Lust As Crust

Khushwant Singh on Women,
Sex, Love and Lust
Hay House
Rs 299; Pp 220
ISBN 9789381431009
Paperback

An anthology of sexy stories by Khushwant Singh—and all of them packed into a mere 219 pages? But if the man’s a sex maniac and can think of nothing else, why has he written so little on sex? Especially, as the blurb itself says, when he’s authored more than a hundred books and penned countless words for countless magazines?

The answer quite simply is that the Sardar in the Bulb is not as obsessed with bosoms and buttocks as he himself likes to make out. A wholly rounded human being, he does have a glad eye—but then, which full-blooded man hasn’t? After all, the good Lord chose to make our gender look ordinary, but, conversely, made almost every member of the other half worth not just one look but several, preferably of the sideways kind.

The savvy Khushwant Singh, who has more of his father’s commercial cunning than he would care to admit, spotted this universal male failing decades ago. And he has leveraged it to run the most successful business enterprise in the written word that India has known while getting on with his real interests—the history, heritage and future of his community, the Sikhs.

That magnificent obsession has been both his doom and his triumph.

Full report here Outlook

Best of Khushwant Singh back in new avatar

Khushwant Singh, the grand old man of contemporary Indo-Anglian literature has returned in a new avatar with an updated edition of his signature anthology, Not a Nice Man to Know: The Best of Khushwant Singh.

The anthology, first published 20 years ago with 30 of Singh’s selected works, has been revised to include 18 more of his essays, short stories and opinions.

The revised edition was launched by Penguin India at the Le Meridien in the capital here Saturday.

It was accompanied with a dramatized reading of his postcolonial play which features in the book – Tyger Tyger, Burning Bright – by adman and stage personality Suhel Seth.

The 96-year-old writer could not join the gathering because of ill-health.

Releasing the anthology, editor Nandini Mehta, who edited the first edition of the collection 20 years ago, said, “When I edited the first volume of the best of Khushwant Singh 20 years ago, the writer had said it was perhaps the last book on him and he would not be able to write any more.”

Full report here Hindustan Times

'Best of Khushwant Singh' returns in new avatar

Khushwant Singh, the grand old man of contemporary Indo-Anglian literature has returned in a new avatar with an updated edition of his signature anthology, Not a Nice Man to Know: The Best of Khushwant Singh.

The anthology, first published 20 years ago with 30 of Singh's selected works, has been revised to include 18 more of his essays, short stories and opinions.

The revised edition was launched by Penguin India at the Le Meridien in the capital here Saturday.


It was accompanied with a dramatized reading of his postcolonial play which features in the book - "Tyger Tyger, Burning Bright" - by adman and stage personality Suhel Seth.

The 96-year-old writer could not join the gathering because of ill-health.

Releasing the anthology, editor Nandini Mehta, who edited the first edition of the collection 20 years ago, said, "When I edited the first volume of the best of Khushwant Singh 20 years ago, the writer had said it was perhaps the last book on him and he would not be able to write any more."

Full report here IBNLive

Penguin India presents a collection of 21 books on Delhi

Ahead of the Commonwealth Games, Penguin India has put together a collection of 'must-read books'on Delhi.

The list of authors includes famous names like Khushwant Singh, William Darlymple and Nayantara Sehgal among others.

The anthologies, City Improbable, Celebrating Delhi, Finding Delhi and Trickster City, have writers portraying the city's different localities and people, the famous and the obscure alike.

The biographies, Sam Miller's Delhi: Adventures in a Megacity, William Dalrymple's City of Djinns and Ranjana Sengupta's Delhi Metropolitan map the newer Delhis, attempting to bring its many chameleon faces to life.

The Mughal past is celebrated in Mahmood Farooqui's Beseiged: Voices from Delhi 1857, William Dalrymple's The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi, 1857 and Pavan Varma's Ghalib, The Man, The Times.

Full report here Sify

Tireless journalist

Humra Quraishi discovers the lesser known facts of India’s oldest serving journalist Khushwant Singh with whom she co-authored a book.

