Chapter Two R. K. Narayan: My Days and Khushwant Singh: Truth, Love and a Little Malice • Chapter II

(i) R. K. Narayan: My Days,

(ii) Khushwant Singh: Truth, Love and a Little Malice

The present chapter discusses the autobiographies of those writers who made a mark on the literary scene of India which, in some ways, is of basic significance. They are R. K.

Narayan and Khushwant Singh. They come from two different states of India. There is a lot of difference in their background, their financial condition, their environment and the way they were brought up. It will be interesting to see the journey of these two in the world of letters and thought as depicted in their autobiographies.

R. K.Narayan: My Days

R. K. Narayan is that name without which the history of Indian English literature cannot be complete. Narayan was among the famous trio of Indian English fiction, the other two being Raja Rao and Mulk Raj Anand. Everybody, who has read his novels or has seen the television serial, Malgudi Days based on Narayan's celebrated book Swami and Friends is enchanted by Narayan's brilliant powers of minute observation, skill of sketching characters, use of lucid language and the way he has created a tiny piece of India in his celebrated imaginary town of 'Malgudi'. He uses conventional style of writing and it is deceptively simple. It is like the traditional story teller. However, in his writing, a comic and sarcastic surface exists above deeply serious depths. His autobiography is no exception to it.

Before we go to My Days proper, it is suitable to know a few personal details of R.K.

Narayan's life. He was bom on October 10, 1906 at Number 1, Vellal Street in

Purusawalkam, Madras (Chennai). His father was a provincial head master who h^dlQ^o to

21 different places due to transfers. Narayan spent his early childhood with his maternal grandmother and uncle in Madras. He used to spend only a few weeks each summer visiting his parents, brothers and sisters wherever they used to be stationed. He studied in different schools at Mysore. When his father was appointed headmaster of the Maharaja's High School in Mysore, Narayan moved there with his parents.

Narayan obtained his Bachelor's Degree from Mysore University in 1930. At first he tried different jobs such as an employment in the Mysore Secretariat and later on as a teacher, but they could not suit him. He decided to devote almost whole life as a writer. He started by writing short stories which appeared in The Hindu.

He married Raj am in 1934. For some days he worked as a newspaper correspondent for a Madras-based newspaper. Justice to support his family. Soon they had a daughter,

Hemavati. In 1939 the greatest tragedy of his life took place, his wife died of typhoid. He has written about this time in his autobiographical novel The English Teacher.

He began his writing career as a novelist with Swami and Friends in 1935. Most of his work including Swami and Friends is set in the fictional town of Malgudi which replicates India in the microcosm. He told stories of ordinary people trying to live their simple lives in a changing world. Narayan writes about the Southern part of India which he knows from his birth. He always writes about the lower middle class and their everyday problems of living. He depicts commonplace situations, but succeeds in making them uncommon by attributing universality to them with the magic touch of his genius. Narayan's writing style is marked by subtle humour.

R.K. Narayan's works include a huge bulk of writing. Novels-

22 Swami and Friends (1935, Hamish Hamilton), The Bachelor of Arts (1937, Thomas

Nelson),r;2e Dark Room (1938, Eyre).The English Teacher (1945, Eyre),Mr Sampath (1948,

Eyre),r/2e Financial Expert (1952, Mtihacn), Waiting for the Mahatma (1955, Methuen),r/2e

Guide (1958, Methuen),r/ze Man-Eater of Malgudi (1961, Vik\ng),The Vendor of Sweets

(1967, The Bodley Head),r/ze Painter of Signs (1977, Heinemann), A Tiger for Malgudi

(1983, ¥ie'mQmann),Talkative Man (1986, Heinemann),T/ze World of Nagaraj (1990,

HQmemann),Grandmother's Tale (1992, Indian Thought Publications)

Short story collections:

Malgudi Days (1942, Indian Thought Publications), An Astrologer's Day and Other Stories

(1947, Indian Thought Publications), Lawley Road and Other Stories (1956, Indian Thought

Publications), A Horse and Two Goats {\970),Under the Banyan Tree and Other Stories

{\9^5),The Grandmother's Tale and Selected Stories (1994, Viking).

Non Fiction:

The Ramayana (1973, Chatto & Windus), My Days: Autobiography (1974, Indian Thought

Publications, Indian Reprint 2000) The Mahahharata (1978, Heinemann), Reluctant Guru

(1974, Orient Paperbacks), The Emerald Route (1980, Indian Thought Publications), A

Writer's Nightmare (1988, Penguin Books).

He won numerous awards and honors for his works. These include: Sahitya Akademi

Award for The Guide in 1958; Padma Bhushan in 1964; and AC Benson Medal by the Royal

Society of Literature in 1980; he was elected an honorary member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1982. He was nominated to the Rajya Sabha in 1989.

Besides, he was also conferred honorary doctorates by the University of Mysore, Delhi

23 University and the University of Leeds. He died in Madras at the age of 94 on 13th May,

2001.

When we turn to My Days the first thing that strikes us is Narayan's urge to be a writer. It was something unusual in the India of his times. Writing could not be a profession to provide a person a comfortable way of life. Narayan had to face it in his life when he wrote humorous articles at ten rupees a time for the weekly Merry Magazine or to accept the government proposal to write a book for the Karnataka State. However, he decided to be a writer very early in his life and stuck to his decision. He fulfilled his promise given to himself and became an internationally successful writer. He brought the world alive as he saw it.

My Days was published in 1974. Almost all critics opine that Narayan's autobiography reads like a novel. The world he has depicted in his novels appears factually in his autobiography. Narayan enjoyed his childhood living with his grandmother and maternal uncle. His full name was Rasipuram Krishnaswami (lyyer) Narayan, later shortened to R. K.

Narayan on the advice of Graham Greene, and his first publisher, Hamish Hamilton. His childhood was happy compared to his brothers and sisters who lived with father, a very strict person at school and at home as well.

When we try to understand the art of a particular writer it can be useful to trace the various influences working on him that shaped him. These can be many and diverse, not necessarily uniform and single. They may not be necessarily 'literary' also. To be a writer is a complex process. For example, the earliest influence on Narayan was of his grandmother.

The most lovable person of Narayan's family was his grandmother, with whom he spent his childhood in Madras. She looked after his needs, taught him multiplications, the Tamil alphabet, Sanskrit shlokas in praise of Saraswati, the goddess of learning, and even to sing

24 classical melodies. What was most important was that she kept a strict watch on his behaviour. It was through his grandmother that Narayan inherited Brahmin orthodoxy.

He recalls: "My Grandmother's preoccupations were several and concerned a great many others, she was a key figure in the lives of many. My Grandmother was an abiding influence. "(Narayan, 2000: 29) .His grandmother's prerogative was limited to the house and the households around it. She ran the house with the skill of an economist. Their large house had been partitioned and rented out as offices, shops and apartments. Grandmother had kept only three rooms. Narayan understood the reason only after he grew up, "I did not realize at that time how much she (grandmother) depended on the rents for our survival." (p.28). She was a strong religious woman. She was a devoted gardener, who grew more than twenty

varieties of hibiscus and several kinds of jasmine and desperately tried to help certain delicate plants to survive that grew on the heights of Bangalore. But the low marine air of Madras was not suitable to these plants. She was a match-maker, a reader of horoscopes and an advisor on

marriages. Sometimes she gave herbal medicine for scorpion bite, cough, paralysis,

convulsions and even snake bites. She was a loving mother too. Before going to her daughter

she prepared sun dried edibles every year.

It is, at this stage, interesting to see how this grandmother (re)appears in some of

Narayan's works. Swami's grandmother is an ignorant but kind and gentle old lady, who

lived in an ill-ventilated dark passage between the front hall and the dining room as it was a

custom of those days that a widow should live a secluded life. However, she was an

important part of Swami's life : "After the night meal, with his head on his granny's lap,

nestling close to her, Swaminathan felt very snug and safe in the faint atmosphere of

cardamom and cloves." (Narayan, 1983: 21). Swami shares every little secret of his school

with his granny; who would narrate stories of Harishchandra to him. Swami's grandmother is

the prototype of nearly all the Indian grandmothers, who uphold the traditional values of the 25 Indian society. The old lady finds a reflection in The English Teacher in Krishna's mother.

Like Narayan's grandmother, she is a loving and dutiful woman. She is wholeheartedly involved in her house hold matters and gives top priorities to her domestic duties. She is religious, superstitious and traditional. She comes to Malgudi to set up the house of Krishna and his bride. In Waiting for the Mahatma, Sriram's grandmother is a woman of strong will power and firm decisions who saves money for Sriram in the bank. However, Narayan expresses his sadness that such loving grand mothers are not seen as they have lost their importance in the 'nuclear family', "Grandmothers were in those days very important. They are no longer so - have disappeared." (Narayan, Frontline, \996).

Next to the grandmother, the maternal uncle made an impression on young Narayan.

The uncle was an amateur photographer, one of the earliest in India. The young nephew

Narayan had to pose now and again as his rigid and unblinking model with his friend the monkey, Rama. His grandmother took the gloomy view that having his photograph taken shortened the subject's life. Shirish Chiadhade in a Marathi article 'Malgudi Narayan' says,

'Actually the grandson lived for ninety four years. Perhaps he would have lived hundred and twenty five years if he had not been photographed so much'. (Chindhade, 2001: 99) His uncle was a college student. Sometimes he explained to Narayan Shakespeare's Tempest they had decided to enact. He had a skill of telling stories. Thus Narayan knew Tempest before he knew anything else. The would-be novelist got the sanskaras of literature in his house, even before he went to school. Already the instinct for story telling was starting to form by listening to his uncle as well as grandmother. One can see how this is compounded of sharpness of sight, free play of imagination, curiosity and expressiveness. He narrates an incident. It was a fun to go to the market with his uncle. When they were walking on the market street, his attention was caught by the lamp lighter, with his bamboo ladder, going from lamp post to lamp post. He observed all his activities with wide eyes and had many

26 questions in mind but he was dragged along with his questions unuttered. Again it is reflected in Swami and Friends where there is the description of lanterns with smouldering wicks.

(Narayan, 1985: 151).

The very first mention in the autobiography of Narayan is that of their pets ~ a peacock and a monkey. The pets were always with him. The peacock enjoyed freedom in the house while Rama—the monkey —was chained in his cabin on the roof of the house; he didn't like it and tried to express his disapproval by shouting. Peacock and monkey were succeeded by a kitten with a bushy tail, a mynah, a green parrot and a little hairy puppy brought for one rupee from a butler serving in a European house. All these pets, photography and above all the local streets, temples, vehicles, buildings of school, college, and court in the city of Madras figured largely in Narayan's early experiences. Swami, for instance, wishes to take a spider as his pet. He puts it in his pocket so that nobody in the house will notice it. In almost all of his novels, the imaginary town Malgudi is described with all details: names of roads, important places, names of shops and shop keepers etc. William Walsh says,

"The detail suggests, surely and economically, the special flavor of Malgudi, a

blend of oriental and pre- 1914 British,...Especially this is true of the details of public

life, of the shabby swarming streets and the stifling bye-lanes..Even the names

strengthen this double quality: Nallapa's Grove and Albert College, Mill Street and the

Bombay Anand Bhavan, Kabir Street and Lawley Extension, the Mempi Hill and the

Board School.."(Walsh,1983: 30)

Malgudi, thus comes alive as a representative town reflecting the changes in Indian habitation due to the British rule, at the same time keeping its special identity.

Narayan nostalgically remembers the names of the streets and temples and places whether he walked them as a small boy with his uncle or a little later on his own, sneaking

27 out of the house unnoticed to play on roads with a cycle rim or just a barrel band rolling ahead. He played incessantly till darkness. 'I practically lived in the streets in those days.'

(Narayan, 2000:31). "The streets offered boundless material to his precociously alert observer, nutrition for the imagination, education for the feelings, provocation to wonder, as well as reminders of the harshness of life and the proximity of death."(Walsh,1983: 9).

Narayan's nostalgia led him to visit these places in his old age. The 'streets', the 'temples', and the 'congregations' were all found largely unaltered despite some cosmetic changes wrought by 'half a century or more.' Perhaps Narayan wanted to suggest that old places and their significance is still there, despite some outward change.

How an irrational fear of a person or a thing can influence a child is revealed in an incident. It is about Kodandam, a fuel merchant. He was a violent man and would beat up people if they didn't listen to what he told them to do. On one such occasion Narayan saw him coming to take flowers from their garden. Little Narayan thought that Kodandam came either to catch him or to beat him. Full of dread, he slipped into his uncle's study and hid behind clothes heaped on a stand. All day along he hid himself there. He reflects, 'In childhood, fears and secrecies and furtive acts happen to be natural state of life, adopted instinctively for survival in a world dominated by adults .... I believe a child is capable of practicing greater cunning than a grown up". (Narayan, 2000: 21). This aspect is highlighted in Swami and Friends. The fear of being alone, of solitude, especially at night is described in the chapter 'Swami Disappears'. Being a lonely child living in the company of adults,

Narayan became a shy and introvert dreamer. Perhaps after this incident he was sent to school. The school became a routine after this. This routine was changed by the annual weeks of vacation with his family. Narayan did not like to go to Chennapattana or later to

Hassan where his father was transferred. But later he enjoyed the pampering of his mother and his elder brother's company who taught him how to train grass hoppers and put them in

28 little cannisters. It is reflected in an incident where Swami watches a small piece of tin skimming gently along in the gutter of Vinayaka Mudali Street.

The influence of school days left an everlasting impression on Narayan. It was not at all good. Narayan got his primary education at Lutheran Mission School, Puruswalkam,

Madras. The teachers and students were Christian converts. They displayed a lot of hatred towards the few non-Christian students like Narayan. Swami also faces this situation in his school. The scripture teacher, Ebenzer, condemns Hindu god Sri Krishna, in comparison to

Jesus. He says, "Did our Jesus go about stealing butter like that arch scoundrel Krishna? Did our Jesus practice dark tricks on those around him? " Swaminathan asks a counter question,

"If he did not, why was he crucified?" (Narayan, 1985: 5-6). Though Narayan himself was not a rebel like Swami, he has created Swami's character a rebel. Narayan was the only

Brahmin boy in his class. Similarly, Raju's father in The Guide, does not send him to Albert

Mission School because they try to convert Hindu boys into Christians and all the time insult

Hindu gods. The converted boys ridiculed the Brahmins who, according to them, claimed to be vegetarians but ate fish and meat in secret and were probably responsible for the soaring price of those commodities. In the class-room English was the first language and taught by the best teachers. Sanskrit and Tamil were treated as minor subjects. English was taught just as it might have been done in England at the time. However, he was enchanted by the

Biblical stories. Especially the Old Testament fascinated him. He loved 'the Rebeccas and

Ruths'. The love of English language was a preliminary state in the development of Narayan as a writer.

