THE SUNSET CLUB

by Khushwant Singh

  The outside lights are kept lit throughout the night. The chowkidar keeps strolling between the entrance and exit gates, thumping his lathi on the tarmac surface, thak-thak, shouting periodically Khabardar raho—remain alert!

  For old people, mornings are an ordeal. No matter what age-related ailments they suffer from, it is usually in the mornings from sunrise to noon that they succumb to them. More old people die during these hours than at others. This is a blessing in disguise as in tropical climates relatives dispose of their dead before sunset. And many deaths are related to bowel movements because they weigh heavily on their minds. Some have to strain at their stools, which takes a toll on their hearts. Others have breathing problems and are short of breath; their exertions on the commode also strain the heart till it gives way.

  Though Sharma never had problems with his bowels he had an enlarged prostate which blocked his urine. Medical examination showed early stages of cancer. He was operated on in good time. He got rid of the cancer but it made his bladder uncontrollable. He has to get up twice or thrice at night to empty it in the pisspot that is kept under his bed.

  Boota Singh is bowel-obsessed. He takes laxatives, enemas, glycerine suppositories up his rectum. For the last few years he has been taking three heaped teaspoonfuls of Isabgol in a glass of warm milk every morning. Sometimes he has a good clearance. But more often nothing works.

  Baig, though he eats richer food, takes little exercise, and is overweight, has no complaint about his bowels.

  Sharma gets up after daylight, stretches out his arms and loudly intones Hari Om Tat Sat a few times, coming down to just Hari Om, Hari Om. He goes to the bathroom to urinate and rinse his mouth. Then he downs a tumbler of warm water and a mug of tea. He goes on to recite the Gayatri Mantra at the top of his voice:

  Almighty God: Creator of the Earth and the firmament

  Blessed be Thy Name

  And blessed be the Sun that gives us light and life

  May thou endow me with similar qualities

  May such thoughts enlighten my mind.

  He waits for a few minutes till pressure builds up in his bowels. Thereafter he has his bath and gets into fresh clothes. He has a good breakfast of cereal, a couple of fried eggs, and is ready to face the day. He does not believe in subscribing to newspapers as he can read them all in the library of the India International Centre. Soon after his sister leaves for her office, his driver takes him to the Centre. He spends his mornings there, has a bite in the coffee lounge and returns home for a long siesta.

  For Boota mornings are, as he says, a pain in the arse. He is up before 4 a.m. He swallows a couple of pills with a tumbler of orange juice. He sits down on a well-cushioned armchair. He says he does not believe in prayer but he prays for his bowels to move smoothly: ‘Aum Arogyam.’ He repeats the mantra many times. He keeps looking at the three table clocks in his bedroom and his pocket watch lying on the table. He looks through the window to see if dawn has come. From 5.30 a.m. newspapers start arriving. He subscribes to six. In the Hindustan Times and the Times of India he only reads the headlines and turns the pages of their supplements to see the tits and bums of Bollywood starlets. His morning preoccupation is solving crossword puzzles. With breakfast of a tumbler of warm milk with Isabgol he takes eight more pills prescribed for his fluctuating blood pressure, enlarged prostate, wind in the stomach and other age-related ailments. If his fake prayers and the pills do what they are meant to and he succeeds in filling the toilet bowl with his shit, he hears koels calling from the mango groves. If not, it is the kaw-kaw of crows all day long.

  Baig’s household are early risers. As the call for the Fajr prayer, Allah-o-Akbar, wafts across from the mosque in Nizamuddin, Begum Sakina and all the servants turn towards Makka, raise their hands to their ears and offer namaaz. Nawab Sahib’s day begins much later. He announces it by stretching his arms wide with a loud cry, ‘Ya Allah.’ It is a signal for the household to get down to their daily chores. He goes to the bathroom to urinate and rinse his mouth. As he sits in his armchair by the fireplace, Sakina joins him with the greeting, ‘Salaam Alaikum. Did you sleep well?’ He replies: ’Valaikum Salaam. Allah be praised, I slept soundly.’ A servant greets his master likewise, brings a silver tray with two Spode china cups on saucers, with silver spoons, a bowl of sugar cubes and a silver teapot covered by a tea cosy to keep it hot. Sakina pours tea, milk and sugar in the two cups, and hands one to her husband. She takes her seat with cup in hand. ‘What is the programme for the day?’ she asks.

