The Good, the Bad and the Ridiculous

by Khushwant Singh

  PREM NATH KIRPAL

  (1909–2005)

  My friendship with Prem Kirpal lasted longer than any other—over sixty years. Circumstances threw us together in Lahore, Delhi, London, Paris and back again in Delhi. We happened to be in England at the same time, as students: he was in Oxford, I in London. We heard of each other from common friends but never met. It was in Lahore, where I settled down to practise law and he got a job as a lecturer in Dayal Singh College, that we got to know each other.

  Prem’s father, Ishwar Das, was then deputy registrar, and later registrar, of Punjab University. They were Sahajdhati Sikhs. Prem’s mother came from a family of orthodox Khalsas. Ishwar Das was much influenced by leaders of the Singh Sabha movement, the poet Bhai Veer Singh, Dr Jodh Singh and the Attatiwala family. This was a common link between his family and my wife’s parents, who were ardent followers of Bhai Veer Singh. It did not take us long to start visiting each other’s homes.

  Prem was very conscious of having been a student of Balliol College, Oxford, and always wore his college tie. In his scheme of things, Oxford was the best university in the world, Balliol the best college in Oxford, and he privileged to be the product of the best institution. An anecdote told about him was that when leaving Oxford to catch his boat to return to India, he happened to be having his breakfast in the dining car of the Oxford-London train. Sitting across the table was an Englishman also having breakfast. Over the din and rattle of the train, he asked Prem, ‘Would you mind passing me the salt?’ Prem promptly held up his college tie and replied, ‘Yes, this is a Balliol tie.’

  Soon I found out other connections with the Kirpal family. All the sons had been to Government College: Amar Nath, Prem, Pritam and Prakash. Amar Nath was a lawyer and edited a law journal; his son Bhupinder (Cuckoo) also became a lawyer and, later, judge of the Delhi high court and chief justice of the Gujarat high court. Pritam, who played hockey for the college, retired from the army as a general. Prakash became a draughtsman in the Survey of India in Dehra Dun. There were also three or four sisters, of whom two, Sita and Leela, were then unmarried. Ishwar Das often used to boast of the virility of the Kirpals, when he rued that Prem had not found a wife and kept up the family tradition of fecundity.

  Actually, Prem was very eager to find a mate. His first choice was his closest friend Mangat Rai’s elder sister. Priobala was then teaching in Kinnaird College. Prem started calling on her. He was not a man of many words—and when it came to women, even less vocal. He was not getting anywhere because in Kinnaird College there were always some women about. At my suggestion, he persuaded Priobala to come out with him for a drive. He did not have a car and could not afford a taxi. So he hired a tonga and the two went around Lawrence Gardens and other beauty spots of Lahore. He was still not getting anywhere. I told him that some women responded to action and that he should simply grab her in his arms and kiss her. He decided to give it a try. The next time he took Priobala for a tonga ride, he told her, ‘Prio, you know what Khushwant asked me to do? He said I should take you in my arms and kiss you.’ Priobala was incensed. ‘He is an absolute rascal. You can tell him that for me,’ she added. And that was to remain the pattern of many romances.

  After Partition, we found ourselves in Delhi and then London. He was education officer; I was a press attaché. Our boss, Krishna Menon, did not like Prem but liked me to start with. Prem was sent back to the ministry. A couple of years later, I resigned from my job and was back in Delhi. Prem and I resumed our friendship. He was joint secretary and an eligible bachelor.

  One afternoon, while sharing the office car with a lady colleague, Prem’s hand slipped and fell on her shoulder. The lady promptly responded by giving him a full-blooded kiss on his lips. There was no escape. His father approved of the girl (she was South Indian) and their engagement was announced. What came as a surprise to me was that Prem, now in his forties, knew so little about the female sex. One afternoon, when overcome by passion he tried to bed her, she pleaded illness and begged him to be patient for a few days. That was the first time he had heard of women menstruating. ‘Please don’t tell anybody I didn’t know about this,’ he begged me. Of course, I told everyone. The way he broke up with the lady was even more amusing. She fixed the date for their wedding. Prem disappeared from Delhi and sent her a telegram saying he had broken his leg and the marriage would have to be postponed indefinitely. For a few days, he even had his leg put in plaster.

