Awry Pecking Order

After a rather long meeting with Khushwant Singh a few years ago in his New Delhi apartment, I had returned to write a piece calling this brilliant writer the 'literary exhibitionist'of India. Newsline editor Rehana Hakim and television producer Mehreen Jabbar had accompanied me to the Old Sardar's house and we had unknowingly walked through the rear entrance, actually the kitchen, without an appointment. 'If you were not Pakistani journalists, I would have thrown you out,'Singh had said to three unsuspecting women who knew very little about protocol at the Singh household.

Khushwant was disappointed with the trio for another reason too. When he invited us for drinks the same evening he looked in disbelief when we replied that we were non-alcoholics. At this point 'the lovable rascal'with that famous twinkle in his eye reminded us of those lovely Pakistani Punjabi women who when in Delhi dropped at his flat during the 'happy hour', and drank 'neat' without a batter of their heavy mascaraed eyelashes.

So what is all the fuss about? Pecking and kissing? When is a peck simply a peck and when does it translate into a kiss? Is a peck harmless with no emotions unlike a kiss? Or if the pecker is Khushwant Singh there is more to it? After all here is a self-confessed Punjabi who throws all notions of love out of the window and says that it is lust that binds two individuals.

If anyone has reason to be angry it is Khushwant Singh himself. Imagine the audacity of high commissioner Ashraf Jehangir Qazi saying Singh was old enough to be a great-grandfather. All Qazi has to do is read his latest book, In the Company of Women, and all grandfatherly thoughts will fly right out of his excellency's mind. Singh himself says that they still have not invented a condom for his pen. In fact they have not yet invented a condom for Singh's free spirit, because that is what he is, constantly feeding on controversies.

To begin with, it was the Indian Express, knowing fully well that Khushwant's peck on the innocent cheek of a young Ms Qazi, was a photo op, which would receive tremendous feedback, especially across the border, kindled the flames.

Remember an unsuspecting Riaz Khokhar caught in a similar act with an Indian lady at his farewell dinner? And what about Tehmina Durrani's display of warmth when she met Khushwant Singh. Even poor Nelson Mandela was not spared for the pecking between him and Shabana Azmi. The tirade against the photograph had several dimensions. From an Indian kissing a Pakistani, to a non-believer touching the pure, to a writer who had insulted women from Azad Kashmir in his new book, The Company of Women, by implying that he had slept with them.

'We have no problems with Khushwant Singh or what he writes or whom he kisses. But what boils my blood is the fact that Mrs Qazi and her daughter went to the inauguration of a book in which the writer insults Muslim women from Azad Kashmir. This is even against the rights of liberal women as we have seen Maneka Gandhi going to court over this book,'says Hamid Mir, editor of Ausaf which carried the photograph.

Besides, it was the high commissioner himself who brought up the issue of Islam. 'My daughter is very religious and says she prayers five times a day,'he said in a note sent to the media. At the time when Singh's lips were straying at the book launch Qazi was in Islamabad. For some it was divine justice. It was the same Qazi who, only some time ago, had ensured, with his report from Delhi, that Friday Times editor Najam Sethi spent time in custody. He had called Sethi's speech in Delhi an attempt to appear a 'heroic liberal fighting against corruption and tyranny by portraying his country as an irrational, contradictory, corrupt, unstable and dangerous entity and this was an act amounting to the most contemptible treachery.'

Asks Tahir Mirza in the Dawn: 'Now, who is posing, if not as a heroic, at least as an aggrieved liberal and isn't Mr Qazi now also convinced, after seeing what has been made of an innocent incident in Delhi ('of all places') that we are in a confused state and do not know whether we are Islamic fundamentalists or modern?'

According to a source, however, there is some 'lobby in the foreign office which is behind this. They want to create problems for Qazi who would normally be now ready to take over as foreign secretary after Shamshad retires.'It was, they say, this lobby which got the photograph and fed it to the vernacular media here.'So if they still have not invented a condom for Khushwant's pen they should do so for his generous lips. At least, when Pakistani ladies are within kissing distance.