Daily Fix
The Man Who Knew Everything:
Khushwant Singh
Part I
T. SHER SINGH
Probably the very first book I came across which spoke in the language I could understand, in words and terminology that impressed me, and at the same time introduced me to the deeply-felt pride of being Sikh, was a slim paperback titled “The Sikhs Today”.
It had several pages of black-and-white photographs in it as well, but hidden amidst about a 100 pages of text. The author had what appeared to me then, in my early teens, an unpronounceable name: Khushwant Singh.
I flipped through it and was intrigued by the photos. The book was different in that it didn’t dwell on just our Gurus and religion and history, but also talked about those Sikhs who were at the top of their fields … in every sphere of activity. Today. Alive and kicking. Real people. Like me.
In the Arts - dance, music, film, poetry, fiction, drama, theatre, painting … Sports. Science. Scholarship and Academia. Military. Publishing. Fashion. Journalism. Diplomacy. Travel. Politics. Adventure.
Most of those depicted in the book I had never heard of before. Others I knew of, but knew little of their achievements.
Once I finished reading the book, I kept it by my bedside, going back to it occasionally to flip through it, wondering how and where I could find out more about these fascinating characters. The queries I directed to my father were answered, but soon I realized that I had exhausted him as a source, and I needed more.
Around this time, there were two other discoveries that added to my growing thirst.
First, during one of our seasonal family holidays, we had driven around the state of Uttar Pradesh where I was introduced to the saga of Rani Jindan and Maharaja Duleep Singh. We had stumbled into an obscure fort at Chunar, near Mirzapur, where a guide casually mentioned that Jindan had been imprisoned by the British in one of its cells, from which she had made a dramatic escape and had fled to Nepal.
Triggered by the story, my siblings and I wanted to hear more. Over the next few days, as we drove distances, my father regaled us with tales of the Sikh Empire. History had suddenly come alive for us. It was OUR history.
The other discovery was back in boarding school where our new teacher, Brother Johnson, had the 18 of us in our Class Seven start a library of our own, helping us choose the books we wanted to read, acquire them by mail-order from Calcutta (with funds he had managed to squeeze from the school budget), and then manoeuvre our way through the worlds they opened up for us.
But I also learned to my pleasant surprise that if you like a book very much and still yearn for more after you have reached the last page, all is not lost. Chances are that the same author has written other books and that you may enjoy them too.
Thus I learned the trick that if you remembered the name of the author of each book you read, that tid-bit of information could bring pleasurable dividends later.
Soon thereafter, I began to race my way through everything Edgar Wallace had ever written. Then, Earl Stanley Gardner. When I was done with all the Perry Mason books, I discovered that he had also written under the pseudonym, A.A. Fair. So, I proceeded to dig my way through all the Donald Lam and Bertha Cool mysteries as well.
Edgar Rice Burroughs was next, first with his Tarzan series, then with his science fiction collection.
Alistair Maclean and Hammond Innes followed in quick succession.
All of this was just the beginning. The Bronte sisters …Alexandre Dumas …Charles Dickens … Thomas Hardy …
And then, one day, I looked at “The Sikhs Today” at my bedside and wondered if there were more books around by its author.
Khushwant Singh.
This time around the search didn’t go smoothly. The book-dealers we were dealing with hadn’t heard of him.
The next time I was in Calcutta -- I often accompanied my father on his occasional business trips and was left on my own for the day to catch up on the latest movie fare from Hollywood at the MGM Movie Theatre, The Lighthouse, The New Empire -- I made a beeline for my favourite haunt: the indoor serpentine warrens of the New Market.
It had a number of book stores dabbling in old or discarded books as well as the latest offerings of the publishing world. The owners were well versed in their wares. I showed one of them a slip of paper with a name scribbled on it -- I still couldn’t pronounce ‘Khushwant” -- and he lighted up. Yes, he said, I think I have something.
He pulled out a dusty volume off the top of a shelf, and threw it on the ground. It let go a ghostly cloud of dust. He picked it up and slapped it a couple of times, wiped it on all sides until the original colours showed, and then held it out towards me.
It was a hardcover with a strange title: “I Shall Not Hear The Nightingale.“
I flipped through it. It was a novel. And, surprise of surprises, it had Sikh characters in it. One even boasted the name ‘Sher Singh’, if I remember correctly. It seemed to be set during the freedom movement -- an area I was gradually getting interested in.
And, its author was … Khushwant Singh.
I stayed up through the night on the 12-hour journey home that evening.
By this time, I had become a fast reader and also learned the mixed pleasures of a good book: the delicious savour of a story well told, and the dread of the inevitable let-down that accompanies the completion of a good book.
