How old is your granddaughter? Is she still in her teens? If so I will get the booklet on adolescent girl for her after it is published. I hope you remember that you promised to write about it in your column after it hits the market. That will be a great help. They have also asked me to write a book on medical jokes. Before they edit the jokes I specialize in, I am sending a few samples:
Woman to psychiatrist: ‘My husband wants to have sex in the ear.’
‘She will become deaf,’ said the doctor to frighten the man off such an act.
‘Abhi tak to goongi nahin hui!’ he retorted.
A dentist was about to extract the tooth of a lady when he pulled back in alarm.
‘Madam you have caught hold of my privates!’ he exclaimed.
‘Yes I know and now we won’t hurt each other, will we?’
Love
Amrinder
***
17 Sept. 2001
Dear Amrinder
Naina is 24+. And very worldly-wise despite absence of men and women friends. She is immersed in books and determined to be an academician.
I will redeem my promise to review your book.
Be cautious about medical jokes. The ones you sent me can land you in trouble. Also there are many complications of doctor jokes, foreign to Indians. No copyright but also no originality. You have to be original.
I’ll be off to Kasauli for a week.
Love
K
***
17.9.01
Dear Khushwant Singhji
Thank you so much for publishing my poem in your column.
I am ashamed to admit that for one who cannot stop talking in private company, I suffer from stage fright. That is why when I was forced to take part in a debate at a gynaecological conference at the Kanishka I was on tenterhooks. No one was more surprised than me when I won the first prize for my first debate!
My son was in New York when the WTC came crumbling down. Thank god he is safe. But how safe is ‘safe’ in the present scenario and where does one find safety (certainly not in India) is the moot point. But why worry about things beyond our control? All we can do is watch the alarmingly rapid developments with interest and let matters take their course.
Quite like your column, I tend to end each letter with a joke nowadays:
A rabbit escaped from a research laboratory where he was born and bred. He joined a group of wild rabbits who took him to a field full of juicy carrots where he had his fill. After this they devoured fat lettuce from another field.
‘That was a wonderful day!’ said the escaped rabbit sighing with pleasure.
‘So you are going to stay with us hereafter?’
‘I wish I could but I really must get back to the laboratory. I am dying for a cigarette.’
Lady to dentist: It is easier having a baby than getting a tooth removed.
Dentist: Will you please decide quickly madam so that I know which side of the chair to raise?
Love
Amrinder
P.S.: When can I look you up next?
***
20 Sept. 2001
Dear Amrinder
I will be on my way to Kasauli for a week – then to Haridwar for a meeting (4–6 Oct.). Any day after that, you will be more than welcome.
Love
K
33
In November 2001, I went to meet Khushwant Singh in the bright magenta sari I wore for Diwali a few days earlier. This shocked the daylights out of him for he was used to seeing me in pastel shades. After the greetings, he asked me how my writing was progressing.
I told him about the discontinuation of the email exchange with the Penguin editor and the fact that The Adolescent Girl was finally out. I gave him the copy I had taken along with me and reminded him of his promise to write about it in his column.
‘Autograph it for me,’ he beamed.
‘You want … my autograph!’ I stuttered.
‘Yes,’ he smiled.
I wrote:
With warmest regards
Amrinder
I then gave him a fancy little wrought-iron cart that could hold a bottle of wine. In return, he loaded me with books he had no use for. True to his words, he did write about my book in his column on 1 December 2001.
***
4.12.01
Dear Khushwant Singhji
Thank you so much for making the public aware of the existence of my book. I do so want it to reach the target readers so that they benefit from it. The president of a school has placed an order for 500 books!
I told my publisher that NK is in charge of a chain of schools. He is trying to clinch a deal through a middleman. I hope he succeeds.
What about your autobiography? I read in the newspapers that stay order has been removed so why the delay? The moment it hits the stands I’ll buy a copy and come for your autograph.
How is your wife now? Has she returned from the hospital? Let me alleviate you sufferings (relatives suffer as much if not more than the invalid) a wee bit by sending you another joke.
A brand new doctor would walk with a swagger to the local paan shop with his white coat slung over his shoulder and bask in the respect showered upon him.
One day the paan-wallah asked, surprised: ‘What is this, doctor sahib? A petticoat on your shoulder in place of the coat!’
‘Oh my god! Both hang on the same peg!’
Please don’t expose the salacious side of my nature to my uncle lest he die of a heart attack.
Love
Amrinder
***
12 Dec. 2001
Dear Amrinder
I am glad my little piece has yielded some dividend. My autobiography is due sometime early January. No great shakes. Just confessions of losing my virginity to a whore, being seduced by a lady teacher and a total flop as a fucker, etc, etc.
One day I might have to resort to blackmail vis-à-vis what you write to bring you round.
I’ll be out of circulation for 15 days. Cataract surgery.
