The other day he asked me if I knew the meaning of the word baporia, Gujarati slang for people who copulate in the afternoon. He delights in such useless information and this particular gem was sent to him by his former protege, Bachi Karkaria.
There was a time when I used to smuggle banned copies of Playboy into the country in a diplomatic pouch. Khushwant would eagerly wait to go through the pictures of voluptuous naked women and the magazine’s famed dirty jokes.
With the possible exception of the editor of this magazine, I don’t know anyone who receives more abusive mail than Khushwant. One envelope from abroad was simply addressed ‘Khushwant Singh, Bastard, India’. To his utter delight it reached him and he has been dining out on that story for years.
Everything Khushwant writes sells and The Khushwant Singh Treasury is an attempt, perhaps a desperate one, by Penguin to get another title out of him. Still, it gives a good measure of the man. As one would expect, it is an eclectic collection of quotations that have caught Khushwant’s attention over the years. It is both profane and profound.
He may have a taste for scatology but has written one of the great Indian novels of the twentieth century, Train to Pakistan. Prime ministers and presidents drop by for an evening chat. His home is the first port of call for many newly appointed ambassadors. His views are invariably sane when it comes to politics though, admittedly, he once signed L.K. Advani’s nomination papers when he contested a South Delhi parliamentary seat. I suspect he later regretted that particular decision.
When his son Rahul celebrated his 50th birthday Rajiv Gandhi was invited to the Sujan Singh Park flat. They had been students together in Cambridge. Rajiv got delayed and by the time he arrived Khushwant had gone to bed. He emerged in his crumpled nightgown to greet the distinguished visitor and then, to our amazement, promptly went back to sleep. Rajiv stayed on to party.
It doesn’t matter who you are, if you are invited for drinks you are expected to leave at eight; if the invitation is for dinner you have to go by nine. Not that many invites are coming our way these days.
Forty years ago someone from Pakistan sent Khushwant a book in the hope of a review. The copy had a flaw—only the first four pages had print, the rest was blank. The publishers had obviously sent him a dummy by mistake. For Khushwant the blank pages were a godsend. He has used it to jot down things. An editor has now culled 365 of them for this book, one for each day of the year. They deal with a wide range of subjects: religion, love, hate, drinking, the joys of life and reflections on old age and death. There is also a generous dose of sex and promiscuity. It’s a slim volume and it is witty in the Khushwant manner.
You will find juxtaposed between uplifting quotes and verses from the Genesis, Bhagvad Gita and Bernard Shaw, ribald limericks such as the following:
"There was a young plumber
named Lee
Who lay plumbing his girl by the sea.
She said, "Oh! Stop plumbing!
There’s somebody coming!"
Said the plumber, still plumbing,
"It’s me."
You have been warned. But let me balance that limerick with a quote from Gandhi that I hadn’t come across before:
"When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it—always."
There are several quotes from Tagore, but none as wise and elegant as Gandhi’s.
