, Rage
The Importance of Bathing
What is Love?
Abolish Marriage?
My Experiments with My Body
An Unfulfilled Dream

GOD & HIS MESSENGERS

Shraddha Mata
Mataji and the Hippies
Dayanand Saraswati: Profile of a Renaissance Crusader
Memories of Bhai Vir Singh
Need to Re-edit Hindu Scriptures
Controlling the Urge to Backchat
Sangam of Religions
Land-grabbing in the Name of God
The Agnostic
Guru Golwalkar
Bhagwan Shri Neelkantha Tathaji
Gurudev Muktananda at Vajreshwari
Encounters with the Occult
The Gita and the Agnostic
Loving is Giving
The Message of Guru Nanak
Finis to Rioting
Dadaji—the Man of Miracles

THE NATURAL WORLD

Shivalik Monkeys
Mating Season
Flaming Trees
Springtime
The Life Around Us
Killer Turns Lover
Massacre as Sport

SEX MATTERS
Our Beautiful Erotica
The Right to Go Nude
The Sexual Morals of the Rich and Powerful
The Female Breast
Nick to the Name
O Mistress Mine! Where Are You Roaming?
To Kiss or Not to Kiss
Hoo-Ha on Whoring
The Kamasutra Game

ME, THE JOKERMAN

Overheard in Pakistan
Not Heard in Pakistan
Pakistani Humour
Hot Tales from Pakistan
‘Tail’ Piece
Babu Explosion
Usha-Loves-Rakesh-Usha
‘Good Shot, Sir...’
To Die, Expire, Perchance to...
Me, the Jokerman
Sardarji Has the Last Laugh
Mississippi in Tamil Nadu
Galbraith is Great Fun
Heard in Pakistan
Ha Ha Honoris Causa
English Bhasha, Down, Down
Literary Nuggets

Acknowledgements
PERSONAL HISTORY
 SENTINEL DOGS

My housekeeper in Kasauli had two dogs to keep uninvited visitors and monkeys
at bay-Neelo and Joojoo. Neither could claim any pedigree and had been picked
out of the litters of bitches living in the vicinity. Both were ill-tempered but their
barks were stronger than their bites. They were never known to bite anyone, but
everyone, including the postman, shouted his arrival from a distance. When they
had no one to bark at, they growled at each other and often had a scuffle. Their
ill temper was more in evidence when I happened to be in Kasauli. As is
common to most dogs, they sense who is the master of the house and attach
themselves to him rather than those who feed them. No sooner would I arrive,
the two would vie with each other to claim closeness to me. Neelo being the
younger and tougher of the two would sit by my chair and snarl at Joojoo if he
came anywhere near me. But Joojoo found ways to get round his rival. Neelo did
not like to go for a stroll in the evening and would wait for me at the gate. I did
not like Joojoo coming with me because he was prone to pick quarrels with any
dog we met on our walks. I did my best to shoo him back home but he found
footpaths on the hillside to catch up with me. While going through the small
stretch of the bazaar, Joojoo would fight half a dozen dogs belonging to
shopkeepers. However, over the years I got used to the temperaments of the two
dogs and stopped fussing about them.
This went on for fourteen years. Both Neelo and Joojoo aged but not very
gracefully. White hair sprouted round their mouths, they became slower in their
movements, Joojoo stopped dogging my footsteps during my evening strolls. I
noticed signs of ageing in the two dogs but refused to admit to myself that I too
had aged and was often reluctant to step out of the house.
When I returned to Kasauli in June, Neelo was missing. My servant told me
that the dog-men in the employ of the Cantonment Board had fed him poison
because he wore no collar. Joojoo, who had spent his lifetime quarrelling with
Neelo, looked older than ever before. His skin sagged over his bones, his
genitals hung like a dilapidated sack under his belly, his legs trembled as he
walked and his eyes looked bleary and unseeing. He would join me at teatime to
beg for a biscuit or two because he could not chew anything harder. One
morning he came and sat by me while I was having my morning tea. When I got
up, he stood up on his trembling legs and looked pleadingly at me. I spoke to
him gently: ‘Joojoo tu budhdha ho gaya. Joojoo main bhee budhdha ho gaya
(Joojoo you have got old, so have I).’ He looked at me with uncomprehending
eyes and slowly went away. An hour later, one of the boys living in the house
came and told me: ‘Joojoo mar gaya (Joojoo is dead).’ I saw him lying by the
club house. The Cantonment Board took his body away in a cart. So ended our
fifteen-year-long friendship.
(2002)
 ‘SECULIAR’ STATE

Many friends of my university days have made good in the films. There is Balraj
Sahni (and his son Parikshit); Chetan Anand and his brother Dev Anand; my
own cousin Achala Sachdev; and Kamini Kaushal whose father, Professor
Kashyap, was my tutor. There is also Rajbans Krishen Khanna, an associate
from the halcyon days of passionate leftism. It is good to see them prosper, to
enjoy their lavish hospitality, to bask in the sunshine of their popularity. What a
vicarious thrill to be seated alongside a friend and hear a pretty teenager scream
with excitement: ‘That’s Balraj Sahni!’ Sometimes I get envious. Why doesn’t
someone jump with joy and yell, ‘There’s the editor of the Illustrated Weekly!’
Envy is the mother of malice and malice can let loose barbed shafts. This one
is aimed at Rajbans Khanna. He has launched a most laudable venture, viz., a
film on the epic voyage of the Komagata Maru—a Japanese vessel chartered by
Sikh emigrants on their way to Canada in 1914. After much violence the ship
was turned back, over thirty of its passengers were killed in a fracas at Budge
Budge harbour near Calcutta; the remnants became the nucleus of the Ghadr
rebellion in the Punjab. Later many turned Communists. It’s just the theme for
Rajbans who is a Punjabi, a dedicated Marxist and, I presume, an atheist.
Rajbans invited me to a religious ceremony prior to the shooting of the film.
The one-foot-long card was very appropriately dyed in revolutionary red. It had
an equally appropriate quotation from Iqbal exhorting the poor of the world to
rise and destroy the mansions of the rich, burn down the crops of those who do
not feed the hungry. The function was to be presided over by the chief minister
of the Punjab, Gurnam Singh, an ardent Akali, passionately anti-Communist and
almost certainly a non-participant in a Hindu muhurat. However, he had given
money for the enterprise. And although he was unable to be present, the
ceremony was duly performed with the chanting of mantras and cracking of
coconuts. And why not! It is truly said ours is not a secular but a seculiar state?
Rajbansji is not alone in this confusion of thought. Samuel Butler has written
of a man who, when asked what his religion was, replied, ‘I am an atheist, thank
God!’
I am reminded of Harold Morland’s verse, ‘Fair Play’, on a lady of similar
ambivalence of mind: A pious self-respecting dame.
With British breadth of mind.
Not only at the sacred name of Jesus Christ her head inclined.
But she behaved the very same when Satan’s mentioned.
‘Really!’ said the priest, ‘your courtesy is odd to say the least.
For after all, the Devil isn’t God!’

But the lady’s ready with her counter-blow: ‘You of all men, Vicar, understand
—civility costs nothing, and you never know!’
(1969)
 THE POISON PEN

I am on the horns of a dilemma. I have been sent a book to review. Its contents
are false, its intent malicious, its potential for mischief infinite. I have always
protested against every kind of censorship. But this book makes me reconsider
my thoughts on the subject because it represents to me the ultimate in obscenity.
I would gladly make a bonfire of it in every marketplace. What am I to do? If I
vent my spleen by saying nasty things about it I give it undeserved publicity—
and perhaps boost its sales amongst people whose minds are as perverse as that
of the author. I could make fun of it, I could ignore it. Earlier when I tried both
with some books of the same genre I found to my dismay that the derision
missed its mark—and my advice to readers to treat such works with
contemptuous disdain also had no effect. The books pretend to be works of
historical research. They claim to prove that monuments like the Qutab Minar
and the Taj Mahal were not of Muslim but Hindu origin. Despite being patently
absurd I now find that many people are taking them seriously. Their authors are
invited to address university audiences. I have reason to believe that what they
say is eagerly lapped up by college greenhorns. The books are sold outside the
monuments. Professional guides utter their spurious contents to gullible parties
of visitors. One can explain why counterfeit currency will go on circulating.
Distort your facts, inject a dollop of pride in your own race and religion,
prejudice and contempt for that of others and you have a witches’ brew of hate
which can be easily brought to boil.
Let me give you a few examples from this book. Like earlier publications of
its kind, it seeks to prove that a complex of seventeenth-century Muslim edifices
was in fact built earlier by Hindus. The walls are inscribed with references to
their origin. These the author dismisses as graffiti ‘...the very nature of the
Muslim inscriptions reveals that they are all frivolous scribblings of idle hands,
such as one sees at picnic spots, idle revellers or pleasure-seekers are known to
scrawl irrelevant and incoherent abracadabras at impossible places at the historic
or safe places they visit. Muslim inscriptions on Indian buildings [the author
really means Hindu] are exactly of that type.’ The word ‘frivolous’ appears to be
the author’s takiya kalam—pillow word. Hence, he concludes that like every
other inscription here the one crediting Akbar as the builder of the monument in
question ‘too is frivolous—the idle work of an idle man with an idle fancy who
wanted to make idle money from Akbar by engraving just anything anywhere’.
The walled city of palaces has a complicated network of water channels and
hammam baths. This is taken as irrefutable proof of its pre-Muslim origin.
‘Muslims take a bath only once a week if at all,’ the author assures us. ‘They
have a desert tradition. They have no use for running water.’
And in any case the earlier invaders were ‘mostly illiterate barbarians’. Their
only contribution to this building was to ‘clog the intricate Hindu water supply
system by misusing the tanks for dumping filth and Hindu images’. The author
then makes a blanket judgement. ‘Raising statues is a sacred Hindu custom,
demolishing them is a Muslim penchant.’ And so on.
If you were the reviewer, how would you deal with such literature? Abuse
and difference are of no avail. Will an appeal to the patriotic sentiment yield
better results? Let me try. I base my appeal on the following grounds. One: our
history is that of a people divided by race and religion with each section trying to
dominate the other by violence and vandalism. No group can point an accusing
finger at the other. If the Muslims killed and destroyed, the non-Muslims (e.g.
Rajputs, Jats, Marathas and Sikhs) did no less. Two: Our history is not a simple
annal of Hindu-Muslim confrontation. In most (if not all) conflicts, there were
Hindus on the side of Muslims and Muslims on the side of Hindus. It is a proven
fact of history that in India more Muslim blood was shed by Muslims than by
Hindus. Three: through all the centuries of association runs a strand of mutual
respect and affection which made it possible for us to create a common culture.
Thus, for example, monuments like the Qutab, the Taj and Fatehpur Sikri,
though essentially Saracenic in concept (you can see the similarity in hundreds
of mosques and mausolea in West Asia), were often executed by Hindu artists
and craftsmen and therefore became Hindu-Muslim art, which we can rightly
describe as Indian. Four: it is both historically wrong and morally unfair to cater
to chauvinistic pride and prejudice. If you brainwash the younger generation
with this venomous mixture of distorted fact, fancy and specious argument, you
will forever be the real authors of communal discord. You will be the real
perpetrators of what has happened in recent weeks in many cities and towns of
Gujarat—the murder of the spirit of Gandhi. If we fail to make ourselves into
one nation, you will be the authors of that failure.
You no doubt want to know the name of the book and its author. I won’t tell
you. If I can help it, not one naya paise will go to the author or his publisher.
(1969)
 1984: A DARK YEAR

JANUARY
For many years I ushered in the New Year drinking champagne and embracing
women I scarcely knew. Most of the following morning was spent nursing a
hangover and resolving never to touch liquor again. After middle age overtook
me I made no distinction between New Year’s Eve and other nights. While
others were drinking, dancing, singing and popping balloons, I would go off to
sleep and the New Year would steal over me as I snored. I would rise at 4.30
a.m., switch on the BBC and listen to the news. This year was no different. The
telephone rang. It was a call from Bombay, a voice from the distant past I could
barely recognize wished me a happy New Year. It was like ‘breeding lilacs out
of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring
rain’.
Daylight broke through the mist. It was cold. The tops of the trees caught the
orange of the morning sun and the dew-drenched lawn sparked in the sunlight. A
woodpecker lighted on the siris tree and crackled ‘noo-noo-year, noo-noo-year’.
At breakfast, the widow of a cousin who had died on New Year’s Eve the
previous year came to reminisce about her husband. On the birth of a new year
we talked of death. In the afternoon Shahidul Haq and Himayatuddin of
Bangladesh dropped in. Himayat’s wife was expecting their second child. ‘We
hoped she (they already have a son) would be born on New Year’s Day,’ said
Himayat’s wife. For a change on the birth of the New Year we talked of a new
life to come. The next visitor was my latest heart-throb, a lovely girl saddened
by her experience of life. She unburdened her heart which she has never given to
anyone yet. But a fellow who pursued her with flattery, gifts and proposals of
marriage turned out to be a philanderer. She was relieved she discovered the
truth about him in the nick of time, but she was sad that the year should begin
with betrayal.
I acquired my new Maruti. It is a lovely little car which taxi drivers
contemptuously describe as sabun-daani, a soap dish. I took K. K. Birla for a
joyride and told him it was half the price and twice as good as the Birla product,
the Ambassador.
The following week I ran into Jacqueline Kennedy and her son John. We had
an hour together in the VIP lounge at Palam. She looked her years and was
somewhat incoherent in her speech. I could not believe a woman like her could
have sold herself to an obnoxious character like Aristotle Onassis for his
billions; nor that her handsome son could, after the assassinations of his father
and uncle, want to become a politician. I had John over for dinner and asked him
who he would like to meet, politicians or pretty girls? Without hesitation he
replied, ‘Politicians.’ However, I asked both. He ignored the girls and spoke only
to politicians.
This was followed by an evening with Namita and Rajiv Gokhale. Her novel
Paro will be published in London. She was bubbling with excitement. Then
presided over a poetry reading by the policeman-poet, Keki Daruwalla. Two
lines struck me as prophetic:
During the big drought which is surely going to come
the doves will look up for clouds, and it will rain hawks.

It continued to be very cold. But the chill winds did not dampen the enthusiasm
of our birds, woodpeckers still cluster about the siris. Every morning painted
storks wheel in the blue skies, flying and heading for the Jumna.
How is it I overlooked the most important day in January? The Gantantra
Diwas on the 26th? Because over the years my enthusiasm for celebrating
anything has been diminishing. Shame on me.

FEBRUARY
Despite the severe cold, the cherry tree has blossomed. If the cherry flowers are
here can spring be far behind? Asha and Vasanth Seth (Great Eastern Shipping)
dropped in. He says Bombay has become so congested that the only way he can
get fresh air is by sleeping in his yacht anchored offshore. His holidays are spent
sailing among the creeks. If every Bombayman owned a yacht, we could walk
over the sea to Karachi.
I have two birthdays—one official and the other nearer the real date of
nativity. I do not celebrate either of them. But there are friends who never fail
me on 2 February. Inder Malhotra of the Times of India is a born birthday
greeter. So are the Advanis who lived in the apartment above mine in Colaba.
Jyoti never forgets to send me a telegram. This year there was nothing much to
celebrate. Bhindranwale was causing me acute anguish. I wrote a profile of the
‘Sant’ for Hyderabad’s Newstime describing him as a ‘mad monk’. One of these
days his goons will get me. Little did he know that he would not be around on
my next fake birthday.
A heavy mist spread over the city on the morning of the 4th and brought air
services to a standstill. My flight to Islamabad to attend a journalists’ meet
organized by The Muslim was delayed by two hours; I missed the connecting
flight at Lahore and had to spend the night and next day in the city which had
been my home till Partition and where many of my dearest friends are buried. I
rang them up (the living) and next morning had a lobby full of my Pakistani
brothers, their wives and children. They were worried over India’s aggressive
postures. The latest case was the disappearance of two servants of an Indian
diplomat from Islamabad. Our embassy protested against their abduction. The
protest boomeranged as a few days later both men surfaced in India (nobody
knows how they got across the border).
Three days in Pakistan listening to speeches from their foreign minister, I &
B minister and retired generals protesting their goodwill towards India was
assuring. More than India they were worried by the Russian presence in
Afghanistan.
I returned home to a Punjab coming to the boil. The Punjab bandh was total.
It was followed by Hindu-Sikh riots in Punjab and a massive Hindu backlash in
Karnal, Panipat and Yamunanagar, resulting in considerable loss of Sikh lives
and property. At the Golden Temple there was an exchange of fire between
Bhindranwale’s men and the armed police. When will Akali leaders and
Bhindranwale’s gunmen realize that for what they do in the Punjab the price is
paid by Sikhs living in other parts of India? In India life is cheap. What are half a
dozen men stabbed to death when a few rail bogeys off the track can take a toll
of over forty lives as one did near Ballabhgarh?
I spent three days with President Zail Singh. I flew with him in his plane to
Poona. He proceeded by helicopter to Rajkot to garland the statue of Shivaji. On
board were his daughter and her husband, also the grandson who had earned his
displeasure for shooting pigeons in Rashtrapati Bhavan. None of the family
could have known that the angel of death hovered over some members of his
family.
I rejoined him in Bombay. All next morning I was on his yacht while he took
the salute from ships and submarines of the Indian navy lined off the sea from
the Gateway of India. The naval review was a boring affair—ship after ship with
its crew lined on the deck, doffing their caps and yelling ‘Rashtrapati Ji ki Jai’. I
caught glimpses of Indira Gandhi, Rajiv and Sonia who were on the yacht
following ours. Throughout the two hours that the ordeal lasted I could see
Indira Gandhi going up and down the deck, tireless as ever.
When I got back home to Delhi it had turned cold again. The sky was
overcast and it started to drizzle. However, the weather did not dampen the
spirits of parliamentarians who reassembled on the 23rd. Affairs of Punjab
should have been given top priority; the President scarcely mentioned them in
his address to the two Houses.
Salman Rushdie came to India on the invitation of Gentleman magazine.
After addressing a select audience at the India International Centre, he and Anita
Desai, who was among the last six novelists under consideration for the Booker
Prize, dropped in for a drink. The next evening (27th) Salman addressed a large
gathering on politics and the novel—he blew to smithereens pretensions of the
Raj novelists like Paul Scott, Kayo, and even E. M. Forster for not really
knowing India or Indians.

MARCH
At a lunch given by Murli Deora at the Taj in Bombay I was told of Prabha
Dutt’s death in Delhi. I slipped out of the party to return to my room to shed
tears of tribute to my grey-eyed young colleague whom I had admired, respected
and loved. It was a sad homecoming—first to call on Prabha’s husband,
‘Speedy’ Dutt, and a few days later to hear of the passing of another friend, I. S.
Johar (11th), in Bombay and writing to his re-united ex-wife Rama Bans.
March is in some ways one of our two ‘autumns’. Neem, peepul and mahua
shed their leaves to don new ones for the summer. The days began to lengthen
and spring slowly turns to summer with the koel’s full throated cry and the
barbets incessant calling to each other.
March is named after Mars, the god of war. Very appropriately the Soviets
promised massive military aid to help us preserve our freedom against foreign
intervention. Meanwhile we had plenty of violence within the country. There
were fisticuffs in the Bengal Assembly (19th); a third attempt was made on the
life of Darbara Singh, chief minister of Punjab (17th) and on the 19th H. S.
Manchanda was murdered in broad daylight by Sikh terrorists. It was ironic as
Manchanda was the only Sikh member of a Hindu family.
The Rajya Sabha shed a third of its members to make way for a new batch.
This time most of them were picked by Rajiv Gandhi—hence Suresh Kalmadi’s
pejorative for the Upper House as ‘Rajiv Sabha’. But there were a few notable
entrants: the industrialist K. K. Birla (Independent), the newspaperman Desh
Bandhu Gupta (Congress I) and the breathtakingly lovely film star Jayalalithaa
(AIADMK).
Some literary asides deserve mention. Amongst my visitors was Kenneth
Rose, biographer of King George V and Lord Curzon—he came to track down
the family of the Munshi of Agra who taught Urdu to Queen Victoria. Gillian
Tindall, author of a book on Bombay, gave a talk on places of literature. I played
the role of an ‘extra’ in a film on Amrita Pritam. Historian Dr Ganda Singh and
editor Sadhu Singh Hamdard were amongst those awarded the Padma Bhushan.
The social worker Bhagat Puran Singh, the ‘bearded Mother Teresa of Punjab’,
got a Padma Shri. All three men were to return these honours three months later.
Not very surprising that the Holi festival (17th) was a dull affair. It was too
chilly to dowse people with coloured water and there was not the usual goodwill
between the communities to take liberties with each other.

APRIL
It was indeed a cruel month. The hatred simmering in Punjab exploded into
violence. Amongst those who were killed were Harbans Lal Khanna, BJP
member of Punjab Assembly, and Dr V. N. Tiwari (MP) who had replaced
Nargis Dutt in the seat next to mine in the Rajya Sabha. Also a number of
Nirankaris including women and children. The terrorists did not spare each
other.
To prove that the government’s stern measures after taking over the
administration had not affected them, the terrorists set fire to thirty-seven
railway stations at about the same time of the night (15th).
I made my little contribution to the debate on Punjab and was perhaps the
only one to condemn Bhindranwale and the Akalis, and warn the government of
the perils of dilatory politics in dealing with incendiary material. The home
minister P. C. Sethi scarcely listened to what I or anyone else had to say.
Voices from the past came in the shape of ex-ambassador Ellsworth Bunker
and his wife, Carol Laise. He is in his nineties; she almost thirty years younger.
Both have innumerable Indian friends and visit India every year. This was
Ellsworth’s last visit to Delhi; he died a few months later.
By mid-April we were in mid-summer. The siris which had perfumed the
breezes of spring shed its pompoms; neem flowers were strewn on tarmac roads
like layers of sawdust. Agitated lapwings tossed about by hot, squally winds
were deliriously demanding ‘did-ye did-ye do it? did-ye-do it?’ The elite have
been swarming to bathing pools; in the evenings anti-mosquito squads pump
anti-mosquito smoke over the city; at night the hum of mosquitoes is louder than
the roar of traffic.
The winter that we experienced this year was colder than past winters; the
summer warmer than most summers, with temperatures soaring into the mid-
forties and staying there for many days and nights. Even the seasonal dust storms
followed by hail did not cool the hellfires. This year there were not as many
electricity breakdowns but many taps ran dry when the need to slake thirst and
wash sweat away were the acutest.
Vir Sanghvi and Malavika Rajbans came to interview me for Imprint. Their
piece would be the instrument of my final breach with Maneka Gandhi and her
mother.
Summer brings many aches and pains. One evening of indiscreet drinking
gave me gout. At Bharat Ram’s party on the birth anniversary of his father, Sir
Shri Ram (founder of the DCM empire), I ran into a childhood friend, Lala
Pratap Singh. Because of arthritis of the knee he could barely walk. On the other
hand his wife, Savitri (daughter of Shri Ram’s brother Sir Shankar Lal), had
overcome cancer which had only a couple of years ago been declared incurable.
Events in Punjab were fast moving towards a denouement. My friend,
Ramesh Chandra, son of Lala Jagat Narain, was gunned down. Hindu-Sikh riots
followed taking a toll of twenty-eight lives in one day. Not to be outdone, in
Maharashtra, organized and well-prepared Hindu mobs carried death and
destruction, killing upwards of three hundred poor, defenceless Muslim weavers
of Bhiwandi. The jayanti of Gautama the Buddha fell on the 15th, and went by
with the usual homilies about his message of tolerance amongst humans.
Sikhs are slowly but surely losing their status as the pampered elite of India.
An instance of the growing animus against the community was an article
published in the Sunday Observer (29 April) which was the subject of a ‘Special
Mention’ in the Rajya Sabha. It was written by one Vatsayana on the
Rashtrapati’s visit to the Asiatic Society in Calcutta. It made fun of him dyeing
his beard with shoe polish, his ignorance of Darwin, the Earth being round and
his proclivity for female flesh. This was editor Vinod Mehta’s idea of humour.
The leader of the House took note of it and when the matter came up before the
Press Council the editor was reprimanded.
Mrs Gandhi’s quarrel with her daughter-in-law Maneka was extended to
include custody of Sanjay and Maneka’s child, Feroze Varun Gandhi. Mrs
Sunanda Bhandare, wife of Congress MP Murli Bhandare, served notice on
Maneka, questioning the way the child was being exploited by her for political
purposes. Maneka countered it with similar charges against Mrs Gandhi. Mrs
Bhandare was later elevated to the bench of the Delhi High Court.
India was becoming too hot for me. I took off to Libya where I spent a
liquor-free week listening to praises of Colonel Gaddafi’s Green Book. Mrs
Gandhi had been in Tripoli a couple of weeks earlier and had received a great
welcome. The city was still plastered with her pictures. A few days after her visit
an attempt was made on Colonel Gaddafi’s life and reportedly over three
hundred Libyans were killed in the shootout. Libya is an uneasy country trying
to bridge a gap of centuries within a few years.

JUNE
June 1984 will go down as the most fateful month in the history of independent
India. The Indian Army moved most of its units into the Punjab. On the 3rd in an
exchange of fire at the Golden Temple eleven people were killed. Akali leaders,
as reckless as ever, decided to impede movements of grain outside the state. The
final die was cast. The army surrounded Amritsar and cut it off from the country
when thousands of pilgrims were there to celebrate the martyrdom anniversary
of the founder of the temple, Guru Arjan. A sporadic exchange of fire began
between army units and Bhindranwale’s men entrenched in the Akal Takht, the
parikrama, and three towers that overlooked the temple complex. Curfew was
imposed on the city, journalists expelled and strict censorship imposed on news.
Whatever we know of the events that followed are what the government decided
we ought to know or from unverified versions of those who were witnesses to
the ghastly tragedy that followed. However, all are agreed that although the army
gave many opportunities to the pilgrims to get out, not many heeded the warning
—either because of the erratic imposition of curfew or indecisiveness. After
knocking off the snipers atop the towers on the 5th the army stormed into the
temple to be met with withering fire from Bhindranwale’s men. Tanks were
brought in. They smashed their way into the parikrama and blasted the Akal
Takht, killing Bhindranwale and most of his closest associates including General
(retd) Shabeg Singh and Amrik Singh. Sporadic firing continued for another
three days. How many people died? According to the government’s White
Paper, 92 army personnel and about 543 civilians. The Akali version put the
figure of civilian casualties at over five thousand, a large proportion being
pilgrims including women and children. Rajiv Gandhi later admitted that over
seven hundred army personnel had died in ‘Operation Blue Star’. The action
created widespread resentment among the Sikhs. Over two thousand soldiers
defected from their centres; some were shot, others arrested. Two Sikh MPs,
several MLAs and civil servants resigned; many surrendered honours conferred
on them.
On 8 June, President Zail Singh and on 23 June, Mrs Gandhi visited the
temple and saw the damage done with their own eyes.
For weeks following ‘Operation Blue Star’ the army combed Sikh temples
and villages in pursuit of extremists. To this day no one knows the extent of the
loss of life and property entailed by this exercise.
On 10 June we had our first pre-monsoon shower; this was a day before I
saw the monsoon bird (Clamator jacobinus). On the afternoon of 14 June
Maneka stormed into my study, flung a copy of Imprint at my face and stormed
out of the house. This was followed a week later by a two-page typed letter from
her mother, Amtesh Anand; it was delivered by a lawyer who made me sign a
receipt. I read only the first para and then put it away among my books. I
expected some reaction but not as exaggerated as the one I got. They were not
my kind of people—they are self-centred and unconcerned with what happens to
other people. I was relieved the association was at an end.
There was a heavy downpour on the 19th followed by rainless days and the
return of dust storms. What a month.

JULY
Having done with Punjab, the government turned to neighbouring Kashmir. On
the night when all Muslims, including Chief Minister Dr Farooq Abdullah, were
celebrating Id, his brother-in-law, G. M. Shah, manipulated the defection of a
sizeable number of Dr Abdullah’s followers and presented them before an
amenable governor, Jagmohan. Farooq Abdullah’s ministry was promptly
dismissed and replaced by Shah and his turncoats. This was Mrs Gandhi’s eidee
(Id gift) to Farooq, one-time family friend. Violence erupted in the Valley.
Meanwhile, Sikh terrorists continued to demonstrate that they had not been
overcome. On the 3rd they hijacked an Air India plane with 240 passengers
abroad and took it to Pakistan. The Pakistan government returned the plane with
its crew and passengers but detained the hijackers.
The monsoon continued to be erratic. It rained on the 13th and 14th. I took
myself to Amritsar to see the damage done and interview people who had
witnessed ‘Operation Blue Star’. The city bristled with soldiers, the citizens
were resentful, sullen and scared. Contrary to the government’s contention that
no damage had been done to the Harmandir Sahib, I counted scores of fresh
bullet marks on its walls. And, contrary to claims of having preserved the
sanctity of the shrine, I saw a notice alongside the Akal Takht saying ‘No
smoking or drinking allowed here’.
The army had overlooked taking it off when it allowed pilgrims to re-enter. I
cited this evidence in my speech on the White Paper in Rajya Sabha (25th) and
was jeered by the treasury benches.
Rain or no rain, on the 28th there were more monsoon birds to be seen in
gardens and parks than before.

AUGUST
Warm, sultry, drizzly. Punjab was not the only troubled state. Tamil resentment
against the treatment meted out to their kinsmen by the Sri Lankan government
found expression in the exploding of a bomb (the third such explosion) at
Madras International Airport killing thirty-two people. I saw some of the debris
when I went to the city at the invitation of the RSS. It seems the only Hindus
willing to take a sympathetic view of the plight of the Sikhs and eager to reclaim
them as brethren belong to right-wing political and social groups. Meanwhile,
government stooges continued their activities in Punjab. To counteract the high
priests’ verdict of ‘guilty’ pronounced against Santa Singh Nihang, who flouted
Sikh sentiment by undertaking to rebuild the Akal Takht, and Minister Buta
Singh who put him up to it, the two organized a Sarbat Khalsa meet in Amritsar
to revoke the hukumnamah issued against them. It was an entirely Congress (I)
sponsored show. The Akali response to it was to call a world Sikh meet which,
though declared illegal, was a much bigger affair.
The government continued its aggressive postures. After ridding itself of a
recalcitrant chief minister in Sikkim, subverting Farooq Abdullah’s government
in Kashmir, it suborned the loyalties of N. T. Rama Rao’s followers in Andhra
Pradesh. Governor Ram Lal, earlier removed as chief minister of Himachal
Pradesh on charges of corruption in his family, dismissed Rama Rao’s
government and installed turncoat Bhaskar Rao in his place. Rama Rao, who had
just got back from the US after heart surgery, mustered his followers and
demonstrated before President Zail Singh in Delhi that he still commanded a
majority in the AP Assembly. The opposition parties rallied around N. T. Rama
Rao in a massive demonstration of support. Ram Lal was compelled to resign,
but Bhaskar Rao was given time to win over more MLAs. Prices ranged from
between five to twenty lakhs per defecting MLA.
On the 22nd, Venkataraman was elected vice president. On the 24th, the
Rajya Sabha bid farewell to Hidayatullah. The next day Punjab was again in the
news with yet another IAF plane hijacked by Sikh extremists to Lahore. Once
more Pakistan returned the plane and passengers—this time the hijackers as
well.
The monsoon which had been eccentric made up for its sluggishness with
four days of heavy showers at the end of the month.

SEPTEMBER
The month started off with heavy rain; better late than never. And the Opposition
maintained heavy pressure on the Congress (I) to test its strength in the AP
Assembly. Bhaskar Rao’s crude attempts to buy support came to naught and on
the 15th N. T. Rama Rao was re-crowned chief minister of Andhra Pradesh
amidst scenes of jubilation. The Congress (I)’s clumsier attempts to foment
communal trouble and use it as an excuse to impose President’s Rule resulted in
extensive damage to Muslim property and life in Hyderabad.
Punjab affairs seemed to be on the boil. On the 27th, I was in Chandigarh
and met Governor Satarawala. I impressed on him the need for more industry in
the state to absorb educated young men who would otherwise turn to violence.
He made a note of what I said. Three days later the keys of the treasury
(toshakhana) were handed over to the head priests and after four months of
occupation the army was withdrawn from the Golden Temple complex.
Unfortunately, this was done under threat of a massive morcha of Sikhs to
liberate the temple; hence the gesture lost the element of magnanimity and touch
of healing.

OCTOBER
It is a bad month for assassinations. Not many Octobers ago North Koreans
succeeded in killing seventeen South Koreans including four cabinet ministers in
Rangoon. Earlier this month the IRA exploded a bomb in a Brighton hotel which
narrowly missed killing Margaret Thatcher, prime minister of England. Our own
prime minister was not so lucky. Her two Sikh assassins took no chances,
shooting her at close range and pumping over a dozen bullets into her frail body.
As if it was not bad enough for men of honour bound to protect her betraying the
trust reposed in them, there were Sikhs in the US, England and even in India
who were foolish enough to celebrate the murder and invited, within minutes of
her death being confirmed, the wrath of the majority community on the heads of
the entire community. This bloodbath washed out the goodwill created by the
participation of a sizeable number of Hindus in the kar seva of the Harmandir.

NOVEMBER
Anti-Sikh riots broke out in many parts of India, taking a heavy toll of Sikh life
and property. Although government spokesmen put the figure of the Sikh dead at
a little over a thousand, non-official estimates put it at over six thousand, half of
it in Delhi. Equally savage was violence in Kanpur, Calcutta and Bihar.
Hundreds of gurdwaras and thousands of Sikh homes, taxis and trucks were
burnt. The pattern of violence indicated organized, well-planned action. In most
places the mobs were led by members of the Congress party. Hindus, where they
could, helped their Sikh neighbours against arsonists and looters who largely
came from surrounding villages and jhuggi-jhonpri colonies. Hindu right-wing
groups, notably the RSS and BJP, rendered service to their afflicted Sikh
brethren. Over fifty thousand Sikhs were rendered homeless.
The administration finally woke up to its responsibility after the orgy of
killing, arson and loot had gone unchecked by the police for three days and
nights. The lieutenant governor of Delhi was sacked (but oddly enough replaced
by the home secretary who should have owned some of the responsibility for
earlier inactivity); the police commissioner and many of the PM’s security
personnel were suspended or transferred. The home minister is yet to explain his
own paralysis in the face of crisis.
The one man who rose to supreme heights in the crisis was Rajiv Gandhi. He
made a most dignified statement on his mother’s assassination and as soon as her
body had been cremated (over a hundred heads of states were present at her
funeral) he spent the entire night visiting affected areas and ordering the army to
put down violence with an iron hand. If he had only done this two days earlier,
the story of the Sikhs would have been different.
[This piece is an edited version of Khushwant Singh’s unpublished journal of
1984. There are no entries for May and December—Ed.]
(1984)
 AFTER-DINNER SLEEP

Last month I was in Chandigarh to deliver the first of the Diwan Chand Sharma
Memorial Lectures. If they had consulted the late professor through a planchette
or a medium he would have said, ‘Not that chap! He does a lot of buk-buk on
things he knows little about. He is bogus.’ However, there I was. I enjoyed
myself lashing out at the establishment and respectability as only one who has
no one to answer to can do. The best part of the visit was meeting people I had
known twenty-five years ago in Lahore. Some I had believed dead were in
vigorous health. Others I had considered mediocre were at the top of their
professions. Most of them had done better than I. My illusion that I had fought
back the years better than they was also shattered.
I take malicious pleasure in the ageing of others but my own ageing I do not
notice. I can tell any shrimati who has dyed her hair. When anyone remarks, ‘My
God! You’ve gone fat and grey!’ I seek reassurance in my dressing room:
Mirror, mirror, hanging on the wall
Who is the greyest, the fattest of us all?
The mirror smiles and replies:
Since it is with your eye that I spy I see the grey tinged with black dye.
Fat you are; fat you’ve always been Better consult a weighing machine.