Love
Khushwant
34
12.12.01
Dear Khushwant Singhji
Now that you have taught me to stop feeling sorry for myself I have started feeling sorry for you! ‘Such impudence!’ you might say but I do feel that despite your celebrity status, your wide circle of friends, you must miss the one person with whom you could share a thought, a meal, a bed – in short your wife – who exists in your house but does not share your life.
In a state of semi-somnolence around midnight I put myself in your shoes and got up to write this poem:
She who was so beautiful
Is but skin stretched over bones.
She who was the epitome of grace
Is now but dribbling orifices.
She who was a charming hostess
Can speak not a civil word.
She who nursed my children
Needs nursing night and day.
She who had both wits and will
Is now reduced to a non-person.
She who stood by me
These long lived years
Allows me
Neither the pleasure of her company nor
Grief at her departure.
Can my sense of loss
My bereavement
Be any less now than
When she is truly gone?
From the depressing, once again I sway towards the salacious and end my letter with a dirty riddle.
Q: Why does Osama bin Laden hate panties?
A: Because there is a “bush” in every panty!
Love and regards
Amrinder
***
23 Dec. 2001
Dear Amrinder
Your poem made me choke with emotion. I’ll say no more.
Love
Khushwant
***
16.1.2001
Dear Khushwant Singhji
When I heard of your wife’s death from my uncle, my first
impulse was to comfort you as a mother would – despite being 35 years younger – but, when I learnt that you would appreciate solitude in your hour of grief, I persuaded myself to respect your wishes and exercise restraint.
My son, a doctor in New York, told me that a survey conducted upon people whose children died of cancer revealed that the prime emotion the parents felt was overwhelming guilt – at not being as grief-stricken as they ought to be at the death of a loved one. This was perhaps because they had done all the grieving they could while watching the slow painful process of dying that death finally brought a sense of relief. I think that this holds true for all deaths preceded by a protracted illness as the family gets ample time to prepare for the eventual loss. Why, my father-in-law actually had an akhand paath performed at Nanak Piao gurudwara for ‘deh mukti’ to put my mother-in-law out of her misery. She had been reduced to a pitiful caricature of her former self, ravaged by advanced Alzheimer’s and hip fracture.
Though your wife had ceased being a companion, you were preoccupied with the demanding job of keeping her body and soul together, albeit a defunct mind in a withering body, that gave you little time to brood. With that too over, all that one is left with are memories – of a long innings together.
Please let me know when you are ready to receive visitors for I would like to visit you. Meanwhile, my best wishes and prayers (someone has to pray for the atheist) are always with you.
Love
Amrinder
***
26 Jan. 2002
Dear Amrinder
I escaped to Goa to avoid the stream of callers. Give me some more time.
Love
K
By the same post, I got an invitation for the release of Khushwant Singh’s autobiography, Truth, Love & a Little Malice. This led to a bitter altercation with my husband who would neither accompany me nor let me go alone. I decided to go anyway and told him so.
‘Are you asking me or informing me?’
‘I am done with asking. I am informing you.’
I wore a maroon crepe sari with intricate Kashmiri embroidery, tucked a rose in my hair, tossed my ringlets in defiance and marched off.
The huge hall at Meridien was filled with the bold and beautiful, the rich and famous that had come in droves to felicitate the grand old man of Indian literature. Waiters weaved dexterously between the guests, offloading whisky into willing hands. Khushwant Singh was seated on a sofa, busily signing books. When my turn came, he asked, ‘You have come alone?’
‘You know how it is.’
‘I don’t.’
‘I’ll tell you about it later.’
All too soon, I was pushed away by a tidal wave of humanity and found myself lost in a sea of people. I saw David Davidar and thought that I could give my right hand to have my book published by him. I tried to mingle with people, but they were not interested in someone with no name to speak of. I returned to Khushwant Singh’s table and unobtrusively watched him eat, sign books and give interviews even as cameras flashed incessantly.
Finally, he was escorted to the dais and the book was released by the CEO, Penguin world wide. Khushwant Singh began his speech with a doggerel by Benjamin Franklin:
If you would not be forgotten
As soon as you are dead and rotten
Either write things worth reading
Or do things worth writing.
Then he continued, ‘When I turned eighty, my daughter asked me to write my memoirs. “Would you want to know what a rascal your father was?” I asked, but she was not only insistent, she wanted me to get it published by her husband and bequeath the royalties to her as well. So I wrote the first three chapters and showed them to my wife and daughter. They both approved of it and I went ahead. After it was over, Ravi Dayal sent excerpts to various newspapers and magazines. India Today published the bit about Maneka Gandhi being thrown out of Indira Gandhi’s house, which enraged her. She got the court to pass an injunction against my publisher and me, strangely not against India Today that published it in the first place. You would be surprised at what a first-class lawyer charges! One day’s fee is equivalent to the royalty I get in a year. My son-in-law roped in David Davidar and together they paid the entire amount. I thought the book would be launched posthumously, but the high court has allowed the release of the book; though the case is now in the Supreme Court. If court procedures are still as lackadaisical as they were in my time, I will be well beyond the reach of Maneka and the court and will have the last laugh.’
