The Afternoon Girl

by Amrinder Bajaj

  77

  24.6.07

  Dear Khushwant Singhji

  I am writing to you after ages. This is because I was contacted by Elsevier – publishers of medical books and journals worldwide. They are the equivalent of Penguin as far as medical publishing is concerned and have now branched into publishing medical material for the general public. I was selected after a stringent selection process to write an illustrated book on pregnancy and childbirth. They are investing a lot of money in it and I feel greatly honoured. As I have to finish the book in a stipulated time, I have not a moment to spare. I am so consumed by this book that even patients appear as interruptions. Mr Rajiv Banerji is the publishing head and knows you personally, as does everyone who matters in the publishing world.

  I will be leaving for a cruise to Alaska on the 21st of July and will return after three weeks. Though the holiday was booked before I signed the contract, it will eat into the time I have been given to finish it.

  The launch of your latest book was wonderful and I managed to get lovely pictures that I will cherish. I am sending you one. Though I bought your book I could not get your signature for even as I waited for the crowd around you to thin out you got up to leave. Never mind, I will come over some day to get it signed. Kasauli must have been relaxing, i.e., if you have learnt to relax and enjoy doing nothing for a change.

  Life is good for I have

  A dream to pursue

  A book to write

  A case to operate

  A pool to swim in

  A dog to love

  A man to make love

  And you to match wits with

  Life indeed is good.

  Guess what? Though I find your adoration of Zohra Sehgal very sweet, I am quite jealous! I met her at your previous book release when Manmohan Singh was the chief guest. She appeared shrunken and shrivelled, while cinema portrays her as larger than life. She has acted very well in a recent movie Cheeni Kum where she plays Amitabh Bachchan’s mother. If possible get a CD and watch it.

  A stupid joke about our PM is as follows:

  Q: Why doesn’t Manmohan Singh go for a morning walk?

  A: Because he is the PM.

  Love and warmest regards

  Amrinder.

  I returned from the cruise to find no letter from Khushwant Singh awaiting me. It did not matter, for I had urgent matters to attend to – the completion of my book and catching up with my practice. That I had bought nothing for him from the duty-free shop indicated that interest was dwindling on both sides. So be it.

  After a few months of very hard work, my manuscript was complete and delivered. The time I had set apart for writing hung heavily on my hands. My thoughts turned to Khushwant Singh again and I wrote:

  26.10.07

  Dear Khushwant Singhji

  For the first time in my life I realized what it means to get totally engrossed in writing a book, as you had been advising me to do for ever so long. For the last six months I have been doing nothing but work at the manuscript of ‘Sailing Smoothly Through Pregnancy’ for Elsevier. I even had to illustrate it with pictures of my own. It was an interactive sort of book writing, for I would send every completed chapter to the publishing head Mr Rajiv Banerji and his inputs would add impetus to my writing. Now that the first draft is complete I feel strangely bereft as if someone who was with me every waking moment is no more. Now that I have the time to pick up life from where I left it, I have no inclination to do so for the world of words was so much more fascinating.

  The ball is in their court (forgive the cliche) and I hope Elsevier does not sit on it like OP Publishers. I have put my heart and soul, my sweat and sleep in this book and can only hope that it takes a concrete form at the earliest.

  Sometime back I had a wonderful trip to the Canadian Rockies in the mountain rail where I had glacial melt water generously laced with whisky atop a glacier, rode on a dog-drawn sledge, went white water rafting down the Athabasca river. From there it was a week-long cruise in Alaska that had the stark, silent beauty of an icy wilderness. We docked at various cities like Juneau, Skagway, Ketchikan and bought the famed Alaskan blue diamonds. Amongst other things there was a poetry-writing competition in which people of all nationalities competed and I got a prize!

  You are often in my thoughts though, I wonder if you have forgotten me. Soon after your book launch I had sent you a letter with lovely pictures I had taken of the event but have not received any acknowledgement of the same.

  How has life been treating you? Age, infirmity, loneliness do tend to creep upon a person insidiously. I do hope you have been able to hold your ground against these onslaughts.

  Having been out of touch with the world at large the last few months, I have only these ‘mild’ jokes to entertain you.

  ‘Middle age is when one’s broad mind and narrow waist exchange places.’

  A man was fighting with his wife in the bus. In exasperation he told her, ‘Zyada tar tar kita te tainu kuttia nu pa daanga.’ At this the man sitting next to them went: ‘Bow wow bow wow.’

  Love

  Amrinder

  ***

  2 Nov. 2007

  Dear Amrinder

  I was wondering about your long silence. I am glad ‘inputs’ have borne fruit – or are about to. I envy your Alaskan experience. I know the Rockies as I spent more than a year in Canada and loved it.

  I have been under the weather, nothing serious – only age creeping up. So I have drastically cut down on my social life. Mostly alone, never lonely. Books and liquor are my sustenance.

  Trust you are in good shape and charhdi kalaa.

