11. These three flowering bushes are found all over India. The adhatoda vasicka is used to make medicinal syrup; the ipomea is grown to reinforce canal banks, Since it blossoms most times of the year it is known in Punjabi as sadd shudgan (ever-in-marital-bliss).
12. Cunningham followed Todd and other European scholars in believing that Jats were of Scythian stock.
13. Panch men parmesvar There is god in the five elected men.
14. See Mahabharata, VIII, verses 2063–2068 (Karna Parva).
15. Darshan Singh (born in 1936) in the village of Suranwala (District Sahiwal now in Pakistan) is an Arora Sikh. He has a master’s degree in music. He is the most highly paid ragi and preacher. He came into politics after ‘Operation Blue Star’ and was twice detained in prison for his fiery sermons denouncing the government.
The Monsoon in Indian Literature and Folklore
1. See, C. Carrington, Rudyard Kipling, His Life and Work, London, Macmillan, 1953, p.94.
2. See, Rudyard Kipling’s Verse 1885–1926, London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1930, p.80.
3. See Aristophanes’s The Frogs in the Great Books of the Western World, New York, Benton, 1952, p.566.
4. See, J. Brough, Poems From the Sanskrit, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books Ltd, 1968.
5. See, Bhartrihari: Poems with the Transliterated Sanskrit Text of the. Satakatrayam, trans. B.S. Miller, ed., William Theodore de Bary, New York and London, Columbia University Press, 1967.
6. See Subandhu’s Vasavaddatta in B.N. Pandey, ed., A Book of India—An Anthology of Prose and Poetry from the Indian Subcontinent, Delhi, Rupa, Vol. I, 1977, p. 138.
7. See, W.G. Archer, Love Songs of Vidyapati, trans. D. Bhattacharya, London, Allen and Unwin, 1963.
8. For details see, Guru Nanak’s Raga Tukhari, 1604, in Guru Arjun Dev, compiler, Adi Granth, SGPC, Amritsar, 1984, pp.1107–1110. Translated by Khushwant Singh in A History of the Sikhs, Princeton, Princeton University Press, Vol. I, 1963, pp. 351–57.
9. Khushwant Singh’s translation of the Baramah is carried in full elsewhere in the book.
10. See, Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali, Delhi, Macmillan, 1980.
11. See L.H. Niblett’s India in Fable, Verse, and Story, in B.N. Pandey ed., A Book of India—An Anthology of Prose and Poetry from the Indian Sub-Continent, Delhi, Rupa, Vol. I, 1977, p. 138.
12. See E.M. Forster, The Hill of Devi, London, Edwin Arnold and Co., 1953, p.93.
13. For details see, S. Ali and S.D. Riply, Handbook of the Birds of India and Pakistan, Delhi, Oxford University Press, Vol. 3, 1984, pp. 194–200.
14. For details see, M.S. Randhawa ed., Agricultural Proverbs of the Punjab, Chandigarh. Directorate of Public Relations, 1962.
The Romance of New Delhi
1. Khushwant Singh’s father-in-law.
2. Khushwant Singh’s father.
Shikwa
1. The Beloved refers to Prophet Mohammed.
2. Khyber was a stronghold of Jewish tribes near Medina and was captured by Hazrat Ali, the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law.
3. This refers to the sacred flame worshipped by the Zoroastrians of Persia.
4. Behr-i-tulmat. When Arab conquerors came to the westernmost shores of Africa which they considered the end of the earth, they are said to have exclaimed, ‘Great God! Had there been land further we would have conquered it in Your name.’
Bara Mah
1. In Chet the Salvadora persica (pee loo) is in blossom in the Punjab countryside.
2. Common hawk-cuckoo (Hierococcyx varius) popularly known as the ‘brain-fever’ bird because of its call. To Indian ears, the same call sounds like pee-kahan (where is my husband?) or papeeha.
Acknowledgements
While every effort has been made to ensure that permission to reproduce copyright material included in the book was obtained, in the event of any inadvertent omission, the publishers should be notified and formal acknowledgements will be included in all future editions of this book. Some of the essays in this book have appeared in different form in the columns ‘With Malice Towards One and All . . .’ and ‘This Above All’ in Hindustan Times and the Tribune respectively and in Outlook and the Telegraph. The editor and publisher would like to specially acknowledge the following:
For ‘Seeing Oneself’, Konark Publishers, 1987
For ‘Why I Am an Indian’, The Illustrated Weekly, February 1970
For ‘The Haunted Simla Road’, The Observer, London
For ‘Manzur Qadir’, The Illustrated Weekly, October 1974
For ‘Prabha Dutt’, The Hindustan Times, March 1984
For ‘Phoolan Devi’, The Hindustan Times, 1981
For ‘Nirad Chaudhuri’, The Illustrated Weekly
For ‘Krishna Menon’, Opinion magazine, Bombay
For ‘Shraddha Mata’, New Delhi magazine, September 1979
For ‘Doomsday in Yogiland’, The New York Times
For ‘Holy Men and Holy Cows’, The New York Times
For ‘Going Gaga Over Yoga’, The New York Times
For ‘The Romance of New Delhi’, The Statesman, Calcutta
For ‘The Hanging of Bhutto’, New Delhi magazine, April and June, 1979
For ‘The Monsoon in Indian Literature and Folklore’, from Monsoons, edited by Jay S. Fein and Pamela L. Stephens, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1987
For ‘The Sikh Homeland’, from A History of the Sikhs, Vol. I and 2, 1839-1988, Oxford University Press, 1991
For excerpt from Iqbal’s Shikwa, Oxford University Press, 1981
For ‘Bara Mah’, from Hymns of Guru Nanak, Sangam Books, Orient Longman, 1978
For ‘Exchange of Lunatics’, by Saadat Hasan Manto, from Land of the Five Rivers, Jaico Publishing House, 1965
For ‘The Death of Sheikh Burhanuddin’, by Khwaja Ahmed Abbas, from Land of the Five Rivers, Jaico Publishing House, 1965
For ‘A Bride for the Sahib’, ‘Portrait of a Lady’ and ‘Posthumous’ from The Short Stories of Khushwant Singh, Ravi Dayal Publisher
For chapter from Train to Pakistan, Ravi Dayal Publisher
For chapter from I Shall Not Hear the Nightingale, IBH Publishing Company, Bombay, 1970
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First published in Viking by Penguin Books India 1993
Published in Penguin Books 1993
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Foreword copyright © Vikram Seth 1993
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