Khushwant Singh is, of course, a well-known name. But what makes him unique is that, today, he is possibly India’s oldest working journalist. At 95, he works as if he were still in his 40s, producing two weekly columns, an assortment of book reviews, and books at regular intervals. Recently, I co-authored a book with him entitled, Absolute Khushwant. But that’s not all. His next novel is expected to hit the stands before the year ends. Here is a man who continues to engage with the world: Read, write, and speak out.

The first time I met Khushwant was in the early 80s, when he was the editor-in-chief of ‘The Hindustan Times’ in Delhi. I was looking for a job. Polite as always, he offered me tea and cookies. The job, however, was not forthcoming! Much later, we were to meet again. This time I had a job  and had been assigned to do a feature on celebrity bedrooms. Without taking a prior appointment, I went over to Khushwant’s apartment situated at Sujan Singh Park, just a short distance from Delhi’s India Gate which, incidentally, was constructed by his grandfather, Sir Sobha Singh. Introducing me to his wife, Kaval, he took me on a tour of his home. Every little detail was carefully recounted, each piece of furniture — each chair, sofa, bed — accounted for. So honest and evocative was this account, that I began to see the home in a new light and came to realise the central role it played in his life. There are, as a teenager may put it, good vibes about the place that you can sense the moment you enter the front door.

Full report here Deccan Herald

Niradbabu framed

Well, this should be worth waiting for: a new biography of Nirad C. Chaudhuri by his eldest son, Dhruva, with a treasure trove of photographs “complementing” the text.

“The famous author and family friend, Sardar Khushwant Singh, has been kind enough to write the foreword,” Dhruva tells me.

He has also included “many interesting reproductions of documents bordering almost on a scoop”.

“The name of this biography has been finalised as Nirad C. Chaudhuri, Many Shades, Many Frames,” says Dhruva, who has been working on the project since 2006 when his last book, Delhi, Light, Shades, Shadows, was published.

This time, too, the book will be published at the end of October by Niyogi Books, whose managing director, Bikash D. Niyogi, appears to have an emotional involvement in its publication.

Dhruva adds that his daughter, Satarupa, an editorial manager at Oxford University Press India, “is doing the very last chapter, a reminiscence about her grandfather in Oxford from 1979 when she was 11 till the fixing of the Blue Plaque in 2008 (outside 20, Lathbury Road)”.

Full report here Telegraph

Gauls and Romans in Agra

Piety and prurience, medicine and court intrigue crowd Kakar’s richly-felt tapestry set in Shah Jahan’s India

The Crimson Throne
Sudhir Kakar
Penguin; Rs 450; Pp 253

High up on my must-read list of a handful of Indian authors is Sudhir Kakar. He is India’s best-known psychoanalyst. His prose is lucid and his range of topics very wide. He makes one think. His latest novel, The Crimson Throne, though ostensibly about the battles for succession between Emperor Shah Jahan’s four sons, tells you about India in the 17th century as portrayed by two European adventurers, an Italian, Niccolai Manucci, in his Storia Do Mogor, and a Frenchman, Francois Bernier, in his Travels in the Mughal Empire AD 1656-1665. Manucci worked his way as a deck-hand and made his way to Goa. He was hospitably accomodated by Jesuit priests and found lodgings on top of a hill with a Hindu vaidraj practicing ayurveda. He found a mistress to cater to his other needs. Soon after, Bernier landed in Surat; he also enjoyed the hospitality of the Jesuits. Both men travelled in bullock cart caravans to Delhi, staying in serais and noting conditions prevailing in the countryside. They arrived in the capital about the same time and took an instant dislike to each other.

Shah Jahan had already named his eldest son Dara Shikoh as heir apparent, and posted his other sons as viceroys in distant provinces. But his decisions carried little weight, as it was widely known that he was a very sick man. He was also known to be grossly oversexed. His favourite queen was Mumtaz Mahal, who bore 12 children in as many years. Unani hakeems believed that a man could not have sex with a pregnant woman as the hard knocks of the penis would damage the foetus. So, the emperor had to get other women to cater to his needs. The ulema condoned his liaisons with his own daughters as a man’s right to taste the fruit of his own labours.

Full report here Outlook

Khushwant Singh among new Sahitya Akademi fellows

Veteran journalist Khushwant Singh and eminent Hindi writer Kedarnath Singh are among the three new fellows who have been elected to the Sahitya Akademi.

