Company of Women

by Khushwant Singh

  ‘Holy Moses!’ cried the boy. ‘Look at this one. A real Hindu lingam.’

  I became the centre of attention. Indeed my penis was thicker and larger than that of any other boy, white or black.

  ‘You measure this thing with a tape and send it to the Guiness Book of Records. The biggest doodah in the world,’ one fellow shouted.

  ‘Ever put that inside a pussy?’ asked another.

  I knew what he meant but refused to answer what seemed to me a very vulgar question.

  Soon my private endowment became public knowledge. ‘He’s got the biggest dong on the campus,’ they said behind my back. One evening a boy asked me the Hindi word for it.

  ‘Lund,’ I replied.

  ‘Sounds Swedish,’ he remarked.

  ‘Also Laura.’

  ‘Sounds like a girl’s name.’

  I offered a third choice: ‘Lullah.’

  ‘That sounds better than prick or dong: prick makes it the size of a pin; dong something limp and hanging. Lullah is masculine and upright.’

  From the boys tales about the size of my penis travelled to their girl friends. It was hardly the kind of thing I would have liked to be known for in the university. But it paid dividends. Girls were curious to see what their boy friends had seen.

  By now I had started going out with girls. It was the done thing, though I felt a little self-conscious in the company of white girls. Then, by sheer luck, I ran into Jessica Browne. She was a sophomore, a year senior to me, and the best woman tennis player in the university. One afternoon after I had finished my game I watched her practicing with the coach on the neighbouring court. What a figure the girl had! Tall, slender and chocolate-brown. A big bosom, narrow hips, protruding buttocks and long athletic legs. She sprinted about the court like a panther. I was entranced and gaped at her open-mouthed. When she finished playing with the coach she came up to me and asked, ‘Like to knock up with me?’

  ‘I’m a novice; I started to play only a few days ago,’ I replied.

  ‘Nevermind,’ she said taking my hand and hauling me up on my feet, ‘I’ll teach you.’

  I made a fool of myself. She stood in the middle of the court and gently patted the ball from side to side and made me run like a rabbit till I ran out of breath. ‘You play with me a few afternoons and you’ll pick up the game very fast. There’s nothing much to it,’ she assured me.

  We introduced ourselves, and she promised to meet me at the courts every afternoon. I looked forward to the ten minutes of coaching she gave me every day. We became friends. Jessica became my regular date. Almost every evening after a session on the tennis court, followed by supper, we went for a stroll. We held hands at the pictures. When saying good night, we started with a peck on the cheeks, progressed to kissing on the lips, and then full blooded mouth kissing—she would roll her tongue in my mouth. She sensed that I lacked the confidence to go further and decided to take the initiative. She asked me to have a drink with her in her room. By now I had started drinking a glass or two of beer every now and again. I went to her room. She greeted me with a lusty French kiss. I got worked up. ‘Jessica, you have a beautiful figure, the best I have ever seen,’ I told her.

  ‘Want to see what I’m really like?’ she asked. And without waiting for an answer she slipped off her blouse and skirt. I had never seen a naked woman before. She certainly was beautiful in the African way: jet black fuzzy hair, lustrous eyes and protruding breasts with large black nipples. I was too shy to look below her waist.

  ‘Never seen a naked woman before?’ she asked sensing my embarrassment.

  ‘Never,’ I replied, ‘you are the first.’

  ‘Take them off,’ she ordered and strode up to me, her breasts bobbing. I obeyed and stripped myself naked.

  ‘Goodness gracious me!’ she chortled. ‘Where on earth did you buy that one? Black boys have bigger dicks than the whites but yours is bigger than any I’ve been. Are all Hindus as well endowed?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ I replied.

  She clasped it in both her hands and asked, ‘Baby, you still a virgin?’

  ‘I’m a man!’ I protested. ‘Only girls are virgins.’

  She laughed, ‘If you haven’t slept with a girl, son, you’re a virgin. We’ll soon take care of that.’

  She took me to her bed, pulled me above her and directed my thing into her. I felt giddy and breathless with sheer joy as she took me in. She gasped with pleasure as I went right inside her. I could not control myself. This was my first time and I spent myself, moaning helplessly, almost as I entered her. I had never imagined sex could be so thrilling. But I wished it had lasted longer.

  ‘Nevermind,’ she consoled me. ‘The first time it is always like this. As we say, “Wham, bam, thank you ma’am.” But it’s not over yet.’