I tuck the wisps of grey hair under my turban, pull in my paunch and rejoin my
ageing friends. One has a pinched look and moves his jaws like an old woman
munching gruel without her dentures. His wife has had a cataract operation; the
thick lenses she wears make her eyes bulge like a cow’s. Another chap once so
proud of his brisk pace through Lawrence Gardens (now Bagh-i-Jinnah) has
become like the proverbial sack of potatoes and now walks with his legs wide
apart to accommodate his hydrocele. I have to sit on his left side as he is hard of
hearing on the right. Another complains of gas trouble. To emphasize the point
he raises a thigh. Before he can break wind, I leap out of range and seek
sanctuary beside a flame of former times. She rues the paucity of admirers. Very
gallantly I express eternal passion. She dismisses me. ‘Arrey! Janey bhee dey!’
The man on her other side asks me if I have sex problems that affect the aged. I
try to laugh him off: ‘Who doesn’t? When I could I didn’t have the courage. And
now I have the courage, I don’t seem to have the compulsion.’ He wags his head
sadly. ‘Take my advice. You need a daily intake of crushed pearls mixed with
arrack of roses.’ I don’t need his prescription. I need young female company.
There is plenty of that on the Punjab University campus. But when I accost a
pretty teenager, she gives me a damper: ‘Uncle, you’ve put on a lot of weight,
haven’t you?’
I belong neither to the young nor to the old. Thou hast not youth nor age. But
as it were an after-dinner sleep, dreaming of both.
(1971)
 THE MORNING AFTER

Some people begin their mornings with prayer, others with a cup of tea and yet
others with the newspaper. I begin my day by surveying how my neighbours are
doing after the night before. Most of them are still asleep long after the sun is up.
We are late nighters, late risers. We live cheek by jowl. We can see who drinks
and what. We shake hands across our balconies, talk to friends on the other side
of the road, listen to each other’s Vividh Bharati, partake in husband-wife
squabbles and bless romances that blossom here at all hours in all seasons.
It’s a nice locality with lots of interesting goings-on. The prudes have given
it a bad name. Down with the prudes! As I said, we are owls, not larks. The
peace of our morning is broken by the chanting of a beggar. He trudges along in
the middle of the empty street, vigorously tapping his white cane. Although he is
blind he can sense that we are an Indo-Anglian, Sindho-Goan, Bohra-Memon
community. He tailors his lines to fit our polyglot ears.
Blindwallah! Blindwallah!
Dey, dey in the name of Allah!
Memsahib, good marneeng
Rabb-il alameen

Sleepers on the pavement shuffle uneasily. A few faces appear in the windows
and balconies. Some yawns, some good morning smiles, never a paisa for the
blind beggar who starts us on our day.
At 9 a.m. I emerge from my apartment. Three urchins, who live on the
pavement outside, are asleep with the sun on their faces and the buzzing of flies
in their open mouths. I step over their corpses and proceed on my way. I have to
run many a gauntlet—garbage emptied from balconies, betel spit, phlegm,
banana skins and lots of children on their way to school. At the temple round the
corner, dozens of lepers line the pavement, holding metal cups with their stubby
fingers. Two overfed cows are fed by a bald old man who has a beatific smile on
his face. Many passers-by touch the cows and pass their sanctified hands across
their chests. The overfed cows drop blobs of dung on the pavement. Shopkeepers
mumble prayers as they open their stores. Lottery ticket sellers scream,
‘Lashday! Lashday!’ Hawkers lay out their wares. Transistors begin to blare. It’s
Vividh Bharati all the way. Snatches of song are handed like batons in a relay
race.
It is on my return from the office in the evening that my neighbourhood
comes into its own. As soon as my cab pulls up, urchins run up to welcome me.
They are the same boys who sleep on the pavement through the morning. ‘Nice
goods!’ offers one. The other recognizes me. ‘Arrey, he lives here.’ The short
welcome is over. They wait in ambush for other cabs which bring pleasure-
seekers to our locality after lamplight. I sit on my balcony and watch the lively
throng below. A hansom cab pulls up on the other side of the road. A man
emerges from the dark and takes orders. Bottles wrapped in brown paper are
handed around. While the hansom cab passengers slake their thirst, they chat
with the urchins and scan the windows above them.
Lots of pretty girls smile down at them. They smile at the chosen ones, pay
off the hansom cab driver and go up. A policeman sauntering along stops to
exchange a friendly word with the bottle supplier. The bottle supplier points to
the sky to indicate God is good, business is not bad and slips something in the
policeman’s palm. In my locality we have achieved a very symbiotic relationship
between lawbreakers and guardians of the law.
So it goes on till the early hours of the morning. While the city sleeps we
keep the vigil. When the city rouses itself, we let slumber overtake us. Everyone
who has eyes in his head can see this. Someone should tell the Blindwallah to
come by at night. He’d do better business. And in any case a good eveneen
rhymes better with rabb-il alameen than good marneeng.
(1971)
 RAT RACE

Weird things happen in this city of Bombay! One morning, I am on my way to

the office. Other people are on their way to their offices. Hawkers unpacking
their wares. Beggars dusting their square yards of pavement; long, orderly
queues at bus stops. God in his Heaven and all’s right with the metropolis.
Suddenly a swirl of crows appears like a black dust devil over Flora Fountain—
cawing furiously, dive-bombing in turn over some mobile object on the tarmac.
A massive rat comes scampering along the pavement. Hawkers leap up and
upset their tray loads of pens, mirrors, flashlights, etc. People run helter-skelter.
The bus queue scatters. I see all this and decide it is safest in the middle of the
road; traffic has been halted at the signals. The rat deprived of its human shield
makes a dash across the road. The crows follow it like a swarm of bees. The rat
turns to me for protection. It seeks shelter between my feet, then tries to clamber
up my trousers. I yell and leap into the air like a dancing dervish. The rat falls on
my foot, fat and clammy like a snake. I scream some more and run through
speeding cars and buses back to the pavement. The rat and his tormentors
disappear into the High Court.
‘Arrey, what kind of Sardarji are you? You get scared of a mouse!’ taunts a
fellow back in the line for his bus. The entire queue bursts into peals of laughter.
I am very angry. I want to tell him that it was not a mouse (chooha) but a rat.
That I may be scared of little mice but not of rats like him. I scour my memory
for the Hindustani word for rat, Hindi word for rat, Punjabi word for rat. There is
no Indian word for a rat as distinct from a mouse. I resume my journey.
(1970)
 A CASE FOR MODERATE DRINKING

The word ‘sharaab’ is derived from the Persian ‘aab’ for water and ‘sharr’
mischief, hence the water of mischief. Prophet Muhammad condemned it; the
Quran denounces it as haraam—but holds out promise to the faithful that they
will have plenty of it in Paradise with houris thrown in. Almost all my Muslim
friends, men and women, Indian and Pakistani, can’t wait to die but continue to
enjoy their drinks while on earth.
They may ask:
Jannat mein ja kar tahooran peeogay To yahaan peena kyon gunaah ho gaya?
Vahaan hoorein milney ka hai hukum, Yahaan kyon zinah ka gunaah ho gaya?

If drinking will be legal in Paradise Why is it declared on earth a crime?

If virgins are provided in Paradise Why is womanizing on earth declared a crime?

Hinduism has an ambivalent attitude towards drinking. Madira, sura or somras

were ingredients of the cocktail the gods churned out of the ocean. Ancient
Sanskrit texts list eleven kinds of hard liquor of which three were top favourites
of our ancestors—one distilled from the mahua flower (Madhuca indica), one
made of honey like the English mead and one made from gur. These were often
offered to the gods. Some yogi orders prescribe the use of liquor to enhance
mystical experiences.
Wine is used in Jewish and Christian religious rituals. It is forbidden by Jain
and Buddhist religious tenets. However, love of liquor overcame all religious
taboos and attempts by governments to enforce prohibition. Neither Mahatma
Gandhi nor Morarji Desai succeeded in persuading their countrymen that
drinking liquor was harmful and impoverished families. Aldous Huxley rightly
pointed out that more people lose their lives to drink than they do in wars fought
for their country, king or the church.
Drinking in moderation creates social bonding. Drinking in excess creates
social problems. A drunk man is a sorry sight. He becomes garrulous and
aggressive before he passes out. A woman drinking to excess is pitiable. She
becomes maudlin and loses the will to say no to men who make advances. A
lady poet summed up her plight: I like to have a martini,
Two at the very most.
After three I’m under the table, After four I’m under my host.

I envy men who can drink endlessly but never get drunk. One such was the
eminent Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz. He could drink from morning to late in the
night without showing any traces of drunkenness. Another was the calligraphist
Sadequain who made beautiful floral reproductions of the verses of the Quran
after putting a bottle of hard liquor in his stomach. As for miserable me, I like
two or three in the evening; more makes me groggy. However, I mean to enjoy
my modest intake for the rest of my life.
Justice Narula has not given up his endeavour to make me a teetotaller.
Being a god-fearing and kindly man with a silver white beard flowing down to
his navel, I have no doubt he will have a luxury apartment booked for him in
Paradise. I am equally certain I will be consigned to the fires of hell. I hope once
in a while he will visit me and bring with him as gifts what he disdains-some
good liquor and a couple of houris.
(2001)
 CELEBRATING OLD AGE

This April two of my oldest friends’ birthdays were celebrated by their friends.
One was the eminent painter-sculptor Bhabesh Sanyal. He turned one hundred.
The other was the equally eminent educationist Prem Kirpal, who turned ninety-
two on 30 April. Come to think of it, I don’t know anyone else, friend or
relation, who has held out as long. Bhabesh is an imperious, grandly bearded
man who stands ramrod straight, wears no glasses, has no problems with
hearing, memory or speech. His wife Sneh and daughter Amba are there to look
after him. Prem, though eight years younger than Bhabesh, broke his hip bone a
few years ago and spends most of his day either in his bed or in his armchair. He
has also become hard of hearing. Being a bachelor, he has been spared a nagging
wife and if his friends become too garrulous, he simply switches off his hearing
aid. He continues to write poetry (his latest collection was released on his
birthday), he keeps refreshing his memory by going over albums of old
photographs, and has a lot of female admirers, including Rajmata Gayatri Devi
who came all the way from Jaipur to felicitate him. And he enjoys his Scotch.
Being a hundred must give a person a feeling of loneliness. All your
contemporaries have departed and there is not much to look forward to in life.
Dr Margaret Murray in her autobiography My First Hundred Years put it nicely:
‘At my age I stand, as it were, on a high peak alone. I have no contemporaries
with whom I can exchange memories or views. But that very isolation gives me
a less biased view of that vast panorama of human life which is spread before the
eyes of a centenarian, still more when those eyes are the eyes of an
archaeologist. It is true that much of the far distance is shrouded in cloud and
mist, but every here and there the fog thins a little and one can see clearly the
advance of mankind.’
The most appropriate birthday greeting for Bhabesh Sanyal is ‘Stay in good
health and enjoy yourself till the very end.’
For Prem Kirpal I have a good quotation from Frank Buxton, once editor of
the Boston Herald, from his memoirs, At Ninety-six: I never thought that I’d
survive, That I’d contrive to stay alive and whoop it up at ninety-five.
But, damn it all, I find that I’ve Increased the score
To one year more
Wow:
And now, you know, it seems to me That even one full century Need not be necessarily A real
impossibility.

(2001)
 ON BEING ALONE BUT NOT LONELY

I cannot understand people who complain about being bored with life. They
moan ‘nothing to do, nowhere to go, no one to talk to. There is nothing worse
than being alone.’ I tell them, ‘I like being alone but never feel lonely.’ There is
so much to read, write and see. I never seem to get enough of the world without
people. What I find boring is humans, chiefly those who complain of being
bored. I put up with them for a few minutes and then politely ask them to depart
as I have more interesting things to do—by which I mean to be left alone. I don’t
think they mind my being blunt; if they do, I don’t care. I will be the master of
my time not them.
I have so many dates to keep. I come out to the garden at 6 a.m. A
Himalayan barbet perches itself at the top of a fir tree and begins to wail. It is a
bit of a ventriloquist. Its calls sound as if they are from a long distance, whereas
it is only a few yards away from me. Another barbet somewhere far down in the
valley responds. Wailing and counter-wailing goes on for almost five minutes.
Barbets depart, koels take over. They are followed by crows, white-cheeked
bulbuls, mynas, Shimla tits and a whole variety of tiny birds my aged eyes fail to
identify. If you have eyes to see and ears to hear, there is not a dull moment in
any garden. If there are no birds, lie back, gaze at the sky and watch the clouds
float by overhead. Why are some going from north to south and others from
south to north? Evidently, at different levels, winds move in different directions.
Why do clouds assume different shapes and colours? Why are some dark,
moisture-laden and bring rain, while others are like fluffs of dry cotton and
simply float about?
(2002)
 WHY BOTHER TO WORK HARD

During the years I was an editor of some journal or the other, I had to contend
with people on my staff who had a very lackadaisical attitude towards the work
assigned to them. Their motto was sab chalta hai. It used to get my hackles up.
There was a very attractive and talented young lady who I had picked up myself
in the hope that she would make her mark as a writer and a poet and bring credit
to the Illustrated Weekly of India. After a few weeks of diligent work, she
became slack: came late to the office, was slipshod in her work, went out for
lunch for long hours with some admirer or the other, and was the first to leave—
even before the office closed. I told her as gently as I could that she was not
pulling her weight. She tossed her head disdainfully and replied, ‘Cheh! Why do
you get so worked up about small errors. Tomorrow whatever you or I write will
be sold to the raddiwallah.’ I lost my cool and spoke sharply, ‘You say that once
more, I will sack you.’ She stormed out of my room daring me to do so. A few
days later she again made a faux pas correcting proofs. When I reprimanded her,
she repeated her formula of life, saying sab chalta hai. I lost my temper: all her
looks and gifts were diminished in my eyes. I gave her an ultimatum as strongly
as I could. ‘Either resign by tomorrow or I will send a note to the management to
order your dismissal.’ She resigned. She could have made a name for herself.
Hardly anyone knows about her today except as someone with great promise
who came to nothing. But she is at peace with herself as a contented, fulfilled
housewife. That is more than I can say for myself.
Should one really bother too much about what one has to do to earn one’s
living? If a modicum of work can earn enough for us to live in modest comfort,
why should we strive for excellence? It is instilled in us from childhood that we
should put our heart and soul into what we are doing, it becomes our dharma,
our religion. The Bhagavad Gita exhorts us to put in our best without bothering
about the fruit. The opposite point of view is spelt out in passages of Ecclesiastes
in the Old Testament: ‘Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. What profit has a man
from all his labours in which he toils under the sun? One generation passes away
and another generation comes; but the earth abides for ever.’ It goes on to add:
‘That which has been is that which will be, that which is done is what will be
done, and there is nothing new under the sun.’ It is true that little or nothing
remains of our worldly toil: ‘There is no remembrance of former things, nor will
there be remembrance of things that are to come by those who will come
after...all is vanity, and grasping for the wind.’ The holy book assures us, ‘The
sleep of the labouring man is sweet whether he eats little or much, but the
abundance of the rich will not permit him to sleep.’ So why struggle hard to
amass wealth? More disturbing is the statement that goodness has no reward nor
wickedness any punishment. ‘There is a just man who perishes in his
righteousness; and there is a wicked man who prolongs life in wickedness.’ The
inevitable conclusion is relax and enjoy life. Says the holy book: ‘I recommend
enjoyment; because a man has nothing better under the sun than to eat, drink and
be merry, for this will remain with him in his labour all the days of his life which
god gives him under the sun… Go eat your bread with joy and drink your wine
with a merry heart.’ There is no guarantee that the deserving win the battle of
life for ‘the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the
wise, nor riches to men of understanding, nor favour to men of skill, but time
and chance happen to them all.’
The choice is yours to make: If you strive for excellence, your only reward
may be the satisfaction of knowing you did your best, or if you say why bother,
it will make no difference.
(2002)
 GOOD LIFE—THE ONLY RELIGION

Among the many bad habits I have, I have one or two good ones I can
recommend to my readers. I have my own book of quotations. No item is taken
from quotation books which are a dime a dozen. My quotations are compiled
from books I have read or from letters I have received. Most of them are from
Urdu poets. I also have some Sanskrit, Hindi, Punjabi and English quotations—
in that order. When I have nothing better to do, I go over them. I was doing that
when I discovered that the largest number deal with religion and hypocrisy, the
two go very well together. Then came love, erotica and the pleasure of drinking.
Why so much religion on the mind of an avowed agnostic? Because there is
much hypocrisy that runs parallel with every one of them. As Thomas Fuller
said: ‘A good life is the only religion.’ What is a good life? Ingersoll put it in
simple words: ‘Happiness is the only good life, the place to be happy is here, the
time to be happy is now, the way to be happy is to help others.’ Notice that God,
prayer, places of worship find no mention for the simple reason that instead of
uniting people, they divide them. Hence, Ella Wheeler Wilcox’s summing up: So
many gods, so many creeds,
So many paths that wind and wind, While just the art of being kind Is all that the sad world needs.

The latest discovery I have made in my personal collection of quotations were a

few lines from G. K. Chesterton which I had overlooked many times. They need
to be read carefully and pondered over: To love means loving the unlovable, To
forgive means forgiving the unpardonable, Faith means believing the
unbelievable, Hope means hoping when everything is hopeless.
(2003)
 IRRITATION, ANGER, RAGE

All the three are different stages of the same phenomenon we call anger. It starts
with irritation (chirchirapan—khichh, khichh) develops into anger (gussa) and
explodes into a rage (prakop). It is the second on the list of cardinal sins in
Indian tradition: kama (lust), krodh (anger), lobh (greed), moh (attachment) and
ahankar (arrogance). More than the other four, it is krodh which destroys
relationships, sets sons and daughters against their parents, causes animosity
between siblings, breaks up marriages and lifelong friendships, leads to quarrels
and fisticuffs, raises one’s blood pressure and brings on strokes.
One thing common to these five cardinal sins is that they are curable. You
don’t have to consult a doctor or go to a chemist to get a pill to get the better of
your libido, desire or exaggerated self-esteem. You are your best doctor and can
treat yourself without drugs of any kind. All you need is to become aware of
these failings, think about the harm they have done to you and resolve to get rid
of them.
However, there may be biological reasons for short-temperedness. When a
child throws tantrums, his parents try to discover what causes them. Some
children are more likely than others to fly off the handle, get into fights with
their siblings or schoolmates. This may be caused by some stomach or brain
malfunction. Parents are advised to have them medically checked up and once
they have been cleared, counsel them on how to control their temper and warn
them of the price they have to pay for not doing so. Thereafter every adult owes
it to himself or herself to undertake this exercise themselves. Some problems
may persist in later life. The lady I dedicated my second novel to would lose her
temper with me without any provocation. I dropped her from my life. So did
many of her other friends and admirers. Later we learnt she had a tumour in her
brain which ultimately took her life. By then it was too late to make amends.
I have some more observations on the subject. Ill temper usually goes with
authority. In families it is the monopoly of the parents, mainly the father. In
school and college it is teachers who vent their ire against students; in jobs
bosses against their underlings. Judges can be short-tempered with lawyers
appearing before them, lawyers have to suffer their rudeness and wait till they
are elevated to the bench before they can talk down to lawyers. Ministers of
government can be brusque and tick off people working under them or anyone
who crosses their path. Can you imagine Sahib Singh Verma, a lowly-paid
librarian of a school, abusing the crew of a flight? At one time he could not have
afforded air travel. But as minister he became arrogant and rude towards people
who could not hit back. See the same Sahib Singh Verma bowing low as he
namaskars the prime minister. I used to see Krishna Menon behave the same
way. When Prime Minister Nehru came to London for a conference, Menon was
all over him, carrying his overcoat and briefcase and sir-ing him. No sooner was
he back in India House than he was ticking off members of the staff, throwing
files at them and shouting at them to get out.
I worked with Krishna Menon and many others like him who tended to be
more ill-tempered in the mornings than in the afternoons. It may have had
something to do with bad digestion or poor flow of gastric juices. Too much
alcohol in the evening can also make one short-tempered. Perhaps some doctor
could enlighten us.
I have no specific remedies for bad temper besides becoming aware of it and
keeping one’s mouth shut till it has subsided. Silence is the most powerful
antidote to krodh. Swallow it with your spittle, never put it in words.
(2003)
 THE IMPORTANCE OF BATHING

At different periods of history different people had different notions of the

importance of bathing. Indians must be the only people who made a daily bath
an essential religious ritual. After clearing one’s bowels the next thing one has to
do is to take a bath. No bath, no breakfast. No bath, no entering a temple or a
gurdwara. Sikh practice puts bath (ishnaan) on a par with prayer (naam) and
charity (daan). Bathing in rivers, notably the Ganga, washes off sins. Likewise,
Sikh ritual prescribes a bath in the sarovar (sacred tank) along a gurdwara as a
spiritual cleanser. The most important sarovar is the one in the middle of which
stands Harmandir, the Golden Temple. The tank was dug by Guru Ramdas, the
fourth guru. The incantation which goes with the holy dip runs:
Guru Ramdas sarovar nhaatey
Sab utrey paap kamaatey

Bathe in the holy tank of Guru Ramdas

and all sins you have committed will be washed away.

I have accumulated a lot of sins but never yet washed them off in any sacred
tank or holy river. I also discovered through experience that a hot bath during
winter months often gave me a cold and I could clean myself just as well by
rubbing my body with a damp towel. My college years in England changed my
attitude towards bathing. Like other Indians, I believed that wallowing in a long
bath tub in your own body’s dirt was unhealthy. After some months, I came to
the conclusion that an English bath was far more cleansing than pouring water
over oneself with a lota. So, during winter, I bathed only twice a week. And was
none the dirtier for it.
During my stint in Paris, I discovered that most French homes did not have a
bathroom. Instead, they used a contraption called a bidet on which they sat
astride as on a horse and turned on a tap which shot a shower of warm water into
their bottoms and genitals. This, repeated after soaping their private parts, did
quite a thorough job. The French sponged their armpits and liberally sprinkled
them with talcum powder. A proper body wash was a weekend ritual performed
in a public bath. Most Saturdays, girls from the office where I worked spent an
hour or more in these public baths and were ready for a prolonged weekend with
their boyfriends. When I rented a house in a suburb of Paris I had to have a
bathroom installed.
Europeans have an interesting history of bathing. Long before they turned
Christian, Scandinavians and Germans bathed naked in lakes and rivers during
the summer months, and in public baths during the winter. With the advent of
Christianity nakedness came to be associated with vulgarity, lascivious thoughts
and, therefore, sinful. St Agnes never took a bath; St Margaret never washed
herself; Pope Clement III issued an edict forbidding bathing or even wetting
one’s face on Sundays. Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, the
practice of bathing in rivers was frowned upon. In 1736 in Baden, Germany, the
authorities issued a warning to students against ‘the vulgar, dangerous and
shocking practice of bathing’.
Slowly, very slowly, prejudice against nudity and bathing abated. Nudist
clubs sprang up. Sunbathing in the nude became fashionable. Today, at any
seaside in Europe, Canada, Australia or New Zealand you will see men, women
and children strolling along beaches as naked as the day they were born. And
bathing together in the nude does not shock anyone except those who still regard
nudity as a sin. Having a bath everyday has become common practice now.
I am reminded of an exchange of words in the British House of Commons in
the early years of World War II. A Labour minister in charge of power was
pleading that a lot of coal could be saved if it was not used to heat water for
bathing and a bath a week was good enough. Winston Churchill stood up and
remarked, ‘No wonder the Labour Party is in such bad odour.’
(2001)
 WHAT IS LOVE?

It is easier to say what it is not than what it is. Even after you have excluded
emotions that have nothing to do with it, you are up against many kinds of love
which have little in common. You may love your God, your country and your
parents but you’ll sense that there is a qualitative difference between these kinds
of love and the love that envelops a man and a woman of somewhat the same
age and capable of sexual intercourse. Dorothy Tennov, an American
psychiatrist, has defined this kind of love as ‘an obsessive, all-embracing passion
for another person that strikes seemingly from nowhere and makes life a hell of
uncertainty, punctuated by brief moments of ecstasy’. She has given this brand
of man-woman fixation the name ‘limerence’.
Tennov’s definition of love is as good as I have seen anywhere but it does
not explain why this ‘obsessive, all-embracing passion’ erupts, why it loses
intensity and why it often turns to sour hate.
How and why two people of the opposite sex are attracted to each other to
the exclusion of others has never been fully explored. The urge is without doubt
physical because it usually manifests itself on the approach of puberty. It is also
often entirely a yearning of the body without any mental or emotional overtones.
Both males and females pass through such a period when compulsions of the
body are so explosive that they will seek their fulfilment through the most
readily available persons without the slightest affection for them. This is lust not
love. Love is more subtle than lust and while lust can be fulfilled by expending
the lust, love has more frustration than fulfilment.
Why two people fall in love with each other can only be explained by
probing their psyches. It is believed that most people fall in love with people
very much like themselves. This has been confirmed by computer matings. If it
is so, we can presume that there is a strong element of narcissism in a person’s
choice. It has been noticed that many couples in love resemble each other like
brother and sister. But, as often, a couple totally unlike each other in their
physical makeup are strongly drawn towards each other. This may be explained
as the negative aspect of narcissism.
It is apparent that love is initially stirred by physical attraction and is born in
the eye. It is on the physical that the mental and emotional relationship is built.
Even the emotional is frequently reinforced by appeals which are essentially
physical: ‘You are the most beautiful person in the world etc.’ Love is not man’s
quest for an idealized Helen; it is elevating a girl who is available to ‘Hellenistic’
heights. That is why men do not roam the world looking for the girl of their
dreams but weave them round the girl next door. She is there, others are not.
This phenomenon has been given the label ‘equity’: in love people get what they
deserve. However idealized the love may become, its consummation is in the act
of sex. As Donne put it in his earthy way:
Whoever loves, if he do not propose
The right true end of love,
he’s one that goes
To sea for nothing but to make him sick

The romantic edifice of love has to have sex as its foundation stone. Once that is
gone, love becomes something else: companionship, friendship. Or whatever
else. The circumstances in which a couple meet each other often compel them to
fall in love. The same couple in a different setting might not even notice each
other. In one of her novels, Rosamond Lehmann narrates how two children who
happened to be playing together by the seaside saw a flock of geese swoop down
through a misty sky to land on the sea in front of them. When they met again
many years later they promptly fell in love because of the mystic experience
they had shared in their childhood. I have little doubt that if an Indian
mountaineer getting on top of Everest from the Indian side were to meet a
Chinese lass coming up from the other, they would immediately fall in love. And
not in the Hindi-Chini-bhai-bhai or the bhai-behen way.
American researchers have further discovered that a man in an excitable state
is more prone to fall in love than when he is calm and placid. Apparently,
excitement causes chemical changes in his blood and brain vessels which make
him more receptive to emotional stimuli. High altitude brings about similar
effects. Hence, the high incidence of marriage between air hostesses and
passengers. The Americans have further established that the traumatic
experience of rejection induces hunger for certain types of compensatory diet
like chocolate.
Speaking from personal experience, I can say that all this theorizing about
love is hogwash. People fall in and out of love all the time in all kinds of places
and make the most impossible combinations. There is nothing exclusive about
love because people can be in love with varying degrees of intensity with many
people at the same time. I do not know if other people suffer anguish when they
are rejected; I feel an exhilarating sense of release.
(1980)
 ABOLISH MARRIAGE?

I have always believed that the institution of marriage implying an exclusive,

lifelong (till death do us part) arrangement is contrary to nature, and man-made
laws enforcing monogamy corrode the personalities of both man and wife.
Since few people have the courage to break their marriages because of social
censure or lethargy, I suggest a change in the law whereby all marriages would
be compulsorily dissolved every five years and the parties be asked to decide
whether they wished to remarry each other or someone else—or resume the state
of single blessedness. The main hurdle in this scheme of things is the upbringing
of children because children need both parents for their mental and physical
health. The closest human society has come to in resolving this problem are the
kibbutzim in Israel where married couples perform their respective daily tasks in
fields or offices, while their children are taken care of by specially qualified
nurses and doctors. Parents have constant access to their children and are free to
take them home if they so desire. To the best of my knowledge the kibbutz-
reared children do not suffer the scars that children of quarrelling parents or
broken homes suffer and grow up to be healthy, normal citizens.
Recent research on sexuality and the rearing of offspring conducted by
Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin (People of the Lake) gives fresh insight into
the motives which bring males and females of a species together and their
attitudes towards the rearing of their offspring. They trace it back to the origin of
life and the desire to perpetuate their species. The authors maintain that, contrary
to popular belief, the male and female after they have performed their respective
sexual roles, do their best to ditch their partners and leave them to look after the
offspring. This was simpler when life was confined to water. Female frogs laid
eggs in floating gelatinous blobs, male frogs squirted their sperm on them and
neither was saddled with looking after their offspring as the resultant tadpoles
fended for themselves. But the problem of survival became acute when life came
to the land. Female birds had to produce eggs with protective shells and often
both parents were required to hatch, feed and protect their offspring from
predators. To this day the highest incidence (90 per cent) of monogamous unions
is found amongst birds. But usually they only last one courtship-breeding
season.
The evolution of humans from monkeys, their search for food from hunting,
through agriculture to organized society was responsible for the many biological
changes that took place in their anatomy. In the animal world, females came into
heat at specified periods when they could conceive and in turn rouse the sexual
instincts of their males. It is only amongst humans that the female is always
ready for sex and the male always ready to give it to her. ‘In all probability,’ say
the authors, ‘heightened human sexuality evolved as emotional cement to an
economic contract in which the product is children. In other words, sex became
sexy for humans—particularly for females—as an essential ingredient in the
uniquely interdependent child-rearing band of Homo sapiens.’
The authors throw further light on other interesting phenomena, such as
women should be more fussy than men in choosing their sexual partner and that
they should look for someone who will be socially and economically successful;
men are more naturally adulterous than women; female prostitution should be
more common than male prostitution; men are likely to be more severe with
adulterous wives than wives will be with husbands who seek illicit sex
elsewhere; that the coupling of older men with young women should be more
common than the reverse; that the maternal grandmother is more certain about
her genetic investment in her daughter’s children than is a paternal grandmother
and will therefore be more solicitous in offering help in caring for the infants;
that under favourable economic circumstances men will seek to be polygamous,
and that such circumstances are likely to be more common than those conducive
to polyandry; that the significant difference in body size between men and
women implies that in our recent history men competed with each other for more
than their fair share of desirable women; and that monogamy is not the natural
state of humankind.
It would seem that man’s genetic animal past is at variance with his present
attempt to concede equal rights to women. But the future is with women. She
may have to bear children for millennia to come but with all the new baby foods
available, she no longer has to give them nourishment. Her bosom having no
alimentary purpose to serve may in due course shrivel to the size of the male
nipple and become a shrunk relic of the past. What male would like to live in a
world of bosomless females! Not I.
(1979)
 MY EXPERIMENTS WITH MY BODY

Are you fat and forty? Dyspeptic and constipated? Uptight, overworked and
losing your virility? Don’t despair. You can still shed your spare tyre, regain
those rock hard muscles, and feel ready to take on half the population of the
world—the female half!
I am not sure at what age I became consciously concerned with my body.
Certainly not as a child. In adolescence I became aware of its many
shortcomings. I was not as tall as I would like to have been. I was squat, short-
necked and prone to put on fat in the wrong places. I wanted to be an athlete: a
long-distance runner, a tennis champion and a hockey ace. I wanted to build my
muscles and become a Bharat Shri. Much as I tried I could not achieve any of
these ambitions. A severe attack of typhoid fever followed by two relapses left
my intestines in very poor shape. When I recovered from the fever I discovered
that my digestive system had been seriously impaired. Almost everything I liked
to eat disagreed with me. I suffered from indigestion, flatulence and
constipation. And as usual with people with a bad stomach I became prone to
many ailments. Migraine was a monthly affair. One cold followed another;
catarrh became chronic and often made my life a misery. I was often reminded
of the Arabic proverb: ‘He who has health has hope; he who has hope has
everything.’ I had lost both health and hope.
In middle age I learnt to enjoy alcohol; just any kind of alcohol. The years in
the diplomatic and international civil service where cocktails, wines and spirits
were de rigueur with every meal (and in between meals) played havoc with my
system. I consulted all kinds of doctors, hakims and vaids. What they prescribed
gave me relief—but only for short durations. Following Voltaire’s advice that
everyone should be his own physician, I decided to examine my body, make my
own diagnosis and take myself in hand.
I had always believed in strenuous exercise. I had no patience with yoga
which I found very boring. Besides, exertion that did not make me sweat out the
poison in my system and leave me pleasantly exhausted was not my concept of
exercise. Consequently though I had reconciled myself to being a second-rater in
sports I continued to indulge in vigorous tennis, hockey and squash.
Outwardly I managed to look fitter than most men of my age. For my inner
ailments I sought the advice of a naturopath. I was then in my middle forties and
living in London. Dr Leif, an Austrian, ran a nature-cure clinic in sylvan
Hertfordshire about thirty miles from London. He had converted an old country
manor called Champneys into a kind of hospital-cum-rest house. This had
become the subject of much humour; the inmates were usually referred to as
‘Leif’s loonies’ or ‘Champney’s chimps’. I joined this ‘lunatic’ group.
I was examined by Dr Leif-my heart, blood pressure, urine, stool etc., and
pronounced fine. I then told him of internal problems. He invited me to have all
my meals with him. I was to eat and drink what I did every day. Alongside my
seat at the dining table he placed a large glass bowl. Into this bowl he poured the
equivalent of everything I consumed: morning cups of tea; the egg, bacon, toast
and coffee I took for breakfast; cups of mid-morning coffee; cocktails and lunch;
afternoon tea; whisky, steak, vegetables with the appropriate wines followed by
coffee and cognac. Then we retired for a chat by the fireside. He brought the
glass bowl full of the slop along. By then the food and alcohol had fermented
and bubbles were popping out of it. He weighed the stuff in my presence and
asked me to smell it. It was foul and weighed over a couple of kilos. All he said
to me was, ‘If you stuff all this into yourself every day, how do you expect your
poor body to cope with it?’ The message went home. The only treatment he
prescribed was fifteen days of fasting followed by a week of instructions about
what to eat.
I discovered that before undertaking a fast the stomach must be thoroughly
cleansed, otherwise the body tends to absorb the festering food that is in it. This
can have deleterious effects. I was put through what was known as a ‘colonic
irrigation’. A penis-sized gadget with two tubes was inserted into my rectum.
One tube pumped in warm water, the other sucked it out along with the contents
of the stomach. I wondered what pleasure homosexuals got out of buggery.
However, this was followed by an oil massage and a vigorous rubbing of salt. By
the end of the morning I was thoroughly exhausted.
Although I felt as clean as the proverbial whistle, I was ravenously hungry.
‘Lunch’ consisted of a single orange. ‘Tea’ was a glass of tepid water spiked
with honey. ‘Dinner’ another orange. For the next few days I dreamt of nothing
but my favourite dishes. There were a number of pretty starlets who sprawled
about the lawns taking the sun in complete nudity. They did not interest me one
bit. A juicy, well-done steak with a bottle of Mâcon followed by a ton of ice
cream topped with hot chocolate sauce was what I craved far more than sex. But
all I got were two oranges and lots of hot water. And a few more colonic
irrigations. On the fourth day there was a humming in my ears. Two days later
the humming disappeared. So did the craving for food. I shed many kilos of fat
without any discomfort.
The ordeal came to an end. I was broken back into the food habit with a bowl
of yoghurt which took me a long time to eat. It was followed by salad and
uncooked vegetables.
An amusing incident which sticks in my mind concerned two inmates of
Champneys. One was a tailor from Leeds. He was a man of gigantic proportions
and had an unquenchable thirst for liquor. Three weeks of fasting and abstinence
from alcohol had knocked out most of his fat. He proudly displayed the gap
between his trousers and his now shrunken belly. Three days before he was due
to leave he succumbed to the temptation of taking out one of the starlets
(likewise hungry and thirsty) to a pub.
The effect of liquor on their cleansed stomachs was lethal. When the pub
closed they bought themselves a bottle of gin and decided to spend the night
together. Despite the bouts of sex they were uproariously drunk in the morning.
The staff put them through colonic irrigations, massages, ice water douches. All
to no avail. When Dr Leif came to hear of the gross violation of rules (drinking,
not sex) he reprimanded them in front of all the other patients and ordered them
out of the institution. Neither of them was in the least bit repentant. ‘All this
bloody fasting was worth this one night,’ roared the tailor. They left Champneys
arm in arm.
When I returned to London I had trouble with my eyes and had to consult an
optician. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that my glasses needed changing
because my eyesight had improved.
Nothing made me more conscious of my body than those three weeks
amongst Leif’s loonies. Thereafter, I began to be selective of the food I ate and
watched my weight every day. Migraines disappeared. The colds became less
frequent. All I did to avoid them was to take cold baths throughout the winter
and an occasional tablet of Vitamin C. (Dr Linus Pauling, twice Nobel Laureate
says that Vitamin C is the only answer to the common cold.)
I developed an unpleasant trait of mocking people with paunches. I recall
telling the then somewhat corpulent General Kulwant Singh that if I were the
defence minister I would sack any soldier who had a paunch. He rudely ordered
me out of his office. To an assembly of Sikhs who were critical of my
unorthodox ways, I retorted by saying that anyone who was physically unfit had
no business to call himself a Sikh. Hadn’t Guru Gobind Singh exhorted: ‘Khalsa
sada rahey kanchan keya kal na kabhoon byapai (Let your body be like
burnished gold).’
No ills will ever befall it. Indians in their forties should be particularly
careful with their bodies. The burden of the country rests heavily on the
shoulders of the university-educated and the affluent who form a very small
proportion of the population of the country. It is in the forties that they usually
come to the top of their professions or other businesses. And it is in the forties
that they begin to indulge themselves in more food and drink than is necessary
for them, keep indifferent hours, take less exercise and usually begin to suffer
from ailments like ulcers, piles, high blood pressure, etc., which take a heavy toll
of their efficiency and eventually kill them.
It is in the forties and the fifties that they must, if they have not learnt before,
control their diet and take exercise. The moral is that a rich man who wants to be
healthy must learn to live like a poor man. If they do not do so, they will only
murder themselves and be guilty of homicide in the second degree. A simple rule
for diet was prescribed by the Talmud: one third of the stomach should have
food, one third drink and the remaining third should be empty. It should be borne
in mind that more people die of overeating and drinking than are killed in wars.
Danny Kaye, the celebrated comedian who I happened to be interviewing
over All India Radio, told me the secret of his youthful vitality (he was seventy-
five, looked fifty-five and was agile as a panther). ‘I take a little exercise,’ he
said, ‘it takes no more than a few seconds twice a day. You do it; you’ll remain
fit all your life.’
‘A few seconds twice a day?’ I asked in disbelief. ‘What kind of exercise is
that?’
‘At lunch and at dinner when I am offered a second helping I waggle my
head to indicate no.’
The guiding principle should be to eat little and eat right. Everyone should
carefully watch what kinds of food disagree with him and rigorously eliminate
them from his diet. I find milk and milk products (except dahi) make me
sluggish or bilious. Cakes, pastries—all kinds of sweets give me flatulence. So
do highly spiced things like chaat or bhel. Whenever I indulge in them, the self-
generated gas in the stomach makes me like a jet plane. Others take all these in
their stride but are upset by meat, eggs or saag.
It is best to prepare your own menu—keeping in mind that it must ensure
regular, easy evacuation. A constipated stomach is an invitation to disease. You
will notice that if the stomach is not clean, even a mild toothache will be
aggravated, athlete’s foot becomes more itchy and dandruff erupts in your scalp.
Living in Bombay for nine years, I rarely used my car. I walked to the office
and back every day. I reduced my lunch to a bowl of soup or yoghurt and fruit. I
continued playing tennis—usually mixed doubles where I combined exercise
with some mild flirtation.
I also joined the Taj Health Club. It was the hours spent at the club and
discussions with the director, Mrs Rama Bans, which convinced me that
everyone who can afford it should join a health club. This lady, a grandmother in
her fifties, has the face of a young woman in her thirties. She made a diet chart
for me; ‘Control your intake of calories and you will not put on an extra ounce,’
she said. And so it was. One extra drink, one extra helping of a sweet dish and it
showed on the weighing machine the next day. I learnt to miss a meal to
compensate for the overindulgence of the day before.
At the Taj Health Club in Bombay there was an assortment of members
hoping for different kinds of benefits. There were film stars and obese Gujarati
ladies only interested in shedding weight; there were men both young and old
who wanted to become more potent. And there were business executives who
just wanted to get rid of their tensions and relax. I believe in certain measure all
of them got what they were looking for.
Health clubs in our five-star hotels are expensive affairs. But much cheaper
than doctors and medicine bills. And if used regularly they cost no more than
five rupees per day which is less than the cost of the hot water, soap, towels,
talcum powder, etc., which are consumed. There is no better place for studying
your body and rectifying things that have gone wrong than a health club. It keeps
a record of your weight, girth, blood pressure. The slightest deviation is noticed
and you will be told what to do about it.
Since most men and women who frequent health clubs are in their middle
years and unable to play strenuous games, the gymnasium provides them gentler
ways of exercising. A yoga instructor is always available for personal guidance;
there are yoga classes for those who wish to do them en masse. The gymnasium
is equipped with a variety of gadgets. The electric belt and cycle to tone up the
muscles. The whirlpool with jets of hot water which if directed to parts of the
body you wish to reduce can be most beneficial. Then there is the sauna or the
steam bath followed by immersion in a chilled pool. You sweat it out in an
overheated room, the icy water gives a pleasant jolt to the system. Every session
of this hot-cold immersion has to be followed by a few minutes of rest on a flat
wooden bench. The sense of relaxation is blissful. An oil massage once a week
tones up the body and squeezes tensions out of the system like water squeezed
out of a sponge. At the end of an hour or two in the health club, you feel as light
as a feather. As I put it in my vulgar lingo, you’ll feel like taking on half the
population of the world—the female half. The evening drink goes down better,
the food tastes tastier and you sleep the sleep of the just.
 Many famous men have written a lot of rubbish about health. Someone has
said that people who spend most of their time watching their health have little
time to enjoy it. It is true that concern with health should not become an
obsession and there should be a certain amount of calculated carelessness about
it. But it cannot be argued that it must take top priority in everyone’s scale of
values. When Jonathan Swift prescribed Dr Diet, Dr Quiet and Dr Merriman as
the three best doctors in the world, what he meant was that you yourself must
watch your food, teach yourself the art of quiet solitude—and cheerfulness will
follow as the night the day.
(1980)
 AN UNFULFILLED DREAM

