Khushwant Singh's Book of Unforgettable Women

by Khushwant Singh

  Her self-portraits were exercises in narcissism. She probably had as nice a figure as she portrayed herself in her nudes but I had no means of knowing what she concealed beneath her sari. What I can’t forget is her brashness. After she had finished talking, she looked around the room. I pointed to a few paintings and said, ‘These are by my wife; she is an amateur.’ She glanced at them and scoffed, ‘That is obvious.’ I was taken aback by her disdain but did not know how to retort. More was to come.

  A few weeks later I joined my family in Mashobra. Amrita was staying with the Chaman Lals who had rented a house above my father’s. I invited them for lunch. The three of them—Chaman, his wife Helen and Amrita, came at midday. The lunch table and chairs were lined on a platform under the shade of a holly oak which overlooked the hillside and a vast valley. My seven-month-old son was in the playpen teaching himself how to stand up on his feet. He was a lovely child with curly brown Jocks and large questioning eyes. Everyone took turns to talk to him and compliment my wife for producing such a beautiful boy. Amrita remained lost in the depths of her beer mug. When everyone had finished, she gave the child a long look and remarked, ‘What an ugly little boy!’ Everyone froze. Some protested at the unkind remark. But Amrita was back to drinking her beer. After our guests had departed, my wife said to me very firmly, ‘I am not having that bloody bitch in my house again.’

  Amrita’s bad behaviour became the talk of Simla’s social circle. So did my wife’s comment on her. Amrita got to know what my wife had said and told people, ‘I will teach that bloody woman a lesson she won’t forget; I will seduce her husband.’

  I eagerly awaited the day of seduction. It never came. We were back in Lahore in the autumn. So were Amrita and her husband. One night her cousin Gurcharan Singh (Channi) who owned a large orange orchard near Gujranwala turned up and asked if he could spend the night with us, as Amrita, who had asked him over for the weekend, was too ill to have him stay with her. The next day, other friends of Amrita’s dropped in. They told us that Amrita was in a coma and her parents were coming down from Summer Hill to be with her. She was an avid bridge player and in her semi-conscious moments mumbled bridge calls. The next morning I heard that Amrita was dead.

  I hurried to her apartment Her father, Sardar Umrao Singh Shergil, stood by the door in a daze, mumbling a prayer. Her Hungarian mother went in and out of the room where her daughter lay dead unable to comprehend what had happened. That afternoon no more than a dozen men and women followed Amrita’s corètge to the cremation ground. Her husband lit her funeral pyre. When we returned to her apartment, the police were waiting for her husband. Britain had declared war on Hungary as an ally of its enemy, Nazi Germany. Amrita’s husband was therefore considered an enemy because of his nationality, and had to be detained in prison.

  He was lucky to be in police custody. A few days later, his mother-in-law, Amrita’s mother, started a campaign against him accusing him of murdering her daughter. She sent letters to everyone she knew asking for a full investigation into the circumstances of her daughter’s sudden death. I was one of those she sent a letter to. Murder it certainly was not; negligence, perhaps. I got details from Dr Raghubir Singh who was our family doctor and the last person to see Amrita alive. He told me that he had been summoned at midnight. Amrita had peritonitis caused perhaps by a clumsy abortion. She had bled profusely. Her husband asked Dr Raghubir Singh to give her blood transfusion. The doctor refused to do so without fully examining his patient. While the two doctors were arguing with each other, Amrita quietly slipped out of life. But her fame liveth evermore.

  The Beggar Maid

  For the first few months after taking over the editorship of The Illustrated Weekly of India, I lived as a paying guest of a young Parsi couple in a flat in Churchgate. I did not know many people, so had very little of a social life. I walked to the office every morning and walked back every evening as I refused to use the car and chauffeur provided for me.

  Among the earliest friends I made was A.G. Noorani who combined practising law with journalism. He was and is, a bachelor. We began to spend our evenings together. We would go for a stroll along Marine Drive and return to my flat.

  I had my evening ration of Scotch; Noorani, who was and is a teetotaller, had a glass of aerated water. Then we set off to try out different restaurants in the neighbourhood. After dinner we tried different paanwalas and bade each other good night. This routine was upset with the onset of the monsoon in Bombay. That’s when I ran into the lady about whom I write.

