I rose at 5.30 a.m. and went out on the balcony. Facing me was an aquamarine sea. Between us a dun-coloured city of yellow skyscrapers, a velodrome with two cyclists whirling along with slopes and a football stadium with a coach instructing players in soccer tactics. There was hardly anyone on the road besides fast-moving cars. No dogs, no birds. The only familiar things were posters with Indira Gandhi’s pictures on the walls. She had been there a month before me.
Razia Sultana
Back in the conference hall I could not keep my mind on the Green Book. My eyes were fixed on the translators’ panel with Razia’s face glowing like an angel holding a candle in front of it. I got a friend to write two sentences in Arabic on separate pieces of paper and asked a messenger to take the first one up to the translators’ panel. It read: Anta Jameelon Jeddan (You are very beautiful). I did not sign it. I saw her read it and look down the seminarists to see if she could spot its author. She tucked it in her blouse. I sent the second note: Ana Ohebboka (I love you). Once again she looked puzzled but failed to locate her admirer. At the end of the session Razia questioned the messenger. She scribbled a note which was delivered to me. It was in Arabic. With bated breath I asked a friend to translate it: “Anta Shaikh Sakheef: You are a silly old man.
This book is a selection from ‘Gossip: Sweet and Sour’ and ‘Malice’, in which Khushwant Singh gives you ‘the low-down’ on people he has known and places he has visited. In these pages, you will be introduced to people like Mountbatten, Faiz, Shraddha Mata, P.C. Lai, Phoolan Devi and many others and you will travel to places as well known as Pakistan and Korea and as remote as Papua New Guinea. Irrepressible, incorrigibly provocative, perceptive — Khushwant was never better!
Those of you who have always enjoyed Khushwant’s effortless prose, his spontaneous and infectious outpourings will be delighted with his book. Those who are not yet avowed fans are sure to be converted in one reading! A must for every bookshelf — in fact, get yourself two copies—you are sure to find one is borrowed and never returned.
Khushwant Singh is easily the most widely read author in India today. His weekly columns are reproduced by over fifty journals in all the regional languages of the country. He has done different things at different times: practised law, diplomacy and politics; taught comparative religion at Princeton and Swarthmore; and edited The Illustrated Weekly of India and The Hindustan Times. He has written regularly for several European and American journals including The New York Times. He has also edited and translated a number of literary works.
Author of eighty-nine books, Khushwant Singh is best known for his work of fiction, Train to Pakistan, and his two-volume History of the Sikhs, which is still considered the most authoritative writing on the subject. His acerbic pen, his wit and humour, and, most of all, his ability to laugh at himself, have ensured him immense popularity over the years.
He was a Member of Parliament from 1980 to 1986. Among other honours, he was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1974 by the president of India (he returned the decoration in 1984 in protest against the Union government’s siege of the Golden Temple, Amritsar).
He lives in New Delhi
Rohini Singh, who has edited other selections of Khushwant Singh’s writings, is also the author of seven books on cookery published in the US, the UK and India.
First published in India in 2011 by
HarperCollins Publishers India
a joint venture with
The India Today Group
Copyright © Khushwant Singh 2012
ISBN: 978-81-7223-662-5
Epub Edition (c) June 2012 ISBN: 978-93-5029-289-1
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Khushwant Singh asserts the moral right to be identified
as the author of this work.
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Cover design: Dushyant Parasher
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Malicious Gossip Page 16