The world has begun to depress me. It may be that in twilight years I have
abandoned the zest for living I once had and am preparing myself for the night
of which I know nothing and the promised dawn in which I do not believe. On
further self-analysis I am convinced that my depression is not entirely due to any
morbid forethoughts of my demise. It is more due to the shattering of the dreams
of my youth that the world has become a depressing place.
In my younger days, I dreamt that within a matter of a decade or two, people
would be free, there would be no tensions between nations and no wars,
everyone would have enough to eat, drink and live in comfort; gifted men and
women would enrich our lives with good books, pictures, music and dance. For
some time, things seemed to move in that direction. Many nations attained
independence and began to settle their problems by talking to each other, we
overcame most diseases, began to produce more food and made life worth living.
All that remained to be done was to free the human race from the bondage of
racial prejudice and religious bigotry and create an atmosphere in which people
in power would not try to impose their views on their fellow citizens.
Alas! Racial prejudice not only continued as it was in the medieval ages but even
erupted in the most virulent form in a state which I hoped would set an example
to other nations on how to treat their racial minorities. The Soviet treatment of
Jews is an even more sinister development than the treatment of blacks in South
Africa or Rhodesia. Being an agnostic, I looked forward to a world where the
new generation would free itself of the mumbo jumbo of archaic religious
practices and yet be truthful, helpful and decent towards each other. Religion too
has re-erupted in different forms all over the globe. Catholics fight Protestants,
Copts fight Muslims, Muslims fight Jews.
Presidents Carter and Reagan quote the Bible at each other. Heads of Muslim
states find it necessary to proclaim they are Muslims. In Pakistan, General Zia-
ul-Haq reintroduces the chopping of limbs and flogging in public. No one
protests.
I take a look at my own country. Our new rulers tell us that we are going back to
Gandhi—whatever that means. In effect all they are doing is to use Gandhi as a
broom to sweep away Nehru. The Punjab is ruled by Akali zealots. Many other
states are also ruled by equally zealous Hindu bigots sporting caste marks on
their foreheads. Muslim friends advise me that if I mean to retain my image as a
friend of the Muslims, I must not write anything critical pertaining to their
Personal Law—including polygamy and the lesser status that their women (in
comparison to others) have now been relegated to. The cow is once again sacred
(to me so are other animals, particularly cats and dogs) and liquor is the worst
form of poison. All these are beyond argument. This is not the India I dreamt of
forty years ago. And I find it utterly depressing.
(1977)
GOD & HIS MESSENGERS
 SHRADDHA MATA

‘Panditji was undoubtedly attracted towards me with what I said and, I admit,
with my appearance...if he had married anyone I am sure it would have been
me... But there was never any question about it. What Mathai has written is a
lie.’
There is more to Shraddha Mata than the Nehru connection.
Four funeral pyres ablaze, a fifth corpse in a white shroud surrounded by
women wailing and beating their breasts. The acrid smell of burning flesh. And
in the midst of this macabre setting, Shraddha Mata reclining on a wood
takhtposh calmly telling the beads of her rosary. This was in Delhi’s Nigambodh
Ghat. She, a tantric sanyasin, was performing a mahakal yagna. Graveyards and
cremation grounds are regarded as particularly suitable for such rites.
Shraddha Mata is a short, somewhat corpulent lady in her mid-sixties (b.
1917). She wears thick-lensed glasses to read; when she takes them off you can
see that she is a handsome woman who must have been quite a beauty in her
younger days. As they say: ruins proclaim the glory of the monument that once
was. Even today her fair skin is unwrinkled, her bosom full, her talk animated
and her speech blunt: it is always tu not aap—and yet her words exude affection.
‘Kaun?’ she demanded as I turned the flap of the gunnysack curtain she had
put around her little temporary ashram in the cremation ground.
‘It is me. I have come for your darshan,’ I replied.
‘You must have a name, what is it?’
I announced my name.
‘Baithja,’ she said, pointing to the bare floor beside her wooden couch.
As I lowered myself, my feet touched a pair of pink plastic slippers.
‘Arrey kaisa admi hai tu!—what kind of a man are you? You put your feet
on a sanyasin’s sandals!’
I apologized.
She peered into my face and asked, ‘Are you the same fellow who was editor
of the Illustrated Weekly?’
 I admitted I was.
‘Why did they sack you?’
I explained as best as I could.
‘Why have you come to see me?’
‘Darshan’—and since I could not think of the correct Hindi word, I used the
English, ‘aur thodi curiosity.’
‘Arrey chhod curiosity, phuriosity!’ she snorted with a kindly laugh. ‘You
must have read what that fellow Mathai has written about me and Pandit Nehru.
You want to write the same kind of bakwas—rubbish.’
I gave her my word of honour that I would not write anything she did not
approve of, and not even bring up the topic of her association with Panditji if she
did not want me to do so. But I said I would like to know more about her, why
had she renounced the world and become a sanyasin. What had she got out of it?
She listened quietly as she told the beads of her rosary. After a while she
spoke: ‘I have read some of your writings. Are you a nastik?’ I admitted I was an
agnostic.
‘You do not believe in Ishwara?’
‘No, Mataji, I do not believe in anything I know nothing about.’
‘You seem to be an arrogant man—ghamandi.’
I protested, ‘No, Mataji, I have no ghamand. I only plead ignorance of what I
do not know. Maybe you have seen Ishwara and can tell me something about
him.’
She promptly cut me down to size: ‘Arrey ja! You have still to learn the
alphabet aa ee uu and you want me to teach you the Vedas! Get rid of your coat-
patloon, get into a loincloth, sit at my feet for a few years and I will teach you
about God. You have a little twig before your eyes which prevents you from
seeing the Sun. I will remove that twig and you will see this entire drishti—
cosmos is Ishwara.’ Thus, ended the first seance. ‘Come again if you wish’ were
her parting words.
Something, I do not know what, compelled me to return to Nigambodh Ghat
the next evening. The ‘welcome’ was as blunt as the first.
‘Tu phir aa gaya—you have come again?’ she demanded.
‘You asked me to do so,’ I replied.
‘Baith.’
I took my seat beside her takhtposh.
‘I believe that Mathai has again written something about me in his second
book. What has he said?’
I told her that he had written about her association with Pandit Nehru some
time in 1948-49, the birth of a son in a Catholic institution in Bangalore, her
abandoning the child after a few days, the recovery and destruction of the letters
Panditji is said to have written her. She heard me out without interrupting me
and made a non-committal comment. ‘I warned Panditji then that he should not
trust Mathai; he was the kind of viper who would bite him after his death.’
The second seance was followed by a third and a fourth. The Delhi
Municipal Corporation ousted her from Nigambodh Ghat. She moved twenty
miles away to Shiv Shambhu Dayal Mandir in the Okhla Industrial Estate. I
sought her out in her new abode, this time determined to ask her life story. After
some hesitation, she complied.

HER LIFE STORY

‘I am not sure of my date of birth nor the name of the village in which I was
born except that it was in Sultanpur district (UP). I was the only child of my
mother. My father had taken a second wife and died a couple of months before I
was born. I was given in adoption to my father’s sister who was the Rani of
Singhpur-Panhauna, a state near Ayodhya. This was done as the Rani had no
child and my father had managed her estates.’
‘What caste are you?
‘Brahmin-Kshatriya—halfway between the two upper castes.’
‘How did you get mixed up with religion—and sanyas?’
Shraddha Mata reclined on a bolster and after pondering for a while replied:
‘I’ll tell you all. My conversion to the sanyasi’s way of life came in three
successive stages. I was perhaps born with the desire because even as a child of
five I was fascinated by sadhus and sanyasis. I began wearing gerua and refused
to wear any other colour. Then I came across a statue of the Buddha in the
meditation pose. I was captivated. I got a small figurine of the same and instead
of playing with dolls as other girls of my age did, I always carried my Buddha
on me. The third incident that made me finally decide to abandon the world I
lived in came two years later when I was only seven years old. As in many
landed families, I spent more time with the servants than with my adoptive
mother. I was particularly close to the woman who had been my dhaya who I
came to address as Bua. One evening she was taken ill and did not come to the
house. The next morning I went to the servants’ quarters. There she was laid on
the ground, wrapped up in a shroud. I asked someone ‘Where is my bua?’ They
replied, ‘She has gone to Rama.’ This created a veritable storm in my breast. I
wanted to know who that Rama was and where had my bua gone to? As is
customary in our part of India, poor Hindus bury their dead and place a charpoy
upside down on the grave. I used to visit Bua’s grave every day, through sun and
rain, winter and summer till the charpoy had crumbled to bits and the grave was
hardly recognizable. And every time I asked myself, ‘‘Where is Rama that my
bua has gone to?’’ It was perhaps a year later when I was eight that I persuaded
an old woman who was going on pilgrimage to Badrinath to take me along with
her. I slipped out of the house unnoticed at midnight. Instead of going to the
railway station where they were sure to look for me, we went along the Ganga
and took the train from the next station.’

MARRIAGE
‘The party of pilgrims returned to the village but I stayed in Badrinath for
another six months. Ultimately my adoptive mother Rani Ragho Nath Koer
bullied the old woman into telling her where I was and sent a party of men to
fetch me. The Rani decided that the one way out for her was to marry me off to
someone. I was only nine when she arranged my betrothal. Then real trouble
began. My husband-to-be and I quarrelled all the time; we had bitter fights. This
went on for over two years till that engagement was called off. I was then twelve
or thirteen. Now my quarrels began with my Rani mother. Many times we went
into sulks, refused to eat or talk to each other. I got so fed up that I decided to
agree to anything that would get me out of the situation. There were lots of
distant cousins who wanted to marry me-there was the property that I would
inherit and I was regarded as good looking. Another marriage was quickly
arranged. This was with another distant relative called Phanindra Pal Singh. I
don’t remember exactly whether he had done his Bar or was going to do it. But
he was considered quite a catch. Even this marriage did not work out. My
husband and his parents kept me under surveillance as if I was a prisoner. I
wasn’t even allowed to go to the toilet without a couple of maidservants
watching me and an armed guard close by. It was not a marriage but a kind of
death. Ultimately I wrote a letter to Gandhiji telling him that I belonged to a
taluqdar family and had been forced into a marriage against my will. And that I
wanted to become a sanyasin, join him to serve my country. I sent this letter
through a cousin who was going to meet Gandhiji. A few days later I got a reply
from Mahadeo Desai saying that Gandhiji had agreed to my joining him and I
should come at once. Altogether I had spent no more than five to six weeks with
my husband. Then I slipped away.’
‘You seem uncommonly well-educated. But you have said nothing about
your schooling.’
‘Oh that! I had dozens of tutors at home. I was taught Sanskrit, Hindi,
English, everything. I did not take any degrees because women in families like
ours did not go to schools or college or sit for exams.’
Shraddha Mata resumed her narrative. ‘I was with Gandhiji for forty days.
My husband turned up to claim me and even showed Bapu our wedding picture.
Gandhiji was very firm in his reply. He said, ‘‘I know of no taluqdar’s daughter;
I only know this girl who has come to me. She is like a wave of the Ganga and
you cannot lock her up in a cage. Let her go.’’ I stayed with Gandhiji till I was
taken very ill. But by then I had become a free person.’
‘How did you come by the name Shraddha Mata? Surely it was not the name
given to you by your family?’
‘I have had a variety of names. In my horoscope I am Parvati. My real name
which was never used is Shyam Kala. At home everyone called me Bacchi
Sahib. When I took sanyas I was given yet another name Sushriyananda
Saraswati. But somehow it was Shraddha that stuck. I think I gave it to myself at
Gandhiji’s ashram. Shraddha is an abbreviation of Sat Ko Dharan—one who
clasps the truth. Mata—mother-came to be appended to it in later life.’

LADY OF THE FORT

This is all that I was able to elicit in the five evenings I spent with Shraddha
Mata in Delhi. She invited me to visit her in Jaipur where she would give me
whatever she had in the way of photographs of her earlier days and articles
written on her. She promised, ‘I will tell you what I have told no one else.’ That
was too tempting an invitation to let go. Ten days later, Raghu Rai and I flew
into Jaipur.
Hathroi Fort, atop a rocky escarpment, broods over the city of Jaipur. Its
topmost turret gives a spectacular view of the huddle of pink bazaars and beyond
them to the range of hills crowned with other forts and palaces. Hathroi was
designed to block an invader’s path to Jaipur and Amber. It fell into desuetude
and became the haunt of flying foxes, rock pigeons and sand lizards. In 1953,
Maharaja Sawai Man Singh turned it over to Shraddha Mata. She converted the
citadel into the headquarters of the Mahashakti Peeth. The lookout turret from
which Rajput warriors had scanned the horizons to sight an approaching enemy
is now occupied by a life-sized marble statue of a goddess. When the city of
Jaipur sleeps, the goddess and her worshipper keep vigil. Shraddha Mata prays
and meditates through the night into the early hours of the dawn.
We stride uphill to a massive gate and let ourselves in through a small
aperture. An obese mongrel welcomes us with a happy bark and vigorous
wagging of its tail. This is Bhairon; he is a Brahmachari dog who has been kept
away from the temptations of sex by never being let out of the fortress. While
Surendra Singh, Shraddha Mata’s young secretary and acolyte, goes to announce
our arrival, we take a look at the courtyard. It has a well in the centre; pigeons
rest deep down its sides and fly out like bees from a hive. On one side is a
pumpkin patch smelling of green leaves; against another wall is a marble statue
of Shiva, a woman squats in front reciting jap out of a hymnal. Rising above the
parapet of the well are the priests’ quarters; their womenfolk are busy cooking
the morning meal. Through a turning, twisting, perpetually shaded passageway a
flight of broad stone stairs mounts skywards to the turret temple. Along the
parapets on either side are Shraddha Mata’s gufa and her ‘reception rooms’. We
take off our shoes and go up to greet her. ‘First go and pay homage to the
goddess, she will rid you of your nastikta and give shakti to your pen. Then
come back to me.’
Shraddha Mata has a lot to say and drops broad hints that she may not have
too long a time at her disposal to say it. Mathai’s insinuations about the nature of
her relationship continue to bother her. She denounces him as one of the ‘anti-
Hindu’ group who conspired to create misunderstandings between her and the
late Prime Minister. ‘A good man continues to reform and become better till his
last breath; an evil man remains evil till he dies,’ she remarks. ‘And what was it
that I tried to instil into Nehru’s mind? Only that India had a great spiritual
tradition which must not be thrown away in the name of secularism. I believe in
democracy, it liberates people from fear. But if you wish to preserve democracy
you must replace the void created by the absence of fear by something positive,
something spiritual which gives you a sense of responsibility and discipline. I
call this adhyatmik samajvad, the nearest English equivalent is spiritual policy.
Otherwise, the only alternative is the dandebazi of the MISA.’
I looked up my notes and asked her to resume the narrative of her life from
the time she left Gandhiji’s ashram. ‘For the next three years or more I worked
with the Harijan Sewak Sangh, organizing night schools in villages around Agra
and in the Awadh region. My chief contacts were Thakkar Bappa and Acharya
Jugal Kishore. This must have been between the sixteenth and nineteenth years
of my life. Then I threw it all up and retired to the Himalayas. I lived in a cave
above Gangotri from where the holy Ganga begins its course.’ She observed the
strictest vow of silence and lived off whatever wild berries were available at that
height (21,000 feet), sucking icicles to slake her thirst.
Apparently, she was back in the plains in the early 1940s—and politically
active. There was a warrant for her arrest during the 1942 Quit India Movement.
She evaded it by remaining underground. She was taken very ill and for a while
was treated by sadhus in the jungles of Koil Ghati.
It was early in 1943 that she decided to be formally initiated into a sanyasi
order. As required by tradition, she first sought the permission of her adoptive
mother. By now Mateshwari, as she called her, had reconciled herself to her
daughter’s waywardness and gave her consent. At Ayodhya she was accepted as
a dandiswami sanyasin by Sri Karpatriji. She was given yet another name,
Sushriyananda Saraswati—a name no one used. Before the initiation there was
considerable debate on the issue as neither a woman nor anyone who was not a
Brahmin had been admitted by the Sankarapeeth. The Arya Samaj supported her
against the orthodox elements. For some time after the initiation ceremony she
stayed in the village temple built by her mother. Then suddenly one morning,
clad in her deer skin and with kamandal in her hand, she disappeared from her
village to return to her cave in the Himalayan vastness.

KALI REINCARNATED
How and when she returned to civilization is shrouded in mystery. According to
her sometime in the year 1946 she found herself in the Kali Temple in Calcutta.
The ‘transport’ had been preceded by a mystic experience during Navratri when
she had a clear vision of the Kali enthroned in Kalighat. It was accompanied by
ecstatic vibrations (‘spirit of pure joy’ is how she describes it) and a subtle
emanation of fragrance of sandalwood. She felt that the goddess had sent for her
to make her an instrument of some divine design. She describes the mystic
journey, analogous to the holy Ganga’s descent from Gangotri to the Bay of
Bengal. She spent the day amongst the throng of worshippers. Apparently her
presence did not attract any attention. When the evening service was over, she
hid herself behind the goddess. The priests locked the sanctum without noticing
her. She spent the night in prayer and meditation. Next morning, when the head
priest, Haripada Bandopadhyaya, opened the temple door, he saw standing
beside the statue of the goddess a young woman who looked every inch a fair
reincarnation of Kali: long tresses falling down to her shoulder, torso covered
with leopard skin, trident in one hand, kamandal in the other. He prostrated
himself before her.
The news spread like wildfire through the metropolis. Pilgrims in their
thousands came to pay her homage. Offerings of fruit, flowers, coconuts, silver
and gold jewellery were heaped at her feet. Amongst her visitors was Justice
Rama Prasad Mukherjee of the High Court of Calcutta who was the elder brother
of Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, minister in Nehru’s cabinet.
Shraddha Mata was persuaded to give up her vow of silence to give her
message to the people. For several weeks following she was housed in the palace
of Rani Rasmoni in Dakshineshwar (where before her Swami Vivekananda and
Sister Nivedita had stayed). She was invited to expound on the Gita. She did so
to large audiences, sometimes addressing four meetings in a day. But she never
failed to spend some time of the day or night at the Kali Temple. Her chief
achievement was to persuade the priests and worshippers to give up sacrificing
animals to the goddess and instead make offerings of corn, grain and vegetables.

THE NEHRU CONNECTION

Shraddha Mata was not very anxious to discuss her relationship with Nehru; I
did not press her on the subject. But, in the course of our dialogue, Mathai’s
insinuations in his two books on Nehru and the conjectures made by the press
surfaced. In several interviews given to a variety of journals, she has said that it
was Shyama Prasad Mukherjee who brought her to Delhi and fixed the interview
with the Prime Minister. She was given fifteen minutes to have her say; she was
with him for an hour and a half. What she said to Nehru in the first meeting can
be briefly summed up as follows: Nehru’s secularism ignored the religious and
cultural traditions of India and had therefore little support of the sadhus and
sanyasis who were guardians of these traditions. Nehru did not give Sanskrit the
place it deserved as the mother of all languages. He had toyed with the idea of
introducing the Roman script to replace Devanagari and other vernacular scripts.
He wanted the wording in the Constitution to be ‘India that is Bharat’ instead of
what it finally emerged under her insistence as ‘Bharat that is India’. And so on.
I told her that I had gathered from some members of Nehru’s household that
she had met Nehru no more than three or four times. She smiled and replied:
‘That’s all they know about. I will tell you what I have not told anyone before.
At the very first meeting that took place in the house on Aurangzeb Road we
established a rapport which seemed to indicate that we had known each other in
our previous lives. I could see Panditji was attracted to me. He was impressed
with what I had to say. And I do not deny that he was attracted towards this,’ she
said pointing to her face and features. ‘I met him many times and for many hours
at a stretch. I sensed his growing attachment to me. He asked me many times
about my marriage and my husband. I can say that had I been free and not taken
the vows of a sanyasin, it would have been me and not any of the other women
whose names have been linked with him (Lady Edwina Mountbatten, Padmaja
Naidu, Mridula Sarabhai) that he would have wanted to marry. But it never came
to it. I told him quite firmly that I was a sanyasin and that he as a Brahmin was
expected to honour Hindu tradition. At one time he addressed me in his letter as
Priya rather than Mata as others did, and I told him that was not proper. He did
not repeat it.’ With some hesitation I asked her if the relationship, as stated by
Mathai, had gone beyond the platonic. She replied in two words spoken with
considerable feeling: ‘Asat hai (It is not true).’
Like other relationships, the Nehru-Shraddha Mata association became the
victim of misunderstandings—some of them deliberately planted in Nehru’s
mind by people like Mathai—whom she describes as a member of the anti-
Hindu lobby. There is little doubt that Shraddha Mata spoke the language of
Hindu obscurantists like that of the leaders of the RSS. She admits that at one
time Nehru told her that she saw everything from the Hindu point of view. The
meetings became less frequent and then ceased altogether.
For a while Shraddha Mata lived in the Harijan basti in Delhi, then at the
invitation of Raja Jugal Kishore Birla, she moved to Birla House, then to Birla
Mandir and finally to a hut constructed for her on the ridge behind the temple.
She was in Faridabad the day Gandhiji was assassinated. She spent the following
fortnight chanting hymns from the Gita.
Sometime in 1952, Shraddha went abroad. She toured Europe, the United
States, East Africa—and everywhere she went she gave discourses on the Gita,
which were heard by large crowds. When she returned to India she did not
bother to contact Nehru. The Maharaja of Jaipur, Sawai Man Singh and his wife,
the luscious Gayatri Devi, had become her disciples. He gifted the Hathroi Fort
to Shraddha Mata. She moved to Jaipur and she set up her ‘world peace army’.
Panditji misunderstood her intentions and regarded her venture as an attempt to
revive feudal traditions among erstwhile Rajput princes. ‘Sukhadia created
mischief,’ she says (M. L. Sukhadia was then chief minister of Rajasthan).
‘When Nehru visited Jaipur, a mehfil was arranged by Hari Bhan Upadhyaya. I
was cordial. But distant.’ When Nehru had his first stroke, Shraddha Mata wrote
to him expressing her concern. He replied asking her to forget her past
bitterness. That was the last communication between them. ‘When I was close to
him I could transmit some of my shakti to him,’ she says. ‘Once distance had
been created, I was no longer able to do so. I could not help him in his
affliction.’
Her reference to Panditji’s death gave me the opportunity to ask her what she
made of death and dying. Her views are traditionally Hindu. According to her,
one lot of human beings evolve from human birth to human rebirth, getting
closer and closer to the light eternal. The other lot who have evil within them go
through all eighty-four lakh yonis till they are purged of their evil. I protested.
‘Mataji, you are only making statements; there is no evidence to substantiate any
of this eighty-four lakh yoni business.’ She replied in excellent English: ‘There
can be no empirical evidence for this kind of thing. You can only realize the
truth through insight brought about during samadhi. No one can provide physical
proof of such phenomena because cosmic truth is reflected when man goes
beyond sensory perceptions.’ I asked her to explain why if there was a God there
was so much injustice in the world? Why good men suffered and evil men
prospered? Once again she explained in the traditional ‘Pichley janmon key
karm (Paying for deeds done in past lives).’ All this was beyond me. So was her
reasoning about why there ought to be nine Durga Pujas and not eight or ten.
‘Because,’ she maintained, ‘ultimately energy is in nine stages of radiation, one
layer after the other—that is the tantric belief.’
The next morning I was made more aware of the great gulf that divides the
agnostic from the believer. We were seated on the parapet of the fort. It was very
warm. A cord connecting the table fan to the switch came loose. Surendra Singh
who had just come down from the temple after a session of prayer and
meditation plugged it back in. Then he pointed to a naked patch on the cord and
said, ‘You see, by mistake I touched the naked wire but it did not give me any
shock! That is because the shakti generated by prayer and meditation is still in
me.’ Shraddha Mata endorsed this by adding: ‘And also because I am here
beside you.’ I was sorely tempted to ask Surendra Singh to touch the live wire
again and let me see the power of spiritual shakti pitted against the electrical, but
I did not want to be thrown out.

MATHAI: HE IS A LIAR
I had planned to put off the questions about her association with Pandit Nehru to
the last so that I could get the rest of her life story before running the risk of an
abrupt dismissal. But she had brought up the subject herself so many times that I
was sure she would not be upset by my asking her for further elucidation.
‘Mathai in his first book has written that after returning from Bangalore you had
settled in Jaipur as a mod young lady with short-cropped hair, using lipstick and
wearing jeans... Is that so?’
Shraddha Mata exploded in a string of expletives: ‘Ullu ka pattha! Moorakh!
Agyani! His skull needs examining. See all these letters.’ She unwrapped a
bundle of letters and handed me one from the late Sawai Man Singh, Maharaja
of Jaipur, donating Hathroi Fort to her. It began ‘Respected Mataji’ and ended
with ‘yours devoted S. Man Singh’. Shraddha Mata asked me: ‘You think the
Maharaja would have addressed me in this way and given me property worth
over two crore rupees if I was wearing lipstick and slacks?’
(1979)
 MATAJI AND THE HIPPIES