  There was a break in the downpour. I was alone as I stepped out of a restaurant. A gas station and a few shops were on my way home. I stopped there to buy myself a paan and chatted with a bhelpuriwala and asked him how his business was during the rains. ‘Not very well,’ he admitted. ‘Magar iski kismat jaag jatee hai (her fortune increases),’ he added pointing to a woman sitting on the steps of a shop nearby. ‘What I can’t sell, I give to her. She is a beggar. Thori paagal hai (she is a little mad).’ I looked at the woman devouring bhelpuri. An uncommonly attractive girl, she was in her mid-twenties.

  Fair, beautifully proportioned, uncombed hair wildly scattered about her face, a dirty white dhoti untidily draped around her body. I gazed at her for quite some time and wondered what an attractive young woman was doing alone in this vice-ridden city. I fantasized about her long into the night.

  Thereafter, I made it a point to buy my after-dinner paan from the same paanwala by the gas station, exchange a few words with the bhelpuriwala as I ogled at the beggar maid on the steps of the closed shop. I often saw her talking to herself. I tried to buy bhelpuri to give to the girl, but the stall owner rejected my offer. He had plenty of leftovers, and feeding the girl was his monopoly.

  One evening while I was at dinner, the clouds burst in all their fury and the roads around Churchgate were flooded. I tucked my trousers up to my knees, took my sandals in my hands, unfurled my umbrella to save my turban and waded through the swirling muddy water. Both the paanwala and the bhelpuriwala had shut shop and gone home. I saw the beggar girl stretched out on the marble steps barely an inch above the stream of rain water running past her. She couldn’t have had anything to eat that night. I was sorely tempted to give her some money but was not sure how she would react. I walked home thinking about her, and again thought about her late into the night.

  It poured all through the night. As I woke up to look out of the window that overlooked the maidan with the Rajabhai clock tower on the other side, the rain was still coming down in sheets. The maidan was flooded. I saw the shadowy figure of a woman walking across the maidan with a tin in her hand. I saw her hike her wet dhoti and start splashing water between her buttocks. I trained my field glasses on her. She turned to see whether anyone was around. Having reassured herself that she wasn’t being watched, she took off her dhoti and stood stark naked in the pouring rain. It was my beggar woman. She poured dirty water on her body, rubbed her bosom, waist, arms and legs. The ‘bath’ over, she put the wet dhoti back on her and sloshed her way back towards Churchgate station.

  The vision of Venus arising out of the sea in the form of a beggar maid of Bombay haunted me for the many days that I was away in Delhi. When I returned to Bombay I made it a point to go to Churchgate for my after-dinner stroll. The paanwala and the bhelpuriwala were there. But not the beggar. I asked the bhelpuriwala what had happened to the girl. His eyes filled with tears and his voice choked as he replied: ‘Saaley bharooay utha ke lay gaye (the bloody pimps abducted her).’

  My Wife, Kaval

  Most people who don’t know me or my family are under the impression that my wife doesn’t exist or that she is tucked away in some village like the wives of many of our netas. This is a grievous error, as my wife is quite a formidable character who rules the home with as firm a hand as Indira Gandhi ruled India. Unlike the mod girls of today who bob their hair, wear T-shirts, jeans and speak chi chi Hinglish, but when it comes to being married, tamely surrender their right to ch
oose husbands to their parents, my wife made her own choice over sixty years ago.

  I soon learnt that I could not take my wife for granted. If she did not like any of my friends, she told them so to their faces and in no uncertain terms. She is a stronger woman than any I have known. Her mother was very upset when she discovered that she drank whisky. One evening her mother stormed into the room, picked up her glass and threw it on the marble floor. The glass did not break but slithered across the floor, spilling its contents. My wife quickly picked it up and refilled it. ‘I am an adult and a married woman. You have no right to dictate to me,’ she told her mother. When her mother was suffering from cancer, she asked her to promise that she would say her prayers regularly. Despite my pleas to say ‘yes’ to her dying mother, she refused to do so. ‘I will not make a promise that I know I will not keep.’ She nursed her mother for many months, sitting with her head in her lap and pressing it all through the nights. She was with her when she died. She took her bath and went to the coffee house to have her breakfast. When some friends asked her about her mother’s health she replied, ‘She is okay.’ She then came home and told the servants that she would not receive any visitors who came to condole with her. She did not shed a tear. She did not go to her mother’s funeral or any of the religious ceremonies that followed. On the other hand, when our dog Simba fell ill, she sat all night stroking him. When he died at the ripe old age of fourteen, she was heartbroken.

