Sex,Scotch and Scholarship

by Khushwant Singh

  She cleaned herself as best as she could with a dry towel and again lay beside me. She said she had forgiven me because she loved me. And again began to kiss me. This time I found her mouth malodorous and was very reluctant to return her kisses. But eighteen is an age of physical compulsions. I was roused again. And once again savagely went for her bosom and then for her middle. This time she held me back and took the discharge in her hands.

  The dinner gong came to my rescue. I refused to take her back to my room and walked her down to the tube station. For the next three days I avoided her by keeping away from the pension till late hours of the night. In her frustration she went off on a sightseeing tour of the country with one of her other students who happened to be there. He was more adept at the game than I, and she returned at peace with herself.

  The sexual Pandora’s box had been opened wide -and along with it fear of sex. In my letters to my friends who wanted to know of my exploits with white girls, I created all kinds of fantasies about my conquests. For the first time I sat with girls in class, played tennis, badminton and squash with them, saw couples copulating in parks - so it did not take much for me to fantasize about them. My mind was more preoccupied with girls than with Roman law and jurisprudence. However, I managed to pass my tests.

  My first year in England made me fall in love with the country and the people. I moved out of Gower Street to an English boarding house in Streatham. I was the only Indian among four women, including two young nurses, and two elderly men. I spent Christmas in a Quaker hostel in Buckinghamshire, where the Perm brothers are buried. I learnt to sing Christmas carols and made many friends. Although there were several Indians at college, I was fortunate enough to befriend English boys who took me home for weekends. It exploded the myth that the English regard their homes as their castles. And that English women are frigid. Both the nurses in my boarding house and the sisters of some friends were more than willing to extend their favours to me. I was too unsure of myself and never went beyond kissing and cuddling them. One after the other, they dropped me in favour of more aggressive paramours.

  I came home again for my summer vacation travelling on the Italian Lloyd Trestino. I continued bragging of my exploits with English girls. This was perhaps my earliest foray into the world of fiction.

  Back in England I decided to move out into the country. Through an introduction from an English friend whose father was one of the founders of the garden-city movement, I moved to Welwyn Garden City (Hertfordshire). He found me a room with a retired professor, F.S. Marvin, who had written many books. His little cottage was at the end of a lane with the Sherrards Park woods on one side and the rolling country on the other. It took me an hour by train and bus to get to college but it was well worth it. I became a part of the Welwyn Garden community; I played tennis, hockey, badminton and squash for it, travelled with the same group of men and women on the train, and made close friends who continue to keep in touch with me to this day. Above all it was the walks in the woods ablaze with azaleas and rhododendrons and loud with birdsong which made me fall deeper in love with everything English.

  It was during my stay in Welwyn Garden that I ran into a girl, Kaval Malik, who had been with me at Modern School. She had always been a good-looking, light-skinned girl, and a bit of a tomboy, playing hockey and soccer with the boys. When I left school she was still a gawky girl, a couple of years my junior. I lost track of her when I moved to Lahore. When I ran into her in England she had blossomed into a beauty and was much sought after by many boys I knew, some from India’s richest families. Her parents were orthodox Sikhs and determined to marry her off to a Sikh boy in the Civil Service. They stood in awe of the Indian Civil Service, as her uncle, who had made it, was worshipped as a hero. They were negotiating with parents of Sikh boys sitting for competitive exams. Meeting the girl now grown into a young lady caused me anguish, as I fell desperately in love with her and also felt that I stood little chance of winning her. Besides other obstacles, there was the fact that her father was a senior engineer in the Public Works Department, while mine was a builder who had to get contracts from the PWD (Public Works Department). Besides, I was studying law, and lawyers, being a dime a dozen, were poorly rated in the marriage market. Her parents thought well of me, as a year earlier they had visited me in my lodgings. Her mother had found the Sikh prayer book under my pillow and had been deeply impressed. I met them again in the Lake District. They were staying in a fancy hotel at Bowness; I in a lodging house at Windermere. I rowed up seven miles to have breakfast with them. I knew they would agree to their daughter marrying me if they could not find a better Sikh proposal.

