Sex,Scotch and Scholarship

by Khushwant Singh

I soon learnt that I could not take my wife for granted. If she did not like any of my friends, she told them so on their face in no uncertain terms. She is a stronger woman than any I have known. Her mother was very upset when she discovered she drank whisky. One evening she stormed into the room, picked up her glass and threw it on the marble floor. The glass did not break but slithered across the floor, spilling its contents. My wife quickly picked it up and refilled it. ‘I am an adult and a married woman. You have no right to dictate to me,’ she told her mother. When her mother was down with cancer, she asked her to promise that she would say her prayers regularly. Despite my pleas to say ‘yes’ to her dying mother, she refused to do so. ‘I will not make a promise that I know I will not keep.’ She nursed her mother for many months, sitting with her head in her lap and pressing it all through the nights. She was with her when she died. She took her bath and went to the coffee house to have her breakfast. When some friends asked her about her mother’s health she replied, ‘She is okay.’ She then came home and told the servants that she would not receive any visitors who came to condole with her. She did not shed a tear. She did not go to her mother’s funeral or any religious ceremonies that followed. On the other hand, when our dog Simba (he was really a member of the family) fell ill, she sat all night stroking him. When he died at the ripe old age of fourteen (ninety by human reckoning), she was heartbroken.

  The rigid discipline of time maintained in our home is entirely due to her. I have only recently taught myself how to speed the departure of long-winded visitors. She has always given them short shrift. No one drops in on us without prior warning. If any relation breezes in, in the morning, she ignores their presence and continues with her housework and decides the menu for the day. We eat the most gourmet food - French, Chinese, Italian, South Indian and occasionally Punjabi. She has two shelves full of cookery books which she consults before discussing it with our cook, Chandan, who has been with us for over thirty years, or she continues to teach the servants’ children and help them with their homework. We don’t accept lunch or tea invitations nor invite people for them. When we have people for dinner, no matter who they are, cabinet ministers, ambassadors, or whoever, they are reminded to be punctual and told that we do not expect our guests to stay after 9 p.m. Once the German ambassador and his wife came over. The meal was finished at 8.30 p.m. Liqueurs were served. It was 8.45 p.m. The ambassador took out his cigar and asked my wife, ‘I know, Mrs Singh, that you like your guests to leave before 9 p.m. but can I have my cigar before we go?’ My wife promptly replied, ‘I am sure, Mr Ambassador, you will enjoy it more in your car.’ He laughed and stood up, ‘I get it.’ And departed without any rancour.

  I have a lot of pretty girls visiting me. They are dead scared of my wife and know that they have to be on her right side to keep dropping in. All of them take good care never to offend her.

  Why do so few people know about my wife? She is allergic to photographers and pressmen. All you have to do is take out your camera, tape recorder or pen, and she will order you out of the house. The allergy runs in the females of the family. My daughter and granddaughter react the same way.

  I may sound like a virtuous old man rather than the dirty old one of the popular image. Neither is true. That this should happen to me at a time when I should be regarded as a respected senior citizen, a venerable scholar, needs to be explained. I will go back to my childhood.

  Where I was born I know. When I was born remains a conjecture. I was born in a tiny hamlet called Hadali, lost in the sand dunes of the Thar Desert. It was seven miles west of the river Jhelum and about forty miles south of the Khewra Salt Range. I recall very little of my village days except the endless wastes of sand on which we played on moonlit nights. My parents had migrated to Delhi, taking my elder brother with them. I was left in the care of my grandmother. It was she who took me to the school attached to the village temple. And while I was taught the letters of the Gurmukhi alphabet, she read the holy scripture, Granth Sahib. Our classes ended before noon. She would take me back home. We were followed by hordes of pyedogs because she always brought leftover bread to give them. In the afternoon she plied her spinning wheel as she murmured Sukhmani, the psalm of peace. In the evening almost the entire village turned out of their homes. After being milked, buffaloes were driven to the pond to wallow. Women formed groups to find sheltered spots where they could defecate and gossip. Boys made their own groups to do the same. Since there was no water at hand we devised our own means of cleaning ourselves and having fun at the same time. We sat in a line and at a given signal, propelled ourselves forward by our hands as fast as we could. By the end of the race our bottoms were cleaned and dried, and also full of desert sand. The game was known as gheesee - the bottom-wiping race.