Besides Singh and Kedarnath, eminent Maithili writer Chandra Nath Mishra 'Amar' has also been selected as fellow of the prestigious cultural institution.

In a release here on Friday, the Akademi said the highest honour conferred by it on a writer is electing him or her as its fellow.

"This honour is reserved for the 'immortals of literature' and limited to 21 only at any given time," the release said, adding that they were selected by the Akademi's General Council.

Full report here Sify

Musings of a libertine monk

The charming, bite-sized opinions of one of Indian journalism’s legendary provocateurs have sting, but no surprise

Absolute Khushwant
 The Low-Down on Life,
Death and Most Things
In-Between
Khushwant Singh with
Humra Quraishi
Penguin
Rs 250; Pp 200

In a novel, the writer sells the reader a story; in reportage, his or her powers of perception and analysis. In the realm of autobiography and memoir, it might be said, one sells oneself. The more dramatic one’s life experiences and the more divergent one’s beliefs from the mainstream of the culture, the more readers one wins. The writer Khushwant Singh, now 95, has always enjoyed the persona of a professional provocateur, as suggested by the very title of his widely syndicated column With Malice Towards One and All. The purpose behind his writing, he tells us in Absolute Khushwant, has always been “to inform, amuse, provoke”.

He certainly does so in his new book, an engaging, if somewhat uneven, collection of opinions and reminiscences on various subjects, transcribed by journalist Humra Quraishi. Long-time readers of Singh are unlikely to be surprised by any of his stances. He continues successfully to cast himself as part-monk and part-libertine, rising at 4am, working through the day, always keeping himself gainfully occupied, speaking truth to power and avoiding idle pursuits, while simultaneously enjoying his drink and his gossip sessions, keeping his sexual life alive in mind if not in the flesh, recalling his many affairs and vigorously contesting (while also clearly enjoying) his public image as a dirty old man, accepting it finally as the price to be paid for his candour. “Usually, writers are an interesting and colourful bunch,” he writes—and clearly, he has set out his stall to be the most interesting and colourful of them all.

Full report here Mint

The difficulty of being a Mughal emperor, and Mr Roy

If you have not read Sudhir Kakar’s analysis of Indian character, you have missed out something very precious. I have read every book he has published and eagerly await for the next one. He is India’s best-known psychoanalyst and a veryhandsome man to whose charm many beautiful women have succumbed.
He now lives in Goa with his second wife, a German psychiatrist.

You can start with his latest The Crimson Throne (Penguin-Viking) which I think is his best work. It is about the last year of the reign of Emperor Shahjahan and the  war of succession between his four sons. It is based on the observations of two European adventurers — the Italian Niccolai Manucci, a semi-literate fellow from Venice with an appetite for women. He worked as a deck cleaner and arrived in Goa in 1675. He recorded his experiences in Storia Do Mogor. The other was a Frenchman Francois Bernier, a more perceptive observer who arrived in Surat and wrote about the state of affairs in the Mughal Empire. Kakar has based his work entirely on these secondary sources and what he said about India in the 17th century is true about the India of today.

To whet your appetite, let me tell you how Manucci travelled from Goa to Delhi and made his name as a magic healer. He received the hospitality of Jesuit priests who found him lodgings on top of a hill. His sole companion was a Hindu vaid practising Ayurveda. He told him that the stomach was the repository of all ailments and an examination of a sick person’s faeces before prescribing medicine was vital.

Full report here Hindustan Times

Discovery of a new poet

My seven years in Lahore (1940-47) to make a living as a lawyer were a dismal failure. I continued to live on my patrimony to the last day.

I philosophised that living at other peoples’ quarrels was not worthwhile. When I was driven out of Lahore and returned to Delhi, I gifted away my law books, black gown and lawyer’s collar tabs.

However, I lost many Muslim friends who had no problem in my staying on. I also met one man who looked down on me and never lost an opportunity to belittle me. This was Veer Sawhney. Like me, he also failed to make a living as a lawyer and lived on his patrimony. This included a spacious bungalow with a garden not far from the high court. From the first day we met he decided to dislike me. I returned the compliment. So it went on day after day. He was a shameless name-dropper and claimed to be close to VIPs, including the Prime Minister of Punjab, Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan.