  Love

  Khushwant

  ***

  27.11.2007

  Dear Khushwant Singhji

  Speak of the printer’s devil or rather my inability to read your letter correctly at the first go on account of your writing. You began your last letter with ‘I was wondering about your long silence’ and I read ‘I was wondering about the ling silence’ and laughed out aloud. This should be a question your lady friends should be asking you!

  Recently there was a collection of fluid in my middle ear due to the blockage of the tube that connects the nose to the ear. This resulted in partial deafness that has now thankfully cleared. The experience did give me a foretaste of times to come and shook me up a bit. Though I am 57 year old, I neither look (so people tell me) nor feel that old. In fact during a visit to New York, I was travelling with my son on the tube and got up to give a white-haired lady my seat.

  What are you doing?’ hissed my son through clenched teeth. ‘She is your age!’

  I am reading your book I Shall Not Hear the Nightingale all over again and am relishing it more than I did the first time ages ago.

  I have written this letter expressly to send you this silly joke.

  Cheap new pregnancy test for Punjabis: Insert a daru bottle in vagina and keep it for thirty seconds, then remove. If it comes out half empty another Punjabi is on the way!

  Love and warm regards

  Amrinder

  78

  18.12.07

  Dear Khushwant Singhji

  I have sort of got used to receiving one answer for every two letters of mine. I am sure you have got better things to do, though, of the many traits I admired in you, the fact that you replied to every letter you received was something that I thought was extraordinarily commendable.

  These days after the Frankenstein of our own making (environment destruction) has gone out of control and nations are putting their heads together for damage control, I have tried adding my mite in the only way I can – by writing poetry to awaken society. If you feel it is good enough for your column in the Hindustan Times, please include it.

  Love

  Amrinder

  Attached was ‘Mankind‘, the poem I had mentioned in the letter.

  30 Dec. 2007

  Dear Amrinder

  Not 2 to 1 but 1 to 1. I always answer every letter the same day, come w
hat may.

  I don’t get so worked up about global warming when every winter seems colder than the last. This one is as much as I can take with thermals, heated bedroom, log fire in the sitting room – and Scotch inside.

  You say nothing about your books and your solitaire collection. I’d like to know.

  Love

  Khushwant

  ***

  8.1.08

  DearKhushwant Singhji

  I do hope that this year gives you the three things needed to make a person genuinely happy – someone to love, something to work at and something to look forward to.

  Since you asked for an update on my books and my love life, I’ll give you the details. SM is still dilly-dallying and has aroused my latent homicidal tendencies! He has made a joke of my joke book. Indeed, this is the first joke book that has reduced me to tears!

  As for Rajiv Banerji, the publishing head of Elsevier, he is the editor that every writer dreams of. He would contact me every couple of weeks, read every chapter and give valuable inputs. It was an interactive sort of book and I immensely enjoyed giving it my sweat and sleep and earnest endeavour. I was given a deadline – 6 months to finish a 300-page book with illustrations and tables and I loved it, for as a surgeon I get an adrenalin rush when pushed beyond limits. Hopefully my book will be out by 2008.

  Mr Solitaire is still very much around but the fizz has gone out of the affair. The relationship plods along the same old rut like a bullock cart as most long-standing ones do. Our quarrels are predictable, the making up tame and the motions in bed clockwork. In short it has been reduced to a marriage out of wedlock!

  Once again I wish you a very happy and fulfilling new year. Hoping that you live to be over a hundred years.

  Love and warmest regards

  Amrinder

  ***

  1.6.08

  Dear Khushwant Singhji

  I am writing to you after ages though you are often in my thoughts. As replies to my letters began dwindling, I thought perhaps you had taken sanyas from letter writing too and reluctantly let go. I continue to read your columns avidly though, for that remains my only (impersonal) contact with you. Strangely ‘Sadianama’ revived my desire to communicate with you. I remember sadly that she is one of the women in your life, something I can never aspire to be. I have an inkling that you might have got her the column, though she writes well of a Delhi I remember with nostalgia.

  At my end, life is pretty much the same. The book I had written for Elsevier is being edited by the publishing head and is being sent back chapter by chapter via email for the final corrections. The job was taxing but engrossing. I got a jolt when my mentor switched jobs and shifted to another publishing house. Though another editor, a lady, has taken over, the speed has slackened and the rapport I had formed with the former will perhaps never develop with the latter, but then that is life. The book may come out by this year’s end though I have lost faith in publishers after the OP Publishers debacle. Mr SM is yet to come up with concrete reason for not honouring the contract and I do not know how to tackle him. My magazine articles and columns are going on in full swing and I do make a tidy sum out of them – as far as writing goes.

  This year I went with my family for an adventure holiday – white-water rafting amidst turbulent rapids on the Ganga at Shivpuri base camp near Rishikesh. It was an exhilarating experience. We took active part in the rowing (the rapids were grade 3 and 4 – the highest being grade 5) and jumped overboard for bodysurfing where the flow was gentle. We stayed in environment-friendly tents at the bend of the river, amidst towering mountains where the sun and shade played hide and seek. There was a thick forest flush with bird and beast behind us. At night there was a log fire under a starlit sky on the sandy bank, around which we gathered to crack jokes and peanuts. I was mighty proud of my country that had bits of paradise strewn all over and there is absolutely no need to rush to foreign locales for expensive holidays.