  My best chance was to bypass the parents and approach the girl directly. Christmas vacation was near and she had nowhere to go. I suggested that she come to the Quaker hostel in Buckinghamshire. She wrote to her parents to seek their permission. To my utter surprise, they agreed that she could go. I began courting her as soon as the train left London. And continued paying court throughout our fortnight’s stay with the Quakers. On our way back to London, I asked her if I could ask my parents to approach hers with the proposal. She nodded her head.

  Our engagement was announced a few days later. It caused a lot of heartburn among her many suitors. A particularly ardent one, whose sister was married to my fiancée’s brother, said very acidly, ‘the bank balance won’. By that time my father was known to be a man of considerable wealth. Though most of them envied me, the only one to try to dissuade me from marrying the girl was my closest friend, E.N. Mangat Rai, who, at the time, had a poor opinion of her. He was later to fall deeply in love with her and almost succeeded in wrecking our marriage.

  It took me a year more than prescribed for the course to take my Bachelor of Law degree, and I became a Barrister-at-Law of the Inner Temple. In the meantime I had sat for the Indian Civil Service exam. Rating my chances as negligible I had not taken one paper. When the results were declared, I discovered to my great surprise that I had just missed getting in. I was the only candidate, English or Indian, to be given full marks in the viva voce. I must have impressed the interview board more than the examiners of my papers.

  I returned home by sea in the summer of 1939. There was talk of war breaking out. By the time I reached Delhi, German armies had been launched on their conquest of neighbouring countries.

  In October 1939 I got married. It was a grand affair. My wife’s father was by then chief engineer of the PWD, the first Indian to rise to the position. My father was acknowledged as the biggest owner of real estate in Delhi. We lived in a large stone and marble mansion with over a dozen bedrooms, a teak-panelled library, and chandeliered sitting and dining rooms. My father also entertained politicians. At our wedding reception there were over fifteen hundred guests, including M.A. Jinnah, founding father of Pakistan. Champagne flowed like the river Jamuna in flood. My wife received presents which, after fifty years of being given away, have not yet been exhausted. My father gave me a new car and rented an apartment and office space for me near the High Court at Lahore. After a short honeymoon at Mount Abu in Rajasthan, the two of us drove to Lahore in our new Ford.

  My comparative affluence and family connections opened many doors for me in Lahore. I joined the two elite clubs of Lahore, including the Gymkhana, which rarely took Indians. We were entertained in the homes of ministers, judges and senior lawyers. However, none of that brought me clients. I spent hours in my office and at the Bar Association, hearing cases being argued by eminent lawyers. For a while I worked as a junior to the top criminal lawyer, but for months did not have a brief to handle on my own. I took undefended murder cases for as little as sixteen rupees and took up a part-time lecturer’s job at the law college. I earned very little. I began to get bored with the law and turned to reading English poetry and classics, which I had ignored in college days.

  I spent the war years in Lahore. Although after some years I did pick up a little practice, it was never enough to maintain myself at the level I was ac
customed to. My father was a very generous man. He bought me a large bungalow alongside the Lawrence Gardens, and twice replaced my old car with a new one. But it was common knowledge that I had a very small practice, and the best I could hope for through my connections was to be elevated to the bench. The one thing Lahore gave me was my friendship with Manzur Qadir, who was rising fast to the top of the legal profession. He was a man of incredible ability and integrity. Also, like me, an agnostic. He rose to be Pakistan’s foreign minister and chief justice.

  As the British decided to pull out of India, it became evident that India would be divided and Lahore would go to Pakistan. In 1946 savage killing of Hindus and Sikhs had begun in north-western Punjab, and the violence gradually spread eastwards to Lahore and Amritsar. By the summer of 1947 it became clear that unless the rioting was somehow stopped, Hindus and Sikhs would have to get out of Pakistan. He even had word sent to me that I should stay on in Lahore, clearly hinting that he wanted some non-Muslims on the bench. But so fierce was the animosity between the communities that early in August 1947 I decided to leave Lahore till the violence subsided. I handed over possession of my house to Manzur Qadir for safekeeping. I was never able to return to it as its owner. After some years I came to stay in it as a guest of the Qadir family.