Later, he went to C. R. C. High school. Though nothing was particular about the school, it gave him a sense of enlarged horizon as he had to pass through the area beyond the tram-terminus. He was much interested in scout and he was proud of it. After scouting, not class or lessons, but football became an addiction. He played with the boys of different

29 schools and they had a team under the leadership of a dark boy called Jumbu, a boy who had innate qualities of leadership. Perhaps Jumbu was the inspiration for the character of Rajan in

Swami and Friends. After the C.R.C. Highschool, Narayan got admission in the Christian

College Highschool, at George Town, Madras. The school had a gothic chapel, well-lit classrooms and an accessible library. Sometimes he wandered through the enormous corridors of the High Court. Sometimes he clambered on an electric train at Beach Station and got off at Egmore a station nearest his home. He did this 'adventure' without ticket, until his uncle dragged him home and angrily warned him. Swami was thus taking shape in the childhood of Narayan himself.

However the Christian College was a 'short lived glory'. At the end of the first term he was sent to Mysore and admitted in Maharaja's Collegiate High School where his father was transferred as the head master. Narayan went to Mysore but missed the life at Madras, his friends, his games on the streets and above all 'the snobbish glow of belonging to the

Christian College' (Narayan, 2000: 51). But the cooler climate of Mysore proved much more agreeable to him. It was here that Narayan could get chance to fulfill his passion for reading.

It was a priceless privilege for Narayan and he enjoyed it both in his father's library and in the school library. Narayan was a voracious reader and he read any book he liked and all the magazines from Little Folks to The Nineteenth Century, and After: A Monthly Review and the

Cornhill Magazine. Through The Strand he became familiar with Conan Doyle, P. G.

Wodehouse, W. W. Jacobs and Arnold Bennett. The Bookman introduced him to the prominent figures of the contemporary English literature. His father's library was fiill of books by Carlyle, Ruskin, Walter Pater, Wordsworth, Browning, Byron and Shakespeare.

Many of these experiences are reflected in Narayan's early novels such as The Bachelor of

Arts.

30 Narayan's earlier experiences in the classrooms of Madras hampered his learning.

Later in an extract on 'Examinations' taken from his collection Reluctant Guru, he very clearly wrote against the contemporary examination system. He says, "The real wrecker of young nerves, however, is the Examination system. It builds up a tension and an anxiety neurosis day by day all the year round, all through one's youth, right to middle age (for some). I remember the desperate nervousness that debilitated me from January to April every year. After four decades, I still jump off my bed from nightmares of examination". (Narayan,

1974 n.p.) He further says that if he became a Vice-Chancellor, his first act would be to abolish all secrecy that surrounds question papers. He would take advertisement space in newspapers and publish the questions in every subject. He was not a brilliant student and expresses his disapproval for the education system. When he first went to the 'Orange- coloured School', the small children were given clay and colourful papers and they were asked to make forms of fruits and vegetables. He was never successful in it. He remarks, 'I am unable to explain how this course helped me in becoming literate'. (Narayan,2000: 9).

However, next to religion, education was the most compulsive force in a Brahmin family.

Narayan's outlook on education never fitted in with the accepted code at home. "I instinctively rejected both education and examinations, with their unwarranted seriousness and esoteric suggestions. Since revolt was unpractical I went through it all without conviction, enthusiasm or any sort of distinction. Going to school seemed to be a never ending nuisance", (p.53). The very beginning ofSwami and Friends reflect Swami's attitude:

It was Monday morning. Swaminathan was reluctant to open his eyes. He

considered Monday especially unpleasant in the calendar. After the delicious

freedom of Saturday and Sunday, it was difficult to get into the Monday mood

ofwork and discipline. (Narayan, 1985: 1)

31 For Swami, examinations were very unnerving and studying for them was an ordeal.

Narayan always tried to find out some reason to miss the school. But his maternal uncle was

very strict and could sense any false reason given by Narayan. He was always ready to take

him to school. Narayan's father and his maternal uncle found reflection in Swami's father.

His lack of interest in education resulted in his failure in the high school and

intermediate examinations. He also failed in the university entrance examination held in high

school. Now he had a whole year at home. He loved to wander in Mysore. Sometimes he

climbed the Chamundi Hill. There was not only the temple of the goddess Chamundi but also

uncharted slopes, boulders, creeks and unexpected retreats. Once they found a cave-temple

with pillared platforms, secret chambers and underground cellars. The writer in the making

had a great impression of this place.

These days he read a lot. Walter Scott's novels fascinated him. He found a second

hand book shop where read six novels of Scott, all books of Dickens, Rider Haggard, Marie

Corelli, Moliere, Pope, Marlowe, Tolstoy, Thomas Hardy. He read everything with the

utmost enjoyment. He loved the novels with sad ending. Mrs. Henry Wood's East Lynne

made him shade tears. Rebecca Schafer observes, "The influence of European authors was....

a big factor in his choice of language, (for his writing) since all of the novels and publications

he had read during his school years had been written in English." ( Schafer: R.K. Narayan: A

Closer Look). According to Amit Bhattcharya,

.. besides the English literary tradition that Narayan so meticulously tried to

imbibe by reading Long's History of English Literature,((>\) he adequately

supplemented the Sanskrit slokas and Avvaiyar's sayings he had learned from his

grandmother( 11) and Kamban's Ramayan he had read at the request of his dying

uncle(102). In fact, these readings in the best of the both Western and Indian literatures

32 led to the development of the composite heritage of Narayan as an Indo- Anglian

writer. (Bhattacharya,2012: 277-278)

During this pleasantly idle time Narayan picked up interest in writing. His first attempt was a short story entitled "Divine Music", which he read to friends and family after plying them with coffee. Narayan sent it off to England to be published but was rejected by all publishers. Disappointed but undaunted, Narayan continued to write descriptions of local people. He started to write under the influence of events occurring around him. Once a friend of his father died and he wrote ten pages on 'Friendship', very clearly showing the influence of'Adonais".

He took admission to B.A. programme at Maharaja's College in 1926. He was a poor student but a voracious reader. In the B. A. examination he finally succeeded in getting his degree in 1930. During his college days one or two courses attracted him. But most of the time he dreamed of many things. Here also, like his CRC High School, not classes but the

French style windows and the scene outside attracted him:

'..here in Mysore I found the classroom windows revealing trees and birds or meadows with cows placidly chewing grass and perhaps the cowherd sitting in a shade. In such a setting I found the teacher's voice a meaningless drone... (Narayan,2000: 69).

Writing this he makes sarcastic comments on the boredom of education system.

His two earliest novels Swami and Friends and The Bachelor of Arts describe some of his trials and travails during this period. Swami and Friends deals with Swami, the hero and his friends Mani and Rajam. Swami, like Narayan does not like going to school. On the other hand, he is very much interested in other activities such as cricket, different voices and actions of birds, animals in the outer world as well as the happenings in Malgudi. He attends the public meeting to protest the arrest of Gauri Shankar, a prominent political leader of

33 Bombay. He joins the procession of the agitators and shouts 'Gandhiji ki jai' and 'Bharat

Mata ki jai'. This 'political' activity becomes the cause of anger of the Head Master and his cane becomes severe while punishing Swami. He jumps down grasping his books uttering, "I don't care for your dirty school". (Narayan,1983: 24). Those days the tyrants were not senior schoolboys but teachers and headmasters. Swami has to change schools because of different reasons. But in all these reasons Swami and a teacher or the head master of the concerned school is involved. The Bachelor of Arts is a novel that exploits the theme of 'growing up', the protagonist Chandran's transition from adolescence to maturity. Chandran is a college student when the novel begins. He is not a bright student, but good at debating, and warm or arrogant with his friends. Sometimes he mocks at his professors Mr. Gajpati and Mr.

Raghavachar. At the same time he has a school boy within him who is afraid of the teachers.

While doing B. A., Chandran has an urge to go abroad to obtain a doctor degree. He even tells his dream to his father. But after graduation all his dreams change when he falls in love with Malathi at her first sight. Chandran represents the youth of his day. Narayan also wanted to study for post-graduation. About his post-graduation he says, "At first I toyed with the idea of studying for an M. A. Degree in literature and becoming a college lecturer. While

I was going up the stairs of the Maharaja's College with my application for a seat in the M.

A. class, a friend met me halfway and turned me back, arguing that this would be a sure way to lose interest in literature. I accepted his advice and went downstairs, once for all turning my back on college studies". (Narayan,2000:75).

It is interesting to see how Narayan decided to be a writer. After graduation he was expected to work due the poor financial condition of their house. At first, for some time he worked in the Mysore secretariat. Then Narayan made a half-hearted effort to teach, but his first experience as a teacher soured him on that profession of life. In these circumstances, what Narayan decided to do was to write novels and live at home. His belief in his ability as a

34 writer stands out strongly as he refuses all temptations and sticks to writing despite financial pressures. He recalls how, after his decision to be a writer, he began his writing:

'On a certain day in September, selected by my grandmother for its auspiciousness, I

bought an exercise book and wrote the first line of a novel; as I sat in a room nibbling

my pen and wondering what to write, Malgudi with its little railway station swam into

view, all ready-made, with a character called Swaminathan running down the platform

peering into the faces of passengers, and grimacing at a bearded face; this seemed to

take me on the right track of writing, as day by day pages grew out of it linked to each

other.' (pp.79-80).

But he had to face criticism for it. He gives humorous account of this criticism faced by him: 'My father occasionally enquired of me, "What are you attempting on that road roller?" (my typewriter)', (p.79). "Unwisdom, unwisdom!" one of my father's friends would say and add, "you must not cause all this worry to your father ... you could write as a hobby, how can you make a living as a writer? The notion is very unpractical". This was more or less the tenor of everybody's advice to him. (p. 92).

One thing is noteworthy- Narayan's decision of staying at home and writing was supported by his family in 1930's India. Especially when the financial condition of the house was poor, and his two younger brothers were still studying. The lower middle class family of his day could not afford that a graduate son is sitting in the house doing nothing to earn money. Narayan's maternal uncle, his mother's younger brother tried to help Narayan by taking him to people in Bangalore who might help him to learn the art of writing. In fact, not these people, but uncle himself was an inescapable model for Narayan. He was a drunkard but a loving person. In his company Narayan acquired valuable experience and familiarity with a variety of human types, their style of talking and outlook. Narayan portrayed his uncle in The Bachelor of Arts. He provided all the substance to portray a drunken character.

35 Narayan wrote about everyday problems faced by common people. He justifies his writing, he wanted: 'to see if other subjects than love ..could be written about. I wished to attack the tyranny of love and see if Life could offer other values than the inevitable man- woman relationship to a writer'(p. 95). In fact, Narayan was not a writer of romantic attitude.

The short-story pages of John of London's stories appealed to him, as their themes centered around a moment or a mood with a crisis, that Narayan found in the life around him. He wrote about the world around him, his characters can be found in the world in which he lived.

Not only his characters but their problems, their crises in their lives are depicted by him.

Narayan has put an excellent example in front of the would-be writers of a disciplined writer. He wrote about two hundred words each day, not about any definite subject. Many times they were the echoes of something he had been reading. But more important thing was that it was a good exercise for a writer and it became a part of daily discipline. In his life he remained a disciplined writer and the roots are found in his decision and great attempts to be a good writer. There are several small incidents mentioned by Narayan to explain how he learned the art of writing. Once his uncle introduced him to a man who was planning to bring out a "Matrimonial Gazette". He spoke to Narayan in a way to give him advice of how to write and what to write. Though Narayan could not go to meet him again, the result of this meeting was that he wrote many short stories centering round matrimonial life.

Narayan went to every available editor and publisher in the city of Madras and gave samples of his writing. He was certain that they would accept it with joy. However, they all had a general opinion that Narayan's writing lacked plot. He thought that there was no appreciation of his literary values. He felt despaired.

For a sensible and observant mind no event, person or situation, however insignificant goes unmarked if he sees some potential, some substance in it. May it be the description of

36 Malgudi, Swami's house hold, his friends, his schools,; or may it be Chandran, in The

Bachelor of Arts, his life as a college student, a passionate and later frustrated lover, his wandering, Raju's life in the Guide, even the details in the life of an astrologer in the story An

Astrologer's Day—everywhere his sensible and observant mind is prevalent. The detailed description of the geography of Malgudi or the minute descriptions of his characters are the outcome of Narayan's observation. This leads to creativity and one day the portals of success stand wide open. This is what happened to Narayan. His friend Purna, who was a sincere listener of Swami and Friends, was at Oxford at that time. Narayan sent his novel to him.

Puma assured Narayan not to despair. He promised Narayan to find a publisher. And fortunately he met Graham Greene. He admired the manuscript and sent it to Hamish

Hamilton. Thus Narayan got his first break through. His novel was published in October

1935. However, it did not bring money due to lack in sales. As a result the publisher rejected his second novel. Narayan met Hamish Hamilton 20 years later in London at a party in the office of The Spectator, he remarked, "Remember I was your first publisher and I always feel happy at the thought of it"(p.ll6). Not only had Hamilton praised Narayan frankly, next morning he sent Narayan a copy of his Majority, which has extracts to celebrate thirty years of his publishing firm and he generously inscribed for Narayan. Graham Green recommended

Bachelor of Arts to another publisher, Nelson and it was published in 1937. His friendship with Graham Greene, the famous writer, and the impact it had on his success as a novelist is very significant.

Narayan gives the credit of his writing of the prose narrative of Kamban's Ramayana to his uncle. Narayan's senior maternal uncle advised him to read more of Ramayana by the

Tamil poet Kamban. Narayan felt that he was a realistic fiction writer in English and was not interested in Tamil language or literature. He thought it as the fancy of a dying man.

However, three decades later, Narayan became interested in Kamban and after studying it for

37 three years, produced a prose narrative of the Ramayana based on Kamban's Tamil version

ofih^Ramayan.

His two published novels did not bring him money. After much deliberation on his

working in newspapers, he was given a book to review. Its title was 'Development of

Maritime Laws in 17th century England'. Of course, he was not paid for it but the same journal also accepted a short story and paid ten rupees less money-order charges. Thus his

first year's income from writing was nine rupees and twelve annas. In the second year there

was slight improvement. The Hindu took a story and sent him eighteen rupees (less money-

order charges); in the following year, a children's story gave him thirty rupees. However, he

led a regular life, living at home and writing. He had few needs and no other plans.

