‘I’m sorry. I know what it is to have an invalid in the house.’
‘I was writing a new novel but put it away after four chapters. There is too much disturbance here. I will do so in April at Kasauli.’
‘How I long to go there.’
‘The villa is full of books. There are more books there than here. You don’t have to take anything along. There are beds and bedding, hot-water bottles and blowers. You could also get a log fire lit if you are so inclined.’
‘It sounds divine.’
He told me that all I had to do was take a cook or just order food from the club across the road. He insisted that if I went when he was there as well, he would discipline me in no time. When I retorted that the problem really was our body clocks, with him being an early bird and me a night owl, he went on to describe his tempting morning rituals there. I could imagine how wonderful it would be to live with him in that bit of heaven where one did nothing but read and write.
‘Tell me how your love life is progressing.’
‘I have lost interest.’
‘Why? Is it age or boredom?’
‘Boredom. The zing has gone out of the affair.’
‘You feel like a married couple.’
‘When sexual attraction wanes in a marriage, you have a shared home, the children, relatives, friends and social obligations to bind you. In an affair, you have nothing left once the affinity fizzles out.’
‘Has he become jealous and possessive?’
‘Yes. It is as if the rose has withered but the thorns remain. I have begun to feel caged and long for breathing space.’
‘I tire of a beautiful woman with nothing in her upper storey in ten minutes flat.’
‘How true. There is no mental tuning whatsoever with SP.’
‘Why don’t you take a new lover?’
‘Goodness gracious. No!’
‘Why this expression of horror?’
‘I would have never got into this tangle if SP hadn’t been so persistent. It took him six years to wear me down. Why, now that I have not slept with my husband for ages, I’d feel shy to undress even in front of him – the father of my children!’
It took him a while to digest this.
The conversation veered towards books and the Nobel Prize. He was to preside over a function that evening at Max Mueller Bhawan to release Günter Grass’s latest book and invited me to come along. But I had a patient in early labour at the nursing home and excused myself.
He saw me to the door and kissed my cheek in the semi-darkness of the corridor. If only those walls could speak. The stories they’d tell!
21.2.2001
Dear Khushwant Singhji
It was good to see you the other day. I am still working on ‘Project Kasauli’. Quite irrationally I have come to believe that Kasauli will be a turning point in my writing career. If I spend some time perfecting my MSS there I feel that lady luck will smile upon me.
Love
Amrinder
***
27 Feb. 2001
Dear Amrinder
Good! Before you finalize your dates for Kasauli get in touch with me. Except for two days in March when my son’s girlfriend wants to go there. Raj Villa will be available to you. It will be uncomfortably cold till March end; so I suggest early April when the flowers will be out – and full of birdsong. Also I will advise you the best way to go there – either by car all the way – or Shatabdi to Chandigarh and taxi onwards to Raj Villa.
Do a thorough job and you will make it big. You have it in you.
Love
K
When I visited my parents last, Mummy begged me to allow my husband his conjugal rights. I told her that I could not bear his presence near me. Moreover, when it really mattered, he had never bothered about my conjugal needs. She was appalled at her daughter’s assertion for the right to an orgasm.
‘I pity your husband and respect him. It is good of him to keep you after …’ she continued.
‘That’s exactly the point! Why does he keep me? For my income? For being a nursemaid to his parents? To save face?’
‘Instead of being ashamed of your behaviour, you have the nerve to talk like this. Why, any man in his place would have killed you.’
‘He doesn’t have the guts to do anything upfront. Even now, I bet he has come crying to you, which is why this lecture.’
Conditioned by years of maternal dominance, I decided to give my marriage one last chance, provided my husband let me to go to Kasauli. It wasn’t as if I was enamoured of SP any more. I felt I was better off without either of these men.
To put my husband’s fears to rest, I asked his aunt and her cook to accompany me. He agreed. I was jubilant and began making preparations.
A few days later, the aunt rang up to inform me that she couldn’t go as her health did not permit her. I knew it to be a blatant lie. When prodded about the real reason for ditching me, she said, ‘I don’t want to discuss the details. Suffice it to say that your husband does not want me to go.’
I was shocked.
‘Don’t tell him that I told you this,’ she continued. ‘He made me promise to keep it a secret.’
The treachery! I was filled with a loathing so intense that I could not bear to breathe the same air as him. If only he knew how close we were to reconciliation if he had given in to this little wish of mine.
I spewed the venom that life had forced down my throat on all those people whose lives touched mine. If living in the same house as the man I hated, if subjugation and slavery was my lot, so be it. My frustration erupted in the form of migraines that made me want to bang my head against a wall till the skull split open.
24
On our next meeting, the sheer net of my pale-yellow sari intrigued Khushwant Singh. I swung the loose end forward and let him touch it, feeling a bit self-conscious at the intimacy. He asked me how far I had progressed with the book I was writing for adolescent girls.
‘Low Price Publications has agreed to publish it.’
‘What are you writing about? Matters related to menstruation?’
‘That, plus adolescent sexuality – STDs, contraception, including emergency contraceptive pills and pregnancies.’
