Skip to main content

Goodbye, Khushwant Singh


To be able to live a whole century and relish that life to the fullest is a rare blessing.  Khushwant Singh (2 Feb 1915 – 20 March 2014) is one of those blessed souls.  It would be preposterous to wish his soul eternal rest since he had no such beliefs.  Agnostic Khushwant: There is no God! is the title of one of his many books.

He was a prolific writer.  A popular writer, I should say.  I don’t consider him a great writer although he could have been one, as evidenced by his novel, A Train to Pakistan. He was also a very knowledgeable person as revealed by some of his books on Sikhism particularly.  But he chose to write for the masses.  Probably, his acute awareness of the absurdity of human existence prompted him to do that.

What appeals to me about Khushwant Singh is his sheer forthrightness.  With malice towards one and all, as the title of one of his newspaper columns proclaimed tongue-in-cheek.  It was not malice at all, however; it was plain honesty, utter lack of hypocrisy.  He had no pretensions.  He spoke out what he believed was the truth.  He refused to put on masks. 

In some ways he was like the gargoyles erected on old, grand buildings.  The gargoyles saved the building from the ravaging effects of rainwater.  Khushwant Singh grinned or even snarled at us like the gargoyles.  But we knew there was the typically humorous, fun-loving Sardarji smiling away behind those grins and snarls.  We also knew that the Sardarji had much more to offer than his quirky grins and risqué jokes.


“Not forever does the bulbul sing
In balmy shades of bowers,
Not forever lasts the spring
Nor ever blossom the flowers.
Not forever reigneth joy,
Sets the sun on days of bliss,
Friendships not forever last,
They know not life, who know not this.”  [A Train to Pakistan]
Labels:

Comments

  1. Amrit YegnanarayanMarch 20, 2014 at 10:12 PM

    Such a fine eulogy

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownMarch 20, 2014 at 11:10 PM

    He is and always be a real gem.

    ReplyDelete
  3. PriyaMarch 20, 2014 at 11:14 PM

    A Train to Pakistan remains one of the most haunting books I've read.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMarch 21, 2014 at 9:39 AM

      The Partition-generated violence remains one of the most painful events in our history...

      Delete
  4. UnknownMarch 21, 2014 at 12:03 AM

    Well ! if anything perfectly explains his work its the word "Paradoxical " - "He spoke out what he believed was the truth." I am not sure... he lived in interesting times and was interesting being ... RIP

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMarch 21, 2014 at 9:41 AM

      Well, Sachin, for Khushwant Singh a beautiful woman's smiling face would have been a greater truth than facts like water is a compound of hydrogen and oxygen.

      Delete
  5. AmitAagMarch 21, 2014 at 11:05 AM

    A great tribute!
    The news really shocked me, as incidentally I'm midway through his autobiography these days:(

    ReplyDelete
  6. VetirmagalMarch 21, 2014 at 12:43 PM

    Wish there were many like him, who would speak their mind and let the reader decide. We are not that lucky!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMarch 21, 2014 at 12:56 PM

      No, indeed, Pattu... Most people want to ram their truths down our throats.

      Delete
  7. RachnaMarch 21, 2014 at 2:17 PM

    I have read a couple of his books and some of his columns. Loved that he lived life on his own terms. A fitting obituary.

    ReplyDelete
  8. UnknownMarch 21, 2014 at 3:46 PM

    He'll always be missed in fonts He wrote

    ReplyDelete
  9. provoqdMarch 21, 2014 at 5:20 PM

    Hi there,

    Indeed, you have summed it up quite nicely here. His honesty was what distinguished him from his peers. Maybe he did it consciously to demarcate his differentiation.
    Great post, keep it coming. And yes, RIP Khushwant Singh.

    Regards
    Jay
    My Blog

    ReplyDelete
  10. UnknownMarch 21, 2014 at 7:23 PM

    Well written Tribute to a legend.
    Noone can replace him for sure. Thanks for the post Sir.

    ReplyDelete
  11. AnonymousMarch 21, 2014 at 7:31 PM

    very well written
    RIP khushwant singh.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Rajeev MoothedathMarch 22, 2014 at 10:22 AM

    A well rounded account of the great man who did not fear to express his true feelings & expose his earthy self.Thanks for posting

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
18 comments
Read more

Unromantic Men

Romance is a tenderness of the heart. That is disappearing even from the movies. Tenderness of heart is not a virtue anymore; it is a weakness. Who is an ideal man in today’s world? Shakespeare’s Romeo and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Devdas would be considered as fools in today’s world in which the wealthiest individuals appear on elite lists, ‘strong’ leaders are hailed as nationalist heroes, and success is equated with anything other than traditional virtues. The protagonist of Colleen McCullough’s 1977 novel, The Thorn Birds [which sold more than 33 million copies], is torn between his idealism and his natural weaknesses as a human being. Ralph de Bricassart is a young Catholic priest who is sent on a kind of punishment-appointment to a remote rural area of Australia where the Cleary family arrives from New Zealand in 1921 to take care of the enormous estate of Mary Carson who is Paddy Cleary’s own sister. Meggy Cleary is the only daughter of Paddy and Fiona who have eight so...
39 comments
Read more

Dine in Eden

If you want to have a typical nonvegetarian Malayali lunch or dinner in a serene village in Kerala, here is the Garden of Eden all set for you at Ramapuram [literally ‘Abode of Rama’] in central Kerala. The place has a temple each for Rama and his three brothers: Lakshmana, Bharata, and Shatrughna. It is believed that Rama meditated in this place during his exile and also that his brothers joined him for a while. Right in the heart of the small town is a Catholic church which is an imposing structure that makes an eloquent assertion of religious identity. Quite close to all these religious places is the Garden of Eden, Eden Thoppu in Malayalam, a toddy shop with a difference. Toddy is palm wine, a mild alcoholic drink collected from palm trees. In my childhood, toddy was really natural; i.e., collected from palm trees including coconut trees which are ubiquitous in Kerala. My next-door neighbours, two brothers who lived in the same house, were toddy-tappers. Toddy was a health...
10 comments
Read more

Goodbye, Little Ones

They were born under my care, tiny throbs of life, eyes still shut to the world. They grew up under my constant care. I changed their bed and the sheets regularly making sure they were always warm and comfortable. When one of them didn’t open her eyes after a fortnight of her birth, I rang up my cousin who is a vet and got the appropriate prescription that gave her the light of day in just two days. I watched each one of them stumble through their first steps. Today they were adopted. I personally took them to their new home, a tiny house of a family that belongs to the class that India calls BPL [Below Poverty Line]. I didn’t know them at all until I stopped my car a little away from their small house, at the nearest spot my car could possibly reach. They lived in another village altogether, some 15 km from mine. Sometimes 15 km can make a world of difference. A man who looked as old as me had come to my house in the late afternoon. “I’d like to adopt your kittens,” he said. He...
6 comments
Read more