  We ate our supper before sunset. On moonlit nights I was allowed to go out to play with the other boys. These were the happiest memories of my childhood. There were others which continue to disturb my sleep to this day. Our village was largely populated by Muslims. They were big, brawny men, well over six feet tall and proud of their martial traditions. We Sikhs and Hindus were tradesmen or moneylenders. Muslims relied on us for their supplies of tea, salt, spices, vegetables and ready cash. They were usually indebted to us. If we refused to give them credit or became too insistent on being repaid, they thought nothing of instigating gangs of dacoits to teach us a lesson. Once a Sikh family had a wedding and needed money to give their daughter a suitable dowry. They pestered their debtors. One night a gang of dacoits raided their home, killed three men, took all their cash and jewellery, and abducted the bride as well. The nearest police station was more than nineteen miles away. Most of the police were also Muslims. No arrests were made. Neither the money nor the bride was found. She was converted to Islam and married off to a young Muslim soldier. Such periodic experiences kept us in dread of our Muslim neighbours.

  When I was five years old, my parents sent for us. By then I had a baby brother. My parents had rented a small shack near where my father had taken contracts for the building of a new capital of India, New Delhi. My grandmother and I shared one bedroom, so there was no break in our friendship. My elder brother and I were put in a newly opened school known as the Modern. Unlike other schools in northern India, Modern School was co-educational: there were five girls among thirty boys. The principal and majority of the teachers, including two English, were women. Besides the usual courses of study, we were also taught music, painting and carpentry. It was a nationalist school; leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Pandit Nehru and Sarojini Naidu were invited to address us.

  It was in my third year at school that I discovered when approximately I was born. In Hadali there were no such things as registers of birth and death. Since my father was away in Delhi when I was born, he did not put it in his diary as he had done in the cases of my elder brother and younger brother and two others that came after him. When he had to fill out my school admission form, for reasons unknown, he put down my date of birth as 2 February 1915. Other children at Modern School came from Westernized families and celebrated birthdays. I found I was the loser, as I had to take presents wherever I was invited. So I decided to have my own birthday party. I had a birthday cake with seven candles and lots of eats and fizzy drinks. Boys and girls turned up carrying gifts. It was then that my grandmother asked me, ‘What is all this fuss about?’

  ‘I am having my seventh birthday party,’ I replied.

  ‘You are a silly boy!’ she snapped. ‘You were not born in the winter. It was summer. Sometime after the beginning of the World War.’ She was not sure of the date but mentioned the month by the Indian calendar -budroo. Budroo corresponds to July-August. All I know about my nativity is that I am a Leo. I later decided to fix my date of birth at 15 August 1915 - India became an independent country on 15 August 1947.

  Most people say that their schooldays were the happiest of their lives - carefree and full of fun. Mine certainly were neither carefree nor packed with laughter. I dreaded s
chool and often bunked it by pretending to be sick and spending hours at a wayside clinic. I was good at neither studies nor games. I barely scraped through my yearly exams and was often punished. Although our school proclaimed that it had abolished corporal punishment, I was often caned. I was scared to death of the lady principal, who often smacked my knuckles with a foot ruler. The nine years at Modern School gave me exam-phobia which I have not overcome to this day. My anxiety dreams usually take the form of finding myself in an examination hall without being able to answer a single question in the test paper. I wake up sweating round the neck. I was glad when my schooldays were over. I passed my matriculation examination in 1930.

  The carefree years of my life began and ended with my eight years at different colleges. I first joined St Stephen’s College in Delhi. It was run by the Cambridge Mission and regarded among the best in northern India. By then my father’s contracting business had prospered and we were living in a large double-storeyed house with three acres of lawn, a fruit and vegetable garden, and a tennis court. My father had two cars and hordes of servants. My elder brother and I were given motorcycles to ride to college, which was almost five miles from our home. Even in the large house with over a dozen bedrooms, I continued to share mine with my grandmother. By then there had been two further additions to the family, a sister and another brother, making us five in all.