  ‘No,’ I breathed and dug my face between her breasts. It was not long before I felt my member stiffen and grow against her thigh. I fell on her greedily.

  I was determined to do it again and again till it killed me. And so I did.

  Boys were not allowed to stay in girls’ rooms after 9 p.m. The consequences of being caught after that hour could be serious. But neither of us cared about the consequences. We lay together all night. We made love four times before we dropped off. The next morning I walked out of her room carrying an armful of books to explain away my presence in the girls’ dorm. That was how I, Mohan Kumar, aged twenty, lost my virginity.

  Those were blissful days. I could not have enough of Jessica; Jessica could not have enough of me. It was like a honeymoon without a wedding. After classes we went out together hand-in-hand for everyone to see that ours was a permanent relationship. On weekends we went to New York by bus and ate in Indian restaurants. On our way back we stopped at Trenton where her parents lived and spent a few hours with them. They were high school teachers and active in the movement for racial equality. They would have preferred Jessica having a black boy friend but were somewhat relieved to see that I was brown and not a white Caucasian.

  I learnt a lot about America from Jessica when we went for walks in the woods. She showed me the cottage in which Einstein had lived. She told me the names of trees and birds: the bright red cardinal, different kinds of woodpeckers and squirrels. When we were drinking beer in a bar she told me about Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and the black Muslims; the Ku Klux Klan and the WASPs. She often got very worked up while talking of racial slights she had suffered. Once when she was out with a white boy, a gang of white hoodlums had shouted ‘nigger-lover’ and roughed up her companion; no one had come to their rescue. ‘Your best bet is to stick to a boy who is neither white nor black,’ I said to her, patting her hand. She was too angry with the world to respond.

  Thus passed my first winter in America. Jessica and I trudged over paths covered with snow; when the snow thawed we saw the tiny green leaves burst on the bare branches of trees. We fed red and grey squirrels peanuts and saw snowdrops and daffodils bloom in campus lawns.

  I thought my friendship with Jessica would hold as long as I was in the States. In fact, it did not last much beyond spring. No sooner had the first cherry and magnolia trees come into flower than our relationship soured. I noticed that Jessica got irritated with me over small things. Once when I invited her to come and watch me play a tennis match for freshmen, followed by a dinner dance for which I had bought two tickets, she flatly turned down my invitation. I was hurt. When I told her so, she snapped at me, ‘You Orientals are very possessive about your women. I’m not your property. I’m not your wife!’

  We began to drift apart. After a few days we stopped dating. Then I saw her go out with another boy, hand-in-hand. I felt a stab of jealousy in my heart. Jealousy is something Americans disdain as a medieval emotion. You break up with one, you take up with another. Then another. There were plenty of girls around Princeton—big beautiful blondes with huge breasts almost bursting through their sweaters; petite Jewish girls with curly black hair and Oriental features; European girl
s and girls from Mexico and Latin America. Many were eager to date me. So I wrote Jessica off my list of dates and went on the rampage like a stud bull in a herd of cows on heat. I lost count of the girls I bedded the following spring and summer. Now even their names escape me. Only one remains because it was a most bizarre experience.

  I met Yasmeen attending classes in comparative religion in the department of religion and philosophy.

  I had begun to enjoy the lectures on religion by Dr Ashby, our professor. There was a motley group of students in his class from different disciplines—medicine, literature, engineering and others. Among the thirty odd who were regulars, there were two nuns and a woman in salwar-kameez in her late thirties. She wore a lot of gold jewellery and was heavily made up. Since she did not wear a bindi, I presumed she was Muslim. She sat in the front row. I always sat in the last. After each lecture, there were discussions, and some students, the Muslim woman in the front row in particular, had much to say. I took no part in them since I knew very little about any religion.

  Dr Ashby took us through the world’s major religions: Zoroastrianism, Jainism, Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, Christianity and Islam. I was most interested in hearing what he had to say about Hinduism. Despite being a Hindu I knew almost nothing about my religion besides the names of Hindu gods and goddesses and the Gayatri mantra. Three lectures were devoted to Hinduism. Dr Ashby told us of the four Vedas, the Upanishads and the Bhagvad Gita. They made more sense to me than the other religious texts he had dealt with. ‘Worship God in any form you like, that essentially is what Hinduism says,’ explained Dr Ashby. ‘Hindus have no prescribed scriptures: no Zend-Avesta, no Torah, no Bible, no Koran. Read what moves you the most. Seek the Truth within yourself.’ And how spiritually elevating was the message of the Gita as the professor explained it—Nish kama karma: do your duty without expectation of reward. When you engage in the battle of life, do so regardless of whether you win or lose, whether it gives you pleasure or pain. There was also the Lord’s promise to come again and again to redeem the world from sin and evil-doing. Hinduism had no prophets, no one God, we were told. One could choose any deity one liked and worship him or her. By the end of that lecture I felt elated and wanted to shout: ‘I am a Hindu and proud of being one.’