  The rigid discipline of time maintained in our home is entirely due to my wife. I have only recently taught myself how to speed the departure of long-winded visitors. She has always given short shrift to them. No one drops in on us without prior warning. If any relation breezes in in the morning, she ignores his or her presence and continues with her housework and decides the menus for the day. (We eat the most gourmet meals—French, Chinese, Italian, South Indian and occasionally Punjabi. She has two shelves full of cookery books which she consults before discussing the meals with our cook Chandan, who has been with us for over thirty years.) Or she continues to teach the servants’ children and help them with their homework. We don’t accept lunch or tea invitations nor offer them. When we have people over for dinner, no matter who they are, whether cabinet ministers or ambassadors, they are reminded to be punctual and told that we do not expect our guests to stay after 9 p.m. Once the German ambassador and his wife had come over. The meal was finished at 8.30 p.m. Liqueurs were served. It was 8.45 p.m. The Ambassador took out his cigar and asked my wife, ‘I know, Mrs Singh, that you like your guests to leave before 9 p.m., but can I have my cigar before we go?’ My wife promptly replied, ‘I am sure Mr Ambassador, you will enjoy it more in your car.’ He laughed and stood up saying, ‘I get it.’ And departed without any rancour.

  I have a lot of pretty girls visiting me. They are dead scared of my wife and know that they have to be on her right side to keep dropping in. All of them take good care never to offend her.

  Why do so few people know about my wife? She is allergic to photographers and pressmen. All you have to do is take out your camera, tape recorder or pen and she will order you out of the house. The allergy runs in the women in the family. My daughter and granddaughter react the same way.

  It was during my stay in Welwyn Garden in my first year in England, 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 had 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 were determined to marry her off to a Sikh boy in the Civil Services. They stood in awe of the Indian Civil Service, and her uncle, who had made it, was worshipped as a hero. At the time, 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. Amongst other obstacles 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 same. 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. The Christmas vacations were near and she had nowhere to go. I suggested that she come with me 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 consent.

  Our engagement was announced a few days later. It caused a lot of heartache amongst her many suitors. A particularly ardent one, whose sister was married to my fiancee’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 succeed in wrecking our marriage.

  It took me a year more than prescribed 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 living and dining rooms. At our wedding reception there were over fifteen hundred guests, including M.A. Jinnah, founding father of Pakistan. Champagne flowed like the Jamuna in flood. My wife received presents which, even after fifty years of being given away, were not exhausted. My father gave me a new car and rented an apartment and office space for me near the High Court in Lahore. And after a short honeymoon at Mount Abu in Rajasthan, the two of us drove to Lahore in our new Ford.

  The Sardarji and the Starlet

  I have two theories that I wish to illustrate through this almost entirely true short story. The first is that God compensates women He does not endow with good looks, in His own mysterious ways. A plain-looking, homely-type of girl need not envy her better-looking sisters because men are more likely to make passes at her than at girls who resemble Marilyn Monroe. He makes good-looking lasses haughty and arrogant and only gigolo types have the confidence to approach them. That is why the plainer-looking have a better time with men and end up making better marriages than pretty ones who seldom have a satisfying sex life and usually make disastrous marriages.

  The second theory is somewhat hackneyed: Only the brave deserve the fair; equally well expressed in the maxim,
‘Nothing ventured, nothing gained.’

  Some thirty years ago, I was living in a two-bedroom basement flat in Highgate, London. I had recently resigned from the diplomatic service but still had my large American limousine with a CD numberplate and a sizeable stock of duty-free champagne, Scotch, wines and liquors. My family had returned to India and I had three months of freedom to finish a book I was working on and whatever else I wanted to do in the way of keeping myself amused. The apartment above mine was occupied by a stenotyping agency that closed in the evening. The one above the agency was occupied by a young lady who, I was told, was a stage actress. She went to work late in the evening and returned home after the second show sometime after midnight. All three flats had one entrance. Since the only garage attached to the premises was too small to house my limousine, it was parked outside the entrance. The only source of natural light for my basement flat was a large window, half of which was above ground level alongside a bus stop. Sitting in my armchair I could see the legs of people queueing up outside or alighting from buses.

  I spent most of the day working on my book. In the evenings, a girl who had been my secretary at India House came to collect whatever I had scribbled during the day and have tea with me before she departed. After she left, I took a walk round Hampstead Heath and returned home to light a fire, drink, listen to music, eat a sandwich supper and read till I felt sleepy. This was rarely before midnight. And soon I began to time my retirement with the sound of the opening of the entrance door and the footsteps of the actress-girl going up the stairs to her apartment.