  ‘The same,’ he replies, ‘Some business, meeting people, eating the air in Lodhi Gardens and back home. Comes the morning, comes the evening and the day is done. This is the way in which our lives end.’

  The tea tray is removed. Another servant brings an ornate silver hookah with an earthenware bowl full of live embers and fragrant tobacco. Baig takes a few pulls and utters a loud ‘ah’ at the end of each puff. A few puffs of his hookah is all he needs to activate his bowels. He doesn’t care a fig about what goes on in the world. He gets one English paper, the Hindustan Times, for no better reason than that his father used to get it. He scans the headlines and the obituary columns and puts it aside. He used to subscribe to the Urdu journal, Qaumi Awaaz. Since it closed down, he gets Roznama Rashtriya Sahara, Hindustan Express and Sahafat. Also several magazines—Nai Duniya, Sahara Times and Pakeeza Aanchal. He never reads any of them; Begum Sakina goes over every one of them before she passes them on to her servants, all of whom can read Urdu. Baig gets his news second-hand from his wife, with suitable comments: Besharam! (shameless), Goonda kahin ka! (no-good thug), Naalaik (stupid) or just Thoo! Her wah-wahs are reserved for tennis star Sania Mirza and Muslims in India’s Cricket Eleven.

  Members of the Sunset Club do not normally meet on the evening of Beating Retreat. All three watch the spectacle on their TV sets. This year it was cancelled as a mark of respect for ex-President Venkataraman who had died two days earlier—all public ceremonies were cancelled for eleven days and flags flown at half-mast.

  Indians have enormous respect for the dead. If the head clerk of an office dies, the entire office staff takes the day off. They have different ways of expressing their grief. Some take their families to the cinema, others take them to the zoo or for picnics to the Qutub Minar or to Okhla, where there is a barrage from where the Yamuna canal takes off. The next day they have a meeting. The boss makes a short speech, extolling the qualities of head and heart of their departed colleague. They stand in silence for a minute with their heads lowered. Then they go back to their desks and shuffle files, drink relays of tea or coffee. And gossip.

  That afternoon there were lots of picnickers in Lodhi Gardens. As they took their seats, Baig remarked, ‘There is a lot of raunaq in the garden today.’

  ‘Has to be,’ says Boota, ‘Venkataraman died the day before yesterday. So there have to be shok sabhas—condolence meetings. This is as nice a place as any to hold one. Let’s forget Venkataraman. What do you make of the Chandra Mohan–Anuradha affair in Chandigarh? The papers are full of it.’

  Sharma is the first to answer: ‘Shameful! A Brahmin girl from a respectable family marrying a married fellow with two children. And a Bishnoi at that. The founder of the sect, Guru Jambeshwar, was a noble soul, a visionary, a century ahead of his time, the first environmentalist. Don’t kill trees, don’t kill animals, don’t hurt people, don’t tell lies—that’s what he preached. He even sanctioned selecting handsome, healthy males to service married women whose husbands could not impregnate them. That’s the reason why the Bishnois are a handsome people. And see what happened to them. At one time the British intended to declare them a criminal tribe. They have a very high rate of murders and violent crimes. And we had this fellow’s father Bhajan Lal who was once chief minister of Haryana. Overnight he changed sides and bribed MLAs to join him. Now his son has gone one better than his father—he deserts his family to have illicit relations with an upper-caste woman.’

  Baig spea
ks next. ‘Sharmaji, there is nothing Bishnoi or Brahmin about it. Love crosses all barriers of race, religion, caste, wealth and poverty. Mirza Ghalib’s lines on ishq—love—say it best:

  No power can hold it back; it is a fire

  When you try to ignite it, it refuses to ignite,

  When you want to put it out, it refuses to be put out.