These were the years not only of a writer to be but also of a youth to be in love with

somebody. Narayan had to pass through a phase of impossible love-sickness. His

predicament was curious. In a social system where boys and girls were strictly segregated and

one never spoke to anyone but a sister, Narayan's love life was made up of intense, one-sided

love. He fell in love with any girl his eyes fell on. Narayan writes jokingly, "Perhaps the great

quantity of fiction I read prepared my mind to fall in love with all and sundry ... Any girl

who lifted her eyes and seemed to notice me became at once my sweetheart".(p. 105). It is

reflected in The Bachelor of Arts. Chandran, the protagonist, has the habit of staring at every

girl who sat on the sand on the river bank. And one day he sees Malathi there and

immediately falls in love! He is not even sure if she is fair or brown or her nose is straight or

crooked; his feelings for her are very intense.

The genuine love occurred in Coimbatore in July 1933, when he was staying at his

elder sister's house. He saw a girl. Raj am, drawing water from the street tap and fell in love

immediately. Her father was a local headmaster. One memorable evening, Narayan made a

38 bold, blunt announcement of his affection for the girl and that he wanted to marry her. This was an unexpected, appalling action. When the headmaster asked about his career, luckily a small piece that Narayan had written ("How to write an Indian Novel" lampooning western writers who visited India to gather material) had been accepted by Punch and brought him six guineas. This was prestigious to Narayan. However, the matching of horoscopes became a great hurdle. Narayan's horoscope and the girl's horoscope were incompatible. However, a more favorable reading of horoscopes was obtained from another expert and Narayan's marriage took place in July 1934. He married Rajam with all pomp, show, festivity, exchange of gifts and the overcrowding that his parents expected. Their marriage was a happy one.

Due to paralysis his father was bedridden his mother's time was spent with father.

Rajam got on excellently with the family. Narayan writes about her, "Rajam was less than twenty, but managed the housekeeping expertly and earned my mother's praise ... Within six months, she proved such an adept at housekeeping that my mother left her in complete charge. {Ibid, p.l 10). She became a constant source of inspiration to Narayan.

The effect of astrology is portrayed by Narayan in his second novel Bachelor of Arts.

The protagonist of the novel Chandran falls in love with a girl Malati. But the horoscopes of

Chandran and Malati do not match and the proposal is ultimately dropped. Chandran feels so much dejected and upset by this incident that he falls ill and is confined to bed for many days.

After recovery he wanders aimlessly and even becomes a sanyasi for some days. After the futility of this aimlessness is over he regains interest in life marries another girl Sushila and becomes happy. Narayan was a good observer of common men like astrologers and has written a very good story An Astrologer's Day with a twist in the end of it. This is not a learned astrologer, but a person, like a street vendor, who shs under a big tree and tells about the future of the people who come to him.

39 To support his family Narayan became a reporter for Madras based paper called

Justice. His business was to gather Mysore city news, type h and post h. If he had time, he spent it with his wife's and told her the day's events, such as traffic accidents, suicides or crimes. He became a friend of police officers, detectives and informers and came into contact with an immense variety of men and manners. This experience as a reporter helped the writer in Narayan. In his wandering in different parts of Mysore he found many characters that he

could fit into his stories and novels. During a single morning walk about the town ideas were created, developed and even sometimes lost, but often recovered. He compares Mysore to an old Greek city not only in its physical features but he says that the habits of its citizens were also Hellenic.

In 1937, in February, Narayan's father died at the end of the month as if, 'to satisfy a technical need, and died leaving us draw his pension for the full month', (p.l 17). His father never believed in savings or property. Narayan and his elder brother, a grocer, took the

responsibility of the household share. Now, Narayan became father of a sweet little girl,

Hemavati (name of a Karnatak raga), Hema for short. His short stories were accepted in India

and abroad. Though his short stories brought some money, he was forced himself to write a

humorous articles at ten rupees a time for the weekly Merry Magazine. It was a very painful experience for someone of Narayan's sensibility to perform a thousand- word literary

clowning week after week. This experience of Narayan once again proves that to earn the

living as a writer was difficult. \ M " ^ ! -^ '-f ci

He started working on his third novel. The Dark Room is a novel that depicts the fate

of Savitri, the heroine, in an orthodox milieu of Indian society where a wife is an easy victim

of circumstances. The Dark Room, again recommended by Graham Greene, was published by

Macmillan in 1938, and once more favourably reviewed. He had now written three novels and had three publishers. And he made no money on the latest either. It was a great irony that

40 he was famous in England as a writer but not even known in his native town. His name came to the circles of the government of Mysore from Somerset Maugham who asked when visiting Mysore why he had not met the famous author R. K. Narayan. After this he was offered to write a travel book on Mysore. The financial need forced him to accept a commission from the government of Mysore. He was provided with modest living expenses and letters of introduction. The result was rich in legend and short on accuracy. Narayan was never paid for this work. Bureaucracy saw to that. As a writer, it was a strange experience for

Narayan. He went from office to office as he was instructed and retired without a single pai as a remuneration of the book. Narayan reflects, "We cannot console ourselves with the thought that this happened three and a half decades ago. Bureaucracy is the same even today the world over. If I should make the mistake of accepting a government commission to write a book today, I am sure it would go through the same process of elucidation and final liquidation through self-dealing procedures", (p. 129). However, later in life, he did take commission from the Karnataka State and wrote a book The Emerald Route.

The year 1939 proved to be utmost fatal in Narayan's life because of the unexpected death of his wife Rajam. Narayan's personal loss of losing his young wife to typhoid when their daughter was only three years old is one of the most poignant moments in his life. She went to Coimbtore to visit her parents and her sister who came from Rangoon. It was impossible for Narayan to live without his wife and small daughter Hema. He says, "In retrospect, it seems to have been such a futile preoccupation, especially in view of what was coming in the next few months. I hardly realized that the present state of loneliness was only aforestate'. (p.133).

Rajam died because of typhoid. Narayan is unwilling to describe the events after

Rajam's death in his autobiography. He has written an autobiographical novel The English

Teacher in which he has described everything in detail. The background and the event of this

41 calamity form the substance of this novel and made the calamity physically bearable. Both

Rajam and Sushila, the wife of Krishna in The English Teacher died because of typhoid.

Krishna confronts unbearable loneliness like Narayan for a long time. As Meena Sodhi points out, "The book is by and large an attempt to bridge the gulf between the "man" and the

"writer". Krishna in the novel tries to accept the death of his wife, while living his everyday life. And Narayan, through the act of writing, gives meaning to his grief and learns to come to terms with it." (Sodhi, Meena, 2000: 95) Narayan faced such an agony that it meant the end of life for him. However, his friend Graham Greene wrote to him, "I don't suppose you will write for months, but eventually you will". (Narayan, 2000:136) It was natural that he was in great shock. He writes,

"The loss of my wife was sudden and not even remotely anticipated by me...

But now I had to accept her death as a fact... Perhaps death may not be the end of

everything as it seems - personality may have other structures and other planes of

existence and the decay of the physical body through disease or senility may mean

nothing more than a change of vehicle. This outlook may be unscientific, but it

helped me survive the death of my wife... I could somehow manage to live after her

death and, eventually, also attain a philosophical understanding", (p. 135).

It is interesting to note that during the time of his grieving, he became fascinated by a medium, a lawyer, Raghunath Rao from Madras(Chennai), who told him that he could communicate with his late wife. This contact enabled Narayan to overcome his grief and begin writing again, with a new outlook on the aspects of life and death. Here he mentions one Paul Brunton, a man who studied some metaphysical objects and things. He lived in

Egypt and studied from the practitioners of the esoteric arts in Egypt some magical powers.

He taught Narayan to abstract himself from his physical body. With the help of Raghunath

Rao, and the psychic experience as well as the company of Paul Brunton, Narayan was

42 successful to come out of the trauma and he was able to live a normal life. The second part of

The English Teacher deals with this autobiographical experience of Narayan in detail.

However, it is true that Narayan has created fictional characters of Krishna and Sushila in the novel. Why did he find it necessary to have a character of Krishna and not he himself? Why

was he unable to talk about the death of Rajam even after so many years when he wrote his

autobiography? Certainly, it was the most tragic episode in his life, a turning point, one can

say. The death of his dear wife had given him so much anguish that he could not repeat it in

his autobiography, which is a confession of the autobiographer. He had already written it

fictionally in The English Teacher and he was successful in establishing a link between fact

and fiction, autobiography and novel.

But it was not easily achieved. More painful for Narayan was the suggestion to

remarry sooner or later. He never listened to them and remained alone in his life. This is

something Narayan did against the custom. In olden days, in Indian Society, a woman, young

or old, ought to remain alone when she had lost her husband, but a man must remarry.

Narayan did not agree with anybody. It is very remarkable of him. As his marriage was

unusual- it was not an arranged marriage - his decision not to marry again was unusual. His

love for his wife comes across though he never writes about it much - he never married again

despite losing her when he was only 33 years old.

His life became normal once again. He resumed his normal life and activities. The

English Teacher was published in 1944 by Eyre and Spottiswoode, where Graham Greene

was now a director. This novel appeared after a gap of seven years. William Walsh divides

Narayan's novels in his book R. K. Narayan: A Critical Appreciation in three major groups.

The first group 'Beginnings' contains Swami and Friends, The Bachelor of Arts and The

English Teacher. The second group is of 'Development' contains Mr. Sampath: The Printer

of Malgudi, The Financial Expert and Waiting for the Mahatma. Narayan's serious comedy 43 The Guide is the further development. And when he wrote The Man-Eater of Malgudi, The

Sweet Vendor and The Painter of Signs, Narayan reaches at the 'pitch' of his powers as a writer. The novels that followed The English Teacher became less autobiographical, and more fictional as they progressed. A Tiger for Malgudi, Talkative Man, The World ofNagraj and Grandmother's Tale appeared in the last phase. The researcher hardly agrees with the

same, as there are other important writings of Narayan in the form of more novels, short

stories and essays, travelogues, miscellaneous etc. All of his novels and short stories but one,

Grandmother's Tale, are located in the town of Malgudi. His novels deal with a variety of subjects, as their titles suggest. They depict the change taking place in Malgudi. The world in these novels moves at a leisurely pace from the childhood of Swami through the young adulthood and marriage of Chandran, to the pre-independence days in India by the excitement of cricket as well as by the influence of the non-violence movement of Gandhiji, and on to post- independence Malgudi- its industrial expansion (three or four cotton mills are mentioned in Mr. Sampath), the springing up of a migrant working class and the problems of

the middle aged and the old; Malgudi has other face which shows the increase in the numbers of the bohemians, pimps, crooks and prostitutes (depicted in Man Eater of Malgudi, Guide

etc). The simple traditional South Indian town Malgudi changes in to a metropolitan city.

This is a rhythm of growth and mellowing which is comic tinged with the disillusionment

that comes with adulthood and informed by a gentile ironical melancholy.

This world is full of a variety of characters—the middle class people such as Mr.

Sampat a printer, Margayya, the financial expert, Jagan, the sweet vendor and his son Mali,

Sriram, a follower of Gandhi, Raju, a guide, Raman, a painter of signs, Natraj, owner of a

small printing press. Each character has its own peculiarity and personal traits. Apart from the

typical Indian middle class housewives, such as Savitri in The Dark Room and Natraj's wife

in The Man Eater of Malgudi and the characters of mothers and grandmothers, Narayan has

44 depicted very different women when he portrays the characters of MaU's American- Korean girlfriend Grace, Rosie, a dancer, Daisy, a modern woman who arrives in Malgudi to campaign the Birth-Control programme. In Savitri, he shows a typical Indian middle class woman who suffers a lot as a wife, as a woman who is bound by the traditions, who leaves the house of her tyrant husband only to understand her own helplessness and returns to the same world. Rosie an educated girl is married to Marco, who is interested more in sculptured figures in the caves than his wife. Though Rosie does her best to please him, he never pays any attention to her. She runs into a relationship with Raju, a half educated local guide. He helps her to be a famous dancer, but she loses her interest in dance when it is commercialized by Raju. Narayan shows considerable freedom from convention in the portrayal of Rosie.

Daisy, is a rationalist, a modern woman. She has arrived to Malgudi on a mission of population control. She is devoted to her mission and her ambition is to arrest the population growth even if it is only by five per cent a year. She is firm on her conviction. "Daisy's absolute conviction, untrammeled modern-mindedness, steel will and practicality, make her a superb missionary in this cause."(Walsh, 1983:168).

He also published many collections of short stories. Some of them are An Astrologer's

Day and Other Stories, Lawley Road and Other Stories, Malgudi Days. These books depict vivid characters based upon the people Narayan had met in southern India. Narayan also began publishing a journal called Indian Thought which he started with a capital of 100 rupees during World War II, containing his own work and that of local authors. This exhausting project lasted only for two years, but the experiences he gained went into his next few novels. And, in this journal business Narayan found the character of Mr. Sampath, who was Narayan's printer.

There is a saying in Marathi 'ghar pahave bandhun'- one should give a try to build a house. It became true with Narayan. He decided to build own house on a plot of land at

45 Yadavgiri. He had a bitter experience of a contractor who grabbed money by showing longer bills without much progress of the building. At last, Narayan took help of Sampat's lawyer brother to get rid of that contractor. Narayan was happy with the new house, he describes, "I had designed a small study - a bay - room with eight windows affording me a view in every direction : the Chamundi Hill temple on the south, a variety of spires, turrets and domes on the east, railway train cutting across the east-west slope". (Narayan, 2000:165). Here he completed two novels and a number of short stories.

In February 1956 his only daughter got married and in October 1956 Narayan left for the US as the Rockfeller Foundation offered him a travel grant. Then onwards he began his travels and became a habitual globe-trotter. Even in travelling he did not neglect his resolution of writing fifteen hundred to two thousand words a day. The Guide, his most debated novel, was actually written in Berkley, US, where he stayed for some months. In fact, he had been thinking about this novel, its subject being someone suffering enforced sainthood. The novel is based on a true event he observed in Mysore. Graham Greene liked the story and he suggested Narayan that the hero should die, as Narayan was hesitating on the end. His natural humour is reflected in this remark, "So I have on my hands the life of a man condemned to death before he was bom and grown ..." (Narayan, 2000:168-169).

