As every year draws to a close and as I take stock of the few things that I accomplished I realise painfully that yet another passed by with my reading just one or two books. My career best I think was three.
That might come as a surprise to people who do not know me well. They all seem to think that I am well read. Those who know me well enough like Lakshmi, my wife and Purnima, my niece, realise that over the years I have mastered the art of "shamming", to borrow Purnima's pet expression.
2019 could well be the year when I may break that jinx, God willing. Barely a week into the year I read two books. It is another matter that both those books could be completed by a bleary-eyed boozer, between swigs of any kind of liqour. They were Khushwant Nama and Absolute Khushwant. The latter was a joint piece of work between the sardarji and Hamra Quraishi. I still wonder why he needed a co-author to write it.
Khushwant is an easy read. He says his aim as a writer is to "inform, amuse and provoke". He does mostly the last of the three and least of all the first.
It is not as if I did not learn anything at all. I did get to know about how Delhi changed soon after partition. He confirmed to me a suspicion that I had had all along, that Dr. Sarvepalli was a man of foibles too - parochialism, nepotism and so on. So also about the tactless statement that he attributes to the late Rajiv Gandhi when Sikhs were being slaughtered in Delhi: When a big tree falls, the Earth shakes. He interprets that a lack of sensitivity on the part of Rajiv Gandhi.
I got sneak peeks into the lives of many people that no writer, less indiscrete than Khushwant, would dare to provide. I read about many political leaders, men of letters like VS Naipaul and Salman Rushdie. One of the few people that escaped his vicious pen is Nirad Choudhry whose phenomenal intellect he talks about. He says he was the only man he was "in awe of".
His pen picture of Mirza Asaduallah Khan Ghalib is the most touching of all. Understandably so. Khushwant seems to have loved him a lot. Here is an example of the sardarji's pithy style of writing: He (Ghalib) grew into a handsome youth, married in his teens and had several children, none of whom survived.
There is a fair about his own life of course which is interesting and colourful as many might already know. I did not know for example that he had been born into a wealthy family. That afforded him the best of education, allowed him to celebrate an enviable wedding and supported a comfortable if not luxurious lifestyle even when he was in penury by himself. That his father played a part in building Lutyen's Delhi.
What was remarkable though is the scholarship that he says he acquired through voracious reading. I was almost entirely impressed by it - until I read his Sanskrit quotes from the Gita and other Indian scriptures in Absolute Khushwant. They way they have been written are patently wrong. For someone who says he taught comparative religion in Princeton and elsewhere that is unacceptable.
I sensed what I might refer to as hypocrisy too. He accuses Gandhi of having treated and Sir VS Naipaul of not having treated their wives well. I am not sure if he was any kinder to Kaval Malik, his wife, having wooed her to a point of no return.
There are times when you wonder whether you should like the man or loathe him. There is this confession for example in Khushwant Nama: "I have never been able to conform to the Indian ideal of regarding women as my mother, sisters or daughters. Whatever their age, they were, and are, objects of lust." Should one admire his candour? Or should one despise the coarseness? And there is the chapter long treatise on sex in Absolute Khushwant where one particular gets really so vulgar that it probably belongs to Harold Robbins fiction.
Barring the many snippets that I do not wish to load this post with, the books were fairly filled with platitudes and cliches. They are well written though. Shorn of bombast, my favourite weakness, and unlike my laboured, pedantic style.
More than the style of writing what I enjoyed was his irreverence towards everyone except Gandhi and Mother Teresa and his friend Manzoor Qadir. I also enjoyed some of the quotes that I wish to remind myself of in and through this post.
There are lines from Mohammed Rafi Sauda, that he translates, that reminded me of a life that I would have loved to lead.
Concern for livelihood, love for women, memories of the past
What else is there left to man in his life?
And of things that he says he would love people to say about him, quoting from Hilare Belloc, that I know can never be said about me:
"When I am dead, I hope it may be said:
His sins were scarlet, but his books were read."
Alas, I have committed sins of scarlet; but should I ever write books I know that they will never be read.
Finally his views about himself as a writer, which applies to me even more so as a non-writer, is touching. It is an Urdu verse that he translates as follows. I drew from to come up with a title for this post.
You ask me about my business, what I have in mind
I sell mirrors in the city of the blind
And even as I quote from him I am reminded of this couplet that he quotes from Edward Young's Love of Fame:
"Some, for renown, on scraps of learning dote,
And think they grow immortal as they quote."
On the whole it was a great start to a year. I will not mind if I do not read anything for the rest of the year. That may well be the case, if the past is anything to go by.
Reading the books helped me with the much needed levity as I tumbled along through the past month, as I note in my earlier post. Ironically it also reminded me constantly of my dear friend the Late Manohar Reddy.
I used to mail many of my posts to Professor Reddy, as I have always referred to him. He would read all of them and comment. One comment that he made reading after reading every one of them was that I wrote like Khushwant Singh.
I had read Khushwant's books earlier, before I started writing this blog - his autobiography and Train to Pakistan. I never agreed with Professor Reddy's observation. I even argued that it was an insult to the great writer. Yet I felt happy to have my writing compared with him.
In the true irreverent tradition of Khushwant I must say that there were facets about Professor Reddy I did not approve of. Those do not matter any more. What matters now is that I liked the man in spite of those facets. It matters to me a lot that I miss him in spite of those.
What matters is that I was shell shocked when I heard of his passing. For the better part of a week I was in severe agony.
I could turn him to in moments of despair, when I felt I was not being treated well at IIMB. He would lend me his patient and tolerant ears. I will miss him in those moments of despair, sure as I am to be assailed by similar occasions before I retire.
Right now though I miss him, as I write this post. With tears in my eyes, I dedicate this post to your memory, my friend, Professor Reddy.