An act of betrayal drove her to the banks at the Ganga. Old and ugly now, she
takes under her wing six lost souls seeking the light. Preaching, praying, feeding
and smoking ganja, she holds court in a boat. But history repeats itself in strange
ways...
She sat on her haunches with nothing more than a saffron dhoti covering her
body. She rubbed ganja in the palm of her hand. She was stocky as a filled-up
gunnysack. Beads of sweat rolling off her body...age on her face...a trident
tattooed on her forehead. A double-decker bun of matted hair atop.
She intoned the name of Shiv Shankar and gave me her blessing. Sitting with
her were her disciples—five young men and a girl. They were Americans who
had wandered around the world in search of peace of mind and had ultimately
found it in Benares in Mataji’s little houseboat tethered on the banks of the holy
Ganga. I took my seat beside her.
Mataji rammed ganja down the nozzle of her long chillum. She wrapped a
wet rag round the stem, put it reverently against her forehead and roared the
invocation of her patron deity:
Bhum bhum bhum bhum Alakh Niranjan. God of the Burning Ghats.
Destroyer of Sorrows.
The girl who wore a purple sarong around her waist got up. She made a taper
from a piece of newspaper and lit it from an oil lamp burning in the corner.
Mataji put the chillum to her lips as if she were blowing a sacred conch. The girl
put the flaming taper to the pipe, Mataji inhaled deeply till the ganja was aflame.
She took five quick puffs and then held her breath. She shut her eyes and held
her breath; the veins of her neck seemed to be bursting. She handed the chillum
to the girl; her eyes were bloodshot. The girl bowed, took the chillum and, like
Mataji, pressed it against her forehead before smoking it. She passed it on to her
fellow disciples.
The houseboat was tethered at some distance from the ghat used as a
cremation ground. I noticed that the inside of the boat was clean and tidy. On the
wall there were many nude figurines dyed in deep colours. On a string nailed to
the two sides were hung trousers, bush shirts and dhotis of many garish colours-
green and pink and yellow. There were also a few loincloths. The disciples sat in
silence while Mataji jabbered away at the top of her voice. Her speech was
punctuated with loud slogans in honour of her gods. They imbibed every word
she said as if it was nectar.
Beside her was sprawled a young man in shorts with whiskers like those of
Genghis Khan. Next to him was a blue-eyed boy; then a youngster with a
massive butcher’s beard. The fourth wore sadhu’s earrings and a saffron-
coloured loincloth.
The fifth sat rigidly in the lotus pose. On his yellow dhoti was printed ‘Ram
Ram’. He was so thin and woebegone that each time he inhaled ganja he burst
into violent coughs and his head collapsed on his navel. The girl was blonde, her
hair tumbled over her shoulders down to her purple dhoti. She too wore the mark
of the trident on her forehead; her eyelids had a green shadow about them. On
her arms she wore several bracelets of basil seeds.
Mataji was saying, ‘I’ve to bathe them, feed them, teach them. I give them a
hundred sermons. If I did not look after these poor creatures they would die of
hunger. They’re lost souls; they have dirty ways. You would not believe it but
they eat with the same hand with which they wipe their bottoms.’ Her eyes
sparkled when she emphasized her horror of their doings.
She nodded towards the chap with the butcher’s beard. ‘He’s my Rama.
Those two seated across are Bharata and Lakshmana and that chap sprawled at
my feet is Kumbhakarna; and this girl is my favourite, Nandini. In her last life
she was a fish in the Ganga. She performed good deeds and has been given
human rebirth. And that fellow sitting across there in padmasana is my Prem
Das. He does not eat or drink. Nothing stays in his stomach.’ She paused and
said, ‘I must now go and make arrangements for their food. All they can do is to
sit like cats staring at me.’ She got up and quickly swept out of the houseboat.
The young man in the saffron loincloth began to read loudly from a book on
Confucius. The butcher-bearded Rama took out his flute and softly intoned the
notes of the Raaga Bhairavi. The famished Prem Das sitting in the lotus pose
engaged me in conversation. ‘We do not take ganja for its intoxicant effect or as
a drink. This is worship. We are seeking ourselves. Who are we? Why? Where
are we bound for? The past is dead, the future is lost. The older generation has
sold our birthright. We have to atone for their follies. This ‘now’ is helpless...
We... We are disillusioned and blinded. We cannot see objects lying under our
very noses.’ He lit a cigarette and blew two jets of smoke through his nostrils.
He continued, ‘Can you see any images in these jets of smoke? Can you see that
the entire world is contained in the burning up of this cigarette? In this I see
volcanoes erupting. I see valleys flooded with molten lava—cities reduced to
ashes.’ He continued to smoke with his eyes fixed on the burning end of his
cigarette. I asked: ‘Have you ever tried LSD?’
‘Three times. Each time I saw new worlds open up before me. But in order to
take LSD you have to be in the proper frame of mind. You must have a guru, or
someone who has been on the trip before. Here, it is only the Mataji who can do
so.’
We began to discuss Mataji’s philosophy of salvation. There are many things
said about Mataji on the banks of the Ganga. Some said that she had an affair
with her cook. They had both come on a pilgrimage and the cook was swept
away by the stream. Mataji had refused to return to her home.
Others said that a party of sadhus had found her as an abandoned child in a
bear’s cave and they had brought her to the Kumbh Mela and in time left her to
the mercies of the holy river. Yet others said that she was descended from the
Rani of Jhansi and had been performing penance and practising austerity for
several incarnations.
Prem Das had yet another version. ‘Mataji is from Gwalior. Her old father
ran a paan-bidi shop on the main road. Different kinds of people came to this
shop-truck drivers, tradesmen, tourists and sometimes gangs of dacoits. Mataji
spent the day folding paan leaves for her customers. She was then eighteen,
beautiful and bursting with youthfulness. She fell in love with a young Rajput
named Mangal Singh.
‘Mangal Singh was the son of a wealthy landowner. He became a regular
visitor to her father’s shop. It is there that he got to know that gangs of dacoits
were in the habit of visiting the shop and drinking. One day Mangal Singh
tricked the dacoits, informed the police and had them arrested. He had done all
this because of his love for the eighteen-year-old girl. But the act of betrayal
only converted Mataji’s love into hatred. Mangal Singh tried hundreds of ways
to ask her forgiveness, but Mataji would not relent. “Get out of my sight, you are
a low-born cur. Anyone who had suckled at the breasts of a Rajput mother
would not practise such treachery. I do not want to see your face for the rest of
my life.”
‘Mataji was so upset by this incident that she left her home one night and for
many years she went about with parties of sadhus and then ended up here on the
banks of the Ganga.’
Prem Das spoke to me for almost two hours. I promised to see him again the
next day and returned to my hotel. Many days later when I had nothing
particular to do I decided to call on Mataji again. I bought a dozen bananas and
apples and went to the houseboat. As I approached the houseboat I saw her
striding up and down the sand bank. As soon as she saw me a broad smile lit her
face. She greeted me: ‘Alakh Niranjan. Come along, Son. The God of the
Burning Ghats sent you here.’ She took me into the houseboat. Her disciples
were sprawled on the floor. Only Prem Das was as usual sitting in the lotus pose
with his eyes fixed on a spot on the wall. His ribs showed through his chest.
Mataji said: ‘Shankar has brought some fruits for you, get up. You’ve not eaten
anything since yesterday.’
She sat down and crossed her legs. I placed the basket of fruits before her.
She picked up a banana exactly as it were her chillum, pressed it against her
forehead, intoned the name of her gods, broke the fruit into two and threw away
half as an offering to the sacred Ganga. The other half she gave to the butcher-
bearded boy. He, too, pressed it against his forehead before he ate it. Mataji did
not eat any of the fruit. She peeled and cut the bananas and apples and fed her
brood. Only Prem Das did not eat.
Mataji said: ‘My Prem Das will eat nothing today because I am fasting. It is
masya—moonless night. Victory to Darkness! Victory to the God of the Burning
Ghats!’
I asked Mataji, ‘You make no secret of smoking ganja—what if the police
found out?’
She replied: ‘Ganja is a herb sacred to Lord Shiva. It’s no crime to smoke it.
In Benares alone there are eleven licensed ganja vendors. No one dare interfere
with my sacred ritual. The Lord of the Burning Ghats would surely reduce him
to cinders.’ To emphasize the point she stuck the sharp end of her trident into the
wooden floor of the boat. With her red ganja-besotted eyes she glowered at me
and cried, ‘Alakh Niranjan.’ One banana and apple each made the disciples
hungrier. Kumbhakarna pleaded, ‘Mataji, please go to the bazaar and get us
something to eat.’
‘When it’s time, I’ll go,’ she replied. ‘I haven’t yet received the Divine
Command.’
The disciples were silenced. At last Mataji relented. She rose and said, ‘All
right. I’ll go and get you people something to eat. And for you, Prem Das, rice
and yoghurt.’ She hurried out of the boat.
The group maintained its silence for a while. Then Kumbhakarna spoke.
‘Sometimes the spirit of Chandi, the Goddess of Destruction, comes into the
body of our Mataji. When she loses her temper, we do not take it ill.’
Suddenly there was a commotion outside. Shouting, stamping of heavy
hobnailed boots. The boat rocked. A huge police officer burst in. He had a pistol
in his hand. A posse of armed constables followed him. The disciples sat where
they were, lost in the maze of ganja fumes, unconcerned. I panicked. The police
officer bared a row of glistening white dentures; his walrus moustache dyed a
glossy black gave him a ghoulish appearance. ‘Stay where you are!’ he growled,
pointing his weapon at the group.
The constables began to look through the disciples’ bags, passports and
papers. Their visas had expired. The officer ordered them out of the boat. The
constables gathered their ganja chillums.
The officer noticed me. He sniffed near my mouth to see if I had ganja
odour. He asked my name and occupation and asked me to stand aside.
‘Take the lot to the station,’ he ordered.
The disciples submitted without a protest. They were like a bunch of passive
resisters. Their faces glowed with beatific resignation. Only Prem Das
murmured: ‘I am not well. You will have to feed me rice and yoghurt.’
The police officer ignored the request. ‘March the bloody lot to the station,’
he barked.
Down the sandbank came Mataji. Her arms were loaded with provisions. The
setting sun lit her ash-and-sweat-smeared body in a crimson glow. She saw the
police party and roared like a wounded tigress: ‘How dare you interrupt the
worship of Bhairava! Get the hell out of here or the Lord of the Burning Ghats
will reduce you to cinders!’ She descended like a thunderbolt.
‘Get hold of the bitch,’ screamed the police officer.
Mataji strode down till she came face to face with the officer. Her face was
like a sheet of red hot iron. For a moment time came to a petrified standstill. The
constables, the disciples and I gaped spellbound at the confrontation. They
glowered at each other. Sparks flew. The trident on Mataji’s forehead shone. Her
eyes were like volcano craters.
The officer’s eyes gradually lost their fire. His gaze shifted from Mataji’s
face to the setting sun. He stepped back, put his pistol back in its holster and said
to his men, ‘Release them.’
Mataji walked triumphantly back into her boat. We collected our belongings
and followed her. The exhibition of her divine power had us completely
spellbound.
Mataji fed us. The sun went down. The dusky soot of twilight mingled in the
waters of the Ganga. I asked permission to leave. Mataji replied: ‘It is masya—
the moonless night meant for prayer. Stay and join us.’
Mataji took out new earthenware oil lamps and dipped them in the stream.
She filled them with coconut oil, rolled wicks, lit them and put them around the
image of Shiva. She went out and bathed in the Ganga and came back to us. She
was wearing a fresh sari bordered with red and had let down her long hair. She
chanted at the top of her voice, ‘Bhum...Bhum...Bhum.’ Her disciples took up
the chant. Mataji said, ‘You go on with the worship. I must go and pay my
homage to the Lord of the Burning Ghats. I’ll be back soon.’ The worship
continued. The smoke from the lamps and the fumes of ganja filled the boat with
acrid vapours.
We waited till midnight. There was no sign of Mataji. Then we heard
footsteps come up the gangway. A man stood at the door. We could not see him
clearly, only his white muslin shirt and dhoti flapped in the breeze. He came in.
He was big and his walrus moustache hung down to his chin. Prem Das asked:
‘Have you come to see Mataji?’
‘Yes,’ replied the man. ‘Forgive me for disturbing you at this hour. Where is
she?’
Prem Das growled at the man and said, ‘Haven’t I seen you somewhere
before?’
The stranger smiled and replied: ‘Earlier in the day I was the Superintendent
of Police, now I’ve come here as just Mangal Singh.’
Prem Das and I exchanged glances. Prem Das asked Mangal Singh to sit
down and said: ‘Mataji has been away since eight o’clock. She said she was
going to pay homage to the Lord of the Burning Ghats and would be back soon.’
Mangal Singh appeared startled. A shadow crossed his face and he shook his
head and said: ‘She will never come back again.’
(1969)
 DAYANAND SARASWATI: PROFILE OF A RENAISSANCE
CRUSADER

The secret of the phenomenal success as a reformer of Swami Dayanand, whose

ninety-seventh death anniversary falls next week on 30 October, lay in the fact
that he stuck fast to traditional Hindu rituals (agyopavit, shradhs and havan),
observed Hindu traditions and made the Vedas the sole repositories of the truth,
both religious and scientific.
Thus solidly entrenched in Hinduism he was able to launch frontal attacks on
idol worship which he regarded as un-Hindu and to condemn practices like
discrimination against lower castes and castigation of widows as harmful to
Hindu society.
By glorifying the past of Aryavarta and denouncing the degradation of Hindu
society under alien rule, he fanned the dying embers of Hindu self-respect into
flames of Hindu nationalism. Arya Samaj leaders, like the late Lala Lajpat Rai,
who were at the forefront of the freedom movement and a large majority of
terrorists from northern India, including Sardar Bhagat Singh, were influenced
by the Arya Samaj.
Echoes of Dayanand’s teachings can be heard today in the pronouncements
of the leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party and the RSS.
Dayanand was by all accounts a most remarkable man. Not much is known
about his childhood because he rarely spoke about his parents and his family.
And by the time he had become famous most of his relatives and childhood
companions were dead or untraceable. He was born in Tankara, a small town in
the Morvi state of Kathiawar, the eldest of five children of a devoutly religious
Samvedi Audichya Shaivite Brahmin who was also a man of wealth—a
landowner, tax collector and moneylender. The exact date of Dayanand’s birth is
not known. But we know that his pre-sanyasi name was Dayaram Mulshankar
Tiwari and he was generally known as Mulji.
The family were strict in the observance of ritual, particularly the evening
prayer, Sandhya. It was during Shivratri when he saw mice clambering over the
Shivalinga and nibbling at the offerings that Mulji became very critical of idol
worship. The deaths of his nineteen-year-old sister and an uncle who was his
mentor, and to whom he was deeply attached, made a deep impression on his
mind over the transitoriness of life. The pressure of his parents wanting him to
marry drove him from home, and to abandon grihastha and take to sanyas. When
he took the vagrant oath of the ascetic he was barely twenty-one years old.
The impact of the years in his parents’ home and the religious atmosphere in
Kathiawar were to remain with him all his life: the obsession with Shaivite ritual
and the emphasis on Sanskrit he imbibed from his parents. The air he breathed
was heavy with Vaishnavism and Jainism. As a Shaivite Brahmin he learnt to
disapprove of both, and found Adi Shankaracharya’s unqualified monism more
suited to his philosophic bent of mind.
Nevertheless, Mulji was first initiated into a Vaishnav order and took on the
name Shuddha Chaitanya. This did not last long. His father brought him back
home and tried once more to force him to marry. Once more Mulji fled his home
and this time entered the Shaivite ashram at Chetan Math. It was here that he
went over to the Vedantic concept of the oneness of God and man—Aham
Brahma Asmi; here on the banks of the Narmada he was initiated into the
Sanyasi order of Dandis (one of the Dashanami Sadhu sects) and given a name
which he was destined to make famous: Dayanand Saraswati.

WANDERING MONK
Dayanand travelled northwards to Mount Abu and eastwards to Haridwar to
attend the Kumbh Mela in December 1854 and again the greater Kumbh in 1855.
He spent the rest of the year in the Himalayas where he came into contact with
the tantrics. He studied the Tantra Shastras, tried out Hatha Yoga and even
imbibed hashish. He records that at Garhmukteshwar he hauled a corpse out of
the river and cut it up with a knife to see for himself whether what the Tantra
Shastras said about human biology was in fact true.
He wrote: ‘I came to the firm conclusion that there was not the slightest
similarity between the texts and the corpse. I then tore the books to pieces and
threw them into the river with the remains of the corpse.’
After four years of wandering (of which we know little except that he visited
Kanpur, Allahabad, Varanasi and other cities of UP) Dayanand arrived at
Mathura in 1860 and became a disciple of the famous Sanskrit grammarian, the
blind Swami Virajananda (1779-1868). He was now thirty-six years old. It was
the blind Guru who opened Dayanand’s eyes to the need of reviving pristine
Hinduism and the ideal of Karma Yoga—the path of action. Instead of receiving
the farewell dakshina, the Guru extracted a promise from his disciple ‘to devote
everything, even give up your life, to the propagation in India of the books of the
rishis and the Vedic religion.’
Mathura, the centre of the Krishna cult in its most decadent form, changed
Dayanand from a simple scholar of Sanskrit and the Vedas into a preacher. By
now he had picked up enough Hindi to be able to partake in debate. He began to
tour other cities: Agra, Gwalior, Karauli, Jaipur, Ajmer, Pushkar. The only
weapons in Dayanand’s armoury were the Vedas. But these he used to devastate
all opposition.

GOD IS NIRANKAR
The Vedas, he maintained, propagated strict monotheism. God was Nirankar
(unmanifested) Paramatma and was the only phenomenon which was at once
truth, consciousness and bliss: Satchidananda. And those who believed in the
Puranas and worshipped idols had strayed from the path of true Hinduism. The
Bhagvata Purana, he declared, was totally spurious. ‘Abandon the application of
ashes, abandon the wearing of the rudraksh, and do not adore the Lord of
Universe in the form of a Shivalinga.’
It took a little longer for Dayanand to reject the caste system—but eventually
he did that too. On the positive side, he advocated the Sandhya ritual, the
recitation of the Gayatri Mantra and the practice of Hatha Yoga—but only for
physical well-being.
The next time Swamiji went to Kumbh at Haridwar, he went flaunting the
saffron flag with the motto ‘Pakhand Khandini’ denouncing the very concept of
purification through bathing in holy water. ‘This is only water,’ he said, referring
to the Ganga. ‘Moksha does not come from water, it comes from works.’
Here was a Brahmin ascetic, clad in a loincloth, carrying a staff and begging
bowl, denouncing all that traditional Brahminism stood for. He wandered around
the cities and villages of Uttar Pradesh, sleeping on the ground with a stone for
his pillow. When not addressing people, he studied other religions and the
English language. As the Muslims claimed the Quran to be the word of God, so
did Dayanand claim divinity for the Vedas. It is to the Vedas he turned to
denounce astrology as deceit and the Bhrigu Samhita as fraud.
Swami Dayanand was convinced that it was only through knowledge of
Sanskrit and the Vedas that Hinduism as it was practised in ancient Aryavarta
could be revived. He started with a Sanskrit school at Farrukhabad. At the time
Farrukhabad had a small puritanical community: the Sadhus, who believed in the
teachings of Kabir and Nanak, were monotheists and against idol worship and
caste distinctions. Swamiji, though he disapproved of the Sadhus as deviants
from purely Vedantic Hinduism, probably felt that the learning of Sanskrit and
the Vedas would put this otherwise good set of people back on the right path.
Dayanand’s direct exposure to Christianity and its impact on Hinduism came
when he visited Calcutta in December 1872. He was welcomed by the leaders of
the Brahmo Samaj: Keshab Chandra Sen, Rajnarayan Bose, the scholar of
divinity, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar and the historian R. C. Dutt. The Brahmos
persuaded him to start wearing clothes and to pay more attention to Christianity
and Islam than he had done hitherto. He not only changed his lifestyle (on his
visit to Aligarh he entered the city riding on an elephant) but also greatly
widened his horizons. It was after his visit to Calcutta that he spelt out his ideas
in his first edition of Satyarth Prakash published in 1875.

THE DOCTRINE
In the Satyarth Prakash Swamiji reaffirmed his conviction in the unique divinity
of the Vedas. He also wrote that while the Vedas were of universal application to
all mankind, the Bible and the Quran were only meant for followers of
Christianity and Islam. Swamiji painted a very rosy picture of Aryavarta, the
Golden Age of Hinduism, and elevated Sanskrit as the mother language, of all
languages which he denigrated as later corruptions.
Apart from theological affirmations about the nature of the godhead,
Swamiji maintained that the basis of scientific discoveries including steam-
powered engines, hydroelectric energy, the telegraph and even atomic energy
were to be found in the Vedas.
Swami Dayanand’s fervent belief in his brand of Hinduism left no room for
other religious systems like Christianity and Islam, which he regarded as foreign
importations. He also refused to accept variations of Hinduism like the teachings
of Vallabhacharya or the pronouncements of Bhaktas like Kabir and Nanak.
Even the Brahmos, whom he had initially admired, he later criticized for their
love of the English and their anglicized way of living.
The Satyarth Prakash dealt with other subjects like marriage, caste, diet,
administration and politics. After giving credit to the British for introducing the
rule of law, he criticized the way the courts functioned in India. He advocated
the abolition of the tax on salt and heavier excise on liquor.
Having propounded his views in print, Swamiji decided to set up an
organization which would ensure their propagation for posterity. During his stay
in Bombay he founded the Arya Samaj on 10 April 1875. Maharashtra leaders
including M. C. Ranade and Mahatma Phule lent their support to the Samaj. The
nucleus of the Bombay branch consisted largely of the trading banias and
Maharashtrian Brahmins.
Swami Dayanand spent the following year touring UP and made his first
visit to Delhi in 1877. That spring he engaged himself in debates with leaders of
the Muslims and Christians. By this time Swamiji had been acknowledged as the
greatest, albeit controversial, leader of renascent Hinduism. When he proceeded
northwards from Delhi he was welcomed by Punjab’s Hindus and Sikhs (who
had obviously not yet read the Satyarth). The sixteen months he spent in the
Punjab were in some ways his most successful as well as his most disastrous in
shaping the future of Hindu-Sikh relations. While large numbers of Hindu
Khatris and Aroras turned to him eagerly, the Sikhs turned sour against him and
his followers. His movement to convert (shuddhi) Muslims and Christians raised
the ire of Christian missionaries and Muslim mullahs. Consequently, while the
Arya Samaj found an enthusiastic following amongst educated, urban Hindus, it
earned the hostility of Muslims, Christians and Sikhs.
Swamiji never returned to the Punjab but it was in the Punjab (and present
day Haryana) that his teaching took firmer root than in UP, Rajasthan or
Maharashtra where he toured extensively (opening new branches of the Samaj
wherever he went).
The strain of continuous travel, addressing meetings and entering into
debates began to tell on Swamiji’s health. One illness followed another. In 1880
he drew up his first will. But neither illness nor premonition of death made any
difference to his schedule of lectures and debates. It was not all triumphal
processions: debates often turned acrimonious and sometime even led to the
exchange of legal notices.
Swamiji’s brief encounter with the Theosophists was not fruitful. To start
with they were attracted by the Arya Samaj and even suggested making a kind of
united organization to be called the Theosophical Society. They later accused
him of ambition to become the messiah of a new faith. Swamiji denied this: ‘I do
not wish to found a new religion. I only preach the eternal Vedic faith. I do not
aspire to any position except that of a preacher,’ he wrote to Madame Blavatsky
and denounced Theosophy as humbug.

AMONG PRINCES
Swami Dayanand aspired to bring the masses of Hindus to his way of thinking
through conversions of the princely order: yatha raja, tatha praja—as the ruler,
so the ruled. The Rajasthan branch of the Samaj had the Maharana of Udaipur as
president and included the rulers of Shalipura, Asind and Masuda on its council.
Swamiji performed yagnas, blessed princes on their ascension to their gaddis,
and exhorted them to be monogamous, give up drink and pursuit of pleasure.
His note of admonition to Raja Jaswant Singh of Jodhpur is an example of
his outspokenness: ‘It is such a great pity that, though you are such an intelligent
man, you still keep engaging, I do not know why, in the following activities:
drinking, consorting with prostitutes, kite-flying, gambling. If you do not give up
those pastimes and devote at least six hours a day to state affairs, and if you do
not show greater affection for your wives, princesses of great beauty, it is a great
pity indeed. As a ruler is, so will the people be. All these bad habits are
extremely injurious to your life expectation, your strength and health, your fame
to the achievement of the aims of dharma, artha, kama, and moksha, and to the
parental care for your subjects: On the love of husband and wife depends the
welfare of the whole family: its absence destroys the whole line. Therefore, do
not waste your precious time in drinking, womanizing, etc., but spend it in the
good work of looking after your subjects according to the sacred law of justice,
and thus become worthy of universal fame and gratitude.’
Swamiji was taken ill in September and removed to Mount Abu and then to
Ajmer where he died on 30 October 1883. It was later rumoured (he had earlier
given currency to the rumour) that he had been administered poison at the behest
of the Jodhpur Rana’s mistress, Nanni. There is little evidence available on the
subject. More significant were his views on how he wished to be
commemorated. ‘Throw the ashes of my body somewhere in a field, thus they
will be of some use; but do not make a memorial, lest that be the start of some
idolatry.’

SAMAJ SPILT
Two years after the death of Swami Dayanand, the Arya Samaj split into two.
The progressives, led by Lala Lajpat Rai, believed that Swamiji stood for
modern education, freedom to eat whatever anyone liked, saving the cow and the
universality of their creed. The conservatives opted for the ancient, Sanskrit-
based education of the gurukulas, vegetarianism and the Samaj’s teaching being
restricted to the Hindu-born. Nevertheless, between the two they set up an
impressive number of DAV schools, colleges, orphanages and gurukulas, young
men’s and women’s Arya associations, Vedic salvation army, Arya publishing
houses financed by a 1 per cent voluntary tax on the income of members. In due
course, the Arya Samaj became the most powerful social and religious political
force in northern India stretching far beyond the Indus in the north to eastern
Uttar Pradesh. It also had a considerable following in Rajasthan, Madhya
Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra.
Swami Dayanand’s role as the regenerator of Hinduism should be viewed in
its historical perspective of a Hindu India humbled, ruled, exploited and reviled
for centuries by Muslim and European conquerors. What the Muslims thought of
the Hindus was aptly summed up by Al-Biruni. ‘They sip the urine of cows, they
use turbans as trousers, they spit and blow their noses without respect for those
present.’
Even a liberal intellectual like Aldous Huxley described India as ‘depressing
as no other country I have ever known. One breathes in it not air, but dust and
hopelessness.’ It was this kind of gloomy vision of India that reformers had to
dispel by restoring among the masses confidence in their Hindu heritage.
Of them Dayanand was the first and the foremost. While Raja Ram Mohan
Roy turned to the Upanishads (and Swami Vivekananda to Vedanta), Dayanand
went back to the principal source of Hinduism, the Vedas, which he lauded as
‘eternal, infallible and the only revelation of truth given by God to men’. For
him and his followers Judaism, Christianity and Islam were garbled versions of
Vedic teachings. He believed that India was the cradle of all cultures, Sanskrit
the mother of all languages, Vedic knowledge the basis of all scientific
discovery including radio, radar, television, atomic bombs and all advances in
medicine.

STRIDE FORWARD
This may sound somewhat fatuous and should be taken with a massive dose of
salt, but there is little doubt that in the realm of theology Dayanand cleared many
cobwebs from the minds of the Hindus. He explained the multiplicity of gods in
the Rig Veda which mentioned thirty-three manifestations of the One God; lit
the spark of karma in a community which had resigned itself to passive
acceptance of everything that happened; and he explained away miracle-loaded
sagas of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana as fairy tales. His insistence on
monogamy, condemnation of Sati, child marriages, purdah and allowing widows
the right to sit through niyoga marks a giant stride forward to freedom from
superstition and unwholesome social customs. He drove idols and priests out of
his temples and threw them open to all who were willing to purify themselves
through shuddhi.
Dayanand’s Arya Samaj was like a double-edged sword. While its one side
clove through the dead wood of decadent ritualism and made Hindus forward-
looking, proud of their heritage and fiercely nationalistic, the other side cut
asunder the tenuous bonds that Hindu society had developed with other religious
communities—the Muslims, Christians, Jains and Sikhs. It will not be stretching
one’s imagination too much to question if Dayanand would not have (were he
alive today) propagated the ideal of an Akhand Bharat, a Hindi (Sanskrit)-
Hindu-Hindustan, supported the RSS and the Jan Sangh, sought to bring Jains
and Sikhs back into the Hindu fold, agitated for the expulsion of Christian
missionaries, and asked the Muslims of India who had supported the demand for
Pakistan to leave for Pakistan.
For all his learning, Dayanand did not have much respect for views at
variance with his own. He would have had little patience with the ideal ‘sarva
dharma sambhava (respect for all religions)’ of Mahatma Gandhi and even less
for the near-agnostic secularism of Pandit Nehru.
(1980)
 MEMORIES OF BHAI VIR SINGH

The last time I met Bhai Vir Singh was three months ago in Amritsar. He was a
sick man under the care of nurses and doctors. His bed and sitting rooms were
heated by Canadian stoves and a constant watch was kept on the temperature.
The doctor had forbidden him to work or receive visitors. There were only a few
exceptions to this rule; amongst them were younger writers for whom Vir Singh
always had a sort of personal regard. He walked into the sitting room slowly but
unescorted. I touched his feet; he put his frail hand on my shoulder and asked me
to sit down beside him. He enquired about my children for he always loved
children. He spoke with effort and had to pause for breath after each sentence
and then became silent. He was never a man of too many words and the custom
of the circle around him was to sit in silence and meditate. After ten minutes he
looked up and smiled. I knew I was expected to leave.
‘When will you be going to the hills?’ I asked.
He raised one hand in a gesture of resignation and answered: ‘Who knows!’

LONGING FOR TOUCH

I got up and once more touched his feet. This time he took my hands in his—his
soft, warm hands which had the ability to stir deep emotions and without rhyme
or reason bring tears to one’s eyes.
‘Give my love to your daughter. God bless you.’
I hurried out of the room. It was obvious that his time was fast running out.
He did not seem concerned because to him life had meant reading and writing
and the doctor had forbidden him both. And he was of the philosophical mould,
those who take both life and death in their stride. I left his house but the memory
of his touch lingered for a long time. Therein lay the secret of one of the
dominant themes in his poems—a sensuous longing for physical contact with
God in the tradition of the Vaishnava and Sufi writers, a sort of mystic belief that
the touch would evoke the angelic in man and, as a philosopher’s stone,
transmute dross to gold.
 You struck the chords
And I burst into music
Like a harp attuned.
You forsook me
And I feel silent
As one stricken dumb.
Thy hand hath the magic touch.
It makes the living come to Life.

The ‘touch’ had mystical significance for Vir Singh. It occurs often in his
writing: In a dream You came to me
I leapt to hold You in my embrace; It was but a fantasy I could not hold And my arms ached with
longing.
Then I rushed to clasp Your feet To lay my head thereon:
Even these I could not reach For You were high and I was low.

TWENTY YEARS AFTER

This last meeting was a strange contrast with the first, more than twenty years
ago. Vir Singh was then over sixty and a legendary figure. He had become one
in his twenties with the publication of his first novel, Sundari. It is hard to
believe that a man like him should have become the subject of such fierce
controversy amongst a people who admired his writing, were grateful to him for
what he was doing, and above all, who never joined a faction against another or
said one word of disparagement about anyone. The main criticism was against
his allowing people to worship him—which indeed thousands did—and his
being surrounded by a circle which consisted largely of the wealthier sections of
Sikh society. Young people were highly critical of him on these scores; I
counted myself amongst them and not only refused to touch his feet but made
fun of people who made obeisance before him. Yet I lived to make my
obeisance, touch his feet and give him the respect I would give no other living
man.
A man of Vir Singh’s poetic genius and religious bent of mind would get
little chance to escape the attentions of people in quest of spiritual values. From
the age of twenty-six he became the central figure in Sikh affairs—and in a
subtle way was far more powerful than the politicians and ministers who hit the
headlines of newspapers every other day. This for two reasons. He was the man
who brought about a renaissance of the Punjabi language after a virtual lapse of
more than two centuries. Vir Singh also gave a fillip to the Sikh religion.
Through his weekly journal, Khalsa Samachar, his books, Guru Nanak
Chamatkar, Kalgidhar Chamatkar and many tracts which were given away in
the millions he told the story of the Sikh Gurus, their teachings and their
achievements. His novels Sundari, Bijai Singh and Satwant Kaur, which make
dull and didactic reading today, sold in the thousands because they gave the
Sikhs of fifty years ago exactly what they wanted: an assurance of the excellence
of their faith, a pride in the valour of their forefathers and a confidence in the
traditions of orthodoxy handed down by the Gurus. Although Vir Singh was not
the founder of the Singh Sabha movement which espoused these causes, he was
more responsible for its achievements than all the other members put together.

LEARNING AND HUMILITY

Vir Singh’s reaction to the adoration that came his way was that of a modest
man with a deep-seated sense of humility. He was the one man who answered
the Gita’s definition of vidya vinaya sampanne—great humility which comes of
great learning. As people clamoured to see him and hear him speak, he became
less and less visible. He never appeared at public functions, he never made a
speech, he never allowed anyone to photograph him. Not one of his many books
carried his name on its jacket and he had written more than any Indian dead or
alive: his complete works would be bulkier than the entire set of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica. They represent over sixty years of uninterrupted
writing of six to eight hours a day.
The sense of humility never left him and appears like a refrain in many of his
verses. The achievement is never that of the human being but that of the Maker
who in his compassion chose him to be his instrument of expression. Sometimes
this sense becomes that of being used—or in the effeminate masochistic extreme
of being misused—for a divine purpose: Thou didst pluck and tear me from the
branch Held me, breathed the fragrance And cast me away
Thus discarded
Trodden underfoot and mingled with the dust All I remember—and with gratitude— Is the memory
of the touch.

The first time I saw him at a public meeting was at a kavi sammelan in Sargodha
where he sat obscurely mixed up with the people. A young boy had recited a
stirring ballad which had moved Vir Singh and he had asked to meet him. The
news went around the 20,000-member audience that Vir Singh was amongst
them; they clamoured for his darshan because all had read or heard of him, very
few had seen him. He was almost dragged to the microphone on the platform.
Roars of ‘Sat Sri Akal’ lasting a good fifteen minutes greeted him. All he could
do was to fold his hands and mumble: ‘Wahe Guruji Ka Khalsa, Wahe Guruji Ki
Fateh.’ Whichever way he turned thousands of heads bowed to touch the ground
like a field of corn bending to the breeze. No Sikh since the Sikh Gurus could
have known worship the way it was offered to Vir Singh; no one deserved it
more.

NO CONVENTIONAL SAINT
Vir Singh did not look, live or behave like a conventional saint. He was not lean
or ascetic in appearance; he was of medium height, of stocky build and with a
long flowing beard. He dressed well and lived like an upper-class bourgeois
person in a large house with a larger garden. He was married with two daughters.
He kept an excellent table. He was a strict vegetarian and a great stickler for
cleanliness. All fruits and vegetables were regularly washed in potassium
permanganate before they were cooked or consumed in his house. He had a great
love for his garden and grew exotic strains of citrus—grapefruit and Malta
oranges. His favourite flower was the narcissus, which blossomed in profusion
in beds about his windows.
He was not indifferent to money; his poems fetched larger royalties than
those of any other poet. Both he and his scholarly brother had a dominant voice
in the affairs of a bank.
Vir Singh was hardly known outside the Sikh community ten years ago. It
was only after the conferment of doctorates from universities, nomination to the
Punjab Council, the Sahitya Akademi Award for ‘Mere Sayan Jeo’ and the
Padma Bhushan that other people got to hear of him. That was not surprising, for
although he was not narrow-minded in his outlook and had close associations
with innumerable Hindus and a lifelong friendship with a Muslim doctor, Sikhs
and the Sikh religion were his only preoccupation.

FAITH IN SIKHISM
The dominant impression that Vir Singh left on his visitors was one of
gentleness. He spoke softly and what he said had the soothing quality of a salve.
Here, again, was the mysterious something which he attributed to the Guru in his
writing and possessed in good measure himself: As a cloud ambling along
For a moment tarries
To cast a cool shadow on the parched earth And send a welcome shower.

Vir Singh has gone but in his case it certainly is the casting off of worn-out
clothes and donning new ones. Even while he lived, people knew him only
through his writings which will live forever. Wherever the Punjabi language is
spoken, there Vir Singh’s name will be spoken too. And whenever the Sikhs
begin to doubt their faith, there will be Vir Singh’s spirit to inspire them and
beckon them back to the fold.
(Undated)
 NEED TO RE-EDIT HINDU SCRIPTURES

If we continue to regard our ancient religious texts as the words of God and treat
them with superstitious awe rather than as words of wisdom applicable to a
particular period in history, we have little chance of equating them with reason
and the needs of modern society. Arun Shourie, executive editor of the Indian
Express, examines the Upanishads, the Gita and the Brahma Sutras along with
commentaries on them and concludes that the only one who had the courage to
sift the grain from the chaff was Mahatma Gandhi.
It takes courage even in secular India to impugn the sanctity of the sacred
texts. Although most scholars of religion would agree in private that there is a lot
of claptrap in all the sacred books, and that if they were to be re-edited it would
enhance their spiritual appeal, few have shown the temerity to say so in public.
This is understandable because for centuries purveyors of religion have
dinned it into our ears that these texts are the words of God, transmitted to
humanity through the prophets. And woe betide anyone who tampered with a
single word. Consequently, instead of being read as books of wisdom or as codes
of practical ethics, they have been treated with superstitious awe and their words
endowed with superhuman potency.
The best that reformers could do was to interpret them in different ways,
often bending the original text beyond recognition. As far as Hinduism is
concerned, sanctity has been accorded to the Vedas, the Upanishads, the
Bhagavad Gita and the Brahma Sutras. They have always been regarded by
orthodox Hindus as the words of God. Having declared them divinely
immutable, the best the commentators—from Shankara, Ramanuja down to
Swami Dayananda, Tilak, Ramakrishna, Sri Aurobindo and Ramana Maharshi—
could do was to either ignore the contradictions or get around them by tortuous
explanations.
As I have said at the outset, the one man who had both the honesty and the
courage to separate the grains of truth from the chaff of meaningless verbosity
was Mahatma Gandhi. All this has been very painstakingly brought out by Arun
Shourie in his treatise, Hinduism: Essence and Consequence. The thesis he
propounds is at once scholarly, novel, daring and exhilarating. Shourie has
rendered significant service to Gandhi, Hinduism and India.
Shourie starts with the principal Upanishads and examines what they have
had to say on the three topics that concern all religions, namely man’s relations
with his Maker, man’s relations with his fellow men, and man’s relations with
himself, i.e. his ‘inner self’ or his conscience. The texts laid much greater
emphasis on defining God (Brahman) and his identity with man’s inner self
(Atman) than on his rights and duties vis-a-vis other men. And, for some obscure
reason, stilling the mind by emptying it of all other thoughts except the one in
which the self-that-is-God became the be-all and the end-all of a Hindu’s
religious exercise. ‘Even as foam is produced in a vessel containing liquid by
churning, so also it is only from churning the mind that various doubts arise,’
says the Trisikhi Brahmana Upanishad. The overall test is ‘to bring this fickle
monkey of a mind, this wayward damsel, this street dog under control’. The
Upanishads present ‘a veritable cafeteria’ of means to achieve this end. From
overcoming desires by stilling the sense organs (‘temptations’, says the
Maitrayaniya Upanishad, ‘are mere harlots entering the mind’) we descend to
magical mantras (above all the Gayatri), repetition of Om, wearing rudraksha
malas, ablutions with cow’s urine, and bathing (preferably dying) on the banks
of the Ganga to attain moksha.

COMFORTING KARMA
Once a person is enjoined to concentrate all his mental facilities on himself, it is
only natural that other men receive little consideration; they are just so much
flesh, bone, bile, phlegm and excreta. The world is maya, an illusion. So is
suffering. The best you can do about it is to ignore it or to explain it away as
karma. The ultimate goal of man’s earthly endeavour should be to break out of
the cycle of birth-death-rebirth and merge back into Brahma: in this endeavour,
maintain the texts, gyan (knowledge) yields better dividends than karma (action
or good works). Sankara applauds the complete withdrawal from worldly strife
(sanyas) even before completing the earlier stages of life as a student and as a
householder.
Shourie maintains that ‘the principal concern of the authors of the
Upanishads, Brahma Sutras and the Gita was to dilute people’s obsession with
rituals, sacrifices etc.’ He goes on to say that the ‘tit for tat attitude by which the
people expected rewards for the rituals and sacrifices was not just bad for the
people, it was a severe embarrassment for the priests too. They had to
continuously answer for the promised rewards that hadn’t turned up.’ But the
doctrine of nishkama karma (work without concern for reward) came in very
handy. Shourie reproduces the kind of dialogue that could have taken place:
‘Panditji,’ I say, ‘when I asked you over to help perform that elaborate
sacrifice, you said, quoting the Vedas, that I would get such and thus in return. I
haven’t received anything like that, you know.’
‘But you mean, my son, that you launched upon the sacrifice, hankering after
its rewards? That’s precisely the reason why the fruit is delayed. Does the Gita
not tell us, my son, that we should perform all works without any desire for the
fruit?’
‘Of course, Panditji. But I did not hanker after the rewards in that sense.’
‘Well, if you did not, my son, then there is no problem. You have done the
good deed. The deed itself is your reward. And I can assure you, you will reap
the reward. Does Krishna himself in the second discourse itself not say, “There
is no loss of effort here?” If not now, then later, my son. If not in this life, then in
the next, my son. But remember the cardinal rule: do as the Shastras say, never
hanker after the results.’
Shourie contends that the teachings of the Upanishads are not an adequate
foundation for ethics because not only can transgressions be overcome in various
easy ways, there is also the assurance that one does not incur sin as long as the
deed is done with detachment. So the responsibility shifts from the doer to the
Absolute.
The Brahma Sutras, discussed under the caption ‘Verbal Vomit’, are
concerned more with absurdities than with profundities—the sort of footling
disputation that Lenin decried about the Devil being green or yellow.
So we come to the Gita, the most sacred of the sacred Hindu texts. The
commentaries on it are as diverse as the people who read it: Sankara, Tilak,
Gandhi and even Godse. ‘The Gita’, says Shourie, ‘is like the Upanishads, a
loosely structured work. A topic is taken up and left, another intervenes only to
be overshadowed by the next.’ This gave ample scope for placing whatever
interpretation suited the temperament of the times. Sankara and Ramakrishna
read the message of renunciation—tyag-as its central theme. For Tilak, the Gita
propounds nothing but undiluted karma yoga—‘nothing happens till something
is done.’ Gandhi refused to believe that Krishna was actually exhorting Arjuna
to wage war against his kinsmen and considered Kurukshetra a purely symbolic
battlefield between good and evil. He extracted ahimsa as its real message.
Godse must have thought that as long as he was doing what he did in the spirit of
nishkama karma he was absolved of all guilt. ‘Detachment, then, exempts one
and absolute detachment exempts absolutely,’ remarks Shourie.
MONOPOLIZING GURUS
Shourie points out that the Westernized elite tend to dismiss Gandhi as a faddist
and as a traditionalist without realizing that ‘like a true revolutionary who looked
into the people’s psyche’, he beat the orthodox Hindus and Jains at their most
vulnerable points. Although he had no pretensions to scholarship, what he had
read ‘convinced him that the texts, though useful, could never be elevated to
being [the] final arbiter’. He rejected both the literal interpretations and the
authority of the gurus who often claimed monopoly over sacred knowledge. He
used to say that the texts suffered from a process of ‘double distillation’ because
they came to us through a human prophet ‘and then passed through a second
distillation by commentators’. He stated, ‘Categorically, I would reject all
scriptural authority if it is in conflict with sober reason or the dictates of the
heart. Authority sustains and ennobles the weak when it is the handiwork of
reason, but it degrades them when it supplants reason sanctified by the still,
small voice within...blind worship of authority is a sign of weakness of mind...’
Shourie goes on to contrast the attributes of Sankara and Gandhi. Where Sankara
is preoccupied with the scriptures, Gandhi is preoccupied with life and ‘the
actual struggles that the masses must wage. Here is the difference between
scholastic disputation and life, between exegetical polemics and real struggles.’