Though his novel The Guide attained popularity and even though he was awarded The

Sahitya Academi Award in 1960 and also Padama Bhushan in 1964, Narayan does not write with much satisfaction about involvements that turned out to be ludicrous and even tragic about his novel. It was filmed by the famous Hindi actor and producer Dev Anand. But

Narayan didn't get his share of profit as it was assured by the director, nor was he informed about the change in the location from Mysore and its nearby area to Jaipur. They did not care for 'Malgudi'. They thought that for wide-screen purposes and that in colour, Jaipur offered an ideal background. Even they made the character of Rosie a national figure. Thus his

46 simple characters didn't remain simple. And more than that, they made the death of the hero melodramatic to get the money from fmancers. Not only this, once Narayan was summoned to Bombay to dine with Lord Mountbatten in order to persuade him to invite the queen to attend the world premiere in London. One of Narayan's former friends, the American Harvey

Breit, tried to produce the stage adaptation of The Guide. It opened on Broadway in March

1966 and closed after a run of three days.

In the evening of life Narayan developed an interest in agriculture late in his life. He found it the most absorbing. He cut out and filed country notes from newspapers, listen to the

Farm Programme on the radio. Fascinated by these programmes and his own recurring visions of "back to the soil", he bought an acre of land in Banglore, some hundred miles from

Mysore, his native place, which he tried to cultivate in an amateurish way. He was surprised when he saw the economics of agriculture. It required Narayan to spend 450 rupees in order to get grains of 15 rupees worth only. However he speculates over it not as a man who will say, 'this is not my type of work'. On the contrary Narayan thinks that it was a world of completely inverted economic motives, where one spends more money and willingly obtains less in return. The agricultural problems must be allowed to have their stages of rawness, ripeness and withering away'. Walsh says, 'Narayan's notion of the agricultural life is a clue to the complexity of this mild, convinced, self-effacing, amiable and brilliant man'. (Walsh,

1983: 26).

Any autobiography cannot be complete like a work of fiction. It is because it is the story of the life of the writer which continues till the end of life. R. K. Narayan rightly asks,

"Am I to call this last chapter, but how can an autobiography have a final chapter?" (Narayan,

2000:181) The last chapter of an autobiography is a kind of transition. The past is narrated and the present is accepted. One has to sum-up writing autobiography and also to plan the future. Narayan did not find it difficult as he engaged himself in so many things. Narayan

47 /^l once met a friend after many years. He looked much older and had blood-pressure, diabetes and even cholesterol. When he had gone Narayan started to think about himself and found that he had many things to worry about, not inside but outside himself The street lights, corruption, inefficiency of the people etc. He had taken upon himself a difficult task of protecting the thousands of trees of Mysore, the Frangipani in front of his house, as well as the Kukanahalli Tank which was attacked by water hysinth that sucked off all the moisture.

He was in the pink of health at the age of seventy four.

He had happy old age. His life had fallen firmly into professional pattern : books, agents, contracts and plenty of letter-writing to known and unknown persons alike and of course, travel over and over again. With the passing years he achieved the rank of popular writer. He was admired by readers not only from India but from New York to Moscow. His personal life became more interesting as he found every excuse to drive a hundred and twenty miles over a mountain road to visit his daughter and spend many days in her company. He has narrated happy occasions spent with his grandchildren. His granddaughter, a high school girl at that time set up a model of Malgudi with miniature streets and buildings during the

Navaratri festival of dolls. He thinks that his grandson is exactly the copy of Swami in Swami and Friends. He even wrote a story, in which the father of a boy told the uncle to go to 'R. K.

Narayan and take some moneies'. (p. 185).

The researcher has noted that Narayan lived during interesting and tumultuous times for India. The first and second World Wars, India's independence, the partition of India and the assassination of Gandhi- all occurred in his lifetime. Narayan is unwilling to depicting political movements so these events are rarely mentioned in his autobiography. However, these events were so significant that it was impossible to remain untouched; he could not help mentioning the Rowlett Act agitation (p. 15) and the colonial educational system designed by

Lord Baden Powell which was implemented at C.R.C. High school. He remembers how he

48 joined the procession protesting against the Rowlett Act and was reprimanded by his uncle.

According to Amit Bhattacharya, his joining the scouts in the high school can be interpreted

as an expression of his patriotic fervor. He further says,

'In fact, Narayan's passing mentions of these patriotic acts are ways of

reconciling his apparently apolitical autobiography with the clearly political statements

in novels like Swami and Friends (the Boycott Movement and Non- Cooperation of

1920, SW94-95), The Bachelor of Arts (the agitation of self- governance and economic

independence, Bachelor of Arts 37), The English Teacher (resistance to colonial

education system, English Teacher, 205), and Waiting for the Mahatma (the Gandhian

ideology). (Bhattacharcharya, 2012: pp. 277-278)

Narayan was an intense observer and a writer full of wit and humour. He had not only

understood but depicted the difference between the Indian sensibility and that of the western.

William Walsh rightly points out, "Narayan was clear that the Indian sensibility was

profoundly different from the western and his novels, although they were to be written in

English - something which he did naturally and with complete ease - were to embody a

wholly different mentality, another view of the world, after feelings and responses." (Walsh,

1983: 16). When one reads his novels one can understand what Narayan tries to say. In one of

his articles in "Commonwealth Literature" he says, "The English language, through sheer

resilience and mobility, is now undergoing a process of Indianization in the same maimer as it

adopted US citizenship over a century ago, with the difference that it is the major language

there, but here one of fifteen listed in the Indian Constitution", (p. 123). Writing for more

than fifty years using English as the language of his fiction he has proved that it has served

his purpose. The 'Indianized' English language coveys unambiguously the thoughts and acts

of a set of personalities, who flourish in a small town located in a comer of South India.

49 While thinking about Narayan, it is inevitable to think about his contemporaries -

Mulk Raj Anand and Raja Rao. Anand was an ardent champion of the poor and downtrodden.

Some of his novels with this theme are Untouchable, Coolie, Two Leaves and a Bud and The

Village. The writer shows India with its social deformities and seeks respect for the poor and helpless. Mahatma Gandhi and Indian freedom struggle had a great influence on him. Anand had a unique style of writing English in which he used Punjabi and Hindustani idioms. Raja

Rao started his career with Kanthapura. It is the story of a south Indian village during freedom struggle and the influence of Gandhi phenomenon on the village people. Like

Anand, Rao was influenced by Gandhism. In 1998 he published Gandhi's biography Great

Indian Way: A Life of Mahatma Gandhi. He has written five novels Kanthapura, The Serpent and the Rope, The Cat and Shakespeare, Comrade Kirillov and The Chessmaster and His

Moves. His works are deeply influenced by Hindu tradition and spiritualism.

"Mulk Raj Anand ,Raja Rao and R.K.Narayan are contemporaries but their style of writing and subjects are totally different from each other. While as Mulk Raj Anand was a social reformist writer who tried to bring the dark sides of society to forefront and questioned them, Raja Rao was a philosopher, he wrote about the Indian Mysticism, his perspectives in writing were spiritually bent.

R.K.Narayan was the lightest in his approach; he was an observer of life and portrayed it through his characters and their day to day life with a sense of detachment." (Kachroo. 4 April 2013)

Narayan's subjects and characters are universal and this appeal has carried over years and continues as basic human nature remains the same. He is one of the most loved writers by children. Many of his stories are selected as texts in schoolbooks .The tele-series 'Malgudi

Days' was a favourite with the last generation in their childhood and even today kids watch repeat telecasts or you tube versions. His popularity has surpassed many of his contemporaries because of his simple language and worldwide appeal of plot and characters.

The reader is so involved in the stories that, in the words of Graham Greene, ""Whom next

50 shall I meet in Malgudi? That is the thought that comes to me when I close a novel of Mr.

Narayan. I do not wait for another novel. I wait to go out of my door into those loved and shabby streets and see with excitement and a certainty of pleasure a stranger approaching, past the bank, the cinema, the haircutting saloon, a stranger who will greet me I know with some unexpected and revealing phrase that will open a door on to yet another human existence." (Ribeiro, Victor, Outlook, May 15, 2001). People who don't understand literature love reading his works, he has brought literature close to the common man. The Guide by him is considered to be a cult book; the story was so loved and admired by the intelligentsia that it inspired the famous Chetan Anand movie 'Guide' starring Dev Anand and Waheeda

Rahman, the movie too has become legendary. His works have stood the test of time and still appeal to the readers; his works have kept his thinking alive even after so many years of his demise.

His international standing is expressed in the fact that his novels, short stories and retellings of Indian epics and myths can be read in most of the world's major languages; that his fiction has been the subject of a substantial scholarly and critical literature produced over several decades; and that elaborate literary tributes have appeared in the world's media following his death on May 13, 2001. He was nominated on more than one occasion for the

Nobel Prize, although like his fi'iend Greene, he did not win it. Narayan, the most unpretentious and accessible of writers, is also regarded as a v^iter's writer, with serious admirers and imitators in unexpected places in the world.

Every critic of Narayan accepts that essentially he is a story teller. He tells timeless tales and he is a meticulous recorder of the ironies of human life. At the same time he is an acute observer of the possibilities of the ordinary human beings. According to Shashi Tharur,

Narayan is 'India's answer to Jane Austen' (Tharur,: TOI - 15 - 10 - 2006). According to M.

K. Naik, 'Narayan is the novelist of the individual man ... man's filling of the life-role

51 entrusted to him by tradition and environment.' (Nailc, M. K. 1983: 1). According to William

Walsh, R.K. Narayan's fiction, "is unusually close to, and intimate with his personal life."

(Walsh, 983:6). He maintains that Narayan is predominantly autobiographical and utilizes the experiences of his life to organize them in his work of art. Narayan continued to write stories based upon his fictional town of Malgudi and the people he had met during his lifetime up until his death in May, 2001.

But, then, that was only a physical end. R. K, Narayan lives on in his words, and will continue to live on longer than several penmen who rise and fall before making a mark. R. K.

Narayan made such mark with his chaste English, transparent style, a whole interesting community of live and memorable characters -like Leela, the financial merchant Maegayya, taxidermist Vasu, the tiger who finds peace under the influence of the Master, a hermit, Raju, the guide, and, indeed, several such peculiar fellows. That is why he invites readers and critics to engage with his amazing world.

Khushwant Singh: Truth, Love and a Little Malice: An Autobiography

Khushwant Singh occupies a unique place in Indian English Literature. He was a multifaceted personality. He was a renowned historian, a novelist, a short story writer, a journalist, an editor, and a famous columnist. He is a writer widely read, widely loved and widely criticized too. He is cruelly honest and writes what he thinks is right. In doing so he even offends his dear friends or celebrities in the society. Like writer, like autobiography. It is both: controversial and provocative. The Publishers' Note on Khushwant's autobiography makes it clear that his book was to have been published in January 1996, ...'that did not come to pass'.(Singh, 2001:l)It was published after a court case won by Khushwant Singh.

52 Note further says that the original text of 1995 remains as it was and carries a postscript by the author in 2001. Khushwant Singh did not change a word of what he had written!

Khushwant was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He was bom in 1915, in a small village, Hadali in Khushab District Sargodha, Punjab in the Thar Desert, which is now deep inside Pakistan. Khushwant Singh was the second son of Sir Sobha Singh and Veeran Bai, who were closely associated with the building of New Delhi. He spent early years of childhood in the care of his grandmother in Hadali. Then he came to Delhi. He attended

Modern School, St. Stephen's College in Delhi and then he went to Government College,

Lahore. His father had built a very big house in Sujan Singh Park, the name of Khushwant's grandfather given to that area in New Delhi. Also he had a big estate in Mashobra, a very beautiful place in Kashmir. The family would spend summer holidays there. It was something unheard of by common folk. When Khushwant's elder brother and he himself entered the college, father had given motorcycles to both. One can imagine the pomp the young boys must have exhibited in the early 1940s. His family was well off, so, after his graduation he was sent to King's College, London where he completed his L.L.B. In England, Khushwant

Singh met Kaval Malik, once his junior schoolmate in Delhi. They got married in October,

1939. He practiced law at the Lahore High Court for several years before joining the Indian

Ministry of External Affairs in 1947. He began a distinguished career as a journalist with the

All India Radio in 1951. Since then he has been founder-editor of Yojana (1951-1953), editor of the Illustrated Weekly of India (1969-1979), chief editor of New Delhi (1979-1980), and editor of the Hindustan Times (1980-1983). His Saturday column "With Malice Towards One and AH" in the Hindustan Times is by far one of the most popular columns of the day.

Khushwant Singh's name is bound to go down in Indian literary history as one of the finest historians and novelists, a forthright political commentator, and an outstanding observer and social critic. He was a Member of Rajya Sabha from 1980 to 1986.

53 Singh had travelled extensively all over the world on various assignments and invitations to give lectures. This has resulted in several travelogues like: Australia Lone Land of Magnificent Distances, Southern Safari, In Japan without Money or Passport, and numerous others. What makes Khushwant's travelogues special is his total lack of inhibition.

He tells it all as he saw it, missing out nothing whether it was a rebuffed pass at a girl, a joke at his expense or a lecherous intention that came to nothing.

Khushwant Singh was awarded with a lot of accolades in his lifetime. These include:

Padma Bhushan inl974 ( he returned it in 1984 in protest against the Operation Blue Star),

Punjab Rattan Award (2006), Padma Vibhushan (2007), Sahitya Academi fellowship award,

(2010), Tata Literature Live! Award (20\3), Fellowship of King's College, London (2014).

Khushwant Singh spent his last years in Delhi, the city he loved most, in his apartment at

Sujansingh Park. He died at the age of ninety nine in 2014. He became witness to all the major events in modem Indian history including Independence, Partition, the Emergency and

Operation Blue Star. He was a living legend of these major events. His major works are:

Collections of Shorts stories:

The Mark of Vishnu and Other Stories. London, Saturn Press, 1950, The Voice of God and

Other Stories. Bombay, Jaico, 1957, ^ Bride for the Sahib and Other Stories. New Delhi,

Hind, 1967, Black Jasmine. Bombay, Jaico, 1971, The Collected Stories. N. P. Ravi Dayal

Publishers, 1989.