  Strange that, though I lost my home and livelihood, I heaved a sigh of relief that I was done with the law. I had begun to hate it and resolved never to return to it. In Delhi I applied for a job in the Ministry of External Affairs. They were looking for personnel to man their many newly opened embassies. Without as much as an interview I was appointed information officer in the Indian High Commission in London. By October 1947 I was back in England, this time with my wife, our two new children, and two servants. I rented a cottage in Welwyn Garden City.

  The high commissioner at the time was Krishna Menon, an acerbic-tongued, prickly character who had been picked up by Pandit Nehru to be India’s ambassador to Great Britain. My immediate boss was Sudhir Ghosh, who regarded himself as Mahatma Gandhi’s personal envoy and a cut above Krishna Menon. The two clashed fiercely. Menon was supported by Prime Minister Nehru, Ghosh by Home Minister Sardar Patel, who had charge of foreign publicity. The quarrel came to a head a few months after I had joined the office. Menon used me against Ghosh and had him sent back to India. Patel retaliated by transferring me to Ottawa. I had to pack up again and take the boat to New York en route to Ottawa.

  In Ottawa my boss was my wife’s uncle, H.W. Malik, of the Indian Civil Service. He was a great golfer and a party man who disdained to mix with anyone except heads of state, ministers and the rich. He spent more time on the golf course and at diplomatic receptions than in the office. In any event, there was very little for us to do. I began to write short stories, cultivate writers, poets and editors of literary journals. It was in Canada that my literary efforts first appeared in print in the Canadian Forum, Saturday Night, and Harper’s. Although I soon fell out with my high commissioner, I made deep and abiding friendships with many Canadians. I travelled across the length and breadth of the country, went skiing in winter, hiking in the Rockies in summer, and saw the autumn light maple forests on fire. Canada remains my favourite country.

  Just as my relations with the high commissioner were reaching a breaking point, I received orders of transfer back to London. External publicity was taken over by the prime minister and at Menon’s insistence I was brought back to London to take over as press attaché and public relations officer.

  This time I first shared an apartment with the trade commissioner, A.S. Lai, then moved into a small house in Hendon, a north-western suburb of London.

  My second posting to London proved to be a turning point in my career. I soon tired of diplomatic life, which for me meant an endless succession of lunches, cocktail parties and receptions. I kept an open house for journalists. Post-war England was short of booze. I had come back from Canada with several crates of premium Scotch. My parties became very popular. Apart from eminent journalists like Kingsley Martin, Harold Evans, William Clarke and David Astor, I entertained writers like C.P. Snow and Professor C.E.M. Joad, the poets Auden, Louis MacNeice and Dylan Thomas. My first collection of short stories, The Mark of Vishnu, largely based on my experiences in Lahore and Ottawa, was published by Saturn Press. It got very good notices - no doubt due to my cocktail-party contacts. I began to seriously think of taking up writing as a career. My relations with the high commissioner, Krishna Menon, had begun to sour. He was unbelievably discourteous and surrounded himself with a horde of snivelling sycophants. I got caught between his ageing English mistress and a young Indian girl he was enamoured with. She worked as a clerk in his secretariat. He tried to belittle me by sending orders through her. Instead of asking for a transfer, I decided it was time I did what I wanted to with my life. I was approaching forty. If I wanted to become a writer, it had to be now or never. I decided to give up the perks of diplomatic life - invitations to Buckingham Palace, embassy receptions, as much diplomatic duty-free liquor as I wanted, a CD plate on my car. The now or never became now. I put in my resignation in 1951 to try to make myself a writer. ‘Nothing venture nothing have’, I kept repeating to myself. I did not consult anyone, as by now there was little communication between my wife and me. I packed her off with our children and servants. The day they left, I sent in an application for leave that was due to me along with my resignation. Menon made a half-hearted attempt to dissuade me, saying he looked upon me as a friend. ‘You have no friends’ were the last words I said to him before leaving India House for good.