THE GITA, THE WORK OF A POET, NOT OF GOD

Gandhi regarded the Gita as the work of a poet, not of God and maintained that
its meaning changed with the times. Thus, he concludes that sacrifice could not
mean killing of animals nor sanyas mean giving up actions. He went even further
than that by exhorting the spinning of the charkha as a ‘means of universal
service in this age’. Gandhi rejected whatever did not suit him. Of soma juice,
mentioned in the sacred texts, he disclaims all knowledge. He was categorical in
his denunciation of caste, as sanctified by the Gita and the Manu Shastra. He
said ‘Brahmanism is the culmination of other varnas just as the head is the
culmination of the body. It means capacity for superior service, not superior
status. The moment superior status is arrogated, it becomes worthy of being
trampled underfoot.’
Shourie rightly concludes: ‘Here at last is a man who has the calm self-
assurance to claim as much authority as the texts, the gurus and the saints on the
basis of one single thing—his own practice... Gandhi has been the greatest
emancipator in our history thus far and the most original social thinker that we
have had since the Buddha...his practice, for instance, contrasted so very sharply
from the practice of the Ramana Maharshis and the Ramakrishnas. They are
preoccupied with realizing their ‘‘self’’ and this quest leads them to an inner-
directed introspective endeavour. Gandhi too talks of realizing his ‘‘self’’. But in
his lexicon the word and its import have been transformed by subtle changes. He
convinces himself that he can realize this self only when other selves are
liberated from their suffering. For him, therefore, the means to self-realization is
no longer an obsessively inward-directed effort; rather the means is service to
one’s fellow man.’
(1979)
 CONTROLLING THE URGE TO BACKCHAT

For many years when I was young and believed in resolutions to improve
myself, my New Year’s resolve used to be to not run people down behind their
backs. I was in the habit of doing so and hated myself afterwards. Whatever I
said somehow got known to the person I had maligned. When confronted by him
or her, I had to deny what I had said and had reason to feel low in my self-
estimation. I was able to check myself from talking about others behind their
backs for a few days. I resumed the bad habit but somehow it got less and less on
its own. I came to realize the truth of Guru Nanak’s admonition: Nanak, phika
boleeai
Tan man phikka hoi

(Nanak, if you speak ill of people Your body and mind will fall sick.) The Guru’s words can also
be interpreted to apply to saying nasty things to people to their faces. Many people make it a point
to say hurtful things to others and justify themselves by saying that they are merely speaking their
minds. When in return they get more than they give, a slanging match results in which both
participants get hurt while others enjoy the spectacle.
Another of my annual resolutions was that no matter how grave the
provocation I would not lose my temper. My father had a short temper; his father
was even more ill-tempered. My father never used bad language but being
overworked, he was impatient and inclined to snap at everyone. We were
terrified of him and kept out of his way as much as we could. In later years of his
life, he mellowed a great deal and I looked forward to joining him in the
evenings for a sundowner. However, I could never get over my allergy towards
people with short tempers. Incidents of people snubbing me still rankle in my
mind. I have no forgiveness for them. I write off people who lose their temper
with me forever and no amount of their trying to make amends makes any
difference in my attitude towards them.
According to our ancient scriptures, Hindu and Sikh, krodh (anger) is as
serious a shortcoming as kama (lust), lobh (greed), moh (attachment) and
ahankar (arrogance). They exhort us to overcome them in order to achieve
moksha (salvation). They do not tell us how we go about getting the better of
them. As far as anger is concerned, people have their own formulae: ‘When
roused to anger, count ten before answering’ or ‘Swallow the insult and keep
your mouth shut’. There is no doubt that a person who loses his cool loses the
argument. Another school of thought is that it is better to let off steam and get
over with it because if you contain your anger, your blood pressure will rise and
you may get peptic ulcers.
I have evolved my own formula to get anger out of my system. I say nothing
to the person who has insulted or snubbed me but when I narrate the incident to
my friends later, I let loose a torrent of the choicest abuse in Punjabi and
Hindustani—I have a large repertoire of filthy words in four languages—and
purge myself of anger. I even feel exhilarated at having scored over my traducer
by saying nothing to him or her and cleansing my system by letting out the
accumulated venom in front of third parties who thoroughly enjoy my outburst.
(2001)
 SANGAM OF RELIGIONS

When I was a child of about four living in a tiny village with my grandmother,
she taught me my first prayer. I was scared of the dark and prone to having
nightmares. She told me that whenever I was frightened, I should recite the
following lines by Guru Arjan: Taatee vau na laagaee, Peer-Brahma sarnaee
Chowgird hamaarey Ram-kar, dukh lagey na bhaee (No ill-winds touch you, the great Lord your
protector be around you Lord Rama has drawn a protective line, Brother, no harm will come to
thee.) Being young, innocent and having infinite trust in my granny’s assurances, these lines
worked like magic. Later, I discovered that most Sikh children were taught the same lines even
before they learnt other prayers. The hymn had four more lines: Satgur poora bhetiya, jis banat
banaaee
Ram naam aukhad deeya, eka liv laayee
Raakh liye tin raakhan har, sabh biaadh mitaayee Kaho Nanak kirpa bhaee, Prabhu bhaye sahaaee

(The true guru was revealed in his fullness, the one who did all create, He gave the name of Rama
as medicine, in him alone I repose my faith.
He saved all who deserve to be saved, he removes all worries of the mind.
Sayeth Nanak, God became my helper, he was kind.) Mark the Hindu terminology in this short
prayer: Peer, Brahma, Ram-kaar, Ram-naam, and Prabhu. As a matter of fact, a painstaking scholar
counted the number of times the name of God appears in the Adi Granth. The total comes to around
16,000. Of these, over 14,000 are of Hindu origin: Hari, Ram, Govind, Narayan, Krishna, Murari,
Madhav, Vithal etc. There is also a sizeable number of Islamic names for God: Allah, Rehman,
Rahim, Kareem, etc. The purely Sikh coinage ‘Wahe Guru’ appears only sixteen times.
The point I am trying to make is all religions take a lot from other religions
with which they come into contact: there is not a single religion in the world
which has not borrowed some concept or the other from another-some of its
vocabulary and even its ritual. In the Judaic family of religions—Judaism,
Christianity and Islam—there is plenty of evidence of wholesale borrowing. A
good example is Islam. Its monotheism exists in Judaism and Christianity. Its
five daily prayers have roughly the same names as those of Jews; its greeting
salaam alaikum is a variation of the Jewish shalom aleichem; turning to Mecca
for namaaz is based on the practice of Jews turning to Jerusalem for saying their
prayers; their food inhibitions which consider pork unclean is similar to that of
the Jews, halal is the same as Jewish kosher, the custom of circumcising male
children, sunnat, is also Jewish.
The intermingling of faiths is much more in evidence in the Hindu family of
religions: Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Sikhism. All share belief in karma,
the cycle of birth-death-rebirth, meditation etc. Needless to say, they also share
much of their religious terminology. Since Sikhism was the last of these major
religions and the only one to come into contact with Islam, it is the only one
which took a lot of the terminology of Islam from Sufi saints.
When the thekedars (contractors or purveyors) of religion claim that their
faith owes nothing to the others and is, therefore, purest of the pure, it makes me
laugh at their ignorance.
(2001)
 LAND-GRABBING IN THE NAME OF GOD

Israel Zangwill wrote an amusing story set in rural Poland about a very poor
young Jewish couple who lived outside a village and eked out a miserable living,
selling firewood to the villagers. Near Christmas time the demand for firewood
increased, so the couple was able to earn a little more than usual. While the
Christian village was preparing to celebrate with lavish eating and drinking, the
young Jewish couple decided to celebrate in their own way. On Christmas Eve,
the young wife went out in the snow to get some more firewood for their hearth.
She came to a pond which was frozen hard. She had not bathed for several days.
Knowing what her husband had in mind, she took off her clothes, smashed the
ice and jumped into the pool. She heard men’s voices at a distance coming
towards the pool. They were two farmers out shooting birds to add to their
Christmas fare. The girl jumped out of the pool, gathered her clothes and ran
naked to her hut. The farmers saw the figure of a naked woman running across
the snow and vanish in the mist. Who could it be on Christmas Eve except the
Virgin Mary? The story spread in the village. A widow whose son had been
stricken with paralysis took him to the pool and dumped him in the icy water.
The shock cured the child of his ailment. A bishop came to investigate and
proclaimed the water of the pond to be holy. It became a place of pilgrimage and
miracle cures. Soon a cathedral was built near it. The Jewish couple went into
business selling water from the pond in small bottles. They made a lot of money
and became rich.
Zangwill’s story is being reproduced all over our country with unscrupulous
people grabbing public land in the name of their deities. I have witnessed a few
instances in Kasauli and Delhi. The highest point in Kasauli was for some reason
given the name Monkey Point. As a boy I often climbed to the top. There was
nothing there except a pile of stones. You got a spectacular view of the plains
with the Sutlej River flowing through them. Then the Indian Air Force moved in.
It built a lot of very ugly flats at the base of Monkey Point on what had once
been Kasauli’s favourite picnic spot. On the peak was installed a slab of stone
smeared with bright red paint. Monkey Point became Hanuman Point. A story
was circulated that Hanuman, after finding the sanjeevani booti, had put his foot
down on this spot. So a temple came up. Now it has a full-time priest. People
come from distant towns and make offerings of money, fruit and flowers. A few
months ago, it received an important visitor, a minister more stupid than the
usual run of ministers, who declared that a spot hallowed by the touch of the foot
of Bajrang Bali should not be known as Monkey Point but Maan Kee Point. A
Hindu bania of Kasauli has done better. There are a few Muslim graves in the
town, one very close to the main bazaar. There are no permanent Muslim
residents but some superstitious Hindu women were in the habit of making
mannat at the graves. So he had the one near the bazaar given a coat of fresh
green paint and spread the canard that it belonged to a pir sahib who granted the
wishes of devotees. Now there is a stream of pilgrims making offerings at the
tomb. The bania is doing good business. There are two other tombs which are
due to be renovated with fresh paint and oil lamps. Like shopkeepers who have a
chain of shops, our local bania owns a chain of Muslim tombs. Good income, no
income tax.
In the last few years I have seen a proliferation of Hindu places of worship in
the oddest of locations. One is along the wall of what was once Mr Jinnah’s
residence. It is on a side lane and all there was worth noticing was a huge peepul
tree. Then the bole got a dab of saffron paint followed by a slab of stone with the
statue of a deity. Now it is a wayside shrine. The whole area between the office
of the BJP and the road has recently been taken over by some pandits to convert
into a temple. Likewise, there are dozens of shrines along roads, on road-
dividers, and just about every place not already occupied. People are too scared
to demolish structures which have been sanctified by worshippers. The police is
equally scared to take action lest it arouses communal frenzy. So the loot of
public land in the name of God goes on unabated.
It needs men of determination to put an end to this menace. Some years ago a
party of Nihang Sikhs sat down in the middle of a fairway of the Delhi Golf
Club. They said one of them had dreamt that Guru Gobind Singh had desired
that he build a gurdwara on the spot. They refused to listen to reason; the police
refused to help the club out of its predicament. In sheer desperation, late one
night when the Nihangs were deep in bhang-induced sleep, club employees led
by a few intrepid members swooped down on them, picked up all their utensils,
bedding etc., and threw the lot out on the road and shut the club gates. No more
was heard of the Nihangs.
(2002)
 THE AGNOSTIC

‘God is a gas balloon. Or that red rubber ball you kick around in your garden!’
exclaimed the Agnostic. Then ‘God’ descended on the Agnostic. Or was it a
mere coincidence?
The argument went on the lines it had gone many times before.
‘So you don’t believe in God! Is it only for the sake of an argument or do
you really and truly do not?’ asked the host. ‘So help you God!’
‘No, I really and truly do not believe in God. So help me Satan!’ answered
the visitor.
‘Then where does all this come from?’ demanded the host, warming up and
waving his arms around. ‘These trees, these human beings, these animals, this
world and everything that’s in it?’ Being a politician, he was given to rhetoric.
His family always voted for him.
‘I don’t know,’ replied the visitor. And before they could checkmate him
with a ‘There!’ he continued, ‘Nor do you. Nor did any of your prophets and
messiahs and avatars. Nor does anyone else. All your religions are a mumbo
jumbo of children’s fairy-’
‘I know where everything comes from,’ interrupted the ten-year-old son of
the host who never let an argument go without voicing his opinion. ‘Everything
comes from God. So there!’ He snapped his thumb and finger in the visitor’s
face. ‘It’s God, God, God. And if you believe in Satan, you have to believe in
God.’
‘Who said I believe in Satan! He is as much a creature of sick minds as
God.’ To make it simpler for the young lad, he added: ‘Your God is a gas
balloon—or like that red rubber ball you boys kick around in your garden.’
The family were aghast. ‘Oh please! For God’s sake, don’t destroy my
children’s faith with this kind of blasphemy!’ pleaded the hostess. ‘I pay a
Maulvi Sahib to come and teach them to read the Quran and say their prayers.
And you ruin it all.’
She turned to her children: ‘Don’t you believe a word he says. Now go and
do your homework. Off with you!’
The children were reluctant to go; a quarrel between elders was too good to
be missed. But a bit of bribery and lots of cajoling made them get up and drag
their feet to their room. The youngest one left with a parting exclamation and a
laugh: ‘God is a red rubber ball.’
‘Look what you have done!’ despaired the hostess. ‘They will say this kind
of thing in their school—a Catholic institution—and be thrown out. They will
not fast during Ramzan and stop saying their prayers. They will not have any
faith left—not even as a prop or a crutch to fall back on. Do you want them to
become dropouts and misfits?’
The visitor continued needling her. ‘In that case you should not expose your
children to people like me. Don’t invite me to your home; just have your Maulvi
Sahibs and Catholic fathers and superstitious God-fearing uncles, aunts and
cousins stuff their brains with all the poppycock of Allah-in-Heaven-Adam-Eve-
Day-of-Judgement-Reincarnation-Nirvana. Don’t let them think, okay?’
‘Achha! Achha! No need to get so worked up,’ said the host to restore peace.
‘Let’s go for a walk. That’ll help you both to cool down.’
They strolled in the garden. The visitor tried to make up to his hostess. ‘The
argument always goes the same way. I suppose it always has. To wit:
Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument
About it and about: but ever more
Came out by the same door as in I went.

‘Maybe!’ she responded graciously. ‘But I still stick to my point: I cannot dream
that this watch exists but has no watchmaker.’
‘Whoever said that?’
‘Voltaire. But the analogy does not apply. We know the world exists, unless
it is one grand delusion—maya—as some Hindus and Sikhs believe, but we do
not know anything about the World Maker. Even assuming there is a Creator,
there is no reason to worship him. There is more evil in the world than good. It is
best to observe silence. This is the door to which no one has found the key, the
veil beyond which no one can see. It’s more honest to say “I do not know” than
posit theories which go contrary to reason. I neither know that there is a God,
nor know that there is no God. That’s why I call myself an agnostic.’
‘Sure, sure!’ said the host condescendingly. ‘You are welcome to your lack
of belief. But leave alone those who would rather believe till it is positively
proved that their beliefs have been wrong. Live and let live. And now let’s talk
of something else.’
 But the visitor persisted: ‘What I cannot stand is religiosity, the asinine
worship of miracle men who are no better than common jugglers churning up
age-old and unproven theories of God, Soul, Love and what-have-you! And the
millions of asses who get taken in by them!’
‘It’s God we are discussing, not miracle men,’ intervened the hostess. ‘What
amazes me,’ she added, ‘is that a man who disdains all belief in the supernatural
should be so obsessed with the subject of God as you are. You provoke it as a
man with a sore tooth provokes pain by feeling the tooth with his tongue.
Perhaps in your strong protestations is an element of faith which you refuse to
admit—like a man shouting in the dark to give himself courage.’
‘That’s true,’ agreed the host. ‘Reminds me of those lines from Francis
Thompson:
I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter...

But with unhurrying chase,

And unperturbed pace.
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat—and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet—
All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.

He will catch up with you one day even if you denigrate him as the red rubber
ball.’
It was time for dinner. They returned to the house. The hostess clapped her
hands and called out: ‘To the table, children!’
As soon as everyone was seated and the hostess began to heap food on her
children’s plates, the little fellow began to giggle: ‘God is a red rubber ball!’
‘Let’s make plans for tomorrow.’ The hostess tried to change the subject.
‘Gas balloon—no my red rubber ball...’chuckled the little brat.
‘Stop that now!’ admonished the hostess. ‘Not another word or I’ll really
blow up.’
God was not mentioned at the table that night. But the next morning at
breakfast the youngsters were eager to get their parents and the visitor to restart
the argument. The little one picked up the red rubber ball and put it in the
visitor’s lap with a meaningful remark: ‘You take this.’ His mother glowered at
him. ‘Remember, any more of that and I will call off the picnic.’
It was a Sunday morning. Late monsoon time. Clouds rolling overhead cast deep
shadows on the earth. Showers came down as suddenly as they went to let the
sun stream through and span the sky with rainbows. ‘Lovely day for a picnic in
the park,’ said the hostess.
They drove to the park. The children took the red rubber ball with them.
They began to toss it at each other, then into the trees and waited to catch it as it
bounced off the branches. The host and hostess showed the visitor the newly
laid-out rose garden.
They came to a massive peepul tree. The oldest boy tossed the ball high into
the air to let it drop on the tree. It soared up and came downwards, bouncing
from one branch to another. The boys waited for it with hands outstretched. The
ball bounced upwards off the lowest branch, came down and was embedded in a
Y-shaped cleft. ‘Oh, oh, oh,’ groaned the lads, ‘the ball is stuck in the tree.’
They spent the next half hour hurling stones and sticks to dislodge the ball.
Their father’s patience came to an end. ‘We can’t spend the rest of the morning
trying to get the ruddy ball down! Let’s go and have something to drink.’
The boys abandoned their attempts. But their spirits were dampened. They
went to the aerated water stall and sipped their drinks without enjoying them.
‘Arrey baba!’ protested their mother. ‘It’s only a rubber ball! You don’t have to
look as if the world has come to an end! I’ll buy you another one.’
It did not change the boys’ mood. Neither did the plates of potato chips,
tomato ketchup and the ice creams. After an hour, the party wended its way back
through the park towards the car.
They came under the peepul tree. The red ball was still firmly embedded in
the cleft of the branches. They all looked up: ‘It’s still there.’ This time no one
made any attempt to dislodge it.
The visitor friend tried to cheer them up. He proclaimed very loudly: ‘All
right. If that red rubber ball drops into my hands now, I’ll believe there is a
God.’
A gentle gust of breeze swayed the branches and the red rubber ball fell
neatly into the visitor’s hands.
They stood in silence, gaping at each other.
‘That will teach you a lesson!’ hissed the hostess.
‘Damn!’ swore the Agnostic.
(1972)
 GURU GOLWALKAR

There are some people against whom you build up malice without knowing
them. Guru Golwalkar had long been at the top of my hate list because I could
not forget the RSS’s role in communal riots, the assassination of the Mahatma,
the talk of changing India from a secular to a Hindu state! However, as a
journalist, I could not resist the chance of meeting him.
I expected to run into a cordon of uniformed swayamsevaks. There are none,
not even plainclothes CID to take down the number of my car. It is a middle-
class apartment with an appearance of puja going on inside—rows of sandals
outside, fragrance of agarbatti, bustle of women behind the scenes, the tinkle of
utensils and crockery. In a small room sit a dozen men in spotless white kurtas
and dhotis—all looking newly washed as only Maharashtrian Brahmins manage
to do. And Guru Golwalkar-a frail man in his mid-sixties, black hair curling to
his shoulders, a moustache covering his mouth, a wispy grey beard dangling
down his chin. An unerasable smile and dark eyes twinkling through his
bifocals. He looks like an Indian Ho Chi Minh. For a man who had only recently
undergone surgery for breast cancer he looks remarkably fit and cheerful.
Being a guru, I feel he may expect a chela-like obeisance. He does not give
me a chance. As I bend to touch his feet he grasps my hand in his bony fingers
and pulls me down on the seat beside him. ‘I am very glad to meet you,’ he says.
‘I have been wanting to do so for some time.’ His Hindi is very shuddh.
‘Me too,’ I reply clumsily. ‘Ever since I read your Bunch of Letters.’
‘Bunch of Thoughts,’ he corrects me. He does not want to know my views on
it. He takes one of my hands in his and pats it. ‘So?’ he looks enquiringly at me.
‘I don’t know where to begin. I am told you shun publicity and your
organization is secret.’
‘It is true we do not seek publicity but there is nothing secret about us. Ask
me anything you want to.’
‘I read about your movement in Jack Curran’s The RSS and Hindu
Militarism. He says...’
 ‘It is a biased account,’ interrupts Guruji. ‘Unfair, inaccurate—he misquoted
me and many others. There is no militarism in our movement. We value
discipline—which is a different matter.’ I tell him that I had read an article
describing Curran as the head of CIA operations in Europe and Africa. ‘I would
never have suspected it,’ I say very naively, ‘I have known him for twenty
years.’
Guruji beams a smile at me. ‘This doesn’t surprise me at all,’ he says. I do
not know whether the remark is a comment on Curran being CIA or my naiveté.
‘There is one thing which bothers me about the RSS. If you permit me, I will
put it as bluntly as I can.’
‘Go ahead!’
‘It is your attitude towards the minorities, particularly the Christians and the
Muslims.’
‘We have nothing against the Christians except their methods of gaining
converts. When they give medicines to the sick or bread to the hungry, they
should not exploit the situation by propagating their religion to those people. I
am glad there is a move to make the Indian churches autonomous and
independent of Rome.’
‘What about the Muslims?’
‘What about them?’
I have no doubt in my mind that the dual loyalties that many Muslims have
towards both India and Pakistan is due to historical factors for which Hindus are
as much to blame as they. It also stems from a feeling of insecurity that they
have been made to suffer since Partition. In any case, one cannot hold the entire
community responsible for the wrongs of a few.
‘Guruji, there are six crore Indian Muslims here with us.’ I get eloquent. ‘We
cannot eliminate them, we cannot drive them out, we cannot convert them. This
is their home. We must reassure them—make them feel wanted. Let us win them
over with love. This should be an article of–’
‘I would reverse the order,’ he interrupts. ‘As a matter of fact I would say the
only right policy towards Muslims is to win their loyalty by love.’
I am startled. Is he playing with words? Or does he really mean what he
says? He qualifies his statement: ‘A delegation of the Jamaat-i-Islami came to
see me. I told them that Muslims must forget that they ruled India. They should
not look upon foreign Muslim countries as their homeland. They must join the
mainstream of Indianism.’
‘How?’
‘We should explain things to them. Sometimes one feels angry with Muslims
for what they do, but then Hindu blood never harbours ill will for very long.
Time is a great healer. I am an optimist and feel that Hinduism and Islam will
learn to live with each other.’
Tea is served. Guruji’s glass mug provides a diversion. I ask him why he
doesn’t drink the beverage out of porcelain like the rest of us. He smiles. ‘I have
always taken it in this mug, I take it with me wherever I go.’ His closest
companion, Dr Thatte, who has dedicated his life to the RSS, explains:
‘Porcelain wears off and exposes the clay beneath. Clay can harbour germs.’
I return to my theme.
‘Why do you pin your faith on religion when most of the world is turning
irreligious and agnostic?’
‘Hinduism is on firm ground because it has no dogma. It has had agnostics
before, it will survive the wave of irreligiousness better than any other religious
system.’
‘How can you say that? The evidence is the other way. The only religions
which are standing firm and even increasing their hold on the people are based
on dogma—Catholicism, and more than Catholicism, Islam.’
‘It is a passing phase. Agnosticism will overtake them, it will not overtake
Hinduism. Ours is not a religion in the dictionary sense of the word; it is dharma,
a way of life. Hinduism will take agnosticism in its stride.’
I have taken more than half an hour of Guruji’s time. He shows no sign of
impatience. When I ask for leave, he again grasps my hands to prevent me from
touching his feet.
Was I impressed? I admit I was. He did not try to persuade me to his point of
view. He made me feel that he was open to persuasion. I accepted his invitation
to visit him in Nagpur and see things for myself. Maybe I can bring him around
to making Hindu-Muslim unity the main aim of his RSS. Or am I being a
simple-minded Sardarji?
(1972)
 BHAGWAN SHRI NEELKANTHA TATHAJI

The resemblance to Satya Sai Baba is striking: the same beehive mop of fuzzy
hair on the head, the same bright eyes that hold you, the same gentle smile, the
same saffron robes that drape him from the shoulders to the feet. He performs
similar kinds of miracles—waves his hands in the air and produces vibhuti—his
followers say that he can heal the sick—one man claims that he was brought
back to life after his heart had stopped beating. This man of miracles is thirty-
seven-year-old Bhagwan Shri Neelkantha Tathaji, described by his followers as
‘master, guide, guru and God-incarnate’.
I had been seeing advertisements in the papers announcing the arrival in our
city of Bhagwan Shri Neelkantha Tathaji. People who desired darshan were
invited to an apartment in a very upper-class residential locality. I was taken
there by a Parsi couple, both bhakts of Neelkantha Tathaji. The large hall was
full of worshippers chanting hymns: all well-dressed and upper-middle class. On
a dais was an empty chair draped in silks. Beside it was another one with a large
coloured portrait of the Baba, a garland around its frame and a dozen joss sticks
sending up spirals of incense.
The Baba made his appearance. Everyone made obeisance, many people
touched his feet. He took his seat on the dais and joined in the hymn-singing:
Om Namah Shivaya, Om Namo Narayanaya. There were salutations to Lakshmi,
Ganapati and to all the other gods of the pantheon—Sarva Dharmaya
Namaskarah. He performed the aarti, waving a salver of oil lamps. The tempo of
singing and clapping of hands came to a climax and ended abruptly. Neelkantha
Tathaji retired to his room.
Six of us were invited to a private audience in his bedroom. We sat on the
floor at his feet. He spoke to us. His Hindi was not very good and he often
turned to one of his disciples to get the Hindi equivalent of a Telugu word or
phrase. He told us he was one of five brothers—the sons of a poor farmer. When
it came to a division of property, all he got was a few bushels of jowar. He asked
that his ailing father be given to him as part of his patrimony.
 When did the ‘spirit’ descend on him? He did not know the precise moment
but other people noticed some strange phenomenon about him. When he put his
hand on the forehead of a man down with fever, the fever left him. When he
touched the gangrenous leg of someone on his way to hospital to have it
amputated, the gangrene disappeared. A disciple sitting behind me whispered:
‘My heart had stopped beating, I was dead. The Baba gave me a second life.
Can’t you see he is divine? See the light around his head.’ Did I see a halo round
the Baba’s head?

HIS TOUCH TRANSFORMS

He asked me to come near him. I edged forward. He rubbed his thumb on his
palm and dropped a pinch of ash in my hand. He repeated the gesture—a brown
berry rudraksha appeared in his hand. ‘Wear it around your neck,’ he advised
me. He pinned a badge with his picture on my shirt, gave me one to fix on my
ear and slipped a ring (with his picture) on my finger. My friends had brought a
basketful of fruit for him. He proceeded to distribute it to everyone. ‘But this is
for you,’ protested the lady. He replied: ‘What I have touched becomes prasad.’
And gave her an apple and a banana from her basket. He invited us to his
ashram, Om Nagar, in the Kurnool district of Andhra Pradesh, for his daughter’s
wedding next December, blessed us and gave us leave.
Shri Neelkantha Tathaji is an unsophisticated, unpretentious man possessed
of magnetic power to draw people towards him. He is a source of comfort to his
followers, and those who believe in the supranormal may find in him another
man of miracles.
(1972)
 GURUDEV MUKTANANDA AT VAJRESHWARI

It is only fifty miles from Bombay, but a thousand miles away from its noisy
crowds and stench. I surveyed the scene from a hilltop. Rectangles of brown
fields with paddy stubble like an unshaven chin. A ring of hills with names that
tinkle like temple bells: Mandagani towers up in the north, Mawlai from where
the sun rises, Tungareshwar where it sets. And running through the broad valley,
like a silver thread, the stream Tejasa. The teak has shed its broad leaves, the
peepul wears its new pink foliage, silk-cotton buds are ready to explode, the
flame of the forest is in full bloom. As lovely a place to recharge your physical
batteries as you can see anywhere. My journey was however undertaken to see if
there was a spark left in my spiritual battery. I had gone to see Baba
Muktananda.
Many friends protest, ‘We’ve had enough of bhagwans and swamis from
your predecessor. If you are going religious in your dotage, you don’t have to
inflict it on your readers.’ No, I am not going religious. But I cannot keep away
from men who are. Their experiences are different from mine. They live in
another world. I want to know about it. I am curious; curiosity is my profession.
In the last fortnight I have met Balyogeshwar. No, I did not ask him about
his trouble with the Customs. I had an hour with Ma Yogashakti Saraswati. I
have spent many evenings with the Krishna Consciousness people. But I had
never been in an ashram. And Muktanandaji’s hospice at Vajreshwari had been
strongly recommended.
There are many kinds of ashrams. Gandhiji had his Tolstoy Farm and
Sabarmati where his devotees lived in spartan simplicity raising their own food
and spinning their own cloth. The emphasis was on work rather than on prayer.
Jayaprakash Narayan has his—where it is all work and no prayer.
In Gurudev Muktanandaji’s ashram, it is the other way round: more time is
spent on prayer and meditation, less on work. It is a rich establishment. Lavish
display of marble and silver, expensive carpets and furnishing, modern
bungalow, kitchen garden, rose garden, orchards growing papaya, banana,
chickoo and mango. And a black elephant, a very friendly tusker called Swami
Vijayananda, who turns up his trunk at fodder but loves apples and imported
chocolate.
Muktanandaji is unlike any other guru I have met. When he walked into his
teak-panelled, air-conditioned reception room where I awaited him, it took me
some time to realize I was in the presence of a man that hundreds of thousands
worship as God-incarnate. Though his lungi and shirt were of sanyasi saffron,
his woollen cap with a pom-pom on top and his dark glasses made him an
incongruous figure. Though he sat on a sofa with brocade upholstery, he exuded
an aura of humility and friendship I had not encountered before.
‘I would like to ask you some questions,’ I said.
‘Certainly!’ he replied. ‘I’ll answer them as best as I can. But why not look
around the ashram first? Then come back and talk to me and anyone else you
like.’
I was taken around the dormitories, the dining room and the library. All very
neat and clean. I walked around the corridor-like meditation rooms and saw
many men and women sitting straight-backed in padmasana pose, lost to the
world.
Later in the afternoon, Muktanandaji came into the meditation room. He sent
for his foreign disciples. Three Americans and a French girl joined us.
Muktanandaji is Mangalorean. He can speak Hindi and Marathi and not
English.
‘Why do people come to you?’ I asked him in Hindi. He replied briefly: ‘For
different reasons. Some are unhappy, some disturbed, some curious.’
‘What do they get from you?’
‘They get peace of mind. Through meditation they learn how to know
themselves and God who is in everyone.’
I don’t give up. ‘Is peace of mind the ultimate goal? It seems to me to be a
selfish, self-centred ideal. A man should give more to others than to himself.’
‘They do that too,’ replied Muktanandaji. ‘It’s only after a person has found
the divine in himself that he can become an integrated personality and be able to
give the love that he has within him.’
His disciples take over. The Americans are Uma, Damyanti and Chandra—
all with Hindu names. All young, attractive and voluble. ‘We are not dropouts.
We come from good families,’ they say in turns but let slip information that they
had been taking drugs or other palliatives against unhappiness.
‘What now?’ I ask them.
‘I’ve never been happier. I am at peace with myself,’ says one whose eyes
sparkle with joy. I think her name is Damyanti.
 ‘Peace never produced anything worthwhile; it is the restless agitation of the
mind that has created the great works of art, music, science. These electric
gadgets—fans, air conditioners, lights—all were invented by those who tortured
their minds. The world is the richer for their sufferings.’
‘We are so happy we could do without them.’
‘That’s no answer; what would the world be without scientific inventions,
paintings, music?’
‘We give the best of what we have. We can’t all be Michelangelos and
Beethovens.’
‘But this meditation you set so much store by seems to me to be a kind of
selfish indulgence and a waste of time. I’d rather read a good book. I’d rather
sleep than keep awake with my eyes shut.’
There is laughter all round. Muktanandaji asks what has been said. Sri
Yende, who is one of his close disciples, gives him a summary of the discussion.
He nods his head approvingly and asks me to continue.
There is little doubt that this man has the capacity of putting everyone at
ease; of making everyone feel he or she is someone very special. And he is
utterly unpretentious. I have never felt closer to a holy man in so short a time.
We continue our discussion till we reach an impasse over meditation versus
work.
‘Why don’t you try it out?’ says Uma, who edits their newsletter. ‘It is hard
to explain what it does—just as hard as it is to tell a person who has never eaten
chocolate what chocolate tastes like.’
The seance is over. Professor Jain takes up the discussion. He cuts me down
to size. ‘Everyone does his work as best as he can. You edit the Weekly, Uma
edits our newsletter. Both are equally important.’ I acknowledge my error. He
forgives me with a smile and continues. ‘Shakespeare took many years to write
his plays and poems; in seventeen days our Gurudev wrote Chitshakti Vilas. The
play of consciousness. It is greater than anything Shakespeare ever wrote. It did
not come out of any agitation of the mind but out of profound peace.’
The girls assure me that they are not escaping from their responsibilities.
Although life in the ashram gives them peace and serenity, it is not easy. Getting
up at 3.30 a.m. and the work, prayer and meditation is rigorous discipline.
‘To what end?’ I ask them in exasperation. ‘I don’t believe in God and I
don’t need him, so why should I go looking for him inside me?’
‘You have more faith in you than you are willing to admit,’ chorus the girls
and repeat the challenge: ‘Try it out and see for yourself. Come and stay in the
ashram for a few days.’
‘I’d find pretty girls like you very distracting.’
 They laugh happily.
I take leave of Muktanandaji. I ask him to forgive me for the rude questions I
have put to him and his devotees. He places his hand on my shoulder and smiles.
‘They were not rude questions, they were honest. Come again.’
I will go again to Vajreshwari. Let others go there to recharge their spiritual
batteries, I will go to see the flame of the forest in flower, breathe fresh
mountain air and get reassurance from the Gurudev Muktanandaji that I am not
as much of a rascal as I think I am.
(1973)
 ENCOUNTERS WITH THE OCCULT

