Khushwant Singh's Book of Unforgettable Women

by Khushwant Singh

  The days had begun to shorten; daylight faded away sooner than in the summer months. By half-past six the brief twilight had given way to the dark. The evening star twinkled in the darkening sky beside a half moon. Not long afterwards Sarojini heard the car drive up to the gate. The driver got out of the car, opened the iron gate and drove in the sleek black Mercedes with its lights dimmed. Saroj heard Mohan respond to the driver’s ‘Good night, sir’ in English. She heard him come up the stairs. ‘What’s the smell?’ he asked loudly. ‘Hello,’ said he as he walked out to the balcony and took the chair next to hers. ‘Everything okay? Lunch, tea, bedroom?’

  ‘Hello,’ she replied, standing up. ‘Everything’s fine. That’s the aroma of the agar I lit for Saraswati. I do Saraswati puja every evening. Do you mind the smell?’

  ‘Not at all; just not used to it. Please sit down. So what did you do all day?’

  ‘A little shopping. I bought this sari, thanks to you.’ She held up the hem of the sari to show him.

  ‘Very nice. And what else?’

  ‘Unpacked, arranged my clothes and books, had lunch, read a little, slept a little, and the day was gone.’

  They had nothing more to say to each other. Mohan got up. ‘If you’ll excuse me for a few minutes, I’ll take a quick shower and change. The office is a very sweaty place. Too many hands to shake. Too many dirty files to read.’ He loosened his collar and took off his tie.

  The first thing he did was to turn on his answering machine. It had recorded no incoming calls. He shaved himself, took a shower and splashed on some aftershave. He got into a sports shirt and slacks and joined Sarojini on the balcony. The bearer brought out his Scotch, soda and a bucket of ice cubes. ‘Have you never had a drink?’ he asked.

  ‘You mean alcohol? My husband-for-a-month made me try whisky. I didn’t like the taste and spat it out. Then he gave me some kind of sweet wine which I did not mind. It didn’t do anything to me.’

  ‘It must have been sherry. I have some very good Spanish Oloroso, a ladies’ drink. You’ll like it.

  He got up and pulled out a wine glass and the Oloroso from his drinks cabinet. He poured out the sherry for her and a stiff Scotch for himself.

  ‘This is not bad at all,’ she said, taking a sip. ‘I hope it won’t make me drunk.’

  ‘A couple of glasses will do you no harm. There’s hardly any alcohol in it,’ he replied.

  Their conversation became stilted: ‘So, tell me some more.’ ‘No, you tell me more about yourself. I have done nothing really interesting today.’ And so on.

  Sarojini kept pace with Mohan’s drinking and felt she was floating in air. Mohan felt she was drinking to fortify herself against what was to come. They had dinner (vegetarian for both) without exchanging many words. The servants cleared the table, had their meal in the kitchen and left for their quarters. Mohan got up to lock the doors. Sarojini saw him chain and lock the front gate and then disappear into the house to lock the servants’ entrance. He came out into the front garden, faced a hedge and unbuttoned his flies. She heard the splash of his jet of urine on the leaves. ‘Curious fellow!’ she said to herself. She went into her bedroom, took off her sari, petticoat and blouse, and slipped on the new silk dressing gown. She was a little unsteady on her feet and slumped down in her chair. Mohan latched the rear door and came up to join her. He took her hand in his and asked, ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Yes. Only a little tired. I should not have drunk all that sherry. I’m not used to alcohol. I’ll sleep it off,’ she said standing up.

  ‘Let me see you to your bedroom,’ he said putting his arm round her shoulder and directing her towards her bed. She put her head against his broad chest and murmured, ‘Be gentle with me. I have not been near a man for eleven years. I’m scared.’

  He took her in a gentle bear hug to reassure her. ‘There’s nothing to be scared of; I’m not a sex maniac. If you don’t want it, we won’t do it. Just let me lie with you for a while and I’ll go back to my room.’