Nanni....Namaskaaram...
That might come as a surprise to people who do not know me well. They all seem to think that I am well read. Those who know me well enough like Lakshmi, my wife and Purnima, my niece, realise that over the years I have mastered the art of "shamming", to borrow Purnima's pet expression.
2019 could well be the year when I may break that jinx, God willing. Barely a week into the year I read two books. It is another matter that both those books could be completed by a bleary-eyed boozer, between swigs of any kind of liqour. They were Khushwant Nama and Absolute Khushwant. The latter was a joint piece of work between the sardarji and Hamra Quraishi. I still wonder why he needed a co-author to write it.
Khushwant is an easy read. He says his aim as a writer is to "inform, amuse and provoke". He does mostly the last of the three and least of all the first.
It is not as if I did not learn anything at all. I did get to know about how Delhi changed soon after partition. He confirmed to me a suspicion that I had had all along, that Dr. Sarvepalli was a man of foibles too - parochialism, nepotism and so on. So also about the tactless statement that he attributes to the late Rajiv Gandhi when Sikhs were being slaughtered in Delhi: When a big tree falls, the Earth shakes. He interprets that a lack of sensitivity on the part of Rajiv Gandhi.
I got sneak peeks into the lives of many people that no writer, less indiscrete than Khushwant, would dare to provide. I read about many political leaders, men of letters like VS Naipaul and Salman Rushdie. One of the few people that escaped his vicious pen is Nirad Choudhry whose phenomenal intellect he talks about. He says he was the only man he was "in awe of".
His pen picture of Mirza Asaduallah Khan Ghalib is the most touching of all. Understandably so. Khushwant seems to have loved him a lot. Here is an example of the sardarji's pithy style of writing: He (Ghalib) grew into a handsome youth, married in his teens and had several children, none of whom survived.
There is a fair about his own life of course which is interesting and colourful as many might already know. I did not know for example that he had been born into a wealthy family. That afforded him the best of education, allowed him to celebrate an enviable wedding and supported a comfortable if not luxurious lifestyle even when he was in penury by himself. That his father played a part in building Lutyen's Delhi.
What was remarkable though is the scholarship that he says he acquired through voracious reading. I was almost entirely impressed by it - until I read his Sanskrit quotes from the Gita and other Indian scriptures in Absolute Khushwant. They way they have been written are patently wrong. For someone who says he taught comparative religion in Princeton and elsewhere that is unacceptable.
I sensed what I might refer to as hypocrisy too. He accuses Gandhi of having treated and Sir VS Naipaul of not having treated their wives well. I am not sure if he was any kinder to Kaval Malik, his wife, having wooed her to a point of no return.
There are times when you wonder whether you should like the man or loathe him. There is this confession for example in Khushwant Nama: "I have never been able to conform to the Indian ideal of regarding women as my mother, sisters or daughters. Whatever their age, they were, and are, objects of lust." Should one admire his candour? Or should one despise the coarseness? And there is the chapter long treatise on sex in Absolute Khushwant where one particular gets really so vulgar that it probably belongs to Harold Robbins fiction.
Barring the many snippets that I do not wish to load this post with, the books were fairly filled with platitudes and cliches. They are well written though. Shorn of bombast, my favourite weakness, and unlike my laboured, pedantic style.
More than the style of writing what I enjoyed was his irreverence towards everyone except Gandhi and Mother Teresa and his friend Manzoor Qadir. I also enjoyed some of the quotes that I wish to remind myself of in and through this post.
There are lines from Mohammed Rafi Sauda, that he translates, that reminded me of a life that I would have loved to lead.
Concern for livelihood, love for women, memories of the past
What else is there left to man in his life?
And of things that he says he would love people to say about him, quoting from Hilare Belloc, that I know can never be said about me:
"When I am dead, I hope it may be said:
His sins were scarlet, but his books were read."
Alas, I have committed sins of scarlet; but should I ever write books I know that they will never be read.
Finally his views about himself as a writer, which applies to me even more so as a non-writer, is touching. It is an Urdu verse that he translates as follows. I drew from to come up with a title for this post.
You ask me about my business, what I have in mind
I sell mirrors in the city of the blind
And even as I quote from him I am reminded of this couplet that he quotes from Edward Young's Love of Fame:
"Some, for renown, on scraps of learning dote,
And think they grow immortal as they quote."
On the whole it was a great start to a year. I will not mind if I do not read anything for the rest of the year. That may well be the case, if the past is anything to go by.
Reading the books helped me with the much needed levity as I tumbled along through the past month, as I note in my earlier post. Ironically it also reminded me constantly of my dear friend the Late Manohar Reddy.
I used to mail many of my posts to Professor Reddy, as I have always referred to him. He would read all of them and comment. One comment that he made reading after reading every one of them was that I wrote like Khushwant Singh.
I had read Khushwant's books earlier, before I started writing this blog - his autobiography and Train to Pakistan. I never agreed with Professor Reddy's observation. I even argued that it was an insult to the great writer. Yet I felt happy to have my writing compared with him.
In the true irreverent tradition of Khushwant I must say that there were facets about Professor Reddy I did not approve of. Those do not matter any more. What matters now is that I liked the man in spite of those facets. It matters to me a lot that I miss him in spite of those.
What matters is that I was shell shocked when I heard of his passing. For the better part of a week I was in severe agony.
I could turn him to in moments of despair, when I felt I was not being treated well at IIMB. He would lend me his patient and tolerant ears. I will miss him in those moments of despair, sure as I am to be assailed by similar occasions before I retire.
Right now though I miss him, as I write this post. With tears in my eyes, I dedicate this post to your memory, my friend, Professor Reddy.
Nanni....Namaskaaram...
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