  I rented a basement apartment in Highgate and got down to work. I had come to the conclusion that in order to survive in the highly competitive world of writing, I had to specialize in some subject. I chose the study of my own people, the Sikhs. I translated the Sikhs’ morning prayer, Japji, composed by the founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak. It was published by Probsthain. I also wrote a short history of my community entitled The Sikhs which was published by Allen & Unwin. It was not much as a book of history, but my prediction that by the turn of the century the Sikhs would merge back into the Hindu fold roused a lot of controversy, and the book sold out.

  However, none of the three books I had published so far had brought me much money. My total earnings from my first two books were under £500. Whatever I had saved in my four years as a diplomat ran out and I decided to return home. I was back in Delhi by the summer of 1951, living in my father’s house and on his bounty. Everyone thought I was a little mad to have given up a diplomatic career, and with my poor academic record I was hardly expected to succeed as a writer. I had to suffer barbed shafts from members of my family and friends. I decided to get away from this atmosphere. I went off to Bhopal in central India, where my father had an ice-cream factory, an orchard and a house along the lake. I lived alone in the house, working mornings on a novel on the Partition of India. I watched the bird life on the lake and caught an occasional glimpse of the Nawab’s maidservants, divesting themselves of their burqas and peeling off their clothes to bathe in the water. Striptease has always been my favourite voyeur sport. I took long walks through the forest and drank myself to sleep on rum and gin. In three months I had the draft of the novel Mano Majra ready and returned to Delhi.

  My self-confidence was at a very low ebb. I was drawing money from my father’s account; my wife was paying for our children’s education. She saw more of Mangat Rai than was good for her reputation. Very reluctantly I took a job with All India Radio in charge of their English overseas programmes. I had very little to do, and the only positive aspect of the job was that I was able to befriend Nirad C. Chaudhuri, who wrote scripts for us, and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, who came occasionally to record talks.

  I had not till then had my novel typed out. Tatty, the American wife of an English diplomat, Walter Bell, agreed to type it for me. I decided to send it to Grove Press of New York, which had announced a thousand-dollar award for the best work of fiction from India. ‘But it’s n
o damn good,’ said Tatty Bell to me. ‘You are wasting a lot of money on postage.’ Despite the damper I mailed my manuscript to New York using an assumed name, as Krishna Menon was one of the judges.

  During my second year with All India Radio I happened to interview Dr Luther Evans, who was then director-general of UNESCO in Paris. We hit it off very well. A few weeks later I received an offer to take over as deputy head of its mass communication division. Without any regret I resigned my radio job, leaving a note behind recommending that the post be abolished, as I had never had more than fifteen minutes of work in a day.

  Once more I took my wife and two children and sailed for Europe. I was the only one in the party looking forward to the venture. We were in Paris for two years. My children learnt to speak French, my wife learnt to love French cuisine and wines, and once again I had very little to do besides writing letters, attending conferences and receptions in different parts of the world: Madrid, Montevideo, Geneva, London. For me the most pleasant part of my stay in Paris was the announcement that my novel had won the Grove Press award and had been accepted by a number of European publishers, including Chatto and Windus (London) and Gallimard (France). It appeared under two titles, Mano Majra and Train to Pakistan (also Dia Brucke am Satledsch in German). It got undeservedly good reviews. I decided to quit my job. I found UNESCO full of petty intrigue and with more than the normal quota of the loonies found in all international organizations. I didn’t have much problem picking a quarrel with a Norwegian who had been made my boss and handing in my resignation. As earlier in the diplomatic service, I sent my family back to India. I moved into a small cottage near Houdan and started working on my second novel. I finished the first draft in three months and sailed back to India.