  Sarojini felt reassured but clung to him. Mohan laid her on the bed and stretched himself beside her. She dug her face in his chest, clasped him by the waist and lay still. He slipped his hand under her dressing gown and gently rubbed her shoulders and the back of her neck. Then her spine and her little buttocks. The tension went out of her body and she faced him. ‘Switch off the table lamp,’ she said.

  ‘You don’t want me to see your body?’ he asked as he switched off the lamp.

  ‘There is not much to see,’ she replied. ‘I’m like any other woman of my age. Only plainer. And not as well endowed.’

  ‘Let’s have a dekho,’ he said as he undid the belt of her gown and cupped one of her breasts in his hand. Indeed, she was not as well endowed as his wife or Dhanno or any of the other women he had bedded. The difference made her more desirable. He kissed her nipples and took one breast in his mouth. She began to gurgle with pleasure. ‘Don’t neglect the other one,’ she murmured. He did the same to the other breast. He unbuttoned his trousers and she felt his stiff penis throb against her belly.

  ‘My God you are big!’ she exclaimed in alarm. ‘This thing will tear me to pieces. ’She clasped it between her thighs to prevent it from piercing her. ‘Promise you won’t hurt me. Remember I’m very small and have had no sex for a very, very long time.’

  He felt elated, macho and grandly overpowering. And he was more patient than he had been with other women. He sensed she was ready to receive him. She spread out her thighs and he entered her very slowly. ‘Oh God, you will split me into two,’ she said clasping him by the neck. She was fully aroused. In a hoarse voice she whispered urgently, ‘Ram it in.’ He did as he was told.

  She screamed, not in agony but in the ecstasy of a multiple orgasm. She had never experienced it before nor believed it was possible. Her body quivered, and then relaxed … Then all of a sudden, a fit of hysteria overtook her. She clawed Mohan’s face and arms and chest and began to sob. ‘I’m a whore, a common tart! I’m a bitch,’ she cried. Mohan held her closer and reassured her, ‘You are none of those; you are a nice gentle woman who has not known love.’

  She knew his words meant nothing but they were strangely soothing. She rested her head on his arm and was soon snoring softly. Neither of them felt the need to wash and fell asleep in each other’s arms. Many hours later it was Sarojini who shook Mohan awake. ‘Better go to your own room and make your bed look as if it has been slept in.’

  Mohan staggered out of her room. He did not know what time it was. He undid the latch of the servants’ entrance and lay down on his bed. He was fast asleep within minutes.

  Yasmeen

  I met Yasmeen while 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 a Muslim. She sat in the front row, I was always a back-bencher. 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 Ze
nd-Avesta, no Torah, no Bible, no Koran. Read what moves you the most. Seek the Truth within yourself.’ And how spiritually elevating the message of the Gita was—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 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, 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—non-violence.’

  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 in 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 India-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 three 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 whining. ‘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 along with 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 disapp
oint 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 Mecca to Medina, his victorious return to Mecca, the traditions 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 dos and don’ts that 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.’

  She sat down breathless after her speech. Only one student, a mild-mannered Jew who always wore a skullcap, took up her challenge. ‘Perhaps the lady can answer some of my questions before I answer hers,’ he said. ‘Can she deny that Islam borrowed most of its ideas from Judaism? Their greeting, salam valaikum, is derived from the Hebrew shalom alech; the names of their five daily prayers are taken from Judaism. We turn to Jerusalem to pray; they borrowed the idea from us, but instead, turn to Mecca. Following the Jewish practice, they circumcise their male children. They have taken the concept of haraam (unlawful) and halaal (legitimate), what to eat and what not to eat, from the Jewish kosher. We Jews forbid eating pig’s meat because we regard it unclean; Muslims do the same. We bleed animals to death before we eat them. Following us, so do they. They revere all the prophets revered by Jews and Christians. What was there in Islam which was very new? Everything it has is borrowed from Judaism or Christianity.’