Novels:

Train to Pakistan. London, Chatto and Windus, 1956 New York, Grove Press, 1961 ; as

Mano Majra, Grove Press, 1956, I Shall Not Hear the Nightingale. New York, Grove Press,

54 1959; London, Calder, 1961, Delhi : A Novel Penguin Books India 1990, The Company of

Women. New Delhi and New York, Viking, 1999

Major Non-Fictional Work:

A History of Sikhs 1469-1964, Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, and

London, Oxford University Press, 2 vols., 1963-66, Ranjit Singh: Maharajah of the Punjab

1780-1839. London, Allen and Unwin, 1963, Not Wanted in Pakistan, New Delhi, Rajkamal,

1965, Women and Men in My Life. New Delhi, UBS Publishers, 1995.

Translation work:

Translator, Japji: The Sikh Morning Prayer. London, Probsthain, 1959, 2. Translator, Amrita

Pritam: Selected Poems. New Delhi, Bhartiya Gnanpith 1982,

Looking at the life of Khushwant Singh, one remembers a kaleidoscope. His life took a topsy-turvy road and took him at various destinations. He became a lawyer, a diplomat, a historian, a novelist, a short story writer, a journalist, an editor, and a famous columnist. He accepted life as it came to him and lived it wholeheartedly and positively, with a comic view and, of course, a tinge of malice. It is only when he decided to make his career as a writer, that he designed his life in his own way. In order to analyze Khushwant Singh's autobiography critically, it is necessary to understand incidents, situations and people who contributed to the growth, change and maturity of the writer. A human being is the product of the 'mass, moment and milieu' and inevitably shows the influences of the above said three aspects.According to Vasant A. Shahane, there are three kinds of environment which influenced Khushwant Singh the man and the writer: 'the Punjab countryside; urban Indo-

Anglian Delhi; and the liberal, sophisticated city of London are the three most dominant influences on Khushwant Singh.'(Shahane, 1972: 19).Though Khushwant Singh's mind and

55 personality have been shaped by Western education and culture, he is— and remained forever

—at heart a Sikh and an Indian. Therefore his writing has grown out of the grass roots of the social milieu.

Among his earliest influences there is a great share of his grandmother. Khushwant

Singh spent early years of his childhood with his grandmother. She was a very religious woman. She constantly engaged herself in reciting the Holy Scriptures Guru Granth Sahib,

Japji, Sukhmani the whole day while doing her household chores. It is obvious that the influence of his grandmother deeply ingrained in him the religious fervor which made him write the history of his community later. His grandmother was not only a religious woman, but also a very compassionate, loving old lady. He remembers that his grandmother accompanied him to and fro the school, a Dharamshal at Hadali. This walking was very special. Grandmother would take a bundle of stale chapattis with her. They gave the pieces of these chapattis to stray dogs. The same was repeated while returning. Later, his love for dogs is depicted by him when he very beautifully describes a pet his daughter Mala had brought. It was a small Alsatian puppy. He named it as Simba. It was 'as human a dog as I have ever seen', he says. (Singh, 2003:188).Later, in Delhi, Khushwant Singh shared a room with his grandmother till he was nineteen years old. Their room had a verandah where she spent her afternoons plying charkha and reciting holy Psalm of Peace. In this verandah, she fed sparrows with bread crumbs. In Khushwant's memories of his grandmother, the humming of the spinning wheel and the murmur of prayers are closely associated with each other.

Khushwant Singh has portrayed a very sensible word picture of his grandmother in a short story "Portrait of a Lady". It is one of the most popular and most anthologized short stories of

Khushwant Singh. The influence of these years was permanent on Khushwant Singh. He writes in an autobiographical sketch: 'My roots are in the dunghill of a tiny Indian village.'(Singh,1970).

56 Nobody noted the day and date of the birth of Khuswant Singh. Later, when he was admitted into a school at Delhi, his father wrote his birth date as 2nd Feb., 1915. But according to his grandmother Khushwant was born in 'badaroo' i. e. in August. So

Khushwant himself changed his birth date to 15th Aug. 1915, which coincidently became the

Independence Day of India after 32 years! He showed a trait of thinking in a different way when as a small boy he changed his own name 'Khushal Singh' as 'Khushwant Singh' rhyming with 'Bhagwant Singh' the name of his elder brother.

Khushwant Singh observes that there was a friendly companionship among the Sikhs and Muslims in their small village. This feeling of fraternity can be observed in a legend ascribed to their family. One year in heavy rains, flood waters brought with them a Muslim holy man named Shaida Peer. Khushwant's grandfather Sujan Singh, helped him by providing clothes, food and shelter. The Peer blessed him: T will give your two sons the keys of Delhi and Lahore. They will prosper'. (Singh, 2003: 4).

However, even as a child he had sensed that the relations of the Hindus, the Sikhs and the

Muslims (of Baluch extraction) in Hadali were 'uneasy but peaceful' ( p.5). It is obvious that it was made clear to him only when he grew up. A would be writer of Train to Pakistan was brought up with the sense of this uneasiness under the veil of peace in society. When he went to college, first in St. Stephens, Delhi and then at Government College, Lahore, he experienced that the distance among the Hindu, Punjabi and Muslim students widened.

Muslims regarded themselves as a community apart from other Indians. In fact at that time the national movement was on its peak. They did not show any effect of Mahatma Gandhi had as India's leader. The Muslim boys wore distinctly Muslim dress. They didn't speak the language of nationalism. The feeling of separateness saddened young Khushwant. He did his best to befriend them but had little success. He experienced the same when he went to the

Government College, Lahore to complete his Bachelor Degree. Later, it proved fatal during 57 the Partition. This observation is quite different from his image as a friend of Muslims who

always wrote in favour of them. The researcher has not gone through this type of observation

yet. Khushwant Sing remembers the atmosphere when he was in the second year at St.

Stephen's College. Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru were hanged. There was protest

against these executions all over India but not at St. Stephen's as it was run by Christians. He

and a boy raised a slogan 'Bhagat Singh Zindabad' and hoisted Indian tri-colour flag on the

flag mast of the college. They were reprimanded by the acting Principal, who was a Christian.

He attended Modem School at Delhi. It was a nationalist school; leaders like Mahatma

Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Sarojini Naidu were invited to address the students. However,

his school did not have much impression on him, except a few incidents. He came from a

small village and did not know how to speak in English. So the city boys made fun of him.

And he had to suffer much as he was not a scholar and was caned often. But he had gained

skill in playing pranks, and he mentions some of them. He writes about a prank he did with

their Chemistry teacher by putting an injured cobra in a biscuit tin as a present. The cobra

was injured but his hood was left without any injury. It came out very angrily hissing when

the tin was opened by the teacher. Khushwant Singh used this incident in his short story "The

Mark of Vishnu. " In this story he creates the character of Ganga Ram, a poor servant, pious

and devoted Brahmin. He always pours milk for the Kala Nag as a symbol of his worship of

Shesh Nag. He is extremely superstitious and has an immense faith in his belief that Kala

Nag is a representative of Shesh Nag. He is always made fun of by scientifically oriented

playful school boys. One day the boys find a black cobra in the rainy season; they hit it and

put it in a box. They decide to play a prank and present the box to the science teacher. As

soon as the lid is open, the injured cobra bursts out hissing. The teacher, however,

successfully escapes himself from the bite of the cobra. Ganga Ram standing outside the class

room, faithfully places the saucer of milk for the cobra and sits on his knees to show respect

58 and to request the snake god to forgive the mischievous children. In desperate fury the snake bites Ganga Ram all over the body and escapes. Poor Ganga Ram becomes the prey of his own superstition.

It was in his school days that he picked up a terrible 'Phobia' about ghosts. The root of this fear was the deaths he witnessed of his grandfather, his aunt, the first wife of Ujjal Singh and accidental death he witnessed on the road of Shimla of the driver and his assistant of a road roller. In an article written in India Today, he admits. "I do not believe in ghosts. But, I am dead scared of them. They are associated with death and I dread death coming to me.

From childhood, I was exposed to people dying before my eyes; those scenes still haunt me."

(Singh, 11 Dec, 2009.) Some of his stories like "Memsahib of Mandla" have mystique situations with the reference to 'ghosts'.

Khushwant Singh learnt to love the English language as well as poetry, both in English and Urdu which may have honed his sensitive appreciation of beauty in life. Much of his

English came to him on his own as he read books he got. His interest in English became more organized by a teacher Miss Budden. She read to her students children's literature such as stories by Oscar Wilde and short poems by Shakespeare. Khushwant Singh remembers

'One day she recited "Under the greenwood tree ....". The verse touched a chord in my

heart. I memorized it and many others that she read to us from Wordsworth, Tennyson and

other poets. On Saturdays we played a word game devised by her. We were given small

dictionaries. She called out a word; the first to spot it in the dictionary was declared the

winner. It taught me the habit of consulting a dictionary whenever in doubt about the exact

meaning of the word' (Singh, 2003: 23).

In college, he was different from other students. He attended the Bible classes regularly. He cherished love for the language of Old and New Testament. His favourite reading was the Old

59 Testament, not because of its teaching but because of the sonorous language. He says, 'I sensed that in order to write good English one should be familiar with the Bible as well as

European fairy tales, nursery rhymes and even nonsense verse like the limericks of Edward

Lear. I read them not for fun but as the basis of literature.' (p. 32). The love of Urdu poetry came to him by Moulvi Shaffuddin Nayyar. When one reads his English writing it is experienced. Because he read much poetry in English and Urdu, his structure is flawless and style transparent. It is added by appropriate contexts he uses from different poets. Naturally his writing becomes very much readable. Though he had deep passion for poetry, he never wTote poetry in English or in Punjabi.

Secondly, he was deeply influenced by the small trips and long excursions organized by his school for students. His school had a custom to take students for picnic once in a month to visit the old monuments of Delhi. Twice a year the students were taken on excursions to different parts of India. Of these excursions he remembers most are the excursions to Mumbai, the Rajput Fort of Chittor, Rajasthan, Ajmer and Udaipur as well as a visit to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. He says, 'I have never tired of visiting and writing about monuments' (p. 24). When he wrote his novel Delhi he depicted the monuments of Delhi along with the history of these monuments. The roots of these beautiful descriptions are

found in these trips and excursions. For instance, he describes Delhi and its surrounding

suburbs in the beginning of the monsoon when the protagonist and his beloved Bhagmati

gofor a drive :

Delhi had its first pre-monsoon shower... Afresh breeze drives snow-white clouds across

the blue sky. The earth is fragrant...The choice is between Mehrauli and Okhla. Mehrauli

has the Qutub Minar with its gardens, monuments and acres of mango orchards. Okhla has

no monuments but it has lots of water. The Jamuna has a weir from which a canal

branches off. At monsoon time the river is an awesome sight...We go past the ruins of

60 Metcalf s mansion, Jamali-Kamali's mosque and enter Mehrauli town...The Shamsi Talab

becomes a part of the cascade pouring into it. (taken from Not A Nice Man to Know,

pp.348-350)

There is a deep influence of his mother in his comic approach to life. It came to him from his mother. On one occasion he was talking to Vijay Kuvalekar, the then editor of daily

Sakal, Kolhapur edition. On asking from where the aspect of humour came to him, he told that it came to him from his mother. Khushwant Singh has a basic tendency of the comic. He looks at life with this attitude. Many times he laughs at himself. He told about his mother, "If you told something as a secret to mother, which in fact you want to tell everybody, you should tell it to her. Even if you want to ruin some body's name, she would do it with such an exaggeration that it would work perfectly. Even the title, 'With Malice, Towards One and

Air for my popular column came from this." (Kuvalekar, Vijay, Mauj Divali issue, 2015)

Many of his short stories are written humorously. Khushwant Singh uses the comic in various ways. Sometimes it is irony ("The Bride for the Sahib", "Karma"), sometimes it is unmasking of the human nature ("The Voice of God", "Man, How the Government of India Run"), sometimes it is sociological motivation ("The Mark of Vishnu"). His conviviality and gaiety are well known, and these are the expressions of a basically comic view of life. Many of his stories have autobiographical element ("Portrait of a Lady", "The Sardarji and the Starlet",

"The Black Jasmine"). He has mostly written about what he was personally acquainted with, his personal experiences, his close association and intimate knowledge about the subject taken up. He is considered as a realist and humanist and this is revealed in his short stories.

They reveal his gentle irony and his faculty of being ironical on the part of his countrymen.

Many of his stories are based on real life experiences as a bureaucrat, a journalist, a globe trotter as well as an Indian.

61 In fact he was an academic failure. He never had any intellectual pretensions. As expected, he passed the matriculation examination in the second division. He went to St.

Stephen's College, the most prestigious college in Delhi. He spent two years in this college.

Their family was one of the richest families in Delhi. His father gave him a new motorcycle to go to the college. There were only five boys who had motorcycles. The prosperity of his father and other contractors and the influence of their wealth on their children are depicted by

Khushwant Singh in his novel Delhi. It was the beginning of the most carefree years of his college life. It was in these days that he became aware of his attraction towards the body of women. He boldly narrates many incidents. For instance, he fell madly in love with a young

Muslim friend of his sister. Though she accepted to go with him on long drives, she did not allow him to take much liberty. He wrote love letters to her and other girls also. Among his activities in college he joined the UTC (University Training Corps). He even spent a week in a camp.

Khushwant quickly got tired of places and people, so when he was asked he accepted to go to the Government College, Lahore. Though it was a prestigious college, merit was not the measurement for students. More than that was the influence of wealth, ancestry and political clout. As Khushwant's uncle Ujjal Singh was the previous student of this college and now an MLA of Punjab, Khuswant got admission easily. Because he talked too much and was always getting into arguments, his parents decided he was best suited for the law.

Although he never practiced as a lawyer after his Lahore years, his argumentative and even belligerent nature proved to be useful as a journalist!

The Government College was known for its excellence in sports, especially hockey.

Many players of Indian hockey team were from this college. There were several literary influences also. There was Ahmad Shah Bukhari, a member of the staff, who was one of the best speakers in English and a writer of Urdu prose. Among Khushwant's contemporaries

62 were some eminent Urdu writers like Imtiaz Ali Taj, Mohammed Tasheer and Faiz Ahmed

Faiz - Pakistan's greatest poet after Allama Iqbal. But howsoever Khuswant tried he did not gain admittance into this charmed circle. Among other students, there were some boys who later became film actors or directors - ChetanAnand, Balraj Sahni, B. R. Chopra etc.