‘There is a lady whose only claim to fame is her risqué writings. I was amazed to learn that there is no word for female orgasm in Hindi.’
‘There is no actual word, but a man usually asks his partner “ho gayi kya” after the act, which means the same.’
‘And clitoris? There is no word for it.’
‘Some call it “daana”.’
‘And in Punjabi?’
‘Chola.’
By now, I had gone red in the face and abruptly began talking about the flamboyant silk cotton tree that was painting the March sky red and the flame of the forest or the palash tree from which natural dyes are made for Holi.
‘The Battle of Plassey was named after this tree,’ he informed me.
‘History reminds me of an engagement ceremony I had recently attended. The “boy” was the son of a renowned builder who claims that his grandfather built the India Gate; I thought your father Sir Sobha Singh built it.’
‘That’s right. I used to visit the site on a cycle while it was being built. There is even a joke circulating about me trying to stop a man peeing on India Gate, at which the man said, “Tere baap ka hai kya?” and I replied, “Haan!”’
I learnt later that the other builder had built the chhatri behind the India Gate.
I told Khushwant Singh an amusing anecdote I had read about Abraham Lincoln when he was still a lawyer. He summed up a case saying, ‘Respected jury, my worthy opponent has got the facts right but drawn the wrong conclusions.’ When a perplexed jury asked the meaning of this statement, he elaborated: ‘A boy ran to his father, saying, “Father, the farmhand has taken sister to the loft. He has lowered his pants and she has raised her skirt and I think they are going to pee in the hay.” At this, the father retorted, “Son, you
have got the facts right but drawn the wrong conclusions.” Ultimately, Lincoln won the case.’
Khushwant Singh told me a joke about Zail Singh, our former president: The Britishers had heard of a singularly stupid race called the Sikhs. To test their intelligence, they called Buta Singh and Jaswant Singh to identify an object. Both correctly identified it as a condom. When Zail Singh’s turn came, they replaced it with a surgical glove, but he insisted on calling it a condom.
‘Look again.’
‘It is a condom,’ said Zail Singh emphatically, ‘but meant for Draupadi!’
I added another one: A man’s organ was amputated. So the surgeon replaced it with the trunk of a baby elephant. At a follow-up six months later when the doctor asked the patient how he had been faring, he replied, ‘My wife isn’t complaining, I am happy, except for one problem – whenever I go to the fields to defecate, it uproots the sugar cane and tries to stuff it up my …’
Khushwant Singh guffawed with laughter. As the meeting progressed, the jokes got raunchier.
This was the beginning of a risqué phase in our relationship. Hereafter, every letter I wrote to him would end with a joke, quite like his column; but unlike those jokes, these were not meant for public reading.
25
A joke appeared in Khushwant Singh’s column one Saturday: The queen of England, impressed by a farmer for fathering fifteen children, offered him a knighthood. ‘If he had used a “night hood”, we wouldn’t have had so many children,’ said his wife. This induced me to pen a letter.
6.4.2001
Dear Khushwant Singhji
After reading about the joke book by H.D. Shourie in your Saturday column, I agree with you that the best jokes are the ribald ones. If someone did have the daring to publish such a book it would be an outright bestseller. Meanwhile, I would like to share with you two of the recent raunchy jokes I heard. I know that it is not the done thing for ‘ladies’ to be so ‘free’ with gentlemen but then I have always been freer than free with you.
What do two sardars having an affair with the same girl say to each other?
‘Usee, tusee ikoo pussy.’
What is the difference between a five-year-old marriage and a five-year-old job?
The job still sucks!
Kasauli still looms large in my mind’s eye as a beautiful dream. I will make a reality of it yet – provided you don’t lose patience with me in the meantime.
Love
Amrinder Bajaj
***
11 April 2001
Dear Amrinder
Send me a new joke. The ones about pussy and sucking I heard a few months ago – from a lady. I have several collections of the world’s dirtiest jokes. You are welcome to borrow them. Also explicit pix – you are welcome to them as well.
The Kasauli offer stands. My reputation is not going to change.
Love
K
***
14.04.2001
Dear Khushwant Singhji
Now that I have bared the lewd aspect of my nature (which most women rightly keep under wraps) I might as well give you a few more laughs. I hope you haven’t heard these:
Santa brought a pair of pedigree dogs from abroad to begin a dog-breeding endeavour in his native village. Sadly, the male died. A few months later the bitch was in heat and the local strays crowded around her. Worried that his prize bitch might breed mongrels, Santa sought Banta’s help. The latter advised him to put petrol on her behind to keep them off the scent. The ploy worked beautifully and Santa was mighty pleased. His pleasure was short-lived, though, for the bitch disappeared by evening! Banta was sent to look for her. He returned panting after a while and stated: ‘Teri kutti da petrol muk gaya see, gali da kutaa unnoo tochan kar ke liya reha hai.’
Two men were indulging in homosexual sex when a visitor barged in to ask if there was a place to stay overnight at their inn. Annoyed at being interrupted, one of them said, ‘Jagah kithe hai. Disda nahin ethee bande te banda chadiya hai?’