  Past experiences did not deter Prem from making passes at young women. And when they responded, he beat a hasty retreat.

  What I have said about Prem may make him appear very lightweight. He was not. He became head of the cultural division of UNESCO, member and then chairman of the executive board. Although he knew very little about art or music, either Eastern or Western, he made an excellent chairman and conducted meetings with great skill. His strength lay in gentleness and offending nobody.

  Although I made cruel fun of him, Prem remained devoted to my entire family. We travelled all over Europe and Latin America. My accounts of these journeys are peppered with anecdotes about him. Once, in Madrid, I had to bully him to visit the Prado by telling him that it had a richer collection than the Louvre and that his colleagues were bound to ask him about it. He strode through the Prado galleries in fifteen minutes flat. Back in Paris, he told his friends that he thought the Prado was better than the Louvre. They were horrified and told him so. He, in turn, was angry with me for having exaggerated the quality of the Prado.

  Another time, still in Madrid, we decided to invite Elizabeth Adiseshiah, who was staying in another hotel with her husband, Malcolm, for dinner as her husband was busy in a conference. Prem went to call up from the hotel telephone in the lobby, which was packed with guests having tea. When he got her on the line, Prem began to shout at the top of his voice: ‘Lisbeth, this is Prem. If you are not doing anything, then come and have dinner with us.’ Everyone in the lobby stopped talking to listen to the announcement. When he came back, he told me, ‘Elizabeth will come for dinner.’ I replied, ‘I know. So does everyone else in the hotel. Why did you have to shout so loudly?’ His reply was classic: ‘She is in the other hotel, which is a long distance from here.’

  Prem returned to Delhi to become secretary of the ministry of education. He had a strong patron in Dr S. Radhakrishnan, who saw to it that Prem got what he wanted. Prem was not averse to laying on flattery when it was required. ‘You are the greatest philosopher in the world today,’ he told Radhakrishnan. I could not resist cutting in: ‘Sir, he has not read even one of your books.’ Prem gracefully acknowledged: ‘That is true. I have not read your books, but everyone tells me you are a great philosopher. I accept that.’ Prem, who knew little about Radhakrishnan’s works, remained his favourite; I, who had read almost everything he had written, was kept at a distance.

  After retirement from government service, Prem took on the Delhi Public Schools—perhaps the largest chain of schools in the country. He got me nominated to the board as he needed support against mischief-makers who were forever trying to take over the management. Although DPS kept him busy, he still had a lot of time on his hands. Prem evolved a new pattern of living. He would get up late, then take a long walk in Lodi Gardens. After lunch, he would take a long siesta before tea. He would be at the India International Centre almost every evening. Back home, he would have yet another bout in bed. By dinnertime, he would be fresher than anyone else. He could not bear to be alone because he did not read—he had the largest unread library in his house. He invited the same people to his dinner parties. And if he could not get anyone, he landed up at my flat with the announcement ‘What’s happening?’ and then stayed on for dinner.

  Prem became hard of hearing towards the last years of his life. He also took to painting in the most garish of colours. The walls of his sitting and dining rooms were plastered with his paintings. He also composed poetry at the drop of a hat. He loved to celebrate his birthday, when he kept an open house. Champagne
and Scotch flowed. On the centre table, he kept albums. One had pictures of the women he admired or loved; the other was of himself with notables such as Dr Radhakrishnan and the director general of the UNESCO. Beside these albums lay the latest edition of the Balliol College magazine.

  It was a sad day for me when he died.

  PROTIMA BEDI

  (1948–1998)

  The two words missing from Protima Bedi’s life’s lexicon were ‘no’ and ‘regret’. She could never say no to a man who desired her, and grew into a very desirable and animated young woman—whom most men found irresistible. And she did not regret any of the emotional and physical experiences she had.

  Protima felt that keeping secrets was like lying, so she told everyone everything, including her husband and the succession of lovers who entered her life. She broke up marriages but remained blissfully unaware of the hurt she caused people. She had to get everything off her ample bosom.

