Khushwanth’s irrepressible spirit of humour

On March 16, 2014 in a book release function I was referring to the audience about a great man, an audacious nonagenarian journalist, Khushwanth Singh who lived for 99 years and soon going to hit a century. The book, written by my New Delhi-based friend Dasari Amarendra, contained an interview with Khushwanth Singh. But alas, just after five days, the giant breathed his last on March 20 leaving literature fanatics numb. None can be compared to Khushwanth Singh. He was called Shahenshaw of Indian Journalism. He was a unique personality with varied and diversified qualities in many ways. He was a columnist-his syndicated column, ‘With Malice towards One and All’ used to be published simultaneously in 80 newspapers. He never hesitated to call spade a spade. Hypocrisy or flattery was never his cup of tea. He was always critical of highly reputed people like Jawaharlal Nehru, Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Patel etc. His column used to be satirical, brutally frank and mischievously provoking. More than anything else it was full of biting humour and sharp sarcasm. In an interview given to Dasari Amarendra in 1997 (which was published in a Telugu monthly-Vipula), Khushwanth Singh said that maintaining this column for so long had been a difficult task as it was eating away most of his time. Though this column was earning lot of money and fame he was not able to concentrate on writing serious literature (he frankly said that he likes earning money and good things of life that it brings). He also said that because of this column he was able to interact with millions of people. It had given him an opportunity to share his views with readers and could influence their attitude towards life. He was against hypocrisy and a secularist to the core. He was against superstitions and religious bigotry. He never liked mixing religion with politics. He opines that as long as religion is kept as a private matter there is no harm but when it is institutionalised and made to interfere with public life, it leads to serious confrontation between religions.

Apart from being a popular columnist this maverick writer was an innovative editor. I remember his stint as the editor of “Illustrated weekly of India” during 1968-78. Prior to his takeover, Illustrated weekly with a circulation of 60,000 was an elitist weekly catering to the needs of those who were interested in fine arts like literature, music and painting. But Khushwanth Singh had brought about a radical change in its format, content and illustrations and its circulation had gone up to 4 lakhs. When the old readers of Weekly protested against converting their serious weekly into a popular weekly catering to the needs of men in the streets, Khushwanth Singh answered them by showing the sky rocketing circulation graph of the weekly. Under his editorship, a path-breaking series of features were published with splendid photographs, showcasing the fascinating variety of different social communities of India, their culture, their history and eminent persons belonging to that particular milieu. If one week he had published a feature on Coorgies of Karnataka, in another week he published a feature on Nattukottai Chettiars of Tamilnadu. A feature was published on India’s scheduled castes calling them as ‘India’s new Brahmins’ implying that this particular community was enjoying all the benefits of the State, once enjoyed by Brahmins. This created a hue and cry among people but he was never afraid of facing such controversies. As a matter of fact, he always enjoyed controversies. One controversy he couldn’t enjoy was connected to Sanjay Gandhi-the second son of Indira Gandhi. During the infamous emergency of 1975, Khushwanth Singh had thrown discretion to the winds when he started praising Sanjay Gandhi in an article titled ‘The Man who gets Things Done’. He praised Sanjay’s pet scheme of small cars found to be quite useful to the middle class people. It was later revealed that Sanjay’s car had never come on to the roads. Khushwanth had apologised when it was proved that the small car project was a big fraud. After Sanjay’s demise in a plane accident in 1978, Khushwanth Singh went out of the way to support Maneka Gandhi when there was a dispute between Indira Gandhi and her daughter-in-law. And very soon he could rectify himself and expressed regret for this indiscretion.

Many admirers of Khushwanth Singh forget that he was a novelist of considerable merit. Though he had written five novels, his first novel ‘Train to Pakistan’ was taken seriously by the critics. This novel was published in 1956 depicting the horrendous events that took place in 1947 immediately after the Partition of India.

In his another monumental research work in shaping the book ‘History of Sikhs’ made him to secure a permanent place in the field of literature. His other literary pieces ‘Why I supported the Emergency’ (Nonfiction essays), novels like ‘Delhi’, ‘I shall never Hear a Nightingale’, and ‘The Portrait of a Lady’ (collection of short stories) are worth reading.

Khushwanth was a great humorist. He had published many volumes of jokes and cartoons which evoke immediate laughter. Writing introduction to one such book, he says, “My latest discovery is that my countrymen are the most laughable in the world today. Nowhere else you will find so much disparity between what they say and what they mean. We proclaim that we are spiritual people indifferent to material wellbeing. In fact we are more obsessed with money than most others. We have reduced our religions into meaningless rituals with lot of mumbo-jumbo of prayers in languages we don’t understand. That provides a good material for a satirist. Our politicians are even better material than the purveyors of spiritualism. They are constipated with self-esteem and let off a lot of malodorous gas all the time. The most effective weapon to punctuate their inflated ego is to make fun of them and make them appear as ridiculous as they are.”

An anecdote that Khushwanth narrates in this book is representative of his mischievous nature. When he was working as a Press attaché to the Indian High Commissioner V K Krishna Menon in London (whom he calls a singularly humourless character), he was approached by a person for help in London. He sought guidance on how a saree was draped round the woman’s body. Khushwanth’s answer was, “although I have some experience of taking them off, I have never put one around the lady’. When this matter was taken to V K Krishna Menon, he reprimanded Khushwanth. But a serious man like Menon also could not help laughing his heart out.

The jack of all literary forms dabbled through historical anthologies to politically sensitive novel as well as social commentary. The literary genius was awarded Padma Vibhushan, the second highest civilian award in India.

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