ChetanAnand wrote poems in those days. Later, he wrote an article "Chetan Anand " in his book Women and Men in My Life. While his reminiscences his days spent with him, he concludes that Chetan Anand was 'the biggest taker and sponger I met in my life." (Singh,

Khushwant,1995: 101) When he was with Illustrated Weekly, in Mumbai, he looked forward to renew his old acquaintances with his friends of Lahore days, who had become big names in the film world. "Most of all with Chetan Anand, who enjoyed my hospitality on innumerable occasions and been closest to me." {Ibid. p. 103)

The teachers of the Government College were not interested in teaching. Because of this gloomy situation, an anecdote went round the college. 'It was about the visit of the distinguished scientist and Nobel Laureate Sir C. V. Raman. Prin. Garret took him round to see a new laboratory in the College and asked him what he thought of the laboratory. Sir

Raman replied, 'The marble flooring is very good'. Garret could not understand the sting in the answer and repeated his question and got the same answer.'(Singh, Khushwant,2003: 43).

Would it look far-fetched to add that it was this sting effect that inspired Khushwant to write provocative prose as a journalist and a writer?

Khushwant's love for sitar got rekindled once more, perhaps, due to Chetan Anand's poems. In the summer vacations he took admission in Shantiniketan Kala Bhavan. He remembers how on a pleasant morning at Shantiniketan, he was awakened by singing. A group of young men and women were singing 'Varsha Mangal' to welcome the rains. He remarks, 'The vision of song and beauty continued to haunt me for many years'. {Ibid. P. 47).

Once, Tagore ordered Uday Shankar, a would-be master of Indian classical dance, to

63 perform. Without any make-up, stage lights or anything Shankar danced the Tandava with

Simkie, a French girl, as Parvati. There was only a sarod played by Timir Boran. The music and dance deeply moved Khushwant. Shantiniketan also made him aware of the beauties of the Bengal countryside. In the rainy season, along with snakes, scorpions, frogs and field mice, he came across shapely, Santhal girls walking like dancers on a stage. It was a unique experience for a budding writer like Khushwant Singh.

As his family was well off it was decided that he should go to England for higher education. But Khuswant had little hope of entering Oxford or Cambridge as he had passed his last examination for B. A. Degree in the third division. He applied for admission to various British Universities and chose King's College, London because of its regal name. He registered for LLB degree and applied for membership of the Inner Temple to qualify as a

Barrister. In 1934 he left Delhi for London. At Bombay, he boarded the Italian boat Conte

Rosso. Later, Khushwant Singh travelled a lot by plane, but he loved the voyages he made on board of different ships. The experience on the sea is always an important experience in his life and it is reflected in his writing. For instance, when he went to London he describes the

Red Sea: "The voyage after Aden was sheer bliss. The Red Sea was placid as a lake...Warm winds blew over from the neighbouring deserts. At times migratory birds alighted on the ship; flying fish often landed on the deck. One evening as the sun went down the entire sea as far as the eye could see became alive with dolphins tumbling in and out of the water. At night the sky was brilliantly illuminated by a myriad stars. On moonlit nights the sea shimmered like a vast spread of quick-silver. Travelling by ship was so much more pleasurable than the non-stop flights I had to take later in life--.." {Ibid. p. 55)

Khushwant Singh has noted down many interesting incidents of his stay in London. The first incident was of his teacher of Modern School, Roma Biswas to whom he was attracted as a teen ager. Now she caught him in London and tried to seduce him. Then there was a

64 Miss Nehru, a distant relation of Jawaharlal Nehru, on board his ship. She would always wear

Khadi and always lectured the Indians about how to deport oneself as 'Ambassadors of India' in front of the people of England. Once in the hostel where Khushwant Singh was living in

London he saw the Nehru girl with a young Englishman. She had seen his name in the register and the next morning the couple left early without breakfast!

With his arrival in London, began the new life. England had been another great influence on him. Khushwant Singh fell in love with London at its first sight. He spent first few days getting to know it. After the first year examination he went to India. During his summer vacations in India, Khushwant Singh bragged a great deal about his romantic experience with English girls. There was generally a fascination for the Western women found in Indians which he had exploited while telling stories of his imaginary 'romances'.

This fascination later found expression in his short stories like "Mr. Singh and the Colour

Bar", "The Sardarji and the Starlet", "The Great Difference" etc. In "The Sardarji and the

Starlet", he narrates the story of a Sardar, not very smart and a clumsy looking person, who prevails the narrator in winning the beautiful Miss Dawson, a 'starlet'.

The holidays spent very fast and once more he was on board the ship. Before boarding, he confesses that, he lost his virginity to a prostitute in Bombay. Back in England, Singh moved into the country. He took a room with a retired professor, F.S. Marvin, a good writer.

This association probably attracted him towards the literary world. His keen love for nature too was kindled during this time. His regular walks in the woods with the profusely flowering azaleas and resounding with the intoxicating melody of bird song cast a spell over him. Later

Khushwant Singh imbued his fiction with a wealth of detail when describing flora, fauna, the seasons and various natural phenomena. This is seen in his description of the monsoons in his first novel, Train to Pakistan. His empathy for animals is evident in the short story, "The

Fawn". Singh has also written a book entitled. Nature Watch. For instance, in the story

65 "Fawn" he depicts man as an enemy of the nature, animals. The short story "The Fawn" is a story of a beautiful fawn that becomes a prey to the cruelty of man. It is a dig at the modern man who is fond of hunting animals. The modem man is sadistic. The narrator's companion wants to kill the beautiful deer with his gun. When he kills a fawn his delight knows no bounds. The tears and the gurgling blood streaming out of the fawn's jugular veins cannot elicit a little bit of sympathy from the narrator's friend. He even joyfully slit the throat of his hunt. Khushwant Sing is against the killing of animal for sport. He said: "Fortunately, in

India, hunting of animals has been banned."(Singh, Khushwant, 2012: 38)

It is well-known that Khushwant Singh started his literary career with short stories. He is known for his clear cut secularism and humor. His assessment and comparison of social and behavioral traits of people from India and the West is full of outstanding wit. He adhered to the O'Henry-tradition of short story writing. Arthur Voss's comment on O'Henry's stories is indeed a definition of the journalistic short story:

Ingeniously and carefully plotted often culminating in a surprise ending, it was written more to entertain than to be taken seriously. Wit and humour, vivacity and lightness of touch and an urbane manner and cultivated style were other principal characteristics. (Voss, Arthur:

1973)

This is equally applicable to most of the stories of Khushwant Singh. It will be seen that most of his literary writing smells of documentation of real incidents and situations of his life. The journalist is always present there. He expressed what he had experienced in his life, may it be his school or college life or as a law student in London or a bureaucrat in the India House and

UNESCO.

In England, he made so many English friends boys as well as girls and his friendship lasted long. He lived in many English homes and shared their family problems. Once he met

66 an Afro American girl Marie Stones. Khushwant's friend Satinder, who was a lot bolder than

Khushwant, pushed him towards Marie Stones. Khushwant simply couldn't make any development with her. But they remained friends forever and she even visited his house in

Delhi. Marie Stones got a place in a short story "Black Jasmine".

It was during these beautiful days that Khushwant Singh met Kaval Malik, his junior in

Modern School, Delhi. By now she had grown into a stunning beauty. She visited England to do some Montessori Course. Many suitable Sikh boys tried to gain her favour and love.

Khushwant desperately fell in love with her. His chances of marrying her were nearly impossible as he was not an I.C.S., but merely a lawyer. Secondly, though his father was very rich, he took contracts from the Public Works Department where Kaval's father was a senior engineer. But Khushwant was not a person to give up hopes. He met Kaval frequently. Once they visited the Stoke Poges Churchyard and he tried to impress her with his knowledge and also recited some lines from. The Elegy Written in Country Churchyard by Thomas Grey.

Kaval was deeply impressed. None of her other friends had courted her in verse. When the groundwork was done, he caught a moment and proposed to her and she accepted his proposal.

He attempted to appear for the I. C. S. examination. Though his academic record was not very good, he tried the best on his level. Apart from theory papers there was a viva voce.

He gave answers very straightforwardly. In the results Khushwant Singh missed the ICS by one place only. Surprisingly, he got low marks in the paper of International Law but he was the only candidate who was given 300 out of 300 in the viva voce! The straight forward answers and the boldness to speak what he thought was right were the traits of his nature which can be observed in his early days as a student. One also notices how he laughs at himself Humour is an important component in his writing. And it is observed while reading his autobiography. In this ICS business he had totally neglected his law studies and 67 examinations. Consequently, he had done poorly in his LLB Examinations. He could not get admission for LLM.

He returned home, with a sharp sense of shame. There was uneasiness in the relationship with Kaval. Gossip had gone round that his engagement was at breaking point. When Kaval's grandmother was told that her grand-daughter was marrying a Barrister, she remarked, 'Hail hai! itt putto tay Balister nikalada hai' - you pull up a brick and you find a Barrister under it.(Singh, Khushwnt, 2003:82)They met in this awkward situation and perhaps there wasrejection in the mind of both. But they felt that it would earn a bad name to their families.

So they married on 3rd October, 1939with great pomp and Sikh rituals.

Khushwant started his practice at Lahore High Court. His father had rented a two- bedroom corner flat and an office near the High Court. He also gave his son a brand new

Ford car. Initially, Khushwant got briefs of murder cases. He took this opportunity to visit the places of murder and talked to the person arrested, his relatives and friends. Though he made virtually no progress as a lawyer over the years, he read a lot these days. Besides, his membership of exclusive clubs like the Gymkhana Club and his visits to the countryside of

Punjab for the murder cases which came to him, gave him a deep insight into the urban life, their luxurious ways, imitation of the British; and the rustic life, the poverty of the people, the conflicts they had to face, their egos etc. The clubs found expression in his short stories such as "India is a Strange Country". One thing is very clear that Khushwant was never pressurized by the white people or the English environment like some Indians. On the contrary, he was contemptuous of such people who were westernized. This is expressed in his stories like the famous, "Karma" and "A Bride for the Sahib". In "Karma" he makes fun of the blind imitation of the British by one Sir Mohan Lai who despises his wife as 'ganvar' an illiterate bumpkin, as he is looking forward the company of the British officers in the first class compartment of a railway, but who is thrown away by two young British soldiers out of

68 the railway compartment reserved for the 'Whites'. The rustic Punjab is reflected in his novel

A Train to Pakistan. Thus subconsciously he was laying the foundation for his literary career.

He would tell his experiences to his friends in an interesting way when they gathered for drinks. Thus he became a raconteur. However, it was Mangat Rai, his schoolmate, now an

ICS, suggested that everyone should read something written by them originally. And in this circle reading Khushwant became the hero because of his amazing style. This is a (minor) turning point in his life as he took up to writing which would eventually become his metier.

He realized that scoring high marks in examinations had little bearing on the ability to narrate a story which captured attention. This is one reason why many of his stories have a dramatic plot and twist endings. He also read the Indian writers: Mulk Raj Anand, Raja Rao and R.K.

Narayan. He came to the conclusion that one does not have to be a brilliant student to write good stories and novels. Khushwant's confidence as a writer got a boost in this circle.

However, he was not happy with his profession. He thought it as a hard, 'soulless profession'. ( p. 89). He took on undefended cases in sessions courts for a fee of 16 rupees per day. He started teaching part-time at the Law College. But he got hardly thousand rupees a month which were not sufficient and could hardly meet his expensive style of living. His father still sent him money. He was not satisfied with his work. He thought it very bad that he gained money out of other people's quarrels. It was worse than a prostitute as she serves society to give certain kind of better service than a lawyer. The disgusting experience never took an art form for him as a writer, since he has not introduced any significant lawyer character in any of his writings.

His social life as well as married life at Lahore is depicted by Khushwant Singh with candour. Among the visitors and admirers of Khushwant's wife was Mangant Rai, an old school mate, posted in Lahore. He was attracted towards Kaval. Mangant Rai had great

69 power to persuade people. On his saying Kaval gave up her painting, preferred cycling to tennis and even began to miss out her daily routine of prayer. She even started drinking.

Many times, Khushwant Singh's marriage had almost reached breaking point, with his wife's close association with Mangat Rai. At the same time he admits his own attraction to Justice

Gopal Das Khosla's wife. He says, "He was taken by my wife; I with his", (p. 96). Kaval had many admirers and she was flattered by their praise of her beauty. Khushwant Singh was not angry. On the contrary, he also looked after others' wives. Such was their family life in

Lahore! He is straight forward in his autobiography and writes about his not much

satisfactory, rather thorny relationship with his wife.

Among Singh's guests, there were Indians as well as people from other countries, there

was promiscuous Amrita Shergil, the famous painter, his communist friends Danial Latifi,

Sripad Dange and Ajay Ghosh. During this time he developed a close friendship with Manzur

Quadir whom Khushwant Singh remembers most. He also practiced as a lawyer at Lyallpur

(now Faisalabad, Pakistan). Unlike Khushwant Singh, Manzur Quadir was a successful

lawyer and later went on to become the foreign minister and the chief justice of Pakistan.

Both loved literature. Their friendship became the 'talk of the town', as instances of such

close friendship between Sikhs and Muslims were rare.

Khushwant nostalgically remembers their vacations in the Shimla hills. There was a place called Mashobra, six miles from Shimla, where his parents owned a large house called

'Sundarban'. The small hill and the house were very beautiful. Khushwant loved walking so he would walk from Mashobra to the famous place 'Mall' in Shimla. Khushwant has

cherished memories of the summer vacations he spent in this beautiful house. Khushwant

Singh's description of the lovely scenery of Mashobra and around is worth reading. His

fluency of writing English makes one like his writing. The beautiful and mystique

atmosphere of the valley of Shimla portrayed in the short story "Memsahib of Mandla"

70 proves it: "the setting sun lit the house, the lawns, the flower beds, and the teak forest with its creepers in a haze of golden light. It was quiet and peaceful. The distant murmur of the stream in the valley emphasized the stillness of the evening".(Singh, 2009: 81)

The partition of India was on the threshold. Partition is that significant event which influenced Khushwant Singh greatly. Khushwant Singh was very much aware of the increasing distance between the Muslims and the Hindu / Sikhs. This poison had spread deeply and could be seen everywhere. He narrates a very dangerous incident he faced. He had to go to Abbotabad to appear as defense counsel in a murder case. After finishing the case, he decided to walk ten miles to catch the train. The road was absolutely deserted. A couple of miles short of Taxila a lorry full of Sikh soldiers stopped near him. They took him and dropped off at Taxila station. He got into the first-class compartment. He was the only passenger so he bolted from inside. He had heard some shouting before the train had stopped, but didn't understand. When he got off at Lahore, Manjur Quadir told Khuswant that the train by which he had travelled had been held up at the signal near Taxila station and all the Sikh passengers in it were dragged out and murdered. It was his experience, as well as his understanding of social and political unrest that made Khushwant to write Train to Pakistan which afterwards had won many awards.