  ‘Ishq-vishq, love-shove, all bullshit,’ Boota cuts in. ‘Baig Sahib, lust is real, love is the gloss romantics put on it. Lust is natural. It begins to build up in infancy, assumes compelling proportions in adolescence, and lasts till old age. Boys start getting erections and want to put them in other boys’ bottoms or girls’ bums; girls start getting damp in their middles. Nature compels all of them to put their thighs together, fuck away till they are spent. Let me tell you what probably passed between the Bishnoi and the Brahmini. The Bishnoi wanted a new woman and was on the prowl, looking for a dainty dish. The Brahmini in her mid-thirties, fair-skinned, black curly hair hanging down to her shoulders, eyes of a gazelle, bosom like this Bara Gumbad in front of us. Their eyes meet. Lust is aroused. So they get down to the act: Tamaam shud—that’s all.’

  ‘Bhai Boota, no one can answer you,’ protests Baig with a smile. ‘You get down to the basics. Don’t forget that love, not lust, has generated the greatest poetry in all languages of the world.’

  Sharma cuts in impatiently: ‘Forget love and lust, aren’t you concerned about the harm such illicit liaisons do to society? A married man with a family and also deputy chief minister of Haryana should be setting an example in propriety. And that woman, a lawyer, advises him that the easiest way to avoid being charged with bigamy, which is a crime, is to convert to Islam which sanctions bigamy. Disgraceful!’

  Baig is not one to let Sharma get away with a slur on Islam. ‘Sharma Sahib, Islam does not sanction bigamy; it permits it if a marriage does not work out. You must know a lot of Muslims: can you name even one who has more than one wife? I can name several Hindus in important positions—chief ministers of states, MPs, film stars, dancers, business tycoons. Not one has been prosecuted for bigamy. Nevertheless, everyone blames Muslims for being bigamous. Here am I, who finds it hard enough to cope with one wife!’

  ‘I am sorry if I hurt your feelings. But you take it from me that the Chandra Mohan–Anuradha drama is not yet over. There will be lots of ups and downs in the time to come.’

  ‘I agree,’ says Boota, slapping his thighs loudly with both hands. ‘We are a people full of contradictions. On one side we have a couple who break all rules of propriety, on the other we have fundoos like those of the Ram Sene in Mangalore who beat up boys and girls for drinking beer in a pub. These goondas should be stripped naked and beaten with chappals on their bare bottoms. What do you say, Baig Sahib? You must have read about it in the papers.’

  ‘Some people don’t know how to mind their own business,’ replies Baig. ‘Unfortunately, we have lots of them in our country.’

  ‘So you think we should ignore them or joota maro them? Spit on their bums before we smack their backside with chappals?’

  Before they bid each other goodnight they generally allude to the subject uppermost in their minds; it is too delicate to be put bluntly. Baig quotes Ghalib:

  Life goes at a galloping pace

  Where it will stop, no one knows;

  Our hands are not on the reins

  Our feet not in the stirrups.

  Boota adds another couplet:

  There is a day fixed for death

  Why then spend sleepless nights thinking about it?

  Sharma says, ‘Cheerio.’

  On that happy note they bid each other farewell for the day.

  2

  THE MONTH OF

  FLOWERS

  The last day of January 2009 is Basant Panchami which, by the Indian Vikrami calendar, marks the end of winter and the advent of spring. The Vikrami calendar is closer to the change of seasons than the Roman calendar. There is a popular saying, Aaya Basant, Paala udant—comes Basant, the cold has flown. And indeed the short spring makes a colourful entry and melts in the summer’s heat by the end of February. In the flatlands of northern India the mustard is in full flower. At places it is a sea of bright canary yellow. In honour of the mustard flower, men wear yellow turbans, women yellow dupattas. North Indians, unlike Bengalis, are not great users of mustard oil or mustard seed. It is the mustard leaf that they consume with passion for weeks to come. The leaf is crushed, mixed with some other vegetable, seasoned with garlic and ginger and made into sarson ka saag—a puree made of mustard leaves. A blob of fresh butter is put on the green mash and ladled into the mouth with pieces of bajra (millet) or corn bread: it is a feast for kings.