  Protima Gauri (as she renamed herself) had a zest for living. She loved men, liquor and drugs. She had an enormous appetite for sex and admitted to enjoying it as many as six times a day. She had a large range of lovers. Protima hated humbugs and hypocrites. She wrote: ‘Every woman I know secretly longed to have many lovers but stopped herself for many reasons. I had the capacity to love many at a time and for this had been called shallow and wayward and a good-time girl.’

  Protima also had a puckish sense of humour. Once, she arrived in Bombay with an electric vibrator. A very scandalized customs officer refused to let it pass. She gave him a dressing down: ‘My husband is out of town most of the time—what do you expect me to do? I am trying to be faithful! Are you encouraging infidelity?’ She got away with it.

  Death caught Protima unawares. She was killed in a landslide while on a pilgrimage to Badrinath. And on the same day, in Bombay, died Persis Khambatta, India’s first beauty queen and the one-time mistress of Protima’s husband, Kabir Bedi.

  SAHIR LUDHIANVI

  (1921–1980)

  Sentimental, sensitive, sensuous, generous, but at the same time edgy, quick-tempered, hypersensitive and quarrelsome—Sahir Ludhianvi was all these as well as the best and the most successful of our lyricists. He was also the hardest of drinkers.

  Apart from Scotch, what Sahir thirsted for was appreciation. I was surprised at the childish joy with which he celebrated the award of the Padma Shri. And when his fellow Ludhianvis decided to honour him, he travelled all the way to Punjab and back to Bombay by rail (he had a morbid fear of flying) to be acclaimed by his native city.

  I had many encounters with Sahir in the homes of common friends in Bombay and spent a few evenings at his house in Juhu, close to where Balraj Sahni lived. If any evening passed without an unpleasant incident, I regarded it as a minor miracle. Sahir was particularly touchy when he found himself in the company of the newly rich who pretended to enjoy shair-o-shairee. There is no dearth of them in Bombay, where the film industry has thrown up as many millionaires as it has spawned versifiers. I recall one evening in particular. A well-meaning Gujarati businessman began praising Sahir, but in the process misquoted one of his lines. Sahir turned on the poor (rich) man with a volume of abuse in a mixture of English and Punjabi-Urdu (he never got rid of his Ludhiana accent) till the other was compelled to leave, and the party was ruined. It transpired that Sahir was not expecting a drink in the house and had been taking slugs of neat Scotch all the way from Juhu to Malabar Hill.

  In his own home, Sahir was always very considerate. There was his old-fashioned mother, who spoke nothing but the Malwa dialect of Punjabi, as well as a younger relative and the inevitable bottle of Scotch. I was sure that Sahir’s mother disapproved of his heavy drinking. To ingratiate myself in her favour, I asked her, ‘Maji, why don’t you curb his drinking? Don’t you see it’s doing him no good?’ She replied by asking me: ‘Puttar, what can I do when he has friends like you, who come to see him only to drink his whisky?’

  SANJAY GANDHI

  (1946–1980)

  I have been criticized and attacked more often than most people I know. It does not bother me; I ignore it all or laugh it off. The one criticism I have faced that I take seriously is to do with my support for Sanjay Gandhi. In 1975, after Mrs Gandhi declared Emergency in the country, I ran a cover story in the Independence Day issue of The Illustrated Weekly on her second son and partner-in-politics, Sanjay. I called it ‘The Man Who Gets Things Done’. I have never lived this down, but I stand by the story. I believed that Sanjay was what the country needed at the time—a man of action who would bring discipline in public offices, crack down on smugglers, clean up our cities and, most important, take serious steps to control our explosive population growth. I believed that he was doing all those things and I supported him, perhaps blindly. Outside the moment, it is easy to see the full picture.

  I met Sanjay in the mid-1970s, when he was already unpopular among intellectuals and many of my fellow liberals who saw him as an extra-constitutional power and a potential tyrant. When I met him, I found him to be reasonable and courteous. He was the one who had called the meeting. He wanted to talk to me about his Maruti car business and wanted me to write about it. I went with him to the factory site. I was disappointed; it looked like the workshop of a blacksmith, a lohar. He took me around the site in a prototype of the Maruti car, driving fast and talking about how important the project was. I was more impressed by his passion and enthusiasm than by the physical set-up. It was being said in those days that Haryana’s chief minister, Bansi Lal, had given Sanjay land for free for his factory. I found these allegations to be false. Sanjay had paid a fair price. I wrote this in my story on Maruti. That was how our association began. We became friends.