  It was that woman in the front row who dampened my spirits. She launched into a furious monologue. ‘Professor,’ she began as soon as Dr Ashby had finished, ‘what you said about Hindu philosophy is all very well. But tell us, why do the Hindus of today worship a monkey as a god, an elephant as a god; they worship trees, snakes, and rivers. They even worship the lingam, which is the phallus, and the yoni, the female genital, as god and goddess,’ she screeched, thumping her desk. ‘They have obscene sculptures on their temple walls. They have deities for measles, smallpox and plague. Their most popular god, Krishna, started out as a thief and lied when caught thieving; he stole girls’ clothes while they were bathing so he could watch them naked; he had over one thousand mistresses; his lifelong companion was not his wife but his aunt Radha. Hinduism is the only religion in the world which declares a section of its followers outcastes by accident of birth. Hindus are the only people in the world who worship living humans as godmen and godwomen. I am told that there are nearly five hundred such men and women who claim to be bhagwans. They believe a dip in the Ganges washes away all their sins, so they can start sinning again! What basis is there for their belief that after death you are reborn in another form depending on your actions in this life? You may be reborn as a rat, mouse, cat, dog or a snake. This is what the Hindus of today believe in, not in the elevated teachings of the Vedas, Upanishads and the Gita! Should we not examine these aspects of Hinduism as it is practised today?’

  There was stunned silence. The woman had spoken with such vehemence that there was little room left for objective dialogue. Dr Ashby restored the atmosphere to an academic level. ‘This sort of thing could be said about all religions,’ he said gently. ‘What their founders taught and what their scriptures stand for are far removed from how they are interpreted and practised today. Our concern is with theory and not practice. Muslims condemn the worship of idols, yet they kiss the meteorite stone in the Kaaba and millions worship the graves of their saints.’

  ‘I can explain Muslim practices,’ replied the lady.

  Before she could do so, however, the class was over.

  ‘We will resume this discussion next week,’ said Professor Ashby as he left the classroom.

  I was fuming with rage. As the class began to disperse I quickly walked up to the woman and asked her, ‘Madam, why do you hate Hindus so much?’

  She was taken aback. ‘I don’t hate Hindus,’ she protested. ‘I don’t hate anyone.’ She looked me up and down as if she was seeing me for the first time. It had not occurred to her that I could be an Indian. She was contrite! ‘Are you a Hindu from Bharat?’ she asked.

  ‘I am,’ I replied as tersely as I could, ‘and proud of being both. And I don’t worship monkeys, elephants, snakes, phalluses or yonis. My religion is enshrined in one word, Ahimsa—don’t hurt anyone.’

  She apologized. ‘Please forgive me if I hurt your feelings. Perhaps one day you will enlighten me and clear the misgivings I have about Hindus and Bharat.’ She put out her hand as a gesture of friendship. I shook it without much enthusiasm.

  ‘My name is Yasmeen Wanchoo,’ she said. ‘I am from Azad Kashmir on a leadership grant.’

  ‘I’m Mohan Kumar, from Delhi. I’m in business management and computer sciences.’

  Like many Kashmiri women Yasmeen was as fair-skinned as Caucasian women. She had nut brown hair, large gazelle eyes and was fighting a losing battle with fat. She had a double chin, her arms had sagging flesh and there were tyres developing about her waist. She was, as the Punjabis say, goree chittee gole matole—fair, white and roly poly. She was the first Pakistani woman I had ever spoken to, also the first Muslim. I wanted to know if there was any truth in the stories I had heard about Pakistanis hating Indians and the contempt Muslims had for Hindus. I hoped Yasmeen Wanchoo would tell me. It was not very long ago that our two countries had fought a war, their third, but I did not hate Pakistanis. Her outburst had shocked me. I have never understood hatred.