  Basant is also the time to fly kites. Indians have not experimented with making new designs and stick to the traditional square pattern of different colours. What is unique about kite-flying in India is that it has become a kind of warfare. Kite flyers resort to dirty tricks like coating strings with powdered glass which not only cuts the strings of other kites but the necks of people who have the misfortune of coming in their way; they also tangle with electric wires and cause short circuits. People get on their rooftops and send their kites soaring into the sky; they entwine with other kites and as soon as one is cut asunder and floats down in waves, triumphant cries of ‘Bokata’ rent the heavens. Boys armed with long bamboo poles with spikes on top chase the vanquished kite and claim it as their war trophy.

  February is Delhi’s floral month. All parks and roundabouts are, as the cliché goes, a riot of colours. You can see the flowers at their best in Buddha Jayanti Park on the Ridge. There they have long flower beds growing the same flowers en masse. Lodhi Gardens cannot claim to provide such a feast for the eyes for flower-lovers. Undoubtedly, it has an enclosed rose garden with exotic varieties of roses which are beautiful to look at but lack fragrance. Few people besides rose-fanciers bother to visit it. There are a few nondescript flower beds on both sides of its footpaths, but Lodhi Gardens makes up by having an incredible variety of flowering trees which come into bloom in February. They attract lots of tree-lovers.

  Members of the Sunset Club have their own reasons for preferring Lodhi Gardens to other city parks. As I said before, Sharma likes to exchange greetings with important people: members of Parliament, senior politicians and retired civil servants. Most of them recognize him because he is a retired important person. Baig has an abiding interest in ancient monuments, notably those built by Pathan kings who once ruled the whole of northern India. Lodhi Gardens reminds him of the glorious rule of the Sayyid and Lodhi Sultans. Boota Singh does not bother about VIPs nor is he very interested in monuments; he pretends to be a nature lover—birds and trees are what draw him to the park because it has lots of both.

  His own attempts to grow exotic varieties of trees have not been very successful. Many years ago he brought a sandalwood sapling from Mysore. Boota didn’t know it is a parasite and its roots feed on roots of trees nearby and turn the trunk into fragrant wood. It now stands twenty feet tall in his garden. But it has no fragrance. About the same time, he planted a hybrid Amrapali mango tree close to the sandalwood. It grew rapidly, had clusters of white boor flowers, of which a few turned into fruit which was inedible. He planted six avocados. They grew to respectable heights and then collapsed without bearing fruit.

  About ten years ago he bought a sapling of what the nurseryman told him was a kadam and planted it close to his rear veranda. It has grown to over thirty feet. A most handsome tree, thick with large green leaves. Around the end of February it begins to shed its leaves and sprout new ones of bright orange colour. Boota watches it by the hour as its leaves start to drop. Gusts of wind bring some down in showers. And soon new ones turn the tree into a flowering pyramid of fire, a sight for the gods.

  Boota invites friends over to see it. One of them came around with Pradip Krishen’s book, Trees of Delhi. He had one look at the tree and said, ‘This is not a kadam but a kosam.’
And showed him the pictures and text in the book. A few days later he sent him a kadam sapling as a gift. Boota planted it in the middle of his garden. It is already over twenty feet high: one trunk, branches at regular intervals, large light green leaves—it is a balm for sore eyes. Boota has switched his affection from the kosam to the kadam.

  In February, quite a few trees are in flower. At the western side of the lawn with the Boorha Binch are towering semuls—silk cotton—with large, ungainly red flowers, neither beautiful nor fragrant. Further down the lawn facing the tomb of Muhammad Shah Sayyid are a few dhaks, better known as palas, or flame of the forest. No one plants them in their own gardens because they have nothing to show for themselves except for the week or two when they are in flower. Their flowers last till the end of February or first week of March. You can see them growing wild in and around Buddha Jayanti Park. Apparently the battlefield on which Robert Clive got the better of Nawab Sirajuddowlah in 1757 had lots of them in full bloom and hence the battle came to be known as the Battle of Plassey, after palas. Its parrot-beak-shaped flowers are pretty to behold but have no scent. Behind Sheesh Gumbad, which is just west of the Bara Gumbad, there are a few coral trees. Their flowers are the same colour as the dhak but instead of being curved, are straight. Also without scent. It is these trees that are the focus of Boota’s attention and he lectures about them to the other two members of the Sunset Club.