The Singhs left Lahore for Delhi. In a way Khushwant also got freedom from the unwanted legal profession. He hated this occupation so much that he has quoted an Urdu poet

Akbar Ilahabadi:

Paida hua vakeel, to Iblees nay kaha: Allah nay mujhey Sahib-e-aulaad kar diyaa. (The day a lawyer was born, Satan exulted: 'Allah has blessed me with progency of my own son'.) (p. 90)

71 India became an independent country. Khushwant Singh was a witness of the first speech of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, and saw the Indian National Flag hoisted by Pandit

Nehru. However, the tragedy of partition just after the independence made him feel sorry and shattered. As a true nationalist he did not favor the partition of India and Pakistan. Regarding this tragedy he gives his bitter views in the novel Train to Pakistan. The tragedy of partition only caused the unbearable suffering and torture to the people of India and Pakistan. A huge mass of people migrated from one place to another in search of peace and love. In Train to

Pakistan (1956) Khushwant Singh tells the tragic tale of the most lethal incident in the history of India. The brutality, inhumanity and genocide and the events that followed are breath taking. During the partition of India thousands fled from both sides of the border seeking refuge and security. The natives were uprooted with a ghastly experience to give up their belongings, their identity and rush to a land where they were strangers. He attempts to depict the trauma of the victims of partition. He encounters the tragedy of the partition through his characters and records the irmer turmoil and social complexes that plagued the nation and explore the gruesome human disaster in the wake of partition. "The fact is, both sides killed. Both shot and stabbed and speared and clubbed. Both tortured. Both raped."

(Singh, Khushwant, 1956:3) Khushwant Singh brings out the unobserved, unnoticed and ignored voices through his characters from three religious communities: the Hindu, the Sikh and the Muslim. He doesn't blame anyone but emphasizes the agonizing tale of the people who got caught in the tempest of Partition.

There is vivid description of Mano Majra as a peaceful and harmonious place until the seeds of hatred and suspicion grew. Ram Lai, the village money lender is killed dramatically by a neighboring village's dacoit, Malli. Juggut Singh, a local badmaash who loves Nooran, the only daughter of a blind muUa of the village, is arrested as murder suspect by the police.

Khushwant Singh brings in the characters like Hukum Chand, the Deputy Commissioner and

72 the sub inspector in great detail to show how efforts were made to create tension between the

Sikhs and the Muslims. Mano Majra turns into a battlefield when the horrifying train with brutally mutilated corpses enters the village. The Muslim villagers in Mano Majra are forced by the government to leave everything to get across the border for safety. In the climax the brave Jugga saves the train full of Muslims including his pregnant girlfriend, Nooran, that is about to be derailed before reaching to safety across the border to Pakistan. In 1998 a movie based on this novel with same title was directed by Pamela Rooks and was nominated in

Cinequest Film Festival, 1999 in the best feature film category.

However, a distinguished critic M. K. Naik has a different view. In his book Dimensions of

Indian English Literature he says,

"If political material has been treated romantically and satirically, examples of how it

can be utilized for melodramatic purposes are also not wanting. Khushwant Singh's A

Train to Pakistan is a copy book example. The story here would fit any popular film.

Juggat Singh saves the train which carries his Muslim beloved Nooran and other

Muslim refugees across the border to Pakistan but loses his life in the process. Packed

with incidents of rapes and murder, loot and arson, spying and accident, this is a tale

told by an accomplished story-teller, but signifies nothing more than a gaudy

melodrama." (1985:126)

As Khushwant Singh had decided not to practice law, he had to do something for living. As an independent nation India had opened many embassies and they needed manpower. Khushwant Singh applied for a job in the Ministry of External Affairs and was appointed as information officer in the High Commission in London. Once again Khushwant

Singh was back in London.

73 A new chapter of his hfe had started as a diplomat. In this office he became a medium in the politics and issues of prestige among the great national leaders. Mr. Krishna Menon was the High Commissioner of India. Though some people were influenced by the intelligence of Krishna Menon, Khushwant opines that he had 'not detected any signs of genius in him.' (Singh, 2003:118). Menon was a person of Pandit Nehru. Sudhir Ghosh,

Khushwant's boss who considered himself superior to Menon, was a 'Patelite' i. e. a man from the group of Sardar Patel - the Deputy Prime Minister. He was not on good terms with

Mr. Menon. The relations between Nehru and Patel, were strained. Menon used Khushwant

Singh to get rid of Sudhir Ghosh. Consequently, Khushwant Singh got orders of his transfer to Canada. He heard the news that Gandhiji was assassinated in Delhi on 30 January, 1948.

Khushwant Singh felt the shock of the loss of the Mahatma very much. He went to the India

House to attend the condolence meeting.

The year in Canada proved to be another turning point in Khushwant Singh's career as a writer. He met many Canadian writers and poets. He began to write short stories. His stories were published in Canadian journals like Harper's The Canadian Forum and Saturday Night.

His genius flowered in Canada. His love for nature kindled once more in the beautiful nature of Canada. He travelled all over the country revealing the glory of nature. He says, 'Never have I seen a country as beautiful as Canada', (p. 130). This close communion with nature gave him a keen eye for detail when describing the natural surroundings in his stories and novels and gave a realistic and earthy flavour to his fiction. Whether it is the picturesque depiction of the Punjab countryside in "A Punjab Pastoral" or the mystique of the wooded hills in "The Memsahib of Mandla", Khushwant Singh's power of observation is clearly evident. Much later he also made a highly rated television serial, "The World of Nature" for

Doordarshan.

74 In Canada Khushwant Singh had to work under his wife's uncle H. S. Malik, an ICS and once served as Prime Minister of Patiala. The Maliks were very egoistic and considered

Khushwant Singh below their status as he was the son of a parvenu building contractor. The relations of Khushwant Singh and H. S. Malik were never become friendly. Before they became worst he got orders that he was transferred to England. Then why has he devoted a special chapter describing Malik and Menon? Perhaps his natural tendency to express what he thought was right made him write the chapter. His 'malice' is clearly evident here.

The second inning in India House, London provided Khushwant Singh with much material for his short stories. He narrates many incidents which show the Indian Officials, their relations with each other, their habits, their manners in a very interesting way. To keep an eye on others' wives or white women was a usual thing. He writes about all these incidents matter-of-factly. He saw that the feet of the so called great people were smeared with mud.

There were certain memorable moments. The climax of all such incidents was the visit of

Pandit Neharu. His first encounter with Nehru in London where, as public relations officer, he faced the embarrassment of seeing the British papers awash with photographs of Lady

Mountbatten receiving the Indian prime minister well past midnight dressed in a negligee, and numerous other incidents of less importance but equal enjoyment.

He narrates an incident which he turned into a story. It was about a Sardar, he saw in

Ottawa. He was a Bedi descendant of Guru Nanak. He was on business and would return in few days to his wife and children as he missed them too much. He insisted on wearing the typical Indian costumes to get the foreigners know Indian culture and style of living. After some months Khushwant Singh was in Toronto to meet the editors of local papers. After meeting Khushwant Singh returned to the hotel and was surprised when a pretty girl in 'page boys' uniform was there to operate a lift and greeted him with 'Sat Sri Akal'. When

Khushwant Singh inquired she told him about her friend - the same Punjabi Bedi - and told

75 Khushwant Singh how happily they spent a weekend. And this Mr. Bedi gave a speech on

Indian womanhood and also told many times how much he missed his wife and family!

Khushwant Singh met many such hypocrites in his stay abroad. He wrote a story on this incident.

The second posting in England led Khushwant Singh to take a concrete decision regarding his future career. He soon grew bored with the endless socializing that consisted of numerous lunches, cocktails and receptions. Keeping in tune with his literary aspirations

Singh made his home a virtual meeting place of journalists and writers. He had brought several cases of premium scotch with him from Canada. Scotch had become scarce in post­ war England. As a result, his parties were immensely popular. Eminent journalists like:

Kingsley Martin, Harold Evans, William Clarke, David Astor; writers like: C.P. Snow, Prof

C.E.M. Joad; and poets: Auden, Louis MacNeice, Dylan Thomas; all frequented his place. At this time his first collection of short stories. The Mark of Vishnu and Other Stories based mostly on his childhood experiences as well as his life in Lahore and Ottawa was published by the Saturn Press. It received good reviews everywhere. He had plans to translate some

Sikh scriptures, a short history of the Sikhs and a novel.

At this time his relations with the High Commissioner did not remain smooth as before.

Menon's rude behavior and attempts to humiliate him were unbearable. Dilip Bobb says, "He is unsparing about Krishna Menon, his boss at India House in London. His relationship with

Menon was prickly at best, but Khushwant's accounts expose Menon as an unscrupulous scoundrel, a congenital liar and a womanizer". (Dilip Bobb, Feb. 18, 2002). Like Malik, he is critical about Menon and tells how Menon had relations with his English Mistress Bridgette and the fresh looking Kamala Jaspal. He decided to leave the job. In 1951, he sent his family back to India, gave three months' notice of resignation and left his apartment.

76 He took a small basement flat at Highgate and started to work out his plan. He read a lot, and translated Guru Nanak's morning prayer Japji and published it. He soon realized that he would have to specialize in some subject in order to make a distinct name for himself in the literary world. He decided to take up the study of the Sikhs. He completed a Short History of the Sikhs. Being the first book on this subject after many decades, it was reviewed widely in the British press. It created restlessness in orthodox Sikhs in India.

Returning home jobless was difficult, he was called a 'nikhttoo'—a shirker who does not earn his own living. Writing could not be a full-fledged career that can provide a comfortable life. Like R. K. Narayan, Khushwant Singh also experienced this reality. He went to Bhopal and lived in the house of his father there and completed the novel he started in London. He sent it to Grove Press as an entry for the best work of fiction from India. He was shrewd enough to send it under the name of his friend I. M. Verma because he knew that one of the judges was Krishna Menon. The novel Mano Majra or Train to Pakistan (1956) won the first prize of a thousand dollars and a contract to have it published.

He began a distinguished career as a journalist with All India Radio in 1951.He became the in charge of the English overseas programme. Here he met eminent writers like Nirad C.

Chaudhari and Ruth Prawar Zabvala. After two years he got a chance to meet Dr. Luther

Evans, Director General of UNESCO. Khushwant interviewed him and Evans was impressed.

He offered Khushwant a job in UNESCO in the Department of Mass Communications.

Khushwant Singh was looking for a different job and he immediately grabbed this opportunity. He went to Paris. As a part of his work he had to visit Geneva, Denmark and

Sweden as an officer of UNESCO, where did nothing. According to him nobody was interested in UNESCO. In Geneva he spent his hours solving crossword puzzles in The

Times. And when the time came to answer some questions about UNESCO, he couldn't as he had neither heard, nor cared for the questions people asked about UNESCO. In short, he just

77 spent his days dilly-dallying, drinking and enjoying. If surveyed his days at UNESCO, it is seen that he had not done any serious work there. He got much free time and he used it only to enjoy life in his own way - drinking, wandering etc. His principle of life seems to be - 'we get life only once, so enjoy it in our own way'. It was during this time that the Grove Press

Award was announced to his novel Train to Pakistan as the best work of fiction in 1954. The amount of the award was so big that he bought an expensive car like Mercedes Benz.

He met many Indians in Paris and England and got the germs for his stories in them.

He gives example of a family of a man called Baldoon Dhingra, his wife Kamala and two daughters. He got a temporary job in the Mass Communications Department and his wife helped him by lecturing in different parts of Europe. The family had devised a plan to get their meals free of charge. Not only that, this Baldoon Dingra even was successful in making a grand reception of his daughter's wedding at the expenses of the office of Indian

Ambassador. Kamala had made Mr. Montessori, Madam Montessori's son, her dharambhai and told him that it was a custom for a mother's brother to provide gold bangles to the bridge.

The poor fellow had to give gold bangles to the girl! Khushwant Singh has written a short story on this family, "Mr. Kanjoos the Great Miracle".

Khushwant Singh remembers some incidents in UNESCO. One was the problem of rats. The rats came from the underground tunnels and destroyed the food stores of UNESCO.

Somebody gave suggestion to buy a few cats to control rats. It was done. Some weeks passed peacefully. But afterwards the cats made much more destruction than the rats. The cat- catchers were called. They caught more than eighty cats and took them in the remote area! In the next few days, one after another, the cats, left by the cat-catchers, found their way back to the office of UNESCO!! Khushwant's wit found an interesting short story in this incident.

He wrote a story called "Rats and Cats in the House of Culture".

78 Khushwant Singh had administered the project of translations of selected Sikh scriptures through the National Commission and UNESCO. Working on this, Khushwant

Singh understood the dirty politics among the people who were the authorities of religious institutes. With the help of an English poet called Gordon Frager he polished up the poor translation made by the so called authorities. The book was published by Ms. Allen and

Unwinin 1974.

By now he had got tired of the petty politics in the UNESCO. He had given the required three months' notice and spent his leave on working on his second novel. Again it was in a small village near Houndan, where he found a small pub and he stayed for some days to think and to write his second novel / Shall Not Hear the Nightingale. This time proved to be fruitful.

I Shall Not Hear the Nightingale (1959), Khuswant Singh's second novel, is the story of a relatively important Indian Sikh family reflecting the love, pride, passion, religion and culture of the country. It is set in the pre-war conditions in 1942-43, when India was about to get its freedom from the British government. It gives an improved perspective of history with the story of common civilians than the perspective of history as a chain of important events in chronological order. Kushwanth Singh develops its characters to provide meaningful insights into the life and thoughts of people of bygone years under uncommon circumstances.

/ Shall Not Hear the Nightingale is widely acclaimed as one of Khushwant Singh's finest novels ever. Buta Singh's character typifies those Indians awaiting the slightest nod of approval from the British Raj and would degrade themselves to be in their good looks. / Shall

Not Hear the Nightingale is a unique look at the relationship of the British masters with those

Indians like Buta Singh who were loyal to them. When that relationship unravels it brings in a heartbreaking devastation. Buta Singh, the District Magistrate, continues the distinguished

79

^%. line of his father and grandfather as a very obedient servant of the British Government.

Khushwant Singh places young Sher Singh as his protagonist and sets him against his own father, Buta Singh, a chip of the old block. Sher Singh opposes the British rule and wants to oust them from India. He forms a revolutionary attitude. The turning point of the story was when Sher Singh was caught by police in his revolutionary activities, and was faced with a dilemma to save him and his father's hard earned reputation, or to save his revolutionary friends. Sabhrai, mother of Sher Singh was a godly figure in the story, always involved in religious practice. She is the most powerful character in the story, for it was this Sabhrai, who brought the good ending to the story.