  I recently read Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth and enjoyed it, though I am full up to my gills with expatriate Bengalis and wished she would write about something else.

  My love life has been squeezed dry though the diamonds (tiny ones now) do keep coming in on occasions such as my birthday, Diwali, our ‘anniversary’, etc.

  How are you keeping? Are you still in Delhi or have fled to Kasauli to beat the heat? Delhi was surprisingly not too bad for May.

  Please keep in touch.

  Love

  Amrinder

  Finally, I got a reply and, mind you, not a postcard with a couple of lines and a drop of paan masala juice but a yellow envelope with a proper letter from Kasauli. The writing had deteriorated and there were words I could not decipher.

  7thJune 2008

  Dear Amrinder

  Load-shedding, raining, working in semi-darkness. Have been here a week. Hope to be back mid-July. Gone deaf. Alas.

  I am sorry about your book with SM. I deal with his brother KM who keeps his word and sends my cheques. I’ll speak to him after I return.

  You seem to be having a good time even if solitaires have been reduced to tiny sparklers. I trust they are sweetened by periodic visits and performance.

  I was hoping to get some peace in Kasauli but no such luck. I have people coming for tea from Chandigarh, followed by my brother and sister-in-law and children for drinks followed by dinner for the governor of Haryana who has become a regular. I will go rest.

  Look after yourself and keep smiling.

  Love

  Khushwant

  P.S.: No jokes with your letter? I miss them.

  ***

  17.6.08

  Dear Khushwant Singhji

  What is your opinion on the Arushi murder case? Everyone has his own take on the issue. I realized that every seemingly normal family (like mine) stinks beneath the surface. No wonder ‘saade parde kajje rakkhi’ forms a part of modern prayer! I wonder if we will ever get to know the truth regarding the murderer and the motive and can only hope that like the Nithari killings, the rich are not let off while the poor bear the brunt. As for servants, we cannot do without them though we know we are putting our lives at their mercy. Police verification does not deter the determined. At the most it may aid in nabbing the culprit after the deed is done – fat lot of good that’ll do us.

  The denouement:

  Once a call girl went to a business meeting where someone asked her, ‘Aap ka kya business hai, madam?’

  She replied, ‘Bus aisa hee chota sa “hole sale” ka business hai.’

  Love

  Amrinder

  79

  15.8.08

  DearKhushwant Singhji

  I was delighted to learn from my uncle yesterday that you were enquiring about me. Time and again I got the impression that you have lost interest and I did not want to impose my presence upon you. This is because I rarely got a reply to my letters. Also I did not know how to contact you for an appointment as you have told me that you have become hard of hearing and do not attend phone calls.

  My book for Elsevier has come for the final proofreading and all the spare time I had was spent on going meticulously over the 250-odd pages, pictures, diagrams, tables and all. After this is done, the editor will come all the way from Noida to my home so that we can go over the corrections (theirs and mine) together. After that I will have some free time and will try to come over to meet you.

  SM is still behaving as obnoxiously as ever. I ring him up whenever I want to spoil my mood and get the standard refrain. It is galling to be treated like a beggar after a signed contract.

  Mr Solitaire still hangs around the fringes of my life as passions have cooled, affections have waned and the unlovable aspects of our personalities are bared. We carry on nevertheless for the massages he gives are out of the world and I need them more than sex. In fact we barter one for the other.

  Now for the joke:

  Accidents take a minute but suffering lasts a lifetime. Please ensure that condoms and hel
mets are worn on appropriate heads during respective rides.

  Love

  Amrinder

  ***

  21.11.08

  Dear Khushwant Singhji

  At last my book on care during pregnancy and childbirth called Sailing Smoothly Through Pregnancy has seen the light of day. It is indeed a heady feeling to see one’s name and picture in print that too by a publisher of international repute and on my own merit. I would like to meet you some day with a copy of the same. Please tell what is a good time to call to fix an appointment?

  The book was released by the head of the Obstetrics and Gynaecologists Society of Delhi (who also happens to be the head of Sir Gangaram Hospital) at the annual conference of Obstetricians and Gynaecologist at Taj Palace. She, along with the head of AIIMS had also reviewed the book. I met Dr Mangala Telang at the conference and learnt that she was to have dinner with you the following Saturday. I asked her to give you my regards. I wonder if she remembered.

  Thank you so much for the book you sent through Mamaji.

  Q: What is the similarity between walking on Mount Everest and getting a blow job from a 60-year-old woman?

  A: Just enjoy the thrill, don’t look down.

  Love

  Amrinder

  ***

  26 Nov. 2008

  Dear Amrinder

  You sound very happy. I share your happiness over the success of your book. Shabash! Keep it up.

  I answer the phone between 5–7 p.m. Then I drink in silence and solitude. Ring me up any evening you like.

  Mangala has gone to the US. Send me a joke or two which I can publish.