I still remember most of the plot and the characters from the book, even though I never read it again. I can vividly recall the emotions it unleashed in me.
It ignited a fervent interest in the saga of the independence struggle. At the same time, I was thrilled at learning about Sikh thought and practice which somehow found its way through the story even though, obviously, it was neither a history book nor a religious tome. It was sprinkled with gurbani -- in English! -- which in turn lighted another spark: a hunger to read more of our scripture. In E-N-G-L-I-S-H.
And ah, yes, one more thing.
It had a couple of steamy sex scenes.
I enjoyed them for more than just the obvious reason.
I learned that surely sex couldn’t possibly be dirty or bad or evil, especially if a writer could delve in it in a book which also had our Sikh stories and our Sikh beliefs … and passages from our Sikh scripture too.
Sikhs involved in sex scenes in a literary work was a brand new experience! Thus here, for the first time, I had come across three-dimensional Sikh characters who lived normal, full, rounded lives. They did big things and they did ordinary things. Their extraordinariness was enhanced by their mundane side.
Fingering the pages of the book, I came across a list of other books Khushwant Singh had written.
It became my mission in life to track them down. It took me almost a year before I was able to zero in on them on my next trip to Delhi.
And then the flood-gates opened.
Two paperbacks -- Ranjit Singh: The Maharaja of The Punjab, and The Fall of The Kingdom of The Punjab followed in quick succession.
Then, Train to Pakistan.
Which somehow encouraged me to brave the more daunting “A History of The Sikhs”, in two heavy volumes.
By then, I was hooked. Not just on Khushwant Singh. More importantly, on history. Especially Sikh history. And Punjab. India. The Freedom Movement …
It provided me the foundation to tackle more detailed works such as by Ganda Singh and the other chroniclers of the five centuries since the birth of Nanak.
And then came the icing on the cake.
Khushwant Singh’s translations of gurbani. This opened up yet another world for me: the underpinnings of my faith … in MY language, in a lingo I could understand. And emote in, dream in. I could build on it.
I had read English translations before, but none had satisfied me. Each lacked something. There were gaping holes. Later, years later, I realized that what had been missing in the translations until then was poetry. Literal interpretations were mere chaff, having left behind the heart and soul of the words.
The Khushwant Singh corner of my wall of books ultimately grew to fill up a whole section on a shelf. Its books became the most visited, thumbed and dog-eared possessions within my burgeoning collection of anything I could acquire in print.
He became the nexus between the language in which I thought and the language in which I could express my beliefs. They provided me, for the first time, the very words which explained my world to me in terms to which I could relate.
They gifted to me the grammar with which I could make sense of the world around me.
In recent years I had become attached to a film we were shown repeatedly in school. It was an Alfred Hitchcock thriller, but had the added attraction of Doris Day singing ’Que sera sera …” in which, each time, the whole school would join in in chorus. It’s title was ”The Man Who Knew Too Much.”
Having found a kindred soul who wrote and spoke and thought and lived in a way I could relate to, I took the cue from the film and began to refer to Khushwant Singh as “The Man Who Knew Everything.“
To Be Continued …
March 22, 2014
Conversation about this article
1: Kanwarjeet Singh (USA), March 22, 2014, 1:37 PM.
To each his own. I never liked him but admired his success. I once heard an interview where he was asked about Mohandas Gandhi and the interviewer had the nerve to ask him what he thought of Gandhi in comparison to important figures in Sikh history. Instead of chiding the interviewer for his stupid question, Khushwant Singh answered the question by saying something like this: 'he (Gandhi) was a saintly figure and I admire him a lot; in fact I hold him to the same level as our Gurus'. I lost any respect I had for the man once I heard that.
2: N Singh (Canada), March 22, 2014, 7:48 PM.
@ Kanwarjeet Singh ji: I am inclined to agree with you.
3: GC Singh (USA), March 22, 2014, 8:33 PM.
Yes, he had a good grasp of the English language and perhaps wrote a few good books too, but I never liked Khushwant Singh or his weekly column. His misplaced admiration of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, his "chamchagiri" and support for Indira Gandhi during her dictatorship ("Emergency"), earned him the nick-name of "Khushamad" Singh. Although he translated gurbani into English, he also did a lot of damage to the Sikh cause for freedom and justice when he visited Amritsar in the company of the the alcoholic butcher KPS Gill and supported his genocidal actions. He always gave a negative view of the Sikh struggle to foreign journalists and demeaned Jarnail Singh Bhinderanwale, while advocating the elimination of his supporters to bring "peace" to Punjab. To his credit, a couple of weeks before his death, Khushwant Singh said that although he was an agnostic, he strongly believed in the sense of Sikh identity and of Sikhs retaining their symbols; that without a distinct identity, he said, the Sikh community would be under a serious threat from Hinduism.