One morning my friend Virendra Luther of Polydor rang me up and in a very

excited voice asked me, ‘Do you remember my telling you about the Swamiji
who has a copy of the Bhrigu Samhita? Well, he is with me and, believe it or
not, he’s found a page with your name on it. It’s here right before my eyes.’
I recalled my earlier reaction to similar claims made on behalf of the Bhrigu
Samhita. I had dismissed it with one word: ‘Rubbish’. And when told of the
number of cabinet ministers, chief ministers, chief justices, members of
legislatures and other VIPs who regularly consulted it, I had said, ‘I am neither
surprised nor impressed. They are mentally sick morons.’
A few minutes later, Luther, looking as pleased as a cat that had swallowed a
mouse, ushered in a very wizened and seemingly unperturbed Pandit Kundan Lal
of Hoshiarpur. Panditji unpacked a bundle of parchments which was the Bhrigu
Samhita: pages yellowed with age, perforated and written in faded black ink
with a reed pen. He tucked his feet under him on the chair and found the page
which applied to me. It read: ‘On the so-and-so of so-and-so (dates of the
Vikrami calendar) in a city beginning with the letter B beside the ocean at the
hour of 11 a.m., a man named so-and-so will come to ask questions about
himself.’ Luther picked up the loose page and triumphantly held it for me to see.
Yes, my name was there. I begged Panditji to translate what it said about me.
Apparently in my previous birth I had also been a non-believer in the occult
and had suffered because of my lack of faith. Some of that unbelief had persisted
into my present life and would continue to do so in the next. Beyond that he
specified the exact time of my demise. Apparently I am to live up to 1999 and
die a few months before the turn of the century.
Can those who believe in previous births explain how our numbers keep
multiplying? Where were these additional people before their present births? I
wish these samhitas would be subjected to scientific tests which determine the
age of the paper and ink used. I also suggest that those who make their living by
it be kept under scrutiny over a period to find out how and when people’s names
are inserted in their books of the future.
Was I impressed? Again, a one word comment: fiddlesticks.
The second encounter was with a young Swamiji. ‘I don’t know about other
things,’ said a friend who knew him. ‘He had adverse reports in Blitz and some
leftist papers. But he has powers of siddhi. You write three questions, without
looking at the paper he will tell you what they are. He can cure diseases.’
Apparently one of the owners of Bennett Coleman & Co., who had been
afflicted with diabetes for many years, was miraculously rid of the ailment.
Nemi Chand Gandhi is a young man of twenty-four. Slight, sallow-
complexioned and sporting a wispy beard. He is well dressed in expensive silks
and wears two necklaces, of which one is strung with marble-sized beads of
beaten gold. He is a Rajasthani domiciled in Hyderabad, a Jain turned
worshipper of Goddess Durga, a student politician turned sadhu. I asked him
how he had come to acquire siddhi. ‘I don’t know,’ he replied modestly. ‘It is the
gift of Shakti Ma. I practise what she has given me.’ He too has the power to
look into the future and has apparently foretold rail accidents and the fall of the
Bihar government. I asked him why he had turned his back on politics. ‘The
whole thing began to disgust me and I renounced the world.’ He did not take a
guru, believing in the adage: Tu chal akela, ap hi guru ap hi chela (You are both
master and student).
Nemi Chand Gandhi is now Chandra Swamy. He travels all over India and
Nepal. He has no ashram but spends a lot of time with Andhra peasants. During
the nine days of Navratri, he goes into samadhi neither eating nor drinking.
‘Whatever I gain during those nine days sustains me for the remaining 356 days
of the year.’ He went on to explain his philosophy: ‘The world can take dukha
(pain and adversity), it is sukha (success) that people cannot digest.’
The third encounter is with Dadaji who comes like a breath of fresh air. He
displays occult powers which he disowns. He is a ‘Godman’ but vehemently
denounces the cult of gurus and godmen by condemning them as charlatans who
are misleading humanity. ‘Expose them!’ he exhorted me. ‘And if you can’t do
that, get them together through an invitation and let me disprove their
pretensions.’
When I called on him at the house of actor Abhi Bhattacharya, he placed his
hand on my shoulders and made a tingling sensation run through my spine; my
body exuded the aroma of a thousand joss sticks. Then, in front of everyone, he
plucked a wristwatch out of my chest. It was a Seiko made in Japan. Everyone
examined it. Once on my wrist he ran the palm of his hand over it and asked me
to look at it again. The word Seiko vanished. Instead it bore my name (misspelt)
and the name of the donor, Dadaji. He knew my weakness for whisky. Out of
nowhere appeared a bottle of Scotch, the like of which I have never seen. A
white porcelain flask entitled ‘Dreamland Whisky, Made in the Universe’, with
my name printed at its base. Then a blank paper held in my hand was as
suddenly covered with a message in red ink from Sri Sri Satyanarayana.
I am baffled.
(1973)
 THE GITA AND THE AGNOSTIC

‘Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly, upon fear. It is partly the terror
of the unknown and partly the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother
who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the
whole thing—fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death,’ wrote
Bertrand Russell in his Why I Am Not a Christian. I am in complete agreement
with Russell. Like him, although I indulge in religious music and literature, I do
not accept the basic statements of religion. But unlike Russell I believe in
tradition and the sense of belonging that comes with observance of external
symbols—e.g. unshorn hair and beard for a Sikh. Also I feel both the man of
religion who says there is a God and the atheist who says there is not are equally
presumptuous; I prefer the humbler agnostic attitude: ‘I don’t know.’
The Gita is one of my favourite pieces of religious literature (the Old
Testament and the latter portions of the Quran are the other two). Let me tell you
why, though an agnostic, I value the Gita. It is the most important work on
Hindu religion, the culmination of the teaching of the Vedas and the Upanishads,
‘the most exalted of India’s religious poems’ (Basham)—the Bible of modern
Hinduism. Its influence on the Hindu mind, particularly on the minds of the
sophisticated, is incalculable. It is the mainspring of the renaissance of Hinduism
today—evidenced by the proliferation all over the country of Gita Pracharini
Sabhas.
Gandhiji acknowledged it as his spiritual reference book. He wrote: ‘When
doubts haunt me, when disappointments stare me in the face, and I see not one
ray of hope on the horizon, I turn to the Bhagavad Gita and find a verse to
comfort me; and I immediately begin to smile in the midst of overwhelming
sorrow.’
The Gita has inspired much religious and secular writing. Its echoes can be
heard in the songs of the Sikh Gurus—notably in the haunting melancholy of the
compositions of the ninth Guru, Tegh Bahadur. Its spirit is summarized in
Kipling’s famous poem ‘If’ and it was the basis of Aldous Huxley’s The
Perennial Philosophy.
We are still not sure when exactly the Gita was composed. But from the fact
that it has no reference to Buddhism, it can be presumed it is pre-Buddhist. Its
Sanskrit is also of the style of the older passages of the Mahabharata. Scholars,
therefore, believe it must have been written about 500 bce. Its legendary author
is said to have been the sage Vyasa.
We are not quite sure why the Gita has been incorporated in the
Mahabharata. Nor of the symbolism (if indeed there is any symbolism at all) in
the fact that the Mahabharata consists of eighteen books, the Gita has eighteen
chapters and the battle of Kurukshetra lasted eighteen days. It is likely that this
philosophical work was put inside a popular epic to ensure its readership, to give
the philosophic kernel a sugar-coating to make it palatable. It is often described
as the inner shrine of the vast temple of the Mahabharata.
Let me also spell out my personal interpretation of the Gita. It opens with the
blind king Dhritarashtra’s charioteer, Sanjaya, offering to restore Dhritarashtra’s
sight so he can watch the spectacle. The grief-stricken king replies: ‘If it is to see
my sons and nephews and kinsmen engaged in destroying each other that you
will restore light to my eyes, then I would rather stay blind.’
A similar grief weighs down the heart of the Pandava Arjuna. ‘War even
against evil is wrong,’ thinks Arjuna. ‘It is wrong because it leads to the
destruction of the family which in turn has calamitous consequences on society.
Why fight for earthly gains?’ he asks.
It is apparent that Kurukshetra is symbolic of the battle of life. Arjuna, the
personification of the thinking man, is concerned with the ultimate values; his
doubts are the doubts of any thinking man who ponders such problems and is
involved in the search for truth.
Krishna is the guide, philosopher and friend who provides the answers. The
allegory of the chariot, the charioteer and the passenger alluded to in the
Upanishads is no mere coincidence; it is used for the same striving of the human
soul towards the ultimate.
The sermon of the Bhagavad Gita thus opens with Arjuna’s dilemma. He is
convinced that his cause is just and the battle he is about to engage in is a
dharmayuddha—the battle for the sake of righteousness. Yet he cannot bring
himself to kill his own brethren. He is dejected, lets the bow fall from his hand
and says firmly: ‘I will not fight.’ Knowing that it is treason for a commander to
make such a statement on the eve of battle. But he is willing to face the
consequences of treasonous inaction and defeat rather than soil his hands with
the blood of his kinsmen.
Krishna, his charioteer-mentor, answers that only God can take life (which
he has also given)—man is only an instrument of his inscrutable design. ‘He
who thinks he slays, he who thinks he is slain, fails to perceive the truth that he
neither slays nor is slain’. As a matter of fact, says Krishna, ‘there is no death in
the sense of a final dissolution because the eternal in man cannot die, it is only a
passing from one form to another. Just as a person casts off worn-out clothes and
dons new ones, so man when he shakes off this mortal coil is reborn in some
other form. For one that is born, death is certain; for one who dies birth is
certain,’ assures Krishna and concludes that a man should perform his duty
regardless of consequences. ‘In the hour of trial,’ says Krishna, ‘strong men
should not despair because then they will lose both heaven and earth. They
should arise like a fire that burns all before it.’
For a soldier it is to go to battle when the call to battle comes. All human
beings are in a sense soldiers in the battle of life and must likewise perform
duties allotted to them. But the performance of this duty should be without
consideration for reward—nishkama karma. Says Krishna: ‘Treating alike
pleasure and pain, gain and loss, victory and defeat...then go to battle.’
The same principle holds good in everyday life-to perform tasks allotted to
us should be our only right and privilege—never the fruits of our endeavour.’
(One will recall the words scribbled by Robert Falcon Scott, the Antarctic
explorer, in his diary as he lay down to die: ‘It is the effort that counts, not the
applause that follows.’)
How can a mortal achieve this state of mental equilibrium in which pleasure
and pain, gain and loss, victory and defeat are equally inconsequential? How can
one undertake a task with the sole object of performing a duty without craving
the returns? Arjuna asks Krishna: ‘Describe a man who is so wise, so steadfast in
the performance of his duty. How does he speak, sit, sleep and wake? How do
we recognize him?’
Krishna replies: ‘When a man puts away all desires out of his mind, when his
spirit is content in itself, then he becomes stable in intelligence. He should draw
away the sense from the object of the sense as a turtle draws its head and legs
into its shell. If, on the other hand, a person dwells on the objects of the sense, he
inevitably gets attached to those objects. Attachment leads to desire; desire when
frustrated leads to anger, anger to bewilderment, bewilderment to loss of
memory, loss of memory to destruction of intelligence—and so does man perish.
Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.
‘He into whom desires enter as waters into the sea which though ever being
fed by rivers is not agitated, attains peace. It is a kind of peace which passeth
understanding. It is tantamount to attaining salvation in one’s lifetime and
becoming a jivanmukta.’
 ‘How does one attain jivanmukti?’
‘There are different ways depending on a person’s constitution,
temperament, inclination and personality. There is the way of knowledge (jnana
marga) for men of contemplation; there is the way of action (karma marga) for
men of action; and there is the way of love and devotion (bhakti marga).’
‘That may well be so,’ interposes Arjuna as he thinks of other things. ‘So
often in the world does wrong triumph over right, so often good men suffer
while evil men live long, healthy and happy lives. If there be no reward for good,
no punishment for evil, why should one bother very much?’
Krishna replies: ‘Whenever righteousness declines and evil is in the
ascendant, I am reborn, reincarnated as the Avatar (redeemer) to protect the good
and destroy evildoers, to re-establish dharma (the law). So do I come into this
world from age to age. Do not, therefore, worry unduly on this matter as right
must ultimately and inevitably triumph over wrong. Satyameva Jayate—because
I am God, the righter of wrongs, the sustainer of eternal law, dharma. All I ask of
you human beings is that you do your duty in the spirit of renunciation.’
‘Renunciation?’ queries Arjuna. ‘Is giving up everything one has in the
world renunciation?’
‘No, not that,’ replies Krishna. ‘It is the unselfish performance of the allotted
task, performance of duty in the spirit of renunciation which can only be
acquired by the practice of yoga.’
Krishna then explains yoga as the shutting out of all external objects, fixing
the inner vision between the eyebrows, controlling the breath and making the
mind so one-pointed as to become oblivious of all desires, anxieties and
irritations.
In this state of transcendental meditation you will realize that the source of
all evil is the ego—ahamkara (I making). But this ego can also be the mainspring
of salvation. A man must redeem himself by himself, for self alone is the lord of
self, self the only means of salvation—‘atta hi attano natho, atta hi attano gati.’
Krishna then tells Arjuna the essentials of yogic meditation. The need for
physical well-being (yoga is not for those who eat too much or too little, or sleep
too much or too little)-one has to live a temperate and well-regulated life, seek a
quiet place, sit cross-legged on a deerskin and make the mind one-pointed. The
state of one who does achieve this is ‘like a lamp in a windless place which
flickers not’. To such a one comes the knowledge that God is omniscient,
omnipresent, omnipotent—and in the heart of all of us.
‘I am the ritual and the sacrifice...the sacred hymn and the offering,’ says
Krishna. ‘I am seated in the hearts of all creatures; I am the beginning, the
middle and the end. Amongst gods I am Vishnu, among lights I am the sun’—
and so on.
‘I am God, I accept all worship as equally valid,’ assures Krishna. ‘Whatever
form of worship a devotee performs, I make his faith steady...whosoever offers
me with devotion a leaf, a flower, a fruit or water, that offering of love from the
pure of heart I accept.’
This sentiment is beautifully echoed in a Tamil folk song:
Into the bosom of the one great sea
Flow streams that come from hills on every side
Their names are various as their springs
And thus in every land do men bow down
To one great God, though known by many names.
The great-souled, O Partha, who abide in the divine nature,
knowing (me as) the imperishable source of all beings,
worship me with an undistracted mind.
Always glorifying me, strenuous and steadfast in vows,
bowing down to me with devotion, they worship me,
ever disciplined.
(1971)
 LOVING IS GIVING

‘Let me tell you of a fable which illustrates the character of our society today,’
he said in his soft, gurgling voice. ‘There were two men who were close friends.
One was blind, the other lame. They helped each other; the blind man took the
lame man on his shoulders, the lame man showed the blind one the way. So the
friendship was good for both of them. Then they fell out. And as often happens
when close friends fall out, they became the bitterest of enemies. One day God
sent for the lame man and asked him to ask for a boon. Instead of begging for his
legs to be restored, the lame man said: ‘O God, please deprive that blind fellow
of his legs.’ God then sent for the blind man and likewise asked him to ask for
whatever he wanted. The blind man replied: ‘Please God, take the light out of
the eyes of that lame chap.’
This simple parable was narrated by Swami Muktanandaji in his sylvan
ashram at Ganeshpuri. Why he had chosen to use this parable became clear to
me as I watched the crowd, consisting largely of foreign disciples, participating
in the function organized to give 360 Adivasi families kitchen utensils and saris.
‘Where does all this money come from?’ some Indian critics had been asking.
A good bit of it comes from foreigners who come to seek solace and peace in
the ashram. The more important question, ‘Where does all this money go?’ is
seldom asked. The answer is easily available. Drive beyond Santa Cruz airport
into the densely forested hillside inhabited by the Adivasis of Thana district and
see for yourself. All along the route up to the temple of Vajreshwari and beyond
have gone up grey cement pucca dwellings gifted by the Muktananda Trust to
homeless Adivasis. Thirty-five lakh rupees have been spent on this laudable
enterprise. The aim is to put a solid roof over every Adivasi family in the entire
district. This makes sense even to an agnostic allergic to godmen. So does Baba
(as Swamiji is referred to) when he says, ‘God dwells within each one of you,
the only way to see him in others is to love them.’
Baba is a rare phenomenon among the godmen of today. He is no Dilip
Kumar, he is garishly dressed in a comical woollen cap, dark glasses, saffron
robes and ghastly pink socks. And yet he has a charisma which captivates all
who come near him. At the meeting I went to, there were men and women from
thirty-seven nations and of all faiths (Hindus, Muslims, Christians) and races
(Caucasians, Blacks, Arabs and Jews). Baba draws them like a piece of crystal
sugar draws flies.
(1977)
 THE MESSAGE OF GURU NANAK

The Sikhs are celebrating the 500th birthday of the founder of their faith. For the
last ten years they have been planning for these celebrations—to raise new
universities, colleges, hospitals and schools; publish literature; arrange seminars
and lectures; organize the non-stop chanting of hymns; take out massive
processions; entertain their friends at tea parties and banquets. Some of these
schemes have been carried out, many will remain unfulfilled. And almost
everyone will feel that much more could have been achieved if only... The chief
cause of Sikh frustration comes from the feeling that the message of Nanak was
not really conveyed to non-Sikhs and that the participation of other communities
was merely symbolic, a gesture of goodwill. No more.
The sense of frustration is inevitable. People are not really interested in faiths
and practices other than their own. It is also an error to believe that processions,
meetings, lectures and literature influence people’s minds. They have little or no
impact. It is not the excellence of the life of a prophet or his teaching that
matters (lives of prophets as well as their messages have a quality of sameness);
what matters is the way of life and conduct of those that profess to be his
followers. In the final analysis Guru Nanak will be judged not by what he did
and said but by what his followers today do, say, and the way they behave
towards other people.
There is an element of simplicity in Nanak’s life and teachings. His life was
an example of Thomas Paine’s precepts: ‘The world is my country, all mankind
are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.’ His teachings could be summed
up in two words—works and worship—in that order. Only he put it all in very
beautiful poetry. If the Sikhs really wish to pay homage to their founder-Guru
and impress their non-Sikh friends with his greatness, they have an excellent
opportunity to do so. We are the world’s poorest country with the highest
proportion of non-workers—beggars, sadhus, yogis. This places a bigger burden
on those who, like the Sikhs, believe in the adage ‘Work is worship’. Work
harder so that there is something to spare for the needy. Also in recent years the
atmosphere in our country has been fouled by communal passions. Nanak made
the bringing of Hindus and Muslims together the chief mission of his life. What
greater way is there to do honour to his memory than by continuing that crusade?
Sikhs could play a unique role in organizing corps of volunteers in our towns
and villages dedicated to the task of keeping the peace, of fostering fraternal
relations between communities and by making their gurdwaras sanctuaries for
victims of communal frenzy. Nanak became the king of holy men (Shah fakir)
because the Hindus recognized him as their Guru, the Mussalmans as their pir.
Nanak’s Sikhs could emulate his example. Let me coin a doggerel for them:
Singh Soorma Shah Sardar Hindu ka dost, Mussulman ka yaar.
(Undated)
 FINIS TO RIOTING

A few weeks ago there were communal riots in some parts of the country. I met
one of the victims—a handsome youth, educated abroad and, like many
anglicized young men, totally oblivious of whether he was Hindu or Muslim. He
sported a deep gash on one arm. He told me of the incident. He had heard of the
riot in the town but had ignored it as something that happened between Hindus
and Muslims-he was neither because he only thought of himself as an Indian. He
had finished his day’s work and was on his way home in a friend’s car. Suddenly
they came up against a solid phalanx of men armed with lathis and crowbars.
The friend tried to turn back as fast as he could. The men were faster. ‘A bunch
of armed goondas can be a terrifying spectacle,’ he explained. ‘They pelted the
car with stones and began to smash it with their lathis. I realized they were after
me. I did not want my friend to suffer because of me. I jumped out of the car and
tried to bolt. I stumbled and fell. A volley of lathis came crashing on my head. I
got up and ran. I outdistanced my pursuers but other armed men from side streets
joined in the chase. I was exhausted. I stopped and decided to die like a man.
Just then my friend ran up and shielded me. Three other men linked their arms
and made a chain to guard me. ‘‘You will not touch him till you have killed us,’’
they declared. It was a miracle. Four men facing an armed mob of four hundred!
And they won. The mob dispersed. And here I am to tell the tale.’ There was no
bitterness in his voice. He summed up the nightmarish experience in simple,
telling words and a wistful smile. ‘Till that evening all I knew about myself was
that I was an Indian; it took a few lathi blows to pierce my skull and make me
understand that I am a Muslim.’ I asked him if he had any views on how
communal riots could be prevented. He replied: ‘My experience proves that it
takes one man of courage to defy a hundred armed goondas. The rioter is a
coward ashamed of what he is up to, wanting an excuse to give it up. The other
thing is speed. If the police get into action at once, tension can be defused
without much difficulty. But if they waste time securing permission from
magistrates to disperse mobs and make arrests, etc., they only add to their
troubles.’ I am convinced that the government can write finis to the sordid
chapter on communal rioting by introducing a riot code giving the police the
right to shoot, arrest, publicly flog miscreants and impose collective fines on
localities where incidents take place. All patriotic Indians will support the
measure.
(1972)
 DADAJI—THE MAN OF MIRACLES

I have no faith. I’ve never felt the need for it. Faith is denial of reason and for me
reason is supreme. But I do not question the right of people to stick to their faiths
because I have seen the good that it can do to some of them. I do not believe in
miracles any more than I do in magic. But I do not deny that there are
phenomena which still baffle scientists. I say this as a prelude to narrating my
encounter with Amiya Roy Chowdhury, known to his innumerable admirers as
Dadaji.
I received two books on Dadaji. They were compilations of tributes by
eminent doctors, professors and businessmen, all of whom had experienced
some miracle or the other. My interest was roused.
A few days later, film star Abhi Bhattacharya breezed into my office to take
me to meet Dadaji. The happy glow on his handsome face made me suspect that
he had already counted me amongst his dharma bhais.
I report the encounter without any prejudice or bias.
The reception room in Dadaji’s apartment in Bandra had no furniture except
a divan which was obviously meant for Dadaji. At the time there were only half
a dozen men and women, all Bengalis. Then Dadaji entered. Everyone stood up.
One man prostrated himself, placing his head on Dadaji’s feet.
Dadaji is tall and light-skinned. He wears his black hair long. His youthful
handsomeness belies his seventy years. His eyes have a hypnotic spell-binding
power. An aroma known in esoteric circles as the padmagandha (fragrance of the
lotus) fills the room.
Dadaji seats himself on the divan and beckons to me. I shuffle up and sit near
his feet. He tries to fix me in a kindly but hypnotic stare. He wants to know why
I have come to see him. I tell him of my lack of faith, my disbelief in the
existence of a divine power and my curiosity about him and his following.
‘What if Sri Satya Narayan wants to communicate with you?’ he asks. I look
puzzled. ‘What if he sends you a memento?’ he asks again. He raises his right
hand in the air, and in his palm appears a medallion with an image of an elderly
man. ‘It is Sri Satya Narayan’s gift to you,’ assures Dadaji. ‘No, it is not,’ I
protest. ‘You, Dadaji, have given it to me.’ He smiles. ‘I am no one, it is all the
doing of Sri Satya Narayan.
‘What is your name?’ he asks. I tell him. He takes back the medallion, rubs
the reverse side with his thumb. What had been a blank surface is now embossed
with my name. Only my name is not correctly spelt. A minute later and as
mysteriously as before a gold chain appears in the palm of his empty hand. ‘This
is to wear the medallion around your neck,’ he says giving it to me.
‘Come with me,’ orders Dadaji. I follow him. He leads me into his bedroom.
Once more we are on different levels; he sits on his bed, I on the floor beside
him. He tells me he is a monist. Sri Satya Narayan pervades the entire universe.
There are no gurus. Each man is his own guru because he is a part of Sri Satya
Narayan. The way to salvation is through Mahanam (the great name). It can be
in any language.
‘You ask for it in your own mother tongue.’ He hands me a blank slip of
paper and asks me to bow before a picture of Sri Satya Narayan. I do so. The
paper now bears two words in Gurmukhi, ‘Gopal, Govinda.’ A minute later the
paper is blank again. Apparently the message has been delivered and does not
need to be on paper any more. And so it continues. A touch of his hand on my
beard fills my beard with the same padmagandha.
For an unbeliever it is a traumatic kind of experience. It does not shake my
disbelief in religion or miracles nor bends my reason to accept banal statements
about God, Guru and the Name which pass for philosophy in our land. But let
the reader make up his own mind.
(1972)
THE NATURAL WORLD
 SHIVALIK MONKEYS

In late September and early October, not a flower is to be seen on the hillsides.
Not many birds, and little bird song. All day long, I sit in the garden looking at
the deep blue sky and an occasional white cloud floating lazily whichever way
the winds take it. My garden, normally full of the chattering of white-cheeked
bulbuls and cawing of crows, is strangely silent. In the afternoon a troop of
langurs arrives from nowhere and begins stripping leaves off fruit trees. A large
mama langur carrying her little baby perches herself on my birdbath to drink
water. She ducks her baby’s head down to teach it how to drink. A male langur
strolls across the lawn and seats himself majestically on the bench, watching his
family from where he sits. Another plants himself on the tank a couple of yards
away and glares at me through his malevolent yellow eyes as if asking why I am
where I am. Another cheeky fellow seats himself on a branch of the toon tree
under which I sit. His long tail dangles a couple of feet above my head. There
are a dozen of them chasing each other on the corrugated tin roof, romping about
the lawn, completely at home in my home. They make me feel like a trespasser
on their domain. They seem to have driven rhesus monkeys away from my side
of Kasauli. I haven’t seen a rhesus in the two days I have been here and never
before have so many langurs invaded my property. They are beautiful animals,
silver-grey, jet-black faces, sinuous bodies and long tails. And not as aggressive
as the rhesus. Why the rhesus is scared of them, I do not know.
The one thing I have against langurs (and the rhesus) is that they have taken
to chewing telephone wires. My telephone was dead for two days till the wires
were replaced. I hope the wire is coated with stuff that monkeys don’t relish.
(2001)
 MATING SEASON

It begins in spring when young people’s thoughts turn to love. Nature renews
itself. Withered leaves fall, new ones take their place. Animals and birds pair up
to mate. Their metabolism specifies when females come into heat and become
receptive to the advances of the male of their species. The only exceptions are
humans. They remain on heat round the year: for them all seasons are mating
seasons.
By the time spring turns to summer, birds have prepared their nests to lay
eggs. Females of the animal species are pregnant and ready to deliver as soon as
nature is ready to provide them sustenance. Come the monsoon and the parched
land turns green. Trees bear fruit. Insects multiply by the millions to assure
adequate food for birds and their hatchlings. Rains renew life by providing food
for all living creatures.
I see this process of regeneration around my little apartment. Some years ago
my neighbours drove away dozens of cats that had made my home their own.
They said cats spread disease. This was at the height of the bubonic plague
epidemic in Surat. My cats were removed to a cats’ home. They never came
back. A couple of months ago two strays decided to move into my backyard.
They refused to befriend me. Then one of them had a litter of three kittens
behind a bush. I tried to make friends with the kittens. Every time I saw them
playing on the patch of green, I approached them with friendly noises. They
simply glowered at me with their large questioning eyes. If I took a step forward,
they disappeared behind the bushes.
But there was my granddaughter’s cat, Billo, who spent a lot of her time
purring in my lap when no one else was around. We looked forward to her
having a litter because she was often missing from the home and evidently
cohabiting with a tom who prowled around in the backyard. At times Billo’s
belly looked swollen. We surmised she was pregnant. Then just as suddenly the
swelling disappeared. It was probably a false pregnancy—or just surplus gas.
However, I did notice that she frequently visited the linen cupboard at the
farthest end of my flat. It was in the lowest shelf of this cupboard that most cats
I’d had gave birth to their litter. Then one day without warning Billo hid herself
in the linen cupboard and emerged after an hour or so mewing incessantly. She
wanted to draw my attention to something. She led me to the linen cupboard. I
peered inside. I could not see anything but distinctly heard a tiny mew. We
celebrated the arrival of Billo’s progeny. I still do not know if it is just one, or as
is usual with cats, two or three. I look forward to having them play in my lap.
There are few other things as endearing as kittens at play.
During the mating season in the animal world, sex is compulsive. That poses
a problem for humans who are particular about the pedigrees of their pets. They
take great pains to keep their pedigreed bitches from mating with aira-ghaira
animals till they have found an equally high-pedigreed mate for them.
One such person is my friend Claire Dutt who keeps three Labradors. Two
are now past breeding, only one, Zoe, is still of the age to breed and Claire is on
the lookout for a suitable match for her. She sends her dogs out for an airing in
the park with her servant. Apparently she sensed that while her servant was
enjoying his bidi, Zoe had been up to no good with some stray dog. She was
understandably upset and questioned her servant about it. His reply was
charmingly naive: ‘Memsahib, the two old dogs behave very well but this Zoe-
iska chaal challan kharaab ho gayaa hai—whenever she meets a male dog, she
says hello, hello, hello to him.’
(2002)
 FLAMING TREES

There was a time when just before Holi I used to drive round the Ridge and go to
Surajkund just to see the flame of the forest in bloom. This otherwise
nondescript, small-sized tree came into its full glory only for a brief week but it
was a sight for the gods. It has several Indian names like palas, dhaak, and tessoo
and is found across the length and breadth of our country. Its beetle-black buds
contrast with the bright and curving petals which resemble a parrot’s beak-and
give it a spectacular look. It is not commonly known that the Battle of Plassey
(1757) came to be so named because it was fought on a field that had lots of
palas trees in bloom at the time.
I do not drive out anymore and am content to see an imitation of palas in
coral trees which grow in some of our parks-their petals are of the same colour
as that of the palas but are not curved. Neither flower has any fragrance. Now I
sit in my nature-perfumed garden among colourful cineraria, salvias and ixora.
Some years ago, I planted what I was assured was a kadam. It grew very rapidly
to a great height and has thick large-leaved foliage. It has become the favourite
of a variety of birds, including green barbets which call all day long. It gets pale
flowers which have no odour. It is not a kadam, what it is no one has yet been
able to tell me. At Holi time it begins to shed its leaves. The slightest whiff of air
and they come on my head and all around me like confetti showered on a newly
married couple. My gardener sweeps them up twice a day but for a week the pat-
jhar (leaf-shedding) continues unabated till the tree is stripped bare. And
suddenly new fiery-red leaves appear which gradually turn to green. Within a
few days, the tree is thick with leaves as before and a safe haven for birds.
I am closer to nature in my little garden than driving around parks and
gardens. There is a noticeable drop in the number of sparrows these days. And
while we are coming to the end of March and mango trees are in flower, I have
yet to hear the koel which by now should have regained its full-throated
cry-‘koo-oo, koo-oo’. What’s happened to them?
Though all too brief, this is the pleasantest time of the year in northern India.
Whichever way you turn, there are flowers; whenever you pause to listen there is
bird song. Meer Taqi Meer caught the atmosphere of spring time in a few
memorable lines: If you like to visit the garden, go now; For this is the month of
spring; The leaves are green and flowering trees Are in full bloom;
The clouds hang low
And rain is gently falling
The heart feels like a throbbing wound, The tears have turned to one red flood This crimson-faced
poppy of love Dries up life and drains all blood This is the time when fresh, green leaves Appear
upon the trees;
And branch and twig of plant and shrub Are bent with bloom and seed With blaze of roses’ colour,
Meer, The garden is on fire;
The bulbul sounds a warning note: Go past, O Sir, beware!

(2003)
 SPRINGTIME

Spring is the time to go and look at our countryside. I don’t mean the false
spring of Basant day though, according to an old saying, with the arrival of
Basant, the cold weather takes wing and flies away. For here up north where the
cold is real and the winds blow in earnest, the festival of spring with all its bright
yellow turbans and gay mustard coloured dupattas can make you shiver and seek
the warmth and comfort of the fireside at home.
I remember the 5th of February this year when a steady north wind brought
down a taste of the high Himalayas. Looking windward, we caught a glimpse of
snow-covered peaks beyond a gap in the wintry blue of the foothills. There was
no yellow in the fields beyond the new township, the infant wheat plants were of
a dull green colour, the gram was no more than an untidy eruption clinging to the
hard surface of the earth. There was perhaps a sense of vigour in the air, a
feeling that a tremendous effort was somewhere taking place, and as I walked
through the fields I was enveloped by a strong wintry aroma—a glorious health-
giving mixture of smells which rose from brown grass, young green fields, the
plants of rape and mustard, cow dung cakes baking dry in the sun and the smoke
of village fires. But the gaiety, the joy and abandon of fulfilment had yet to
come.
And they have come now that March has brought the real spring to us. The
wheat is now waist-high and the bearded ears heavy with the burden of fat grains
which sway with a drunken rhythm as a light breeze touches them. A gentle
ripple starts at one end of the field and goes whispering all the way to the other
side. The wheat fields are a bright rich green, the sort of green Gauguin liked to
lay on his canvas straight from the tube. The gram plants are a deeper and duller
green but they are dotted with little pink and mauve flowers. The sarson is in full
bloom and as you pass by the gaiety of the yellow flowers shining in the
morning sun takes possession of you. You stop and inhale the pungent flavour of
the air at this spot. The fields are hedged off with dry thorn bushes and men and
cattle walk along narrow dust-tracks that wind their picturesque way from one
village to another.
How many of you who live in towns and make plans and blueprints talk of
the rural wealth of India and the uplift of villagers have seen and felt the
overpowering beauty of our countryside in spring? It is only when you begin to
feel a constriction in your throat and your eyes begin to smart that you will know
how important rural India is spiritually even more than materially.
(1957)
 THE LIFE AROUND US

During a visit to a school in a northern state I was very pleasantly surprised to

see a class of six or seven boys deeply absorbed in pasting leaves in their
albums. There is little emphasis on nature study in our educational system, so
this extracurricular activity attracted my attention.
‘What is this thing you are putting in your album?’ I asked one of the boys.
‘A leaf.’
‘Leaf of what?’
‘A tree, of course! What else can it be?’
All the boys sniggered at my silly questions and resumed their leaf-pressing
without any doubts on the futility of the pastime. Their teacher was not so
embarrassed as I expected. He later confessed to me that he did not know the
names of more than a dozen trees himself.
‘What is the use of learning the names of trees and birds?’ he said
aggressively. ‘Our new principal has just returned from England and he wants us
to do the sort of things they do there.’
It is true that interest in natural life is found more among English people than
any others. Interest in birds is spoken of as snobisme anglais (English snobbery)
by the French. But that is no reason for indifference to the life about us. Our vast
variety of birds, animals and trees is amongst our richest treasures and yet most
of us know very little about them. This is very surprising because as a nation we
are friendlier towards birds and beasts than any other people in the world. Here
sparrows nest in our cooking vessels, mynas walk in and out between our feet
and monkeys clamber into railway compartments at wayside stations… And yet
if you ask even an educated Indian how many birds or plants he can recognize,
his list will not go beyond a dozen. ‘I am not an ornithologist or a botanist,’ he
will say smugly.
There is no particular merit in simply knowing the names of trees or birds: a
rose by any other name will smell as sweet. Nevertheless, it seems silly not to
know a rose as a rose, or in our context to wax lyrical about the bulbul without
knowing what it looks like or how unmusical it can be, or recite verses about the
papeeha and not know when it cries its head off in the mango grove.
This is not all there is to knowing a name. It may be the first step in knowing
to what uses something can be put. An amusing anecdote is told about the first
French Ambassador to Nepal. When he was driving up to the palace to present
his credentials, he noticed whole hillsides of artichokes in flower. He made a last
minute change in his address, adding that he was delighted to see that the
Nepalese and Frenchmen shared one pleasure in common—the love of eating
artichokes.
That was the first time that people in Kathmandu heard that artichokes could
be eaten, up till then they had looked upon it as a noxious weed.
(1957)
 KILLER TURNS LOVER

One summer afternoon I cycled out of the city with a gun strapped to my
shoulder. It was the breeding season for birds and shooting was forbidden. That
was good enough reason to want to shoot.
For several hours I trudged through the hot and dusty countryside and saw
nothing except crows and mynas. In sheer exasperation I shot a crow sleeping on
a keekar tree. The entire crow population of the neighbourhood filled the sky
with their protesting cries. I shot another two on the wing to frighten them off. I
left the three birds gasping and bleeding on the ground. ‘No use wasting eight
anna shots on dying crows,’ I said to myself, ‘the jackals will finish them off at
night.’
The way back home was along a canal bank. Round the bend I suddenly
came across a partridge with a brood of six or seven chicks. She spread out her
wings and hurried them off under a nearby bush. I got off my bicycle and loaded
my gun. I threw stones into the bush. The chicks were not used to human beings
and came scuttling out. Their mother could not remain hidden and followed
them. She tried to lead me away by pretending she was injured and could be
caught. She let one of her wings hang on the ground as if it was broken. I look
quick aim and fired. The hen collapsed in a cloud of feathers. The chicks
scattered away in terror. I put the partridge triumphantly in my bag and rode
home.
I had left three birds fluttering on a dusty field and a brood of six baby
partridges barely two days old to fend for themselves.
That night I could not sleep.