  Sanjay was good-looking. He had an eye for pretty girls, but the good sense not to get carried away. He was also a teetotaller, but not self-righteous. Always polite, Sanjay sought me out for company and advice. I was flattered. Our friendship was strengthened after his marriage to Maneka, whose family I knew. They made a handsome couple. I was past sixty then and, like many people reaching old age, I enjoyed the attention of young and spirited people.

  Since I also had a good equation with Mrs Gandhi in those days, I was dubbed the Gandhis’ chamcha, especially when I supported the Emergency. Even now, after all these years, I think the Emergency was necessary, because the opposition had unleashed chaos and nothing in the country functioned. I had no idea then that it could be and would be misused and abused. Sanjay was always extremely courteous to me, so I found it hard to believe stories about his dictatorial ways. When I first got to know him, he really did seem like a committed man who was always true to his word. He had a conscience. And he was a doer, impatient to bring about changes. Maybe that was what made him dictatorial.

  A year or so into the Emergency, he became very unpopular because of the forced nasbandi (sterilization) programme, censorship and arbitrary slum demolitions. It was bruited about that he had ordered bulldozers to be run over the jhuggis of innocent people, and that men had been pulled out of buses and cinema halls and forcibly sterilized. Many of these were wild rumours, but it is true that Sanjay and his thuggish friends—they more than he—were beginning to run the country like their fiefdom. Mrs Gandhi had come to depend heavily on her dynamic younger son and had almost handed over the reins of power to him. Nobody could understand the hold he had on her. She both loved and feared him. There is a story that Sanjay once slapped his mother at the dinner table, with outsiders present, and she took it quietly.

  What Sanjay did, or was alleged to have done, during the Emergency had given him the image of a monster. He and Maneka came to see me in Bombay shortly after the Congress had been voted out of power, with Mrs Gandhi losing badly in her constituency. When they came to my apartment on Arthur Bunder Road, there were mobs in the streets baying for Sanjay’s blood. I had to drive the couple to the airport at some risk.

  I stood by the Gandhi family during their days in the doghouse, when they were bein
g persecuted by the Janata Party government, many of whose leaders the Gandhis had persecuted during the Emergency. My family and friends were very critical of me, and I had to face a great deal of flak. I watched with some satisfaction as Mrs Gandhi and Sanjay fought back and won the elections of 1980. But the happiness was brief. On the morning of 23 June 1980, Sanjay crashed his two-seater plane on the southern ridge in Delhi. Both he and his co-pilot, Captain Saxena, were killed. After his tragic death, it was left to his older brother, Rajiv—with whom he had had very little interaction—to support a shattered Indira Gandhi. There is some truth in the belief that she was never quite herself after Sanjay’s death.

  I liked Sanjay. But I am certain that if he had lived, this country would not have been a democracy. There would have been order and much faster development, but no democracy. I have been asked if, in that case, I would still have supported him. I don’t know. He would probably have got around me. He could be a real charmer. Besides, he was a friend, and he had been good to me. It was because of him that I was nominated to the Rajya Sabha. And it was he who called up K.K. Birla and told him to give me the editor’s job at the Hindustan Times. He did not need to do that, but he did. He was loyal, and so was I.

  SHRADDHA MATA

  (191?–1987)

  It was during my editorship of the fortnightly journal New Delhi that I first met Shraddha Mata. I did a long feature article on the tantric sadhvi who, according to M.O. Matthai, had borne Prime Minister Nehru an illegitimate child. In the process, I became quite friendly with her. Whenever I was in Jaipur, I called on her at her permanent abode, Hathroi Fort. It was no longer the journalistic nosiness to probe into her past association with Pandit Nehru. It was more a spirit of adventure to explore the world in which she lived and of which I knew nothing: of round-the-clock prayer, the tantric rites amongst burning corpses and her down-to-earth earthiness.