  At the next class she came up to me and said, ‘No hard feelings. Come and sit next to me.’ I declined. ‘Madam, I sit in the last row, I hate being in the front.’

  ‘In that case I’ll sit with you in the last row. And do not Madam me, it makes me feel old. I am Yasmeen. And if you don’t mind I’ll call you Mohan.’

  At the time I had no steady date so I kept company with Yasmeen. She turned out to be not as aggressive as I had thought, and I began pulling her leg often about her being anti-Hindu and anti-Indian. She told me more about herself. ‘My parents lived in Srinagar, now the capital of Indian occupied Kashmir. Our forefathers were Brahmin Pandits till they had the good sense to convert to Islam. It is the best religion in the world. My parents lived in Srinagar till the Indian army occupied it, then they migrated to Muzaffarabad, the capital of Free Kashmir. I was born and educated there. I married another refugee from India, a Kashmiri, also of Brahmin descent—though Muslims, we don’t marry below our caste. My husband is a minister in the Azad Kashmir Government. I am also active in politics and a member of the Assembly. We have two children.’ I asked her if she did not prefer the freedom she had in America to her life in Pakistan. She would not give me a straight answer. When I persisted, she got a little irritated and said, ‘I love my family and my watan. We may not have succeeded yet, but one day we will liberate Kashmir from India’s clutches and I will return to Srinagar which I have only seen in pictures.’

  ‘And plant the Pakistani flag on Delhi’s Red Fort,’ I quipped.

  ‘Inshallah!’ she replied, beaming a smile at me.

  ‘One day we will liberate your so-called Azad Kashmir from the clutches of Pakistan and make it a part of Indian Kashmir again.’

  ‘You live in a fool�
��s paradise,’ she said warming up. ‘One Muslim warrior can take on ten of you Hindus.’

  ‘So it was proved in the last war,’ I replied sarcastically. ‘The Pakistani army laid down arms after only thirteen days of fighting. Ninety-four thousand five hundred valiant Muslim warriors surrendered tamely to infidel Hindus and Sikhs without putting up a fight. In the history of the world there is no other instance of such abject surrender of an entire army.’

  ‘Now you are being cruel,’ she said, almost whined. ‘You Indians are cheats. You misled those miserable Bengalis to rise against their Muslim brethren. Now they hate your guts and want to regain our friendship. You see what happens in the next Indo-Pak war.’

  Despite our heated arguments Yasmeen and I became friends. She could hardly be described as my date as she was almost twenty years older than me. She sought my company because there were not many men or women of her age on the campus. Though young, I was at least from her part of the world; she could talk to me in Hindustani. We often had coffee together. One day, out of the blue, she gave me a Gold Cross pen as a gift. I did not have much money to spare as I sent much of what I saved from my stipend, and what I earned doing odd jobs in the library or working in the cafeteria, to my father. However, I started looking into shop windows to find something suitable as a return gift for Yasmeen.

  After a couple of weeks Professor Ashby went on to Islam. He gave us a long list of books to read—various histories of the Arabs, biographies of Prophet Mohammed, translations of the Koran, essays on Muslim sects and sub-sects. I did not bother to read any of them. What I looked forward to was Yasmeen’s comments after the lectures. She did not disappoint me.

  She kept her peace during the first two lectures in which Professor Ashby dealt with pre-Muslim Arabia, the life of the Prophet, revelations of the Koran, the Prophet’s flight from Makka to Madina, his victorious return to Makka, the traditions (hadith) ascribed to him, the speed at which his message spread to neighbouring countries, the Shia-Sunni schism, and so on. It was factual information but not very inspiring. As soon as he had finished his second lecture, Yasmeen shot up from her seat beside me and delivered an impassioned harangue. ‘What you have told us about Islam is historically accurate, Dr Ashby. What you haven’t told us is why it is today the most vibrant of religions. This is because it is the most perfect of all religious systems with precise rules of do’s and don’ts which everyone can follow. It was only to Prophet Mohammed (peace be upon Him) that God Himself sent down His message for mankind. Mohammed (peace be upon Him) was the most perfect human being that ever trod the face of the earth. There must be some reason behind the spectacular success of His mission. Within a few years of His death, Islam spread like wildfire from the Pacific Coast to the Atlantic Coast of Europe; it spread all over Asia and the African continent. It overcame the opposition of fire worshippers, Jews, Christians, Buddhists and Hindus. Why does Islam gain more converts than any other religion? These are some of the questions that I would like the class to discuss.’