When Hayat Khan died, Veer was there for the funeral embracing other mourners and wailing loudly. He entertained in Nawabi style — all males except the latest entrant in Heera Mandi (Lahore’s red-light district).

His wife returned to her parents. He stood for elections for the Secretary to the High Court Bar Association. I put my name up for the only reason of giving him a drubbing. And I did.

Our fortunes changed on Partition. I returned to the comforts of my father’s home. He had no where to go to. The last I met him was when he was wandering around Connaught Circus. It was cuite a surprise when after 70 years I had three collections of poems with a letter from his son Ashok Sawhney were delivered at my doorstep. The letter claimed that the books were published in London and India. I am pretty certain they were vanity publications, paid for by himself because there are very few takers for poetry. I refused to meet him.

Full report here Deccan Herald

OK Tata, but where's the eureka?

Great brands, it is said, belong in the canvas of life, not the quadrangle of the marketplace, and that definitely applies to the Tata brand. Therefore, when I picked up Morgan Witzel’s book Tata The Evolution of a Corporate Brand, I expected to get a lot of "eureka" moments about why and how the Tata brand had managed to remain timeless, ageless, and stellar through all the changes from the days of Lord Curzon and Jamsetji, to post-liberalisation India and Ratan Tata.

I also expected to learn a lot from the comparisons such a book would make between the journey of the Tata brand and other iconic brands of the same era as well as new challenger brands that came along. I looked forward to an insightful and intertwined account of the changes in the canvas of life in India and how the Tata brand adapted to it, interacted with it. Finally, I expected my heart and soul to be touched and awed the way it was when I saw Zafar Hai’s film on the Tatas; and I expected my thinking about corporate branding to be greatly enhanced because of the richness of the case study.

I must confess to being disappointed. To be fair, the book offers a very well-researched business history of the Tata group and a pretty good description of its DNA, illustrated with several examples. It will be of great value to foreign readers, who know the Tatas by their acquisitions but not by their heritage and values. To most of us who are familiar with Indian business, however, much of this is known and often written about. The book also competently chronicles the challenges faced by the corporate brand over the years, how they were dealt with, and describes in detail the various internal and external brand-building activities of the group and individual companies over the years. Brand theory discussions are, however, fairly basic, like stating that individual company brands do add to the corporate brand perception. What I missed most in the book was depth. The text has inviting bold statements like "Tata’s reputation for incorruptibility has made the group enemies too... politicians who ask for bribes are refused and tend not to regard the Tatas with much favour" and "those companies that use the Tata corporate brand now share a common identity even while maintaining their uniqueness". But the discussion that follows is left at surface elaboration.

Full report here Sify

Rahul more talented than Rajiv, says Khushwant

Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi is "much more talented" than his father Late Rajiv Gandhi who was "not really a leader" but "a boy scout" with some "good ideas but none of them extraordinary".

These are the views of maverick writer Khushwant Singh who compared the two leaders in his latest book Absolute Khushwant: The Low Down on Life, Death and Most Things in-between written along with Humra Quraishi, a columnist.

"He (Rahul) has a vision and that's very important. I'm impressed with him, impressed with the way in which he's conducting himself. He has the right attitude. Even if much of what he does only amounts to gestures, the thinking behind them is right," wrote 95-year-old Singh.

The grand old man of letters lauds efforts of Rahul for "taking on" Mayawati and Shiv Sena on their own turf and highlighting 'shameful' realities of the country by staying with ''lower castes and sharing their food".

Full report here NDTV

Indira petty, Rajiv a boy scout, says Khushwant

Indira Gandhi could be vengeful, even petty. Rajiv Gandhi wasn't really a leader, just a boy scout. Sanjay Gandhi had a conscience, was a man of action. Manmohan Singh is the best Prime Minister India ever had. And men like Varun Gandhi are dangerous for the very unity of the country - in his latest book Khushwant Singh writes with plenty of malice, but not towards one and all.