  There were five boys at St Stephen’s with motorcycles, all Sikhs. Indian colleges had borrowed a very unhealthy institution from British universities, known as ragging. New entrants, known as ‘first-year fools’, were subjected to a lot of rough horseplay, ranging from standing up on the bench and announcing, ‘I am a first-year bloody fool’, to being taken into hostel rooms and stripped naked. Some were forced to masturbate; the more effeminate were kissed; there were occasions when they were buggered. Fortunately, I was spared this ordeal, as after being admitted I went down with typhoid. I had several relapses and had to miss the entire first term. By the time I began attending classes, the baiting season was over. Besides, my having a motorcycle made most of my would-be baiters settle for a ride on the pillion.

  My two years at St Stephen’s were very happy but in no way distinguished. I continued to be as poor a student as I was a player of tennis and hockey, on which I wasted more time than I did on my textbooks. I did however attend Bible classes, which were optional, and got to savour the language of the Old and New Testaments. The Old Testament became my favourite reading - not because of its moral precepts but because of its sonorous language. I also made friends who have stayed friends throughout my life. The one who came into my life in more ways than one was E.N. Mangat Rai, from a Christian family. He was the brightest student in my class and walked away with more prizes than anyone else every year. He subsequently made it into the coveted Indian Civil Service, did his probation at Keble College, Oxford, and rose to the seniormost posts in government service. He was a great and persuasive talker. Also an agnostic. It took me many years to shed his way of thinking. He moulded the minds of many of his contemporaries.

  I scraped through my intermediate exam largely because, having been taught by Englishwomen, I knew the language better than most other Indians, who usually started with the alphabet at the age of twelve. This gave me a headstart over others answering questions on history, logic and economics. However, at the end of two years, I decided to shift to Lahore, where I intended to settle down later. I chose to join the Government College, then the most prestigious in the country. For my interview I was accompanied by my uncle, who, in his time, had captained the college hockey team, and was then a member of the Punjab Legislative Council. In Government College, family connections and influence mattered more than scholarship. When I was admitted to the third year, my cousin joined the first year. For a time we lived with my newly married uncle and his second wife. She was not very kind to her stepson. We moved to the college hostel, where we shared a room. I brought my motorcycle from Delhi and, being the only one to have such a vehicle, was accepted by the elite of the student body, consisting of boys from princely or landed families. By then vastly exaggerated stories of my father’s wealth had begun to circulate. He was said to own half the new city of Delhi. That assured me of special consideration by my professors and fellow students.

  I did no better in Government College than I had done at St Stephen’s. The only difference was that I did a little better at games, and after strenuous practice made it to the college swimming team. I also put my name down for the annual college debate. It came as a pleasant surprise to me that instead of being hooted, as most speakers were, I was heard with rapt attention, my jokes evoked a lot of laughter, and I got away with the first prize, the only one I ever won in any university.

  Although Government College was known for its prowess at sports - it always had four to five players in the Indian Olympic hockey team and several in its track-and-field events - it also had several distinguished men of letters. On the staff was Ahmed Shah Bokhari, the best after-dinner speaker in English that I have heard, who also wrote very witty Urdu prose. With him were two other Urdu writers, Tahseer and Imtiaz Ali Taj. They translated English classics into Urdu. Their rendering of Figaro and Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream were better enacted on the Lahore stage than anything I saw later. At the same time we had Faiz Ahmed Faiz, who had just taken his master’s degree but was often seen in college. His poems were being widely published, and most critics conceded that Faiz would soon blaze a new trail in Urdu poetry - which in fact he did.

  There were other contemporaries at college whose latent powers blossomed in their later years. Most of them made it to the top in the film world in Bombay. They included actors Balraj Sahni and Dev Anand, actress Kamini Kaushal, and directors B.R. Chopra and Chetan Anand.