4: Gurjender Singh (Maryland, USA), March 22, 2014, 11:33 PM.
After the 1984 attack on the Darbar Sahib, Khushwant Singh returned the Padma Bhushan, one of the country's highest civilian awards, in protest against the government's criminal actions.
5: Kanwarjeet Singh (USA), March 23, 2014, 12:05 AM.
@ Gurjinder Singh ji: only to accept the 2007 Padma Vibhushan from the same racist Congress government.
6: Kaala Singh (Punjab), March 23, 2014, 4:38 AM.
A true Sikh who has the courage to return the highest civilian award award in response to the 1984 outrage. A man with character, unlike the Zail Singhs who masquerade as Sikhs.
7: Pritam Singh Hoonjan (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada), March 23, 2014, 10:41 AM.
Yes, Khushwant Singh was 'The Man Who Knew Everything'. In the late 50s or early 60s, I found Khushwant Singh and Ganda Singh were the only ones who wrote articulately about the Sikhs. It was a blessing for the Sikhs outside India. I was fortunate enough to meet him in Kampala, Uganda, when he was invited by Makerere University to deliver a lecture on the Sikhs during the 500th anniversary of Guru Nanak's birth (1969). A few days later, he spoke at a local Sikh Club. A person in the audience got up and said that he used to be non-keshadhari. But when he read Khushwant Singh's "The Sikhs Today", he was was so much affected by it that he became a keshadhari. Tears flowed from his eyes when he said in front of the whole audience and Khushwant Singh. Khushwant Singh got up from the stage, went to him and hugged him. Such was Khushwant Singh.
8: R Singh (Canada), March 23, 2014, 3:44 PM.
Let us see him as he was, a great pen, great wit and journalist, and a historian. However eloquent his praise, he totally misrepresented the Sikh philosophy, and inadvertently did more damage by asserting Sikhi to be just rebottled Upanishads with just different rituals and dress. His politics was that of one who was typically far removed from Punjab, yet took it upon himself to loudly join the chorus of the others, to jump up and throw verbal brickbats, like a convert who needs to be the most vociferous to prove his worth.
9: Hardev Singh (Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada), March 24, 2014, 2:06 AM.
Kushwant Singh had a disdain for religion and considered the soul's after-life as an irrational idea, while he was obsessed with death, writing his own obituary and "Death at my Doorsteps". He has left an indelible mark for recording Sikh history and translating scriptures, besides a formidable literary output and opinion columns, some unkind and questionable.
10: Daljit Rattan (Surrey, British Columbia, Canada), March 24, 2014, 3:16 AM.
He was not a saint but he never claimed to be a saint. He was a prolific writer and a good journalist. So let him be - R.I.P.
11: Harminder Singh (Jalandhar, Punjab), March 24, 2014, 3:45 AM.
T Sher Singh ji, your write-ups are always interesting and I always read them with great interest. In the first week of April I visited Patna Sahib and when I alighted from the train at Patna Sahib, immediately I remembered that I have come to your city. I met your cousin S. Jaggit Singh at Darbar Sahib and he was conveying his regards for you.
12: Sarvjit Singh (Massachusetts, USA), March 24, 2014, 10:21 AM.
Interesting comments ... I respected his success and the fact that his books on our history are considered accurate accounts of how things were. However, I also agree that he was neither a saintly person nor gurmukh (at least, from what is the public perception). To me, he represents a Sikh born of very rich parents; he went to Modern School, was superb in communication skills and knew what to say at the appropriate time. By his own admission he wasn't a genius academically, he tried ICS but could not clear the exams. And eccentric at many times. I almost felt that he wanted to portray lust openly because he enjoyed the image that it would create. I also enjoyed other non-Sikh writers like C. Shackle, Macauliffe, and Gough who wrote great books about Sikhs but were not Sikhs themselves. It is also worth noting that it was based on his father's (Sobha Singh's) testimony that the freedom fighter Bhagat Singh was convicted and hanged. I loved Khushwant Singh's his books and his ability to generate controversy and ride it to his advantage. A loyal Congressi who compared Manmohan Singh (PM) rule as 'Raj Karega Khalsa'. He edited that boring magazine called Yojana in Nehru's footsteps to please Indira. In the 1970s there wasn't any Indian writer/editor who could generate nostalgia and interest; he filled that vacuum with his wise cracks and jokes. He was made popular by non-Sikhs and Hindus, most of the Sikhs probably never got to read his books. RIP. May he find salvation or wherever he wanted to be.