The birds in the house knew I was a killer and flew off as soon as they saw me,
they did so even if I did not carry a gun or a catapult. At first I was peeved and
angry. Then I realized why they fled from me and decided to make friends with
them. It took a long time to win their confidence. This is how it happened.
 The window of the office where I worked was framed by a thick creeper. A
pair of bulbuls built their nest in it. When I discovered it, there were three eggs
in it. The bulbuls were alarmed at my discovery and spent the whole afternoon
quarrelling with each other. The agitated chirping was as clear to me as human
speech. ‘Chuk chuk chuk,’ nagged the hen. ‘Didn’t I tell you not to make the
nest so near that nasty man?’ ‘Chuk chuk chuk,’ replied the male. ‘If you knew
about him why did you lay your eggs here?’
For the next two days I did not hear a cheep; only the sound of flapping
wings told me of their coming and going as they stood guard over the eggs. On
the third day the argument started again. ‘So very much like married couples,’ I
said to myself. But surely I had done nothing to excite their suspicion? I tiptoed
to the window to see what was amiss. It was a great relief to discover that it
wasn’t me they were running down; it was a tomcat who had discovered their
nest and was sitting a few feet away with its eyes glued on it. I shooed away the
tomcat and the birds were quiet once more.
Thereafter I had to come to the rescue of the bulbuls several times. Each time
the tomcat came that way they set up an agitated ‘chuk chuk chuk.’ I had a pile
of stones on my worktable which I learnt to use with deadly accuracy on the cat.
When the eggs hatched, I had to increase my vigilance and practically share the
upbringing of the nestlings with the bulbuls. The battle between me and the cat
was waged round the clock. I shifted my bed to the office.
Then one day I found the nest empty. Had the bulbuls taken their young to
safety or had the tomcat done its devilish job? I threw the pile of stones on the
table into the waste paper basket and tried to get down to some work. I heard the
‘chuk chuk chuk’ at a distance. It must be my imagination, I said to myself, and
went on with my work. Then the ‘chuk chuk’ came nearer. Finally, the two
bulbuls flew into the office, and around my head, calling in the most agitated
manner. ‘Hurry, hurry,’ said one alighting on my notebook, ‘and stop this pen
pushing.’ I got up and went out. The three nestlings were perched on a branch of
a tree. A couple of feet below them sat the tomcat patiently waiting for them to
fall off. I picked up a stone and hurled it with all the venom I had. It hit the
tomcat above his tail and he fled with a loud ‘Miaow.’
I do not know whether birds have a language. They certainly communicate
with each other.
Word got around that I was no longer the nasty man who killed birds. I had
actually saved the bulbul children’s lives. Birds no longer flew away when they
saw me. Some even made friends with me. The magpie robin often came to my
window and gave a free performance of ballet dancing and singing which would
make Balasaraswati and Subbulakshmi turn green with envy.
My interest in birds has changed from curiosity to affection. I can recommend it
as a most satisfying hobby. It rewards you in strange ways. I recall an incident a
few years ago. It was a torridly hot day in June—not a cloud in the grey sky, not
a breath of wind to stir the limp, dust-laden leaves. And an interminable meeting
of civil servants with the boss droning away like a bumblebee. I heard a bird call
—a long, anguished wail which only the pied crested cuckoo can produce. I got
up from the chair and went to the window. The boss stopped droning and
everyone looked up at me as if I had been touched by the summer sun. ‘What is
the matter?’ he asked me angrily. ‘It is going to rain tomorrow. That is the
monsoon bird calling.’ They looked at each other and smiled knowingly. What
with the heat and big turban on the head...
Next day at the same time black nimbus clouds spread across the sky and it
poured with rain. I was no longer the slightly loony Sikh working in the office
but a man who held converse with Nature and understood its mysterious
messages spoken by the birds.
(1958)
 MASSACRE AS SPORT

In the bad old days of the British Raj, when maharajas were rulers of their
principalities and a princely shikar assumed the proportions of a war of
extinction waged by man against bird and beast, I succeeded in wangling an
invitation to a shoot at Bharatpur. K. P. S. Menon was then diwan of the state;
Lord Linlithgow was the chief guest. There were fifty others. We were supplied
with maps of the swamps and woodland with our posts marked. We were given
cartridges by the bucketful, provided with orderlies who would help to reload
our guns and pickers who would retrieve what we brought down. In the early
hours we were driven to our butts, which were camouflaged with leaves, and
asked to await the signal—the opening shot by the Viceroy.
As the eastern horizon turned grey, we heard the thud of the viceregal gun
come over the water. The sky was soon full of millions of birds. Guns opened up
in different parts of the battlefield. A few minutes later several flights of birds
which I could not identify came towards my hideout. I banged away for all I was
worth. There were so many that it was easier to hit than to miss them. By the
time the sun was up I had fired over a hundred cartridges. A variety of bloodied
waterfowl executed by me lay about my feet. I then saw that I had killed many
which were inedible: cormorants, ibises, spoonbills, moorhens, coots. In clearer
light I realized that in the massed flights of teal, geese, mallard and pintail it was
not easy to separate the edible from the inedible. I also realized that the pellets
spread in so wide a radius that for every two or three birds that fell an equal
number were injured—to die of festering wounds or become helpless victims of
predators.
After a few hours, the bugle was sounded for ceasefire. The guests
assembled under a shamiana and were served with iced champagne. What we
had killed was laid out for our inspection. The count ran into the thousands. As
politeness required, the highest score was attributed to the Viceroy, with His
Highness a close second. The rest of us wrangled over our bag while being
‘pilawed and champagned’.
 It was a sickening business. In one morning we had murdered thousands of
innocent birds and maimed many thousand more. It could only be described as
wanton massacre. When I asked what would be done to all the birds we had
killed, I received vague answers to the effect that they would be sent to hospitals
in Bharatpur, Agra or Delhi to be consumed by the inmates. I had little doubt
that most of them would just rot and be thrown away.
Shikars on this massive scale do not take place anymore. But the massacre
continues unabated. One has only to see the way the countryside about our great
cities has been denuded of game. Carloads of shikaris go further and further
afield, do their work of destruction and come back loaded with partridge and
geese and deer. They kill well beyond the need of their tables—and they call it
sport. The diplomatic corps take pride of place in this ghoulish pastime. They
import ammunition at cheaper rates and they have means of stocking their kill in
a deep freeze.
It must be obvious to everyone that neither the high cost of ammunition nor
fees for shooting licences, neither closed seasons nor prohibitions against the
killing of rarer species of fowl or beast, neither game sanctuaries nor national
parks—nor any other law, rule or regulation—can stop the destruction of our
wildlife. In view of past experience it is somewhat naive to hope as our Wildlife
Board did at its last meeting—that by choosing the Gir lion as our national
animal people will become conscious of the peril it is in. By such fanciful logic
all we need to do to ameliorate the wretched condition of our Untouchables is to
choose a Harijan girl as Miss India.
Serious situations need bold, often unpopular decisions. If we really mean to
save our wildlife from extinction, we must impose a total ban on shikar for a
year or more. Prohibit the sale of ammunition and sporting rifles, shotguns and
other weapons, forbid grants of game licences—and thus come down with a
heavy hand on shooting or trapping. A blanket prohibition would be much easier
to enforce than specifying seasons for slaughter or earmarking certain species as
protected. The move will also be popular with the general mass of people. All
said and done this is the land of Mahavira and Gautama and Gandhi. In the
minds of most of us ahimsa is still paramo dharma.
(1969)
SEX MATTERS
 OUR BEAUTIFUL EROTICA

I often wonder what kind of society we were when the temples of Khajuraho and
Konark were constructed. In those times, as it is today, temples were not only
places of worship but also places where people socialized, exchanged gossip,
arranged marriages and transacted business. Around them grew bazaars, markets
and dwellings. Town life centred around them; worship was only a part of the
citizens’ preoccupation. It must have been a very liberal society, the like of
which did not exist anywhere in the world.
Things changed with the advent of Islam and Christianity in the country.
They were puritanical faiths which regarded erotica sinful. Hindus imbibed
Islam and Victorian attitudes and became equally censorious about matters
concerning sex. Some were ashamed of their ancestors’ frank portrayals of
sexuality; others tried to explain them away as spiritual exercises. This is
nonsense. In most temples that have erotic sculptures there is nothing spiritual or
mysterious-all forms of sexual variations, homosexual, lesbian, even intercourse
with animals, can be seen. The one thing Khajuraho and Konark have in
common is artistic excellence, the sculptures however explicit are extremely
beautiful. We don’t have to apologize to anyone for having and cherishing them.
I have no patience with the new ‘morality’ which has assumed epidemic
proportions in our country. Banning books, destroying paintings, censoring films
because they are in conflict with the prevailing religious prejudices are unworthy
of our liberal past.
(2001)
 THE RIGHT TO GO NUDE

It was more than twenty years ago that I was first exposed to people exposing
themselves. This was in Sweden. Literally miles of beach with almost everyone
from toddlers to octogenarians with not a stitch of clothing on them. I could not
ogle at all the nubile nineteen-year-olds as I would have liked to. I was almost
drooling in the mouth when my hosts suggested that we all strip and refresh
ourselves in the sea. The drooling stopped, my throat went dry. My Indian
inhibitions against self-exposure were too strong to overcome. I couldn’t even
raise my eyes to take a good look at my hostess and her three college-going
daughters. I tried to analyse my nudo-phobia and came to the conclusion that I
was more scared of taking off my turban and exposing my long hair than I was
of taking off my pants and exposing...you know what. I was even more scared of
my natural reactions-of showing obvious pleasure at seeing what I was seeing
without having to say so. The visions of that sunny Sunday afternoon near
Stockholm has troubled many of my midnights’ and my noons’ reposes.
Since then I have seen a lot of nudity on the beaches of Hawaii, Côte d’Azur
and Sydney. I am an unashamed voyeur and liked it all. I was delighted to learn
that stodgy old England is about to legalize stripping. As one might expect of a
nation of shopkeepers it is not for the sake of health or for the aesthetic pleasure
of seeing beautiful people as God made them, but to make money. The issue has
come up before the Brighton City Council dominated by conservatives. It would
appear that while the lady members are in favour of shedding clothes, the men
have certain reservations. A lady member who also runs a lodging house has
proved her bona fides by circulating her own photograph in a topless bikini. The
reactions of the other members to this form of canvassing is not known. But a
male member who is opposed to the ‘flagrant exhibition of mammary glands’
has been warned by his wife that if he continues to be obdurate she will release
the photograph of him taking a sauna bath in mixed company. She clearly has
her eye on the cash register. She says, ‘I am not a woman of immoral character.
I’m one of the most old-fashioned girls. I do not take the pill or go to bed with
men, but I believe in this beach. Let’s face the facts—we want European tourists,
and we want their money. So let’s give them the sort of facilities they’re used
to.’
The lady may be getting far more than she is bargaining for. But even the
stodgiest of the councillors concedes that she may have a point. He admits that
sometime ago when he chanced upon a couple taking off their clothes he was
struck by the beauty of the well-endowed woman and suddenly thought ‘that all
those years of tedious committees had been worthwhile’.
There may be unexpected pleasures awaiting visitors to Brighton. To wit:
There was a brave damsel of Brighton Whom nothing could possibly frighten.
She plunged into the sea
And, with infinite glee,
Was taken for a ride by a Triton.

That brings me to the subject of incentives to tourism in India. I dare not suggest
that we too go in for nude bathing to attract foreigners, but let us not be too
prudish when they wish to expose themselves to our sun, sea, sands and our
gazes. Take it from me that nothing will add to the beauty of Calangute or
Kovalam more than a shapely teenager streaking across the palm fronds against
the setting sun.
(1979)
 THE SEXUAL MORALS OF THE RICH AND POWERFUL

Jackie Oh!: An Intimate Biography by Kitty Kelley is indeed intimate! The

Prince Charming of America turns out to be the Emperor without clothes in the
ancient fable. John Kennedy, the youngest, richest, handsomest president of the
United States, had the morals of a randy mountain goat, bestriding any female
who came within reach, ranging from the luscious Marilyn Monroe to horsey
secretaries, pretty airhostesses and fat barmaids, friends’ wives, and mistresses
of all ages in all climes. His performance in bed, however, was very perfunctory.
A lady press reporter beguiled into a White House bedroom in the belief that she
would get a scoop found herself thrown on the bed without as much as an
introductory May I? And it was the classical wham, bam, goodbye ma’am.
Before the lady realized she was being laid, the President had finished and was
zipping up his pants to rejoin his wife and the other guests. We learn that
Kennedy was much like a barnyard rooster mounting its harem of clucking hens
in rapid succession.
The book, however, is not meant to be about Kennedy but about his wife,
Jacqueline. She comes off no better. She is as obsessed with money as her
husband was with sex. She is said to have come from the topmost echelons of
America’s social elite. But her love for the best things of life led her to liaisons
with only those who had the means to provide them. As the President’s wife she
accepted expensive gifts: gold jewellery, diamonds, sapphires, mink, leopard-
skin coats. And not long after her husband’s assassination she befriended
Aristotle Onassis, reported to be the richest man in the world—thirty years older
than her and as crude as any guttersnipe of the Athenian slums. (His favourite
practical joke was to invite his mistresses to examine his rectum for piles, and
when they did so, to fart in their faces.) Jackie made a deal with Onassis. She
received millions of dollars for giving him the right to bed her. It makes her the
most expensive whore in history.
It is a great pity that the biographer who admittedly was never granted an
interview by Jacqueline should nevertheless have gone ahead to collect all the
juicy gossip she could and put it together. Although she has succeeded in
producing a salaciously readable book, it can scarcely be described as a
biography.
(1979)
 THE FEMALE BREAST

What is it about a woman that most men fall for? Is it her face or figure? Her
eyes or lips? Her bosom, broad hips or her posterior? An anatomical dissection
would be futile because it is the totality of her physical makeup (all her body is
pasture to mine eyes) plus other intangibles like her temperament and above all
her vitality that determine her attractive potential for the male. However, it has
also to be conceded that when it comes to what is vulgarly known as sex appeal
it is the bosom, the middle or the buttocks that rouse the male libido. Of these
three items the pornographer and the voyeur will vote for the pudenda or the
rear; the aesthete be he poet, painter or a man of letters will vote for the bosom.
No part of the female anatomy has been more exploited by artists and
photographers nor more written about by novelists. But it had never occurred to
me that there was enough material to devote an entire book to the subject. Alan
Brien has achieved that distinction with his Domes of Fortune. If our Customs
chaps do not ban the book for obscenity and you can afford the rupee equivalent
of the dollar price you may be able to read 6,000 words of eulogy and ogle at
pictures of bosoms of various shapes and sizes.
Alan Brien has long been my favourite journalist-author. Ever since I ceased
getting the Times group of papers, including the Sunday Times, the two items I
have missed most are the crossword puzzle and Alan Brien. I was glad to learn
that he has been profitably engaged in field work on the female breast or what in
scientific terminology is known as mammarology. Apparently his wife, Jill
Tweedie, approved of the project. ‘I have never attacked soft porn,’ retorted Jill
to the insinuation that the two were separating after her husband’s ‘boobing’ for
the sake of money. ‘The interesting thing about breasts is that they change all the
time,’ writes Alan Brien. When a woman is running, or angry, or wearing a
sweater, a breast is the most restless thing in the world. But when it comes to
penning variations to the theme, Alan does not show much ingenuity. He
describes them as others before him have done, borrowing vocabulary from
architecture (domes, igloos, arches) or from the gourmet (apples, peaches, etc.)
The Song of Solomon compared the breasts to ‘two young roes that are twins’.
We Indians are familiar with comparisons of bosoms with melons and mangoes.
We also have allusions to their restlessness: a popular Punjabi folk song sings of
them as jangli kabootar—wild pigeons. They have been endowed with an
autonomous existence of their own; an otherwise shy, docile damsel may be
possessed, as an eighteenth-century English poet wrote, of ‘a rugged bosom that
beauty cannot tame’.
The male preference for a well-stacked bosomy female is pre-historic.
Figurines of goddesses with three breasts predate the Indus Valley civilization.
Even later when women shed the third breast, the sizes of the two that remained
were of vital interest to the male. A woman who was poorly endowed was
always regarded a liability. In the Old Testament brothers lamented ‘we have a
little sister and she hath no breasts’. Charles Dickens’s approach was that of an
exhausted old man-for him the ideal breasts were those on which a man could
repose, like a pillow. For the more youthful the preference would be for the more
shapely, ‘on which a man could hang jewels’.
I can understand bosoms being likened to domes or fowl or fruit which they
resemble but find it less comprehensible when they are described as edibles. A
child may have good reason to call them ‘honey pots’ but it sounds odd when
old Spenser addresses his lady love’s adornments as if he were saying grace
before supper: Was it a dream, or did I see plain?
A goodly table of pure ivory,
All spread with junkets, fit to entertain The greatest prince with pompous royalty: ’Mongst which,
there in a silver dish did lie Two golden apples of unvalued price...

In another of the Amoretti the praise is largely floral: Her goodly bosom, like a
strawberry bed; Her neck, like a bunch of Columbines Her breast, like lilies, ere
their leaves be shed; Her nipples like young blossomed jessamines.

On erotica my personal preference is for the bawdier form of literature like the
limerick. To wit: To his bride said the keen-eyed detective, ‘Can it be that my
eyesight’s defective?
Has the east tit the least bit
The best of the west tit
Or is it the faulty perspective?’

(1979)
 NICK TO THE NAME

There is a bawdy story about a man who lost all his children soon after they were
born. He consulted a learned pandit who advised him that he should give his
children to come ugly names so that God (who presumably doesn’t mouth
obscenities) would not send for them. Following the wise man’s advice the man
named his next son after the male genitals, the daughter who followed after the
female genitalia, and being a whole-hogger, named the kid his goat had
delivered ‘Buttocks’. It worked. The three attained puberty in good health. It is
not recorded how the two humans with these peculiar names fared in social
circles. But the story reaches its bawdy climax at the nuptials of the girl and her
mother’s pleading with her son-in-law to be considerate towards her child
(named you know what). The irate, un-understanding son-in-law stomps out of
the house, and his father-in-law runs after him pleading that he was as dear to
him as his own son (you know who?) and if he came back he would slaughter
(the Hindi word is maro) the goat-kid to feast him.
There is a moral behind this bawdy tale: only he or she who has to live with
it should have the right to choose their name. Since a child has to be called
something, the parents may give it a temporary label which its incumbent should
be entitled to shed as it sheds its milk teeth and choose another which it fancies.
A much bigger problem is posed by nicknames. These are given unasked and
are more often than not meant to hurt. Imagine the agony of an obese child being
called Bessie or Billy Bunter, Fatso or Motu! Or of a thin child being called
Skinny!
A long-nosed one being a Concorde! A thick-lipped being called Lipso.
Often nicknames do not allude to physical features but are mutilations of the real
name. For some reason I was nicknamed Shali, which I did not mind too much.
But when it came to be rhymed: Shali shooli bagh ki mooli (radish in the garden)
I minded it very much. For some mysterious reason Shali died out. I was re-
nicknamed Khusrau which I did not mind too much. But when Khusrau had its
tail docked and I was labelled Khusra (eunuch) I minded it very much. Now I
read of a poor Indian girl in England with a nice name like Suneeta who has
been nicknamed Snot-eater. The vicissitudes through which nicknames pass are
infinite. A new publication Nicknames: Their Origin & Social Consequences
mentions a child nicknamed Polly (Scots for Chubby) successively being re-
nicknamed Pearshape, Persia, Iran, Irene, Irebus and, finally, Bus. How right
was Hazlitt in his opinion that a nickname is the hardest stone that the Devil can
throw at a man!
Seldom do nicknames pursue their bearers into adult life. Then we design all
kinds of euphemisms to cover up unpleasant truths. A blind man is a Nainsukh,
Surdas, Soorma, or Lakhnetra (with 100,000 eyes). Plutarch mentions that this
was a common practice in ancient Athens where a harlot was described as a
companion, tax as a donation, a dungeon as a chamber.
Another right that should be granted to all mankind is to change their names
to suit a country they happen to be in. I recall an embarrassing encounter with a
distinguished Swede, a Mr Lund (very common name in Scandinavia) who was
due to visit India. After a few drinks I got the courage to tell him that he should
not be upset if northern Indians smiled or sniggered at being introduced to him
and explained what his name meant in Hindustani. He was most amused and told
me that he had not long before escorted an Indian lady called Miss Das and had
to introduce her to various audiences. ‘Why should that have embarrassed you?’
I asked him. ‘Because in Swedish the word “dass” means shit,’ replied Mr Lund.
(1979)
 O MISTRESS MINE! WHERE ARE YOU ROAMING?

Much ink has been spilt trying to define a mistress; she has proved to be slippier
than the proverbial eel. As a matter of fact it is easier to say who is not a mistress
than to say with any degree of certainty who is: the classical approach neti neti is
best. The point on which all lexicographers are agreed is that a wife is not, nor
can ever be the mistress of her own husband. She may be the mistress of his
household, boss over his business, even rule over his heart, but if it is a mistress
she wants to be, it has to be to a man other than her husband. She must be his
‘exclusive keep’ and wield influence over him.
Cleveland Amory in Who Killed Society? has this dialogue: ‘Do you mean to
say that the Union Club has come to a day when a man can bring his mistress to
a club?’ asked an irate member. The doorman knowing the great club tradition
replied, ‘Sir, you may if the lady is the wife of any of the members.’ All
dictionaries confirm the common usage of the word that a mistress is ‘a woman
illicitly occupying the place of a wife’. One of Playboy magazine’s deft
definitions sums it up: ‘The difference between a wife and a mistress is night and
day.’
Having eliminated the wife, we now proceed to examine the status of other
women in their relationships to men. At the bottom of the list is the streetwalker.
Seth Sonamal Hirachand Motiwala, having done an honest day’s work in his
shop, is on his way home in the twilight hour. He is propositioned by a pimp
(bharooah) or accosted directly by an overdressed lady. He takes a quick look
around, assures himself that he is not recognized by anyone, makes a deal and
goes to some dingy room and has what is described in Yankee slang as a ‘wham,
bam, thank you, ma’am’. He adjusts his dhoti, resumes his customary expression
of sanctimonious righteousness and rejoins his happy family. Can the lady
recipient of his money and his seed describe herself as his mistress? Certainly
not. A ‘quickie’ does not elevate a woman to the status of a mistress. Even if
Seth Sonamal Hirachand Motiwala’s constitution only allows him ‘quickies’,
there must be a succession of them stretched over a period of time before the
lady in question can claim to have crossed the first hurdle.
What applies to the streetwalkers applies equally to the whore with premises
of her own and the call girl at the beck and call of any patron. Seth Sonamal may
find it safer and more convenient to do honours to the same lady, but before the
lady so patronized can lay claim to the title of Motiwala’s mistress, she must
fulfil a second qualification-she must acquire a certain measure of influence over
Sethji’s mind as well as his body. Implicit in this second qualification is the
social standing of the paramour. He must be a man of substance and status in
society. Poor, nondescript Ghatiamals can, and indeed, do have affairs over
prolonged periods of time and their women may acquire stronger holds over
them than their wives, but since Ghatiamals have little impact on society, they
are not worth reckoning—nor as a consequence are their lady friends. It is only
after she has found a man who is rich or powerful, a millionaire, politician or
statesman that a woman can call herself a true mistress and throw her weight
around.
A third essential qualification is that once the woman takes up with a man
she must reserve her favours exclusively for him—or at least appear to be doing
so. Thus courtesans, dancing girls and other borderline professionals who serve
anyone who pays them are no better than comfort girls attached to the Japanese
regiments; they cannot be counted as mistresses. In Indian parlance she must be
the exclusive ‘keep’ of her man.
Having stated the three—or is it four—essentials that go into the making of a
mistress, let us now examine some well-known affairs of the mighty of our
times. President Roosevelt took a fancy to a society lady and summoned her to
the White House. There, without any ceremony, he conducted her to his
bedroom, ordered her to strip and leapt on her from his wheelchair (he was a
cripple). ‘One did not say no to the President of the United States,’ explained the
lady in her memoirs. Mistress? No. Though bedded by the world’s most
powerful (politically speaking) man, she wielded no influence over him.
The same applies to the succession of women, including the eminently
beddable Marilyn Monroe, who slept with President Kennedy. And the same
disqualification to the one-shot affair of President Nixon. Likewise Lloyd
George. Though he sired many bastards, he is not known to have been
influenced by their mothers. President Giscard d’Estaing, following the time-
honoured tradition of heads of state of France, is reported to have had a liaison
with a lady, but it is not known whether or not she in any way guided him and
through him the destinies of her great nation.
The institution of the mistress is a universal phenomenon. As one would
expect, she is more in evidence in Christian societies where she provides the
escape valve to an imposed monogamy than in the Orient where the harem and
recognized concubinage provided many an assortment of sexual spice. In India,
where love was never regarded as a prerequisite of marriage, it was rare to find
men of consequence who did not have mistresses. There is much truth in the
statement that where there is marriage without love, there has to be love without
marriage.
Our ancient Hindu, Buddhist and Jain aristocracy which looked upon
marriage as a kind of treaty between families—to end hostilities, to acquire
additional estate or prestige—also sanctioned the keeping of concubines and
patronage of courtesans. Some of these ladies became exclusive ‘keeps’ of their
patrons and influenced their decisions.
Pali and Sanskrit have innumerable references to them. In a Sanskrit novel,
written in the seventh century CE, a mother describes how she had brought up
her daughter, controlling her diet, teaching her astronomy to make her a suitable
companion to the potentates of society. But the girl disgraced her calling by
falling in love with a young Brahmin who had neither money nor power.
Our epics concede an important status to the veshya. On the eve of the battle
of Kurukshetra Yudhishtra is believed to have sent a message of good wishes to
the ladies of pleasure: ‘My dear friend, ask after the welfare of the fair-decked,
fair-clad, scented, pleasure-loving, pleasure-fraught women of the houses of
joy.’ But these ladies were apparently common whores and could no more claim
the status of mistresses than the women who accompanied the army equipped by
King Dasharatha for Rama. The Mahabharata also has harsh words for the
veshya. On the other hand, the famous Ambapali who entertained the Buddha,
though she charged a sizeable fortune for a night, does qualify for the rank of a
mistress because the Blessed One conceded: ‘This woman moves in worldly
circles and is the favourite of kings and princes,’ and undoubtedly influenced
their judgements.
Muslim conquest and the imposition of Muslim mores drove the Hindu
courtesan out of her refined boudoir into the common brothel. Thereafter, the
harem became a status symbol—the better stocked, the higher the prestige of the
stocker. Any woman that took the fancy of the prince was added to the seraglio
as a begum or a rani or, failing that, a concubine. It needed a lot of wiles for one
so readily available to gain ascendency as a mistress. Some, however, managed
to do so. There was the profligate Jahandar Shah who was so enamoured of a
grocer’s daughter that he raised many of her relatives to positions of power and
even exposed himself naked in a baoli with his mistress in the belief that she
would thereby become pregnant. Maharaja Ranjit Singh was said to be greatly
influenced by his Muslim ‘wife’, Bibi Mohran, and had coins struck with her
emblem. None of his other wives had much influence over him and it was
common knowledge that some of his many Sikh ranis, including Maharani
Jindan acclaimed by latter-day Punjabi historians, cuckolded him. The Maharaja
had seven strapping sons of whom only the firstborn, Kharak Singh, was
accepted as legitimate.
With the coming of the British and their propaganda in favour of monogamy,
the mistresses really came into their own. While the wife was put on the shelf of
respectability and the common whore reduced to a purely functional role as a
gratifier of sexual desire, the mistress became both a companion and a bedmate.
She continues to retain her status after Independence. Many of our top-notch
statesmen of the establishment and the opposition, topi wallahs, industrialists,
ambassadors, senior civil servants and executives are known to keep mistresses.
Most of them are provided with jobs, accommodation and other perks such as
air-conditioned travel and five-star hotels at government or company expense.
Although it is permissible, indeed in some circles obligatory, to malign
mistresses behind their backs, the worldly wise who are in the vast majority will
curry favour with them, entertain them in their homes, load them with presents
and compliments—none of which they will do for the wives of the people
concerned.
Men can be very bitchy about their mistresses. The classic in masculine
bitchiness is the repartee between Gladstone and Disraeli—prime ministers of
England in succession. Gladstone lashed out: ‘Mr Disraeli, you will probably die
by the hangman’s noose or a vile disease.’ The nimble-witted Jew retorted: ‘Sir,
that depends upon whether I embrace your principles or your mistress.’
The problem with a mistress is the same as with the wife. They both age,
become stale and less appealing. Power being the ultimate aphrodisiac
(Kissinger), men will retain their potency till deprivation of power castrates them
of desire. While on the pedestal they continue to look for new pastures. ‘Next to
the pleasure of taking a new mistress is that of being rid of an old one,’ wrote
William Wycherley in The Country Wife. The old mistress has to be provided
for, or married off to an indigent relative or retainer. If she is literate, she may
make some money writing her memoirs. A man with foresight and desire for
posthumous respectability can provide against this hazard by inserting a clause
in his last will and testament to the effect that if his mistress writes anything
about him, the money bequeathed to her should be passed to the wife. Despite all
the fun she has, nothing riles a mistress more than the wife.
It would give Shakespeare considerable solace to discover that he would not
have to go very far to find his mistress today. She is roaming everywhere, in
every country and every city of our civilized world.
(1976)
 TO KISS OR NOT TO KISS

‘By all means!’ says the Khosla Commission. ‘What you do in private you can
project on the screen provided you make the performance a work of art.’ Many
kissophiles have lined up behind Khosla. I. S. Johar leads the camp with a film
devoted entirely to the history and development of the art of kissing from the
Vedic period (everything in Hindu India begins with the Vedas) down to the
present times. All power to Johar’s lips! The kissophobes (i.e. those against
public demonstration thereof) appear to be in the majority. ‘It is against Hindu
tradition,’ they say, notwithstanding eloquent testimony to the contrary at
Konark, Khajuraho and innumerable other temples and caves. They echo
Jonathan Swift’s sentiments: ‘Lord! I wonder what fool it was that first invented
kissing.’ But having been invented, there is little excuse to propagate it from the
screen, they say. There is substance in this argument. Our film stars are anyhow
given to hamming and overacting. If you grant them the liberty to kiss instead of
gently rubbing noses or softly joining lips—‘a rose-red dot upon the letter i in
loving’ (Edmond Rostand)—our screen kiss may recall Shakespeare’s lines in
The Taming of the Shrew.
This done, he took the bride about the neck
And kiss’d her lips with such a clamorous smack
That at the parting, all the church did echo

Those who know the reaction of Indian audiences will agree that our cinema
halls will not only echo to the ‘clamorous smack’ of parting lips but also to
prolonged derisive smacks, catcalls and whistles. Each kiss on the screen will
have to be followed by a ten-minute interval.
There are other hazards. What if the hero or heroine suffers from halitosis or
has liberally partaken of garlic or onion before the shooting? The scripted
dialogue ‘I love you’ (how limited we are in expressions of affection!) may
suddenly change into a monosyllabic ‘ugh’! This may open new vistas to
advertisers of breath fresheners and toothpastes—and perhaps the medical
profession. Kissing, we are told, can be a serious health hazard as it transfers
billions of death-dealing microbes from one amorous mouth to another. But
kissing need not necessarily be labial. Walter Savage Landor recommended a
pleasanter alternative. ‘It is delightful to kiss the eyelashes of the beloved—is it
not? But never so delightful as when fresh tears are on them.’ It is obvious that
Landor never kissed an Indian starlet with kohl or mascara in her eyes.
Otherwise he might have taken a darker view on the subject. Well, if you can’t
kiss on the nose (halitosis) or lips (health), what are the alternatives? Ears? No. It
might produce a giggle, even a shiver down the spine. Elsewhere, it may partake
of what that naughty and banned-for-obscenity magazine Playboy describes as
‘an application for a better position’. Thus, notwithstanding the erotica in our
places of worship, we say ‘No’.
Let the kissophiles and the kissophobes get together and settle the argument
—with a kiss. All said and done ‘a kiss is a method, cunningly devised, for the
mutual prevention of speech at a time when words are superfluous’. (Don
Carlson)
On which side am I? I’ll tell you through my favourite anecdote on the
subject. A hero of World War I was approached by a young girl and asked: ‘Did
you kill a German?’ The hero replied in the affirmative. ‘With which hand did
you do it?’ demanded the girl. ‘With this right hand.’ The girl took the hand and
kissed it. An officer who was watching the proceedings exploded: ‘Heavens,
man, why didn’t you tell her that you bit him to death?’
(1969)
 HOO-HA ON WHORING

I once knew a girl, the daughter of a rich and illustrious father. She had an
English nanny and tutors who taught her at home. She never went to school or
college, nor therefore came by a piece of paper to certify that she was educated.
At sixteen she was married to a young man in one of the imperial services. By
the time she was twenty-two, she was the mother of three children. She was as
happy as she could be because she aspired for nothing more than a husband,
children and a home.
Then her world came crashing down. Her father’s business collapsed and,
rather than face the disgrace of bankruptcy, he took his own life. A few months
later, her husband was charged with corruption, dismissed from service and
ended up in gaol. Thus, within one year, this mother of three children was left
fatherless (her mother had been dead many years), husbandless, homeless and
paisaless.
She struggled hard. Since she had no degree, she could not get a job. She
took on private tuitions and did odd jobs but was unable to pay the rent of her
apartment, feed, clothe and educate her children. Men were willing to, and did,
befriend her, but no one was eager to take on a mother of three children on a
permanent basis. With some bitterness she said, ‘They would take me out, spend
lavishly on me, give me expensive presents which were of no use to me. But as
soon as I suggested that instead of flowers, saris and ornaments they give me
money to pay my children’s school fees and doctor’s bills, their attitude
changed. They became discourteous, used me roughly and treated me as a chattel
they could pass to their friends. To them I was a common whore. Technically, I
suppose I am. So are a hundred thousand other so-called respectable women:
spinsters, married, widowed, divorced, whose chief asset in the eyes of their
lovers, husbands and benefactors is their body.’
I relate this true story to illustrate how thin the borderline is between what is
acceptable or condoned by society and what is condemned as prostitution. As
George Bernard Shaw remarked in Mrs Warren’s Profession: The only way for
a woman to provide for herself decently is for her to be good to some man that
can afford to be good to her.’
This brings me to the deliberations of the 25th Abolitionist Conference
which was so exercised over the prevalence of prostitution. I was surprised to
note that so many delegates, chiefly our own countrymen, continued to adopt the
same sanctimonious tone towards their ‘fallen sisters’ as did their grandparents.
And so few had any acquaintance with the research and experience of
prostitution in other countries. The problem is vastly exaggerated. In countries
like ours it should not be given high priority because there are innumerable
others like food, housing, education and employment that must take precedence.
We should not encourage our law-enforcing agencies to dissipate their energies
raiding brothels and arresting women soliciting in the streets when they are as
yet unable to cope with violence, arson, burglary, theft, cheating, adulteration of
food, black marketing, etc.
The Conference agreed that prostitution cannot be abolished by simply
passing laws. The delegates did not have the courage to go further and say that,
in countries where the sexes continue to be segregated as strictly as they are in
India, prostitution provides the safety valve for frustrated youth. If the ban were
ever to be enforced effectively, crimes of sex would multiply—so would the
incidence of violence to person and property. And where did our Attorney
General, Mr Niren De, acquire the notion that it is only poverty that drives
women to prostitution? He would do well to read The Psychology of a Prostitute
and Polly Adler’s A House is Not a Home and learn that innumerable women
actually prefer living by prostitution to the drudgery of domestic life or working
in offices.
The experience of post-war France should convince everyone of the danger
of outlawing prostitution. As soon as licensed brothels were closed, their inmates
took to the streets. In brothels they were subjected to regular medical
examinations; on their own, they neglected doing so. Venereal disease went up
by astronomical proportions. As Harry Golden wrote in For 2 ¢ Plain: ‘The
puritan strain in our culture hounded the professional out of the brothel and
forced her to move into the apartment next door, where she quickly became the
best tenant.’ I suspect that many people who wax eloquent against prostitutes do
so because it gives them the opportunity to indulge in talk about sex and yet not
mar their holier-than-thou image. If they really mean to abolish prostitution, let
them lend an ear to the advice of Alva Myrdal, one-time Swedish ambassador to
India. When asked by the dowagers of the All India Women’s Conference how
the Scandinavian countries had got the better of this problem, she replied with a
straight face: ‘Ladies, the only way to abolish prostitution is for the amateur to
drive out the professional.’
Permissive sex does not breed prostitution, it reduces its incidence.
(1972)
 THE KAMASUTRA GAME

Did Vatsyayana know what he was talking about when he classified women into
four distinct, easily identifiable categories? Does the modern woman explode his
thesis?
Sage Vatsyayana, author of Kamasutra, the Hindu treatise on love, classified
women into four categories according to their physical characteristics and
desires and emotional responses. He placed them in the following order of merit.
Padmini, Chitrini, Shankhini and Hastini. The classification can be better
comprehended if we reverse the order and start at the bottom.
The Hastini, named after the elephant, is pachydermatous in her proportions:
massive, with a large, pumpkin-like bosom, enormous hips and buttocks,
expansive thighs and hirsute around private aspects of her anatomy. She has a
gargantuan appetite for food, strong liquor and sex. Her body exudes an odour
reminiscent of a mahout’s wife—if you have been lucky enough to have known
one. In the crisis of her excitement she is said to trumpet like a mast (rogue)
elephant.
The Shankhini partakes of the nature of the conch shell, she is hard, hollow
and sexually as agitated as the Bay of Bengal during a typhoon. In the frenzy of
excitement she is known to dig her nails into the flesh of her paramour and
scream obscenities like a harlot.
The Chitrini is the arty type: somewhat smaller of bosom and behind than
her more amply endowed sisters of the two categories mentioned above. Her
appetite for food and sex is correspondingly smaller. She loves music and
painting. She likes to put jasmine chaplets in her hair, wear jewellery and fine
clothes. She gets more enjoyment from being embraced and kissed than the act
of sex.
The fourth category partakes of the lotus flower and is therefore named after
it as Padmini. She is petite, demure, with a water lily blush on her damask
cheeks. Her eyes are like those of a gazelle and she is therefore also described as
mrignayani. And like some species of gazelles, she carries an invisible pod of
musk in her navel which envelops anyone fortunate enough to envelop her in his
arms. Padmini has a small appetite, she imbibes nothing stronger than cool, clear
water—or, perhaps, a lemonade with lots of ice. As the sun sets she folds up her
petals as if they were veils and retires to bed. She never uses coarse language,
expresses no desire for sex. When taken, she submits with grace as expected of a
good Hindu woman. She makes no sounds that may be interpreted as
pleasurable. A sigh may escape her lips and with the sigh some expression of
thanksgiving to her Creator—Hai Ram!
Vatsyayana, like other great Hindu savants, was prone to reducing every
subject on which he wrote into precise categories. He enumerated the varieties of
kissing, ways of biting, scratching and sexual pastimes. Modern Hindu scholars
have enriched Vatsyayana’s enumeration by adding techniques known to the
Arabs and the people of France. They are of the considered opinion that not only
was Vatsyayana wrong in classifying women into four distinct categories but
that he also erred in ascribing specific characteristics to them. There are, for
instance, Hastinis who eat very little, are strict teetotallers and abhor sex like the
plague. And there are Padminis who guzzle steak carved from the flanks of the
holy cow and wash it down with the fiery brew called Asha—desire. The
modern generation of students of the Hindu art of love dismiss Vatsyayana as a
lot of bull. The following incidents prove how wrong the Kamasutra can be as a
guide.
Woman-spotting has long been my favourite sport. Bombay is a great city to
practise it in. And in Bombay the foyer of the Taj Mahal or the Oberoi-Sheraton
is the best place from which to tee off as on a lush eighteen-hole golf course.
According to the rules, foreigners are excluded from the game. Their women
are larger than ours and I am not as familiar as I would like to be with their
culinary tastes and bed behaviour.
I take my place on the settee facing the reception desk and watch people as
they come to register or make enquiries. They present their posteriors for
scrutiny. Although the sari is designed to make calculations go awry, with a little
practice you can strip off the unnecessary millimetres of colourful camouflage
and plant a mental label on their bare behinds. First, comes a large, twin-
pumpkin rotunda draped in shimmering chiffon with a dahlia embroidered in the
centre in gold. She is chewing paan and surveys the men in the hall to see who
will make a nice betel leaf. A Hastini without any doubt. But one must not jump
to conclusions without examining the rest of her facade with X-ray eyes. That
dahlia covering the rear cleft is somewhat distracting and instead of consulting
the Kamasutra, I recall the limerick of the young man of Australia, who painted
his behind with a dahlia, etc., etc. She strides away behind the porter carrying
her valise. No label.
The next one at the reception counter is in a saffron lungi. She is very small
with a behind like that of a schoolboy. The clerk at the desk towers above her.
She has to stand on her dainty little toes to fill in her name in the register. She
turns round. Very petite! Little red dot on her forehead. A smear of sindoor in
the parting of her hair to indicate her marital status and a black-beaded
mangalsutra to reinforce it. Where is her husband? She gives the porter a rupee
note and tells him to take her bag to her room and leave the keys at the reception.
She catches me ogling at her. A faint lily blush comes over her face. Padmini. A
hundred-paise worth of Padmini in the rupee.
My 100 per cent Padmini glides down the corridor. She reminds me of
Robert Herrick’s lines:
When as in silks my Julia goes,
methinks how gently flows the
liquefaction of her lungi.