  I passed my Bachelor of Arts examination in the third division. With my poor academic record I had little prospect of making it into Oxford or Cambridge. Of the London colleges, where I would be admitted, I opted for King’s College, for no other reason than its regal name, in preference to University College, the School of Economics or the School of Oriental Studies. In any case, all I wanted to do in England was to qualify for the bar. This in years past required no more than dining at the Inns of Court for three years and paying a fee which gave you licence to practise law in any high court.

  In the summer of 1934 I left Delhi by train for Bombay. Hundreds of my father’s friends and distant relations came to see me off at the railway station. In those times going abroad was a rare adventure for Indians. I was loaded with garlands as if I were going out to conquer the world. My elder brother and his wife were sent with me to see me safely on board my ship.

  My first sea voyage was on the Italian boat Conte Rosso. Most of the economy class was taken up by Indian students. I was given the lower berth in a cabin for six. It was monsoon time. Lunch was announced as the boat pulled out of the harbour. By the time soup was served, the boat began to rock and roll. The dining room emptied and we ran back to our cabins. For the next five days the ship reeked of vomit. I only left my berth to rush to and back from the bathroom and let the cabin steward make my bed. Huge waves washed over the decks; the boat groaned and shuddered as if it were about to break into pieces. It was only when we got to Aden that the sea became calm.

  Aden was not a great change. All the shops were owned by Indians. The only Arabs we saw were pedlars or beggars. Thereafter began the pleasanter part of our voyage. A placid Red Sea; at sunset dolphins by the hundreds doing cartwheels as far as the eye could see; moonlit nights heavy with the fragrance of the desert.

  We entered the Suez Canal. The more enterprising went off to visit the pyramids and reboard the ship at Port Said. One boy who was in my class in Government College and had been there had told us of nude shows and brothels stocked with young whores from distant parts of the world. And how little it cost to be laid. Much as I yearned to savour joys of the flesh, I was far too scared to risk such a venture. Like me, another
two boys made a virtue of timidity and we spent our time walking along the seafront to the statue of Ferdinand de Lesseps, the engineer who designed the canal, and wandered round Simon Arzt, the largest department store in the East. We took sly glances at dirty picture postcards which were stuck in front of our noses by insistent pedlars. By the evening the other boys came on board and we eagerly heard of their adventures. For most of them it was their first experience of sex. The brothels were almost entirely furnished with Arab or Negro women, fat and middle-aged. At eighteen, boys are not choosy about who they lose their virginity to. It was easy money for brothel keepers, as these overexcited young men had shot their seed having barely touched their targets. They were now apprehensive about the outcome. Every day they examined their organs to see if there were any signs of venereal disease.

  From Port Said to Venice, where our sea journey terminated, the only topic was this first encounter, gone over and over again in great and varying detail.

  After spending a day in Venice, I took the boat train to London. My first encounter with sex awaited me.

  While at Government College I had been corresponding with a lady teacher of the Modern School. She was only a few years older than me. Our correspondence had gradually got more and more amorous, and once when in Delhi I had gone to see her in her room and kissed her passionately in the moonlight. She had reprimanded me, but thereafter her letters to me were even friendlier than before. She was in London doing some kind of advanced course in teacher’s training. My fears of getting lost in London were lessened by the knowledge that she was there. She was there at Victoria Station to receive me and had booked me a room in a pension on Gower Street run by an Italian. We hired a cab to take us to our destination.

  I had not seen her since I had taken liberties with her and was unsure of how she would treat me. My doubts were soon dispelled. No sooner was the taxi in motion than she turned my face towards her and glued her lips to mine. It continued all the way to the pension. I was in a frantic state of excitement by the time we paid off the cab driver. She helped me with my luggage to the third floor of the pension. No sooner had the Italian patron turned his back to us than she bolted the door and we tumbled on the bed kissing each other with wild abandon. I got bolder with my advances. She withdrew. Seeing the protrusion in my trousers, she tapped it with her finger and said, ‘Not sex; only love.’ It was no use. I tore her blouse and sari off her. She protested, ‘No, no. I have no protection. We must get contraceptives before we do that.’ Even that was no use. I tried to lunge into her and came into her thighs. A strong feeling of shame, guilt and revulsion came over me.