The 95-year-old writer sharply criticises former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. He writes, "She was dictatorial and, like her father, indulged in favouritism. She overlooked corruption and undermined democratic institutions. She manipulated and gagged the press. And she wanted dynastic succession. Power went to her head. This is why her public image changed from goddess to vindictive despot...She could be vengeful, extremely critical and even petty." The book titled 'Absolute Khushwant' is written in association with journalist Humra Quraishi.

India's grand old man of letters was a supporter of the Emergency. Many regard the period (1975-77) as a blot on India's democratic register. But he maintains, "I have been criticized for supporting Sanjay and his mother and the Emergency she'd imposed. I don't deny that I supported them and I have no regrets."

Full report here Times of India

Khushwant? Absolutely

Khushwant Singh tells how his latest book Absolute Khushwant came about

Is there a universally accepted definition of absolute truth? Just as change is the only constant, the quality of being human militates against the very idea of an absolute. Maybe that's why Gandhiji, whose status as the epitome of truth earned him the epithet Mahatma, only got as far as “experiments with truth”. Seemingly at the other end of the spectrum from the ascetic Mahatma is the irrepressible Khushwant Singh, who states that Gandhiji is his icon, and that in moments of quandary he does as he thinks Gandhiji would have.

This dichotomy, among the many puzzling paradoxes that characterise India's “grand old man of letters”, is what makes the title of his latest book so apt: Absolute Khushwant, a Penguin publication, released this week. But surely the chief of these paradoxes is that Singh, after half a century as a journalist, authoring over two dozen books, being an editor of leading national journals and dailies, and continuing to write two columns a week, should need a co-author. The cover of Absolute Khushwant tells us the book is by “Khushwant Singh with Humra Quraishi”.

One wonders if it could be because he is closer to 100 than 90 and needed a hand. But that is obviously not so. Singh, though tired the day after the launch and (honestly, as always) admitting he couldn't hear much of the proceedings as his hearing aid was not efficient enough, has certainly not ceded his command over the pen. This book was not his idea at all, he states simply. It was Penguin's.

Full report here Hindu

Straight from the heart

India’s ‘dirty old man’ is back with a new work. ‘Absolute Khushwant’, written in collaboration with Humra Quraishi, deals with Khushwant’s life, loves and works. Published by Penguin, the book throws light on the low down on life, death and other things of India’s grand old man of letters.

One of the great icons of our time, Khushwant Singh, 95, is a man of contradictions. An agnostic who’s well-versed in the holy scriptures; a vocal champion of free speech who supported the Emergency; a ‘dirty old man’ who sees ‘the world in a grain of sand and beauty in a wild flower.

Born in 1915 in pre-partition Punjab, Khushwant Singh has been witness to almost all the major events in modern Indian history and has known most of the figures who have shaped it. In a career spanning over six decades as writer, editor and journalist, his views have been provocative and controversial, but they have also been profound, deeply perceptive and always compelling. Khushwant Singh has never been less than honest.

Full report here Spicezee

Literati recalls times with grand old man of Indian writing

 He is a man of all seasons, one who still enjoys an occasional peg, a plate of piping hot kebabs and stimulating social dos. At 95, writer-columnist Khushwant Singh still means many things to many people.

He has touched the lives of many with his wit, honesty, intelligence and flair for the gab and words.

For former minister of state for external affairs Shashi Tharoor, Khushwant Singh is ‘the man from the Illustrated Weekly in the late 1960s’ while for Rajya Sabha member Mani Shankar Aiyar, Khushwant Singh was the reason to smile.

‘It is not Khushwant Singh but what I discovered through him (homour) that matters the most to me,’ Aiyer told IANS at the glittering launch of Khushwant Singh’s biography, ‘Absolute Khushwant’ in the capital Monday. The book has been published by Penguin-India.

Going down the memory lane, Aiyar said: ‘He encouraged a young female writer, Suneet Vir Singh, to co-author ‘Homage to Guru Gobind Singh’. I decided that the girl, Suneet Vir Singh who co-authored the volume with Khushwant Singh, was the right girl to get married to.’

That book was published by Jaico Publishing House in 1966. And Mani Shankar Aiyar married Suneet Vir Singh Jan 4, 1973.

Full report here India talkies

PM is the best example of integrity: Khushwant Singh

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh lost the Lok Sabha election from South Delhi in 1999 but he immediately returned Rs 2 lakh he had taken from writer Khushwant Singh for hiring taxis saying he had not used it.

