Notes from Sujan Singh Park

Khushwant Singh on death,and a life well lived

You cant beat the Grand Old Man of Sujan Singh Park when it comes to candour. Best known by Mario Mirandas sketch of him inside an electric bulb with a bottle of whisky close at hand,Khushwant Singhs latest,Absolute Khushwant,is not his autobiography that came earlier.

Its a collection of memories,very coherent ones,ideas and reflections on things that contemporary India would find interesting and informative. Written with the help of writer/journalist Humra Quraishi,it has chapters where Singh strips down to the most vulnerable in his discussion of human relationships: the state of his marriage with Kaval,his wife of 62 years,his attachment to his ancestral home in Pakistan,the inevitability of death and the need to prepare for it (He speaks of his request to the Bahai management to be buried in a corner by a peepal tree. As the corner did not work out,an electric crematorium it will be,he informs us).

But this is not just a requiem by an old man. Singh writes of politics,too,his meetings with Jawaharlal Nehru in London (when he decided to be rude at a press conference,would not reply to any questions but just stared at the ceiling); his encounters with General Zia-ul-Haq a week after Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was hanged; not to mention his feelings for Indira Gandhi,an admiration for aspects of her politics,but deep resentment for her actions in Punjab.

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He also recounts finding refuge at the Swedish ambassadors home for the three days that Delhi burned after Indira Gandhis assassination. That the then Sikh president of India,Zail Singh,did not come on the telephone but sent a message that he should seek shelter with a non-Sikh family,deeply impacted Singh (and led him to return the Padma Bhushan after 1984). It also coloured his perception of Rajiv Gandhi whom he calls a boy scout,as opposed to his brother Sanjay.

The book is vintage Khushwant as he talks the reader through a life well lived,from being known to many as a dirty old man down to now being obsessed with hitting out against narrow-minded intolerance,something he reasons,tore India apart at Partition. His mission now is to denounce religious fundamentalism of all kinds,Sikh,Muslim and Hindu a task he equates to the business of selling mirrors in the city of the blind.