To balance the above, here is another of my sob stories in rhyme! I know you despise people who indulge in self-pity but surely converting tears into words is the best way to delete negative emotions.
Love
Amrinder
Attached was a mediocre poem about being transferred from the cage of matrimony to the prison of stifling extramarital love.
19 April 2001
Dear Amrinder
Both jokes were new to me. I will add them to my repertoire. I understood the personal element in your poem but the lines do not rhyme – to start with, marriage does not rhyme with cage. There are some others, which need rephrasing. Also it does not seem that the bird having escaped one cage resents having been caught in another. Besides gold and diamonds there seem to be other compelling reasons to sing away in the second prison.
Love
K
26
I took part in a competition organized by the website of a well-known heritage bookstore in Kolkata. They asked for the first chapter of an unpublished novel by fresh authors and three winners were to go on to become the first e-authors of India.
As the date of the results drew nearer, I scanned their website in a feverish state of anticipation. Out of 1,700 applicants, fifteen were shortlisted and my name was among them! I was in an agony of excitement. To reach this far and not be selected would be such a shame. The shortlisted manuscripts were sent to established Indian writers like Shobhaa De, Amitav Ghosh and Vikram Chandra for the final appraisal. When the results were finally announced, I had tied with another for the third position! The one person I wanted to share my incredible joy with was Khushwant Singh and I rushed to meet him. With his patka off, his white hair askew, his unevenly blackened beard open, he looked quite a sight that May afternoon. There was no electricity and therefore no AC. A window was thrown open to let in fresh air.
‘The problem is that I cannot work in this weather,’ he lamented, adding, ‘Would you like some phalsa sherbet?’
I nodded an affirmative. It was not often that I was offered anything in his house. I sipped the cool and refreshing purple drink while he went over the printout of my email correspondence with the website of the heritage bookstore.
‘Amitav Ghosh was part of the selection committee. I read his The Glass Palace recently. It was beautiful, published by my son-in-law, Ravi Dayal.’
‘What is the name of his publishing house?’
‘Ravi Dayal.’
I took a while to digest this. Besides being a consultant editor with Penguin, he also had a publisher for a son-in-law. The man had the best of resources at his disposal but lifted not a finger to help me. The brightness of my joy dimmed somewhat, yet I had much to be grateful for. He taught me to draft and redraft my manuscript till there was not a word more or a word less. And it was such a pruned and polished first chapter that had won me the prize.
‘You are happier than I have seen you in many days.’ Khushwant Singh broke into my thoughts.
‘I am. Now that I have proved myself, no one can stop me from going to Kasauli. That is if your place is still available.’
‘Your husband won’t object now?’
‘I have something concrete to show for my “wasteful scribbling”. Moreover, I have the difficult task of reducing a full-grown tree into a perfect bonsai ahead of me.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Our novels will be published as e-novels that are not to exceed 30,000 words. I’ll have a tough time pruning 1,30,000 words to 30,000 and will need to give it unequivocal attention. The date is yet undecided, so I cannot tell you when I can avail of your generous offer but before that, the winners will be felicitated in Delhi. The venue is yet to be decided.’
27
23 May 2001 got me my first taste of success as a writer. Along with the three other winners, I was to be felicitated by Vikram Chandra at The Park in CP. There was to be a press conference as well!
Though the actual function was at thre
e in the afternoon, we were asked to report at 9 a.m. Among the winners, I was the oldest and the only married one. While we introduced ourselves, a photographer from India Today accosted us and as he clicked furiously, I had to remind myself that this was no dream!
After a while, in walked the COO of the well-known bookstore. Over breakfast, he told us that we would have to sign over our copyrights to them. As we looked at him dubiously, he laughed with an assurance that told us in no uncertain terms that we were not in a position to refuse.
‘If your work was that good, it would have been grabbed by publishers long ago,’ he said, deflating my ego considerably.
‘And here I was dreaming of buying a laptop with my earnings as a writer,’ I quipped unthinkingly.
‘Forget it. Why, even the bestsellers Khushwant Singh writes do not sell more than 5,000 copies.’
I knew that Penguin published at least 13,000 copies of Khushwant Singh’s works at the first go and they are all sold out even before they hit the stands, but I kept quiet.
Not one for mincing words, the COO made it clear that we were mere stooges in the drama enacted by the oldest bookstore in Kolkata.
‘You’ll have to send chapters of the rest of the novel as and when you write them,’ he continued. ‘These would be posted at our website as e-novels for the readers to comment upon. Remember that the novel should not exceed 30,000 words, for the reader on the Internet has a very short attention span. Finally, three of you would be selected and awarded prizes for the complete novels. You will have the distinction of becoming the first e-authors of India.’
We swallowed this bit of information along with our breakfast, though it took us a while to digest it. The first prize for the first chapter was Rs 5,000, the second Rs 3,000 and the third Rs 2,000. I wanted to ask whether the third prize winners would have to share the prize money since we were tied for the position, but was too embarrassed to do so.
The Afternoon Girl Page 10