Khushwant Singh returned to Delhi, once again jobless, dependent on his father. His

wife was paying for the education of their children. Again he wanted some job. Tarlok Singh

of the Planning Commission suggested him to be the Editor of Yojana, a weekly publication,

both in English and Hindi, brought out by the Planning Commission. With Yojana, his career

as an editor and a journalist started. As per the demand of his work he visited almost all

important places in India within a month. However, Khushwant does not write about his travel through India, he writes only a small paragraph about it. One does not see a journalist anywhere. However, he was now interested in the work. He worked hard on his notes, wrote about everything he saw and made the first issue ready. But the reactions were not enthusiastic at all. On the contrary they hurt him. He describes, "'Yojana proved to be a non-

starter'. (Singh, 2003:194). He was unable to deal the rivalry between senior officials and government authorities.

Besides Yojana, he took other assignments also. One was from UNICEF to write a booklet on UNICEF's work in Afaganistan. The result of his three-week stay in that country was a book From Aryana to Afganistan. Another assignment was of the Government of India.

It was about the refugees flying from Pakistan - Millions of Hindus, Buddhists and Christians

80 -into West Bengal. He accepted this task and visited many refugee camps and talked to many people who had left their homes and lands. Just everybody, whom Khushwant Singh questioned on why he or she had left Pakistan, answered with one word, 'Bhoy' - fear. He wrote a booklet on his interviews and experiences: Not wanted in Pakistan (1965).

Khushwant had a life-time opportunity to write about the Sikh religion when he met a project scout of the Rockfeller Foundation in Delhi. He offered Khushwant Singh a fellowship for three years to write something more definitive and original on the Sikh religion. Khushwant Singh happily accepted it. The fellowship proved very important in the career of Khushwant Singh. Deliberately choosing the sponsorship from Aligarh Muslim

University he presented his project. He wanted to prove that the antagonism between the two religions was not true. He travelled countries like England, USA, Canada, Japan, Singapore and Burma. He gathered such material which was not used by anybody till the moment. He seriously and wholeheartedly worked on this project. To write the book he took help of

Yvonne Le Rougetel, an English woman who had been his secretary at UNESCO. He worked even after the three years given by the Rockfeller Foundation without getting extension.

With determination in mind Khushwant Singh completed the work of two volumes. This work gave him a sense of satisfaction. The two volumes of A History of the Sikhs were published by both the Oxford University Press and the Princeton University Press. During this period he also wrote a biography of Maharajah Ranjit Singh. He became a well-known writer and many of his short stories and articles appeared in English, American and Indian journals. He was even commissioned by the New York Times and the Observer (London) to write for them. He became a most wanted writer and journalist of the day.

The next phase in the life of Khushwant Singh started. He became the authority on the subject of the Sikh religion and was invited to deliver a series of lectures on Sikhism at

Oxford. The Princeton University invited him to teach Comparative Religion. He began to

81 teach Indian Religions and Contemporary Indian Politics at Swarthmore College. His stay at

Swarthmore laid the foundation for the pattern of life that Khushwant Singh followed in his later life. It was here that he developed his legendary respect for time.

His years at the Illustrated Weekly of India are the greatest influential time in his life.

He received name and fame; he became the most sought after journalist and editor in India.

He went to Bombay in 1969. His new routine contained an early hour before anyone came in the office. In this hour he finished his work of writing editorial, making captions, editing stories and articles and answering mail. Before he joined The Weekly, its circulation was only about 80000. It was thought to be the weekly for the elite class. Khushwant Singh tried to reach it to the common people. He took many bold decisions to make it readable. Vimla Patil, the contemporary editor of the Femina, remarks,

"After Independence, the 70s was the turning point of the Press in India. Before it,

people lived with their separate identity as Tamil, Gujrati, Kannad etc. They lived in

the cocoon of their respective society. They started to be integrated in a true sense after

Independence. Illustrated Weekly (with Femina and Dharmyug) was a great bonding

factor between people of different culture but belonging to same roots..."

(Patil, Vimla. 23'''Feb. 2014).

He made a series on different sub communities of India such as Lingayats, Jats, lyers, Chitpavans, Aiyengars, Vokklingas, Gujars, Memons, Khojas, Boharas etc. This proved very helpful not only to increase the sale of the Weekly but also to create the feeling of 'oneness' among Indians. He decided to take different themes for its issues. He even published photographs of nude people. He wrote articles on Raman Raghav, the serial killer,

Shakila Bano Bhopali, the Gazal singer. Consequently, it went on the top in its sales in the

TOI group. With the Weekly, the reputation of Khushwant Singh also reached to the height.

82 Because of his popularity he was praised as well as envied by many. He constantly wrote on the plight of Indian Muslims. He thought that they were discriminated. He even produced a special issue on the hundredth birth anniversary of Mr. Jinnah. Khushwant Singh was regarded as a friend by Mrs. Gandhi and her son Sanjay. The Weekly was the only weekly to be published in the Emergency. He admits, 'The Weekly brought me other rewards. My

Editor's Page came to be widely read: it prepared the way for my later career as a freelance columnist. It also opened many doors to me. I was sought after by Chief Ministers of States and members of Central Cabinet Mrs. Gandhi was more than willing to grant me interview whenever I sought them.'(Singh,2003:254).

Khushwant Singh was given two extensions. However, everything has an end, so it was to his editorship. But it came very badly. Because of political pressures of the day it was not possible. He accepted this and prepared his last article bidding a touching farewell to The

Weekly and everyone associated with it. It has been included in Not A Nice Man to Know:

The Best of Khushwant Singh. But he was shocked when a week before he was to leave, he was abruptly handed a letter asking him to quit immediately. This insulting way of firing hurt him till his death.

Khushwant Singh continued his writing of the third novel Delhi. Back to Delhi, he had many offers but he chose National Herald of Indira Gandhi without any pay but left it after three months. Then he became the editor of New Dehli, a magazine launched by Anand Bazar

Group of Publications. But it also proved to be a failure. However, Mrs. Gandhi was soon back in power, after the defeat of Morarji's cabinet in the elections. Mrs. Gandhi remembered him for his unconditional support through her bad times. He was offered the choice of becoming either the High Commissioner in London or a member of the Rajya Sabha as well as the editor of The Hindustan Times. He accepted the latter. From 1980 to 1986 he remained the MLA in the Rajya Sabha. His closeness to the Gandhis, especially Sanjay and Maneka

83 Gandhi, brought him a lot of criticism. He was awarded the Padam Bhushan in 1974. Ten years later in 1984, he returned the honor as protest to Government of India against the storming of Golden Temple by the Army. On June 8, a day after the incident, he drove to

Rashtrapati Bhavan and returned the decoration to the President of India, Giani Zail Singh, who himself was a Sikh. It was an act of courage. In the autobiography he talks about the bitter experience of Operation Blue Star in which the armed forces stormed the Golden

Temple of Amritsar on the occasion of the death anniversary of the Sikh Guru Arjun Singh.

Many innocent lives were lost during this operation and much damage was done to the holy place. He was asked as to why he did not resign from Rajya Sabha as well, he replied that he did not wish to let go of a platform from where he could voice the grievances of his community to the government and that's exactly what he did.

When the parliament session started he calls the whole unfortunate incident at the holy shrine in the following Urdu Verse.

Voh waqt bhee deykha taareekh kee gharion nay

Lamhon nay khataa kee thee, sadiyon nay sazaa payee. (Singh, 2003: 330) (The ages of history have recorded times when for an error made in a few seconds centuries had to pay the price.)

This action became the reason for his falling out with Nehru family. Due to his apparent disloyalty in the Parliament, his three-year contract with The Hindustan Times was not renewed. The proprietor, K.K. Birla, however, asked Singh to continue writing his weekly column "With Malice Towards One and All". This column was through the years picked up by over fifty papers. Khushwant Singh has based several of his essays and articles on this period of his life. He has written articles such as: "Khalistan", "My Years in

Parliament", "Giani Zail Singh" and "M. Hidayatullah" in his book. Sex, Scotch and

84 Scholarship. The desire to be different from the common people was rooted in Khuswant's

subconscious. It led him to make a distinct name in the world of literature as well as in his career as a diplomat and a journalist.

Khushwant Singh claims it took him almost twenty years to complete the novel Delhi.

It was published in 1990. He doesn't follow plain historical catalogue of Delhi, but adds his

wit, sarcasm, humor and also erotic description to the book. Delhi, the capital of India, was

completely destructed and then reconstructed number of times as it turned to be a city of

culture, calamity, conceit, capability, poets, saints and politicians. His protagonist is not any

handsome rich dude but a bawdy, old, reprobate Sikh journalist, in love-hate relationship with

a hermaphrodite, Bhagmati and the city. The narrator discovers the legends that lurk in

various streets, forts, abandoned palaces, towers, temples, embankments, mosques,

gurudwaras, memorials, burial grounds and coffee houses of the city.

The story spans from six to seven hundred years and ends with the assassination of

Indira Gandhi, leading to the massacre of Sikhs. The narrator loves his city for what it has

endured and the prevailing condition of the city. Delhi celebrates the city of its state, its

being, its glory, its mystique and its cosmopolitanism. The Muslim conquest of India had

profound impact on its social, cultural, religious, economic and political life. The invaders

coming to India had always tried to demonstrate their superiority by destroying places of

worship that belonged to a religion other than their own. This book has a tint of

autobiographical note and it moves backwards and forwards in time through the history of

Delhi. Kushwant Singh's love for Delhi is clearly evident in his narration and he renders a

painful tone when he describes how the city had suffered at the hands of people who lusted

for dominance over it. He brilliantly depicts pieces of stories that figure out rich history and

culture of Delhi including that of Nadir Shah, Taimur, Aurangzeb, Mir Taqi Mir and Bahadur

Shah Zafar. There are stories of the rulers and destroyers who looted and exploited Delhi. 85 There are some imaginary characters like Musaddi Lai Kayasth, a Hindu convert working under the hostile Ghiyas Ud din Balban. The war of 1857 is described by a Sikh Nihal Singh fighting for the British against the forces of Bahadur Shah Zafar to revenge the slaying of his

Guru by Aurangzeb. The book covers history of Mughals right from the dawn to the dusk of the Mughal Empire and ends with the terror of the Sikhs mercilessly burnt alive by people angered due to the assassination of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh guards. However, one question arises- Why didn't Khushwant Singh write about the Hindu kings and emperors before the

Mughals? As Delhi has been a significant place in the history of India, and that he loved the city, he should have described this part also.

Rohini Singh is right in her observation of Khushwant Singh. She says, "Khushwant

Singh is full of life. He believes in enjoying life to the fullest. He is not materialistic. He is a serious man but his casualness portrays his persona as not so serious. He is not a bore and people of all ages feel at home with him. A frank discussion about sex is not a taboo to him.

It is his openness which unfairly sticks a label of 'dirty old man' to him. In real life

Khushwant Singh is a thorough gentleman." (Singh, Rohini, extract from her book provided by Dr. Lakhinder Singh ji (Florida, USA) web).

According to Dilip Bobb, "The best part of Khushwant Singh's memoirs is his early life as a pampered son... Perhaps the best parts (of the autobiography) are the accounts of his early life as a son of a prominent, affluent father, may be because this is an aspect of his life that is least known." (Bobb, : 2002).

In October 1997, he was honoured with the 56th Mondellow award, a literary award given in Italy. He received it for Train to Pakistan which was translated into Italian. Singh appeared regularly on various television programmes that were broadcast by the numerous

86 channels. He had no false notions about his literary abilities. He said in a discussion forum on a television programme:

I must dispose of the question which people often ask me: 'What do you think of yourself as

a Writer?' 'Without appearing to wear the false cloak of humility, let me say quite honestly that I do not rate myself very highly.'

Khushwant Singh was a very bold and free writer. Once, when asked about his

girlfriends and his freeness to express sex in his writing, he freely told that it came to him

from his stay in foreign countries. He spent many years in England and more than half of his

life he visited many countries on different jobs or assignments. He experienced free life in

foreign countries. He says that there is a free atmosphere and very clear attitude towards sex.

His natural tendency to express everything including sex came from his stay in western

countries.

He was an ardent Sikh. This can be seen in his abundant writing on the Sikh religion.

Punjab and the Sikh religion had been his subjects of affection. But at the same time he was

never in favour of the Khalistan movement. He was a serious reader and had read a lot not

only about the Sikh religion but also on Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, the Muslim

religion and other religions.

Khushwant Singh was totally a self-made man. It's true that he came from a wealthy

family. He was brought up as a pampered son of a rich man. His life is an example that

wealth helps man only to some extent. There should be his inner urge to be somebody,

distinct from others, which made him find his path. It was his urge that made him what he became- a famous author, most sought-after columnist and journalist of India with an

international readership. He has been bestselling author of over 80 books and two weekly

columns syndicated in over 40 English publications. India Today described him "The

87 Capital's best known living monument," in the year 1999, when Sikhs celebrated 300th year of Khalsa at Anandpur sahib.

In October, 1995an extract of his autobiography. Truth, Love and a Little Malice, was published in India Today. This greatly upset Menaka Gandhi, the younger daughter-in-law of

Indira Gandhi and then Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment. She felt that portions of the book infringed upon her privacy. Consequently she filed a case seeking a stay upon the book. However the question of privacy does not arise because, Khushwant Singh has written

about the widely-publicized facts between Indira Gandhi and Menaka Gandhi. Ultimately,

Khushwant Singh won the case and the book was published.

His autobiography is intended to be his swan song. He wrote it at the age of eighty four.

But he lived for next fourteen years and continued his writing. He wrote novels such as

Death at My Doorstep (2005), and The Sunset Club{2Q\Q). He was a regular writer of his

columns and he also wrote an autobiographical book Khushwantnama (2014).

In his book Absolute Khushwant: The Low-Down on Life, Death and Most Things In-

Between, he wrote: "I believe in the Jain philosophy that death ought to be celebrated... In

fact, I'd written my own epitaph years ago:

Here lies one who spared neither man nor God Waste not your tears on him, he was a sod

Writing nasty things he regarded as great fun Thank the Lord he is dead, this son of a gun. {Absolute Khushwant, Penguin Books, 2011)

Although one of his books is titled Not A Nice Man to Know, whether nice or not,

Khushwant Singh is certainly an interesting man to know.

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