She casts a sidelong glance at a boutique window, abruptly turns right and
disappears from view. ‘Not the Harbour Bar?’ I almost scream to myself. What
would a Padmini be doing amongst the dissolute lot who foregather in that dim,
vice-laden madhushala? She must have gone up to the Rendezvous to join her
husband, or brother, or father. I saunter down to the elevators and take one to the
rooftop restaurant. I brush aside the steward and scan the faces of the diners. No
Padminis there. Three or four likely Chitrinis and one Hastini.
I take the elevator down to the reception and saunter into the Harbour Bar.
There she is! Demurely perched on a tall stool, fixing a cigarette in a long ebony
cigarette holder. I take the stool alongside with an air of bored indifference. The
barman lights her cigarette. She rummages inside her handbag, finds her health
permit and slaps it on the bar. ‘Scotch on the rocks, make it a double.’ She pouts
her lips and sends rings of blue smoke like the emblems of the Olympic games
floating into the room. Two more jets shoot downwards from her nostrils, recoil
on her lungi and then settle back in her saffron lap. While the barman is pouring
out a large Scotch for her, she stretches her arm, draws a bowlful of pickled
onions towards her and tosses three into her dainty mouth. This is tamasik (stale)
food, wholly unsuitable diet for a Padmini.
The barman gives me a glass of lager. I steal a pearl onion from her bowl.
She ignores my presence. In two gulps Padmini disposes of the Scotch and onion
bowl. The barman pours in another double into her glass. She looks
questioningly at him. He explains, ‘That gentleman over there in the corner!
With his compliments.’
 Padmini turns her gazelle eyes towards the corner. The gentleman flashes a
gold-studded denture and waves a hand laden with sparklers. Padmini ignores
him. Without as much as a smile of thanks she returns to her Scotch on the
rocks. The second large Scotch goes down the lovely hatch; a second bowl of
raw onions is emptied. When the barman pours the third burra Scotch, Padmini
merely asks, ‘The same chap, no? Who is he?’
‘Yes, madam,’ replies the barman in a tone heavy with reverence. ‘He,
richest, richest man of Bombay.’ I don’t catch his name, but it sounds something
like ‘Seth Hiralal Sonamal Magnolia’. Padmini is unimpressed. She simply
drains the Scotch and holds out the tumbler to the barman. ‘Can I have another
large one? Put it on the fat bastard’s bill.’
My faith in Vatsyayana’s classification is rudely shaken. The image of the
chastity and incorruptibility of Hindu womanhood is on the verge of being
shattered. Surely any woman who accepts drinks from a total stranger can have
little compunction in expressing her gratitude in the conventional way! But, as I
said before, don’t jump to conclusions. Padmini has had her regular quota of
four large whiskies and two bowls of raw onions. She asks for her health permit
and the bill for the first drink. ‘Taken care of, madam,’ replies the barman.
Padmini puts her cigarette holder in her bag and slides off the stool. Seth Hiralal
Sonamal Magnolia threads his way through tables of drinkers and comes to stake
his claim. ‘Good evening, madam!’ he says, with an ingratiating smile. ‘Would
you care to join me for dinner? I am Seth Hiralal Sonamal Magnolia.’
The moment of truth has arrived. If she says yes, it would be clear proof that
though she looks like a virgin Padmini, she is in fact a Hastini slut. If she
politely rebuffs the richest man of Bombay she redeems her status as a Padmini.
Padmini gives Seth Magnolia an icy stare. And in words loud enough to be
heard by everyone in the Harbour Bar hisses, ‘Seth Hiralal Sonamal, you know
what? I’d like to be your widow. Now buzz off!’
(1974)
ME, THE JOKERMAN
 OVERHEARD IN PAKISTAN

President General Zia-ul-Haq desired to issue a postage stamp to commemorate

his two-year rule in Pakistan. The best artist of the country was ordered to draw
his portrait: Sam Browne belt, medals, epaulettes, the works. Millions of stamps
were printed and released with great fanfare. After a couple of weeks the
President wanted to know how the stamp was doing. He sent for the Post Master
General and asked him about the sales.
‘General President, sir, I deeply regret to inform you that the stamp is not
selling well.’
‘Why?’
‘Because they do not stick.’
‘Why? Have the gum supplier arrested immediately. I will have him flogged
publicly.’
‘No sir, there is nothing wrong with the gum,’ protested the Post Master
General, ‘the stamps won’t stick because the people put their spit on the wrong
side.’
(1980)
 NOT HEARD IN PAKISTAN

General Zia-ul-Haq while on a visit to India decides to ring up the late Mr

Bhutto to find out how he is getting on wherever he is. He puts in a long distance
call. Indian telephones, which have great difficulty in putting through local calls,
have no trouble whatsoever connecting him with the nether regions. So General
Zia has a brief three-minute chat with Bhutto who assures him he is better
looked after than he was in Rawalpindi gaol. General Zia’s telephone bill for this
long distance call is Rs 1000. This is understandable as hell is a long way away
from India.
General Zia returns to Pakistan and decides to have another pow-wow with
the late Mr Bhutto. Pakistan telephones have learnt the ropes from their Indian
counterparts and immediately get Mr Bhutto on the line. General Zia talks to
Bhutto for over an hour. He then asks for the bill. It is only Rs 15. The General
is most impressed but asks his telephone department to explain how a three-
minute call from India cost him a thousand rupees while an hour’s chat from
Pakistan cost only fifteen. Promptly comes the reply: ‘Sir, in Pakistan a call to
hell is charged at local rates.’
(1979)
 PAKISTANI HUMOUR

I did not find any special Pakistani flavour in the jokes about their leaders. One
often related about General Ayub Khan I had heard about Indira Gandhi. The
General arrives in Allah’s court where there is a large assemblage of the world’s
great personages. The Almighty honours them by getting up from his throne to
shake hands with them. But when General Ayub Khan steps forward to greet his
Maker, Allah remains firmly seated on his throne. Later, the angels gather round
Allah and ask him about his strange behaviour in discriminating against the
distinguished Pakistani. Allah replies: ‘With the others I felt quite safe, but I
know that if I left my throne to shake hands with Ayub Khan he would
immediately push me away and grab it.’

One which I had not heard before applies equally to the Indian situation as it
does to the Pakistani. There has been a prolonged drought, an entire crop ruined
because of the failure of the monsoon. A delegation of Pakistani ulema approach
Allah and beg for rain. The Almighty replies: ‘We have run out of clouds. If you
don’t believe us you can inspect all our godowns.’ The pious ulema, though not
distrustful of Allah, nevertheless undertake a tour of inspection. Godown after
godown but not a cloud in them. Then suddenly they come upon a black, rain-
bearing nimbus cloud. They return to Allah and inform him of their discovery.
Allah replies: ‘Oh, that one; that is reserved to cause floods in your country.’

General Zia comes in for the usual brand of humour that builds around heads of
state. It is well known that his dour image as a stern disciplinarian conceals a
man unsure of himself and prone to change his opinion. Hence his designation as
Chief Marshal Law Administrator (CMLA) is often rendered as Change My Last
Announcement. The Nizam-i-Mustafa has generated a crop of jokes largely
around hand chopping (no one has yet been deprived of his limb) and the
drinking behind drawn curtains. There is the story of a well-known bowler found
guilty of having stolen goods from a store. His lawyer, pleading for a lighter
sentence, appeals to the judge: ‘While passing sentence, your honour may take
into account that the accused person is the best left-arm spin bowler of Pakistan.’

Drinking has been drastically cut down. But it is well known that in multi-
storeyed hotels served by lifts the management put their elevators out of
commission after dark. The police seldom have the enthusiasm to climb up
fourteen or more floors. So liquor flows with the abandon of the Indus. The top
floors of hotels are described as the last bastions of resistance against the Nizam-
i-Mustafa.
(1979)
 HOT TALES FROM PAKISTAN

Recent visitors to our militant neighbour have brought back a crop of anecdotes
bearing on its state of affairs. The first one compares it to its neighbour on the
other side, Iran.
Ayatollah Khomeini called on Allah and complained: ‘Just and merciful
Allah! I have introduced the Islamic code in my country but there has been no
improvement in the condition of the people. When will things change for the
better?’
Allah thought over the problem for a minute and replied, ‘Not in your
lifetime.’
Khomeini burst into tears and departed.
The next caller was General Zia-ul-Haq. ‘Almighty God, I have also
introduced the Islamic code in my country and there has been no improvement in
the condition of the people. When will things get better in Pakistan?’
Allah pondered over the problem for a minute and burst into tears and
replied, ‘Not in my lifetime.’

A peasant travelling by bus from Rawalpindi to Islamabad addressed the man

sitting next to him, ‘Sir, are you in the army?’
‘No.’
‘Is your brother or any other relation in the army?’
‘No.’
‘Is there anyone from your village in the army?’
‘No.’
‘In that case, you son-of-a-bitch, why the hell have you put your foot on
mine?’

Three civilians were hauled up before a military court for assaulting an army
captain. When asked to explain, the first accused replied, ‘Sir, this man winked
at my sister and I felt I had to beat him up to redeem her honour.’
The second accused replied: ‘Sir, every girl in the village is like a sister to
me. So when this fellow winked at my friend’s sister I joined him in redeeming
the girl’s honour.’
The third accused who was not from the village replied: ‘Sir, when I saw
these two men assault the man in uniform, I thought that military rule was over
in Pakistan, so I said to myself, why not I also do something for my country?’
(1980)
 ‘TAIL’ PIECE

It is a great pity our legislators lose their tempers so readily. Much more can be
achieved by ready wit than by angry demonstrations, yelling slogans, abuse,
fisticuffs or walkouts. I recall an encounter between the late Feroze Gandhi and a
senior cabinet minister given to making acid remarks about everyone and with
an exaggerated notion of his own ability. This minister was said to have
described Feroze Gandhi as the ‘Prime Minister’s lapdog’. Then he had the
misfortune of getting involved in a financial scandal. Feroze Gandhi was
scheduled to open the debate in the Lok Sabha. He is said to have walked up to
the minister and within the hearing of the Treasury benches said: ‘Mr So-and-so,
I hear you have been describing me as a lapdog. You no doubt consider yourself
a pillar of the state. Today I will do to you what a dog usually does to a pillar.’
(1969)
 BABU EXPLOSION

Two tigers who had escaped from the Delhi Zoo reappeared in their respective
cages after six months of freedom. One was very fat, the other reduced to skin
and bone. They began to discuss their experiences. Said the thin one: ‘I was very
unlucky. I found my way to Rajasthan. There was famine. I could not get enough
to eat. Even the cattle I killed had no flesh on them. I would have died of hunger,
so I decided to surrender myself to the police. Although I am caged here, at least
I get my bellyful of meat every day.’
He asked his fat companion why he had come back to the zoo. ‘At first I had
very good luck,’ replied the fat tiger, licking his chops in happy reminiscence. ‘I
got into the secretariat buildings and hid myself under a staircase. Every
evening, as the millions of babus poured out of their offices, I used to catch one
and eat him up. For the first six months no one noticed anything. But yesterday I
made the mistake of eating up the fellow who serves them their relays of cups of
tea and coffee. Then they let hell loose on me. Take my word, it is safer behind
bars than being at the mercy of those bloodthirsty babus.’

You’ve probably heard this one before. Maybe you have your own favourite
story to illustrate the explosive birth rate in our bureaucracy. If you wish to see
concrete proof, take Delhi’s telephone directory of 1929 and that of 1969 and
compare the number of officials in each. Thirty years ago a handful of civil
servants with a few underlings administered this country, including areas which
are now Pakistan. Today a smaller area requires almost four times as many
officials to look after it. Count the number of secretaries of various hues-
secretary general, special secretaries, additional secretaries, joint secretaries,
deputy secretaries and undersecretaries—add the number of officers on special
duty, the hordes of superintendents, section officers, clerks, stenographers,
typists and peons. The figure runs into the thousands, their salaries into
astronomical figures. What is incredible is that we know that more hands mean
more red tape and less efficiency. But we seem to be unable to check the
proliferation of government departments and civil servants. What Robert
Malthus said about population increasing in geometrical progression, Cyril
Northcote Parkinson said about bureaucracy. But whereas the Malthusian
multiplication can be curbed by the pill and the loop, no one has yet devised
anything to prevent the fecund bureaucrat from generating larger and larger
litters of babus, big and small.
(1969)
 USHA-LOVES-RAKESH-USHA

I am an ardent collector of graffiti—scribbling on walls. In the West this art is

usually practised in public lavatories. In India one seldom sees anything besides
names and dates defacing historic monuments or the attaching of whiskers,
beards or pudenda to pictures of women on hoardings. It is different in the hills
where the climate is somewhat Western. Himachal has many rain shelters.
Visitors trapped by the monsoon find the white walls of shelters and the easy
supply of burnt wood left by departed picnickers very tempting. One such shelter
at Kasauli is like the town’s wall newspaper. From its graffiti I learn who loves
who, of the lustiest maiden in town—frequently illustrated by line drawings of
the wench in action. Most of the writing is in Hindi verse. But students of
Lawrence Public School across the hill at Sanawar make their contributions in
English. The walls have to be frequently whitewashed. Last time I went to the
Kasauli rain shelter, I saw a notice put up by the Cantonment Board: ‘Do not
write on the walls’. A few days later a line appeared underneath—I give the
credit to a Lawrencian—‘Do you want it to be typed?’
(1969)
 ‘GOOD SHOT, SIR...’

Cricket is very much in the air. Most of us are now convinced we are no better at
this game than at others. We live on memories of our great masters: Ranji,
Duleep, Nayudu, Pataudi, Nissar, Wazir Ali. Those were names to be reckoned
with. But I have this true anecdote from a test match between England and
Australia at Lord’s. Duleepsinhji had gone in to bat for England. An English
spectator turned to his Australian neighbour and asked him whether they had any
princes in their team. The crestfallen Australian shook his head. ‘We have,’ said
the Englishman very proudly, ‘that fellow there is a maharaja—palaces,
elephants, harems—and a damn good bat too.’ Duleepsinhji obliged by hitting a
six. ‘Good shot, sir,’ bellowed the Englishman. ‘See what I mean? One of the
greatest batsmen of our time.’ On the next ball Duleepsinhji’s middle stump flew
into the air. The same Englishman screamed, ‘He’s out. The bloody nigger!’
(1969)
 TO DIE, EXPIRE, PERCHANCE TO...

I scan the ‘death’ columns of most daily papers. ‘But for the grace of God’, I say
to myself, ‘I would be seeing my own name in print.’ Could any reader enlighten
me why Punjabis ‘leave for their heavenly abode’, Bengalis ‘pass on’, and all
other Indians simply ‘expire’?
(1969)
 ME, THE JOKERMAN

I have a large collection of jokes: some I make myself, others I pick up from
friends or books and remould to suit me. Several slim volumes of my jokes
liberally contributed to by readers have been published and sell better than any
of my other books. I get the royalties, my contributing readers only get the
pleasure of seeing their names in print. The joke is on them. Unfortunately, most
of my best jokes are unprintable because they have to do with sex aberrations.
What is a joke if it hasn’t something to do with sex? Book censors don’t see it
that way.
My second best jokes are about my own community, the Sardarjis. At one
time they had the confidence to laugh at themselves. No longer so. They have
become as touchy as Tamil Brahmins who happily laugh at jokes about
Marwaris, Chettiars, Bengalis, Parsis and Mian-bhais; but you tell one joke
about them and they are up in arms.
I will tell you a few of my favourite jokes that are printable. If you have
heard one before, skip it and get on to the next one. The first is one about
Sardarjis of the Ramgarhias caste, the same as Giani Zail Singh, whose main
profession is carpentry.
Two Sikh carpenters settled in London were reminiscing about their good
fortune since they immigrated to England. Said one, ‘The Guru has been good to
us. In India we were poor carpenters. And, see, here we have our own house, our
own car, TV set, Frigidaire, washing machine. We’ve got everything we could
ask for.’
‘True,’ replied the other, ‘we have all we wanted except one thing. We’ve
never had a white woman.’
‘That can be easily done,’ said the other. ‘I’ll get one from the streets and ask
her to join us.’
So one went out and soon brought a white girl home. The only trouble was
that the Sardarji spoke no English and the girl spoke no Punjabi. After a long
moment of silence, the girl picked up a plate from the table and with her lipstick
drew the picture of a bottle. ‘She wants whisky,’ said the Sardarji.
So they got a bottle of whisky. After another spell of silence, the girl wiped
out the picture of the bottle and drew one of a bird.
‘She wants to eat chicken,’ deciphered the Sardar.
So they brought a tandoori chicken and the three ate it.
After yet another period of silence, the girl drew a picture of a bed on the
plate.
‘How in hell did she get to know we were carpenters?’ shouted both the
Sardarjis.
Saved on the verge of being a dirty joke. This one is somewhat political and
also clean. It was told during the time Indira Gandhi imposed Emergency on the
country. Bapu Gandhi in heaven was very perturbed that after all he had done for
the country no one really bothered about him anymore. So he sent for Nehru,
who was also in heaven, and asked him, ‘Nehru, what did you do all the years
you were prime minister to perpetuate my memory?’ Nehru replied, ‘Bapu, I did
all I could. I had a Samadhi made at the spot where we cremated you. Twice in
the year, your birthday and the day of your assassination, we collected in the
thousands to sing ‘Ram Dhun’ and pay homage to you.’
Bapu was satisfied with Nehru’s answer. He sent for Lal Bahadur Shastri and
put to him the same question, ‘Bapu, I had a very short time as prime minister,’
replied Shastri. ‘In those two and a half years I had all your works and speeches
translated into all the Indian languages and put in village libraries.’
Gandhi was satisfied. ‘Who became PM after you?’ he asked.
‘It is Nehru’s chhokri who is ruling the country now,’ he replied.
So Bapu sent for Indira Gandhi and put the same question to her. Indira
replied, ‘I’ve done more to perpetuate your memory than either my father or
Shastri. I’ve made the entire populace like you and left them with nothing more
than a loincloth of the type you wear and a stick of the sort you carry.’
Bapu was very alarmed. ‘You mustn’t do this. The people will rise in
rebellion against you,’ he warned.
‘I’ve taken care of that,’ replied Indira. ‘I let them carry the langoti in their
hands and have stuck the stick up their bottoms.’

This last one is again a Sardarji joke. But restricted to one, our ex-president
Giani Zail Singh. When Indira Gandhi had him elected president she began to
doubt the wisdom of her choice. She called a cabinet meeting and told them,
‘Giani speaks no English. How will he communicate with other heads of states?’
They pondered over the problem and decided that Gianiji should be given an
English tutor. ‘But only a head of state should teach the head of our state,’ was
the cabinet consensus.
So a global tender was floated for a head of state to teach Gianiji English.
Only Ronald Reagan applied. ‘You send him over to the White House for six
months and I’ll have him speaking English like a Yank,’ he wrote.
So Gianiji was flown to Washington and was a house guest of the Reagans.
After six months Indira sent for Rajiv and said, ‘Our president has been missing
for a long time. You go to Washington, find out how much English he has learnt
and bring him back.’
So Rajiv flew to Washington and called on the Reagans at the White House.
‘Mr President, I’ve come to fetch Gianiji and find out how much English you
have taught him.’
Reagan replied in rustic Punjabi, ‘Iss munday nun angrezee kadee nahin
aunee—this lad will never pick up English.’
(Undated)
 SARDARJI HAS THE LAST LAUGH

‘Have you heard this one about Milkha Singh? Well, there was this Flying Sikh-’
‘Are you relaxing? No, I am Milkha Singh.’ Heard it half a century ago.
Milkha isn’t fifty so you couldn’t have heard it half a century ago. In any
case, he wasn’t relaxing. He was sleeping soundly in his village home when a
thief broke in. He happened to drop something. The crash woke up Milkha. The
thief ran. Milkha sprinted at Olympic speed after him. On the way he ran into
another Sardarji.
‘Milkha Singhji, where you heading for at this pace at this hour of the
night?’
‘Chasing a thief.’
‘A thief? Where is he?’
‘Oh, I left him far behind.’
Bet you hadn’t heard that before! Ha ha ha!
(1972)
 MISSISSIPPI IN TAMIL NADU

A young reader sends a south Indian version of how to spell Mississippi. First
comes yumma. Then I come. Then my sissi. Then I p-p. Then I come again.
(1971)
 GALBRAITH IS GREAT FUN

John Kenneth Galbraith’s Ambassador’s Journal about his two and a half years
as the US ambassador in Delhi has been published. Galbraith is no common man
—he is as towering a personality as he is in person—six foot six inches, vain as
a giraffe (‘Modesty is a vastly overrated virtue,’ says he) and with little respect
for anyone’s intelligence save his own. It is no wonder he did not get on with
men as self-opinionated as himself. Galbraith’s and Krishna Menon’s views
about each other would take up quite a few columns in the dictionary of insults.
Although he thinks of few men as his mental equals, Galbraith has always been
impressed by power. To him Kennedy was like a young god; Nehru had
irresistible charisma (in Delhi Galbraith was ‘a pandit who walked with Pandits
yet kept his uncommon touch’—Gore Vidal); he saw eye to eye with the equally
statured De Gaulle ‘that the world belongs to the tall men’.
Galbraith is great fun. He is a very gifted raconteur. He once told me of the
experiences of an American couple who came with an introduction to ‘Mr Singh
of Delhi’. Their friends had assured them, ‘you cannot miss him. He wears a
turban and a beard and drives a cab.’ The poor couple had the misfortune of
running into a Mr Singh who answered to the description and proceeded to take
the Americans for a ride. (The Americans’ naiveté has to be experienced to be
believed!) Mr Singh presented them with a bill of Rs 400 for two days of
sightseeing. By then they had noticed that most of the city’s cabs were plied by
men with turbans and beards—and almost all of them answered to the name
Singh.
Galbraith’s favourite after-dinner anecdote was about his visit to Bengal. A
very enthusiastic officer from the department of agriculture was appointed to
escort him on a tour of the countryside. The young man went on endlessly about
plans, projects, hydro-electric power, afforestation, compost pits, etc. In order to
show some interest in his surroundings Galbraith pointed to a clump of
eucalyptus trees and asked, ‘Are they indigenous?’
‘Oh yes, sir, they are very indigenous,’ replied the agriculture expert. ‘We
got them from Australia.’
(1969)
 HEARD IN PAKISTAN

Yahya Khan, trying to persuade a yokel to volunteer for the Pakistani Air Force,
took him inside the aircraft and explained: ‘You press this yellow button and the
engine will start. Then you press the red one and the plane will fly. It is all very
simple.’
‘But how do I bring it down?’ asked the yokel, puzzled.
‘You don’t have to bother about that,’ explained Yahya Khan. ‘Leave that to
the Indian Air Force.’
(1971)
 HA HA HONORIS CAUSA

The University of Manila has decided to introduce a three-year course of study

in humour. This is no laughing matter. Humour is serious business. It can have a
curriculum as varied as any: wit, repartee, calculated insults, epigrams, puns,
riddles, limericks, clerihews, shaggy dog stories, bawdy jokes, sick jokes, clean
jokes, mother-in-law jokes, racial humour and what have you. As soon as other
universities begin to award degrees in humour, you will see that no one will
thereafter consider humour a subject for laughter.
I hope very much our schools and colleges will introduce humour as a
subject of study. I know few people in the world with a poorer sense of humour
than us Indians. We take ourselves too seriously. Many foreigners have
remarked that Indians seldom smile. We are touchy about many things and are
quick to take offence. Consequently, our aggressive instincts remain bottled up
inside us till they explode in anger and violence.
First thing to do is clear our minds about what is humorous. The basis of
humour is the puncturing of another person’s ego, causing him or her some kind
of embarrassment which makes him or her lose his or her dignity. All laughter is
at some other person’s expense. A man slips on a banana skin and even though
his buttocks may be seriously bruised, you burst out laughing. A much-respected
citizen is unable to contain the wind in his stomach and farts in public. He
cannot thereafter face his fellow citizens and his respect is lost forever. You who
enjoy farting in private revel in the other fellow’s discomfiture, tell everyone
about it and laugh and laugh till tears roll down your cheeks. Malice is the
essence of jest. Jest is an important safety valve to preserve one’s sanity against
the pressure of accumulated malice.
Psychologists also believe that laughter is necessary to keep the balance of
mind. A hearty laugh releases aggressive impulses because it is always at
someone else’s expense. You will notice that people who do not laugh are often
constipated with hate. Psychologists also tell us that the ability to see the
ridiculous develops very early in a human child. Watch a baby gurgle and
chortle, become helpless with laughter when its parents make asinine noises or
play peekaboo with it. By the age of seven you can detect whether or not your
child will develop into a good raconteur. The ability to tell a joke is inborn. One
child of seven will know how to tell a story with a straight face, how long a
pause to make before delivering the punchline. Another will ruin the same story
by beginning to laugh while telling it and, by forgetting the all-essential pause to
create a sense of expectancy, deliver the punchline in a hurry and so murder the
joke. Training in storytelling may improve the child a little, but not very much.
Storytellers, like mathematicians, are born not made.
It stands to reason that humour is as old as humanity itself. Long before we
learnt to write we were making fun of each other. As usual, the Greeks were the
first people to record different varieties of humour. The earliest recorded joke I
have come across is repartee between an elderly Greek woman driving her herd
of asses and a cheeky young man.
‘Good morning, mother of asses,’ greeted the youngster.
‘Good morning, my son,’ replied the woman.
We Indians have a rich heritage of humour. We have been profligate and
frittered away our storehouse of laughter. We have had our Tenali Ramans and
Birbals. What are we left with? Bawdy jokes lifted from foreign sources, jokes
about different communities (Bohris, Sardarjis, Marwaris, Parsis, etc.) which we
dare not repeat in front of the subjects of our humour and which no one dare
print for fear of invoking sections of the Penal Code for causing hatred between
the communities.
We must cultivate a sense of humour and learn to laugh at ourselves. But
have no illusions about the price you will have to pay. Laughter and success do
not go together. You have to choose between being a VIP and being a jester.
Thomas Corwin, a member of the US Congress, put it very succinctly: ‘Never
make people laugh. If you would succeed in life you must be solemn, solemn as
an ass. All the great monuments are built over solemn asses.’
We Indians may have lost our sense of humour but we still have a rich
laboratory of materials to work on. Every third Indian is a clown in his own
right: self-esteem, immodesty, sanctimoniousness, name-dropping and verbosity
make a golden treasury of the ridiculous. We could study all these aspects,
channel them into stories and then grant degrees to the more laugh-producing
dissertations. We could make a very spectacular start by awarding doctorates
even before the courses in humour are launched by conferring on our politicians
degrees of Ha Ha Honoris Causa!
The latest joke from Czechoslovakia is a dialogue between an official assigned
to gauge public opinion and a peasant. The official made his questionnaire as
simple as possible for the rustic’s mind: ‘Now, Jan, if you were asked to make
three wishes for your country, what would they be?’
‘First, I would wish the People’s Liberation Army of the People’s Republic
of Red China to occupy Czechoslovakia.’
The official refused to be put out of countenance. ‘And what would be your
second wish?’
‘My second wish would be that the People’s Liberation Army of the People’s
Republic of Red China should occupy Czechoslovakia.’
‘Okay, okay! That’s the same wish twice. What would be your third wish?’
‘My third wish would be that the People’s Liberation Army of the People’s
Republic of Red China should occupy Czechoslovakia for the third time.’
‘Now, aren’t you being a little perverse? Why would you wish your country
to be invaded and occupied three times by a foreign army?’
‘That’s very simple,’ replied Jan. ‘The People’s Liberation Army of Red
China would first have to march across and occupy the Soviet Union three times
before it could get to us. That would teach the Russians what it means to be
under foreign occupation.’
(1970)
 ENGLISH BHASHA, DOWN, DOWN

A firm which undertakes to destroy vermin has sent me its terms of contract. If
its ability to kill pests is as great as its ability to kill the English bhasha then I
can strongly commend it. Instructions are:

(1) Before start the work empted every thing.

(2) In the bed Room Cuboards to be empted.
(3) When the Job is started, nobody can stay inside after fumigation to
keep two hours in the Flat
(4) After open the Flat only clean with dry cloth.

(1970)
 LITERARY NUGGETS

Every mail brings me some gems of Indo-Anglian literature. One of them

addresses me as the ‘Respective Singhji’ and forewarns himself: ‘I must not take
your more time.’ He seeks my forbearance because ‘it is my last but one letter to
you. Only one request I want to offer you.’ The proffered request is to include
him in the list of VIPs of the Chandraseniya Kayastha Prabhus, scheduled for the
issue of 26 July. And why not? He is a very important lance naik in our army.
Then there is the entirely lovable Mr Bhatt, a banker who can ‘converse in
verse’. The rhyming pattern is very simple: There is none to sue
There is none to coo
There is none to woo
O! God. What should do?

I cannot advise Mr Bhatt on what he should do. But when he proceeds to

compose a verse on a lady named ‘Devyani’ and rhymes it with biryani, it is
time to call a halt to versification.
There is also the indefatigable Sardar Daljit Singh Narula who sends me
reams of poetry on every important event. The last one was on the election of
Ceylon’s lady prime minister: The gun, my pen
Fires a salute
To the Hon’ble Lady Number one.
Of the Salvo Ten Mrs Sirimavo Dias Bandaranaike.

But The Statesman of Calcutta has an absolute nugget, said to be a complaint

addressed to the District Traffic Superintendent: Beloved Sir—I am arrive by
passenger train at Ahmedpore Station and my belly is too much swelling with
jack-fruit. I am therefore want to privy. Just as I doing nuisance, that guard
making whistle blow for train to go off and I am running with lota in one hand
and dhoti in the next, when I fall over and expose some of my personal thing to
many female women on the platform. I am get leaved on Ahmedpore Station.
This is too much bad. If passenger go to make dung, that dam guard not wait
train five minutes for him. I am therefore pray your honour to make big fine on
that dam guard for public sake, otherwise I am making big report to papers.
(1970)
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many of the essays that appear in this volume are versions of pieces that first
appeared in Yojana, New Delhi, The Tribune, The Statesman, the Hindustan
Times, Illustrated Weekly of India, and Times of India, to name a few of the
publications that Khushwant Singh contributed to. As the majority of the pieces
were taken from typescripts in the possession of the author’s estate, it has been
difficult to accurately source the name of the publication in which the pieces first
appeared. All the essays in the book have been used with permission from the
author’s estate. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and obtain
permission to reproduce copyright material included in the book. In the event of
any inadvertent omission, the publisher should be informed and formal
acknowledgement will be included in all future editions of this book.
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Also by Khushwant Singh
 FICTION
Train to Pakistan
I Shall Not Hear the Nightingale Delhi: A Novel
The Company of Women Burial at Sea
The Sunset Club
The Portrait of a Lady: Collected Stories non-fiction
Truth, Love & a Little Malice: An Autobiography Delhi Through the Seasons
Indira Gandhi Returns A History of the Sikhs Ranjit Singh: Maharaja of the
Punjab anthologies
The Freethinker’s Prayer Book 99: Unforgettable Fiction, Non-fiction, Poetry &
Humour Portrait of a Serial Killer: Uncollected Writings translations
Land of Five Rivers
Umrao Jan Ada (with M. A. Husaini) Shikwa and Jawab-i-Shikwa Celebrating
the Best of Urdu Poetry (with Kamna Prasad)