Then he proceeded to thank the benefactors and friends who had helped him write the book.
Though I felt lost and lonely, I was determined to enjoy myself and decided to make the acquaintance of some of the people in the room, most of them well-known faces.
I spotted Manmohan Singh, the finance minister, an honest enough gentleman, and Vasant Sathe, but politics was certainly not my cup of tea. I spied Tarun Tejpal of Tehelka fame and introduced myself. He took my proffered hand with limp fingers and supreme indifference. I was brushed off like a fly within a minute. My eyes smarted with unshed tears. The shame of being thought a social climber who latched on to the likes of him! I longed to be famous with every fibre of my being, if only to douse the flames of humiliation that seared my soul. It was small consolation to learn only a few days later that Tarun Tejpal was sucked into a quagmire of his own making – for having engineered news that shocked the nation.
35
13.02.2002
Dear Khushwant Singhji
Thank you so much for including me in the august gathering at the launch of your autobiography. Being a working day my husband refused to miss his clinic to accompany me; but because I wanted badly to be there I defied him blatantly.
Though you were your usual gracious self I soon realized that I was more of a ‘who are you?’ in the gathering of the ‘who’s who’. I tried to make the acquaintance of some of the celebrities but they would have nothing to do with a nonentity. I marched up to Tarun Tejpal of Tehelka.com and introduced myself. I asked him about his publishing house, ‘India Ink’. He said that it was now with his partner, Sanjay Seth.
‘I would like to make his acquaintance,’ I said.
‘He is a man with a beard,’ he said helpfully.
‘I can’t possibly accost every man with a beard,’ I muttered under my breath. The pretty Canadian lady with him heard me and told him: ‘She really wants to meet him.’
‘I am trying to spot him,’ he said vaguely and walked away. I was appalled at the rebuff and could barely conceal my tears behind the curtain of my lids. I felt like a weed in a garden of exotic plants, but not for anything in the world would I have missed your book launch.
I am halfway through your book – I am purposely reading it slowly to savour it sip by sip as one may say and am enjoying your wit and candour immensely. When I read the bit about prostatic hypertrophy I remembered an old couple in our neighbourhood. The poor woman, pestered by her husband’s ineffective erections would run out in the street in the middle of the night.
When I asked her why she won’t let him get over with it, she replied, ‘That is the whole point. He is unable to do anything!’
Have you heard the latest in my repertoire?
A man applied a milking machine to his organ and had the orgasm of a lifetime. The machine would not come out afterwards though, causing him a lot of pain. He bent down to read the instructions, which stated: ‘Auto release after 2 gallons!’
Love
Amrinder
P.S. I received an email from Quills Publishing who claim that they are literary agents based in Kolkata. Have you heard of them?
***
17 Feb. 2002
Dear Amrinder
It was good to see you at the party. The Scotch and snacks were good, gate crashers a nuisance. I slipped out at 8.15.
I’ve never heard of Quills. I am also suspicious of literary agents. Do your own polishing, rewriting whatever. Then try one publis
her after another. Or sit on your MSS for some time and take it up after you have done another book or two.
I’ll be away from Delhi till the 24th to attend the writer’s jamboree at Neemrana Fort. I know some of the big shots like Naipaul, Vikram Seth, Amitav Ghosh. All v. self-opinionated and pompous.
Love
K
***
25.2.2002
Dear Khushwant Singhji
You must be physically and mentally exhausted after the writer’s meet at Neemrana Fort. A conglomeration of people with inflated egos jostling each other like a bunch of helium balloons one sees with vendors at India Gate. The meeting should have been called ‘The Famous Grouse’, (which suited them more than a brand of whisky) for all the famous had some grouse or the other. I hope you enjoyed catching up with old friends, specially Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul. You had asked me to read his books along with those by Graham Greene and Camus when I first met you and expressed a desire to become a writer.
I have just finished reading your autobiography and was a wee bit disappointed. The point is that your life has always been an open book and there wasn’t much in it that most of us did not know already. Though it was generously interspersed with your trademark witticism and salacious tadka, exposure of your personal/emotional life has been deftly avoided. I am sure a book written by your wife ‘Living with Khushwant – 60 Years’ would have been more readable.
Regarding your statement on page 363: ‘Of women who repose confidence in me, I will say no more than it baffles me as to why they do so without having the least desire to have a liaison with me’, let me speak for myself. You have always projected yourself as a ladies’ man and keep paying them pretty compliments. Which woman would not be flattered to learn that Khushwant Singh finds her attractive? We are preconditioned to expect such talk and behaviour from you – quite like the pretty foreigner you had talked about at Rajneesh’s ashram who expected him to make a pass at her and was disappointed when he didn’t.
The Afternoon Girl Page 13