This act of the Prime Minister's integrity finds a mention in a new book Absolute Khushwant: The Low-Down on Life, Death and Most things In-between written by the 95-year-old author Khushwant Singh.

In the book written along with Humra Quraishi, a columnist, the eminent author says Manmohan Singh is the best Prime Minister India has had even rating him higher than Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister.

"I really got to know him at the election he lost from South Delhi. This was in 1999. I was surprised and impressed because the son-in-law (of PM), whom my family knew, came to borrow some money-just two lakhs-to hire taxis that were needed for campaigning. They didn't have even that much to spare. I gave the money in cash," recounts Khushwant Singh.

Full report here Times of India 

How to live and die

Death is rarely spoken about in our homes. I wonder why. Especially when each one of us knows that death has to come, has to strike. It’s inevitable. This line from Yas Yagana Changezi says it best: Khuda mein shak ho to ho, maut mein nahin koi shak (You may or may not doubt the existence of God, you can’t doubt the certainty of death). And one must prepare oneself to face it.

At 95, I do think of death. I think of death very often but I don’t lose sleep over it. I think of those gone; keep wondering where they are. Where have they gone? Where will they be? I don’t know the answers: where you go, what happens next. To quote Omar Khayyam,
“Into this Universe, and Why not knowing
Nor Whence, like Water willy-nilly flowing...”

and,

“There was a Door to which I found no Key
There was a Veil through which I could not see
Some little Talk awhile of Me and Thee
There seemed—and then no more of Thee and Me.”

I once asked the Dalai Lama how one should face death and he had advised meditation. I’m not scared of death; I do not fear it. Death is inevitable. While I have thought about it a lot, I don’t brood about it. I’m prepared for it. As Asadullah Khan Ghalib has so aptly put it,

“Rau mein hai raksh-e-umar kahaan dekhiye thhamey
Nai haath baag par hai na pa hai rakaab mein
(Age travels at galloping pace; who knows where it will stop
We do not have the reins in our hands nor our feet in the stirrups).”

All my contemporaries—whether here or in England or in Pakistan—they’re all gone. I don’t know where I’ll be in a year or two. I don’t fear death. What I dread is the day I go blind or am incapacitated because of old age—that’s what I fear—I’d rather die than live in that condition. I’m a burden enough on my daughter Mala and don’t want to be an extra burden on her.

Full excerpt here Outlook 

Documenting heritage

“Celebrating Delhi” is an engaging study of the city and its past

One doesn't see Upinder Singh, a noted historian, anxiously describing a book, nor does one find Khushwant Singh reminiscing about the past so often, but with the launch of the book “Celebrating Delhi” edited by Mala Dayal, all this and much more came to the fore at the main auditorium of the India International Centre. The book of essays is based on the series of 12 lectures organised by the Attic in 2006. Organised in collaboration with the Attic and INTACH which explores the city's living syncretic heritage illuminating unknown and fascinating aspects of its history, it boasts contributors like Upinder Singh, Pradip Krishen, William Dalrymple, Duno Roy and Ravi Dayal.

Upinder Singh, giving a brief introduction of the book also showed a few pictures of the famous Iron Pillar, Purana Quila, etc and also of lesser-known treasures in and around Delhi. The audience which included Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's wife Gursharan Kaur was familiarised with the stone tools that were discovered on the campuses of Delhi University and Jawaharlal Nehru University through more visual support. “Most dilli-wallahs visualize their city extending from somewhere near the Qutub Minar to somewhere beyond the Red Fort and recollect a vague connection between ancient Indraprastha and the Purana Quila. But Delhi from the Stone Age to the times of the Rajputs stretches much further than one can imagine”.

Pradip Krishen entered the discussion by shedding some light on the city's interesting native trees. He, then, invited Rakhshanda Jalil for ‘Dehli ki Aakhri Shama', a poetic re-enactment of the ‘Last mush'aira of Delhi'. In her chaste Urdu, Jalil spoke about Farhatullah Beg's novel “Dilli Ki Aakhri Shama” on which the dramatic re-enactment was based upon.

Full report here