The Good The Bad and The Ridiculous: Khushwant Singh

Book Review of The Good, the Bad and the Ridiculous by Khushwant Singh

The Good, the Bad and the Ridiculous by Khushwant Singh is a memoir, mostly his opinions on the famous (or, infamous) persons he met in his life time. Each chapter of the book is devoted to a personality who was related in some way to the Indian subcontinent. The narrative is characterised by total absence of inhibition. He hid nothing, spared no one. Khushwant Singh criticised what was wrong and openly acknowledged what was admirable. Some confessions are shocking and almost sounded like gossip. Our system of learning deliberately hushes up these aspects of history so much so that we have almost superhuman images of our leaders. Our entire life we believe in these superhuman myths.

There are many portions of The Good, the Bad and the Ridiculous that one may find quite uncomplimentary. Nobody accused him of falsifying. The only complaint against this book was perhaps this: Singh didn’t respect the dead. But then Singh argues,

The truly good and the great are not diminished when their faults are exposed; on the contrary, they earn greater respect for rising to admirable heights despite their very human flaws.

The fact however remains that The Good The Bad and The Ridiculous is laden with personal opinions, though Singh harboured no favouritism against any particular individual, political party, race, or creed. Like I already mentioned, he spared absolutely no one.

Some of the names mentioned in this book may not sound much familiar to present day readers. I’d suggest they refer to Wikipedia to get the most out of this book. Ali Sardar Jafri, Begum Para, Chetan Anand, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Firaq Gorakhpuri, I S Johar, Indira Gandhi, Pt Nehru, Krishna Menon, Md. Ali Jinnah, VS Naipaul are the few of the 34 persons found mentions in Singh’s book.

Though liberal and left-leaning, Khushwant Singh was supportive of Congress party in general and Gandhi family in particular. He was fond of late Sanjay Gandhi and considered him a man of action therefore much needed to bring reform the sluggish political system of India. However that didn’t prevent Khushwant Singh from censoring Mr. Gandhi. He openly expressed his concern about the dictatorial streak in Sanjay Gandhi. He was critical of Indira Gandhi and regarded her to be particularly arrogant.

The only person on record who made derogatory references to Indira’s looks and intelligence was her aunt, Vijayalakshmi Pandit. Indira never forgave her (or her daughters) for slighting her and denied her senior diplomatic assignments. Indira Gandhi never forgave anyone who said anything against her.

In The Good The Bad and The Ridiculous, Singh also criticized the heavy handed approach Ms. Gandhi took at the time of Emergency, though he also believed that some of it was necessary. But he was critical of the censorship of press. During Emergency many people were jailed. Singh remarked,

There was, as I have said, a strong streak of vengefulness in Indira Gandhi. A lot of people who were jailed during the Emergency were victims of the spite of the Gandhis. Despite repeated requests and pleas for the release of such prisoners, Mrs. Gandhi refused to relent.

He expressed his opinion about Krishna Menon in what was probably the longest chapter in his book.

I had briefly met Krishna Menon in my college days and had not detected any signs of genius in him. He was a sour-tempered barrister without briefs and spent his energies building up his India League and paying court to Pandit Nehru whenever he was in England. His appointment as high commissioner was badly received in India and the Indian community in England; people considered it gross favoritism.

Khushwant Singh came to know many secrets about Krishna Menon while working under him.

Menon had an eye for good-looking women. He treated the husbands of good-looking women as friends. If he sensed tension between the couple, he became especially considerate towards them – he had great understanding for misunderstood wives.

Now here is one thing that I could relate to. I was working in a Nationalized Bank where there was no dearth of bosses like Krishna Menon.

He built up a reputation of being a workaholic. He kept long hours, which he wasted on trivialities such as checking the menus of the canteen and the consumption of petrol by the office cars. He forced me to sleep in the office on many nights. There was never enough work to justify imposing this discomfort on me. He knew that I was very keen on games and looked forward to Saturday afternoons when I played tennis or hockey. Without fail, he would ring me up before lunch on Saturdays and ask me to attend some meeting he was holding in the afternoon. He had a strong streak of sadism.

Khushwant Singh’s last conversation with Krishna Menon was on phone. This account was particularly juicy.

I was sharing a flat with Sheila Lall and we had a common telephone. Every night she would be out with one of her many lovers. The telephone would ring, but when I would pick up and say, ‘hello’ the line would go dead. I complained to Sheila. ‘That must be Krishna’, she told me. ‘He wants me to be his mistress – no strings attached.’ The next time the telephone rang, instead of saying the customary ‘hello’ I spat out with venom: ‘You bloody bastard, I know who you are! Stop ringing up at this hour or you will hear worse.’ There were no calls after that.

Khushwant Singh was awarded Padma Bhushan which he returned as a protest against Indira Gandhi’s Operation Blue Star. After Indira’s assassination by her own Sikh bodyguards, the whole country broke into riots. Several Congress leaders lead the riots against Sikhs which lead to Singh’s political disillusionment. He was against any kind of fundamentalism. Singh was a fierce supporter of democratic values which is why he sensed a potent threat in the rise of L. K. Advani.

The youth of today should be aware of the rise in communal politics and the dangers involved. If we love our country, we have to save it from communal forces and though the liberal class is shrinking, I do hope that the present generation totally rejects communal and fascist policies. I shun people who are at the forefront of this communalism, and this includes the likes of L. K. Advani.

Though agnostic himself, Khushwant Singh was against religious bigotry. While analyzing the incident of demolition of Babri Masjid, he raised some legitimate questions.

Advani should have left the political scene in a blaze of glory; but not many tears will be shed for him now. And for good reasons. Did he ever regret the role he played in the demolition of Babri Masjid? If he did, as he claims, why did he not tender an apology? Did he regret the anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat? If so, why did he protect Narendra Modi from being sacked, as prime minister Vajpayee evidently wanted? It was a symbiotic relationship between the two – Modi helped Advani win elections from Gandhinagar, Advani, in turn, exonerated him from the anti-Muslim pogrom charges of 2002. Is it possible that as home minister Advani did not know of Jaswant Singh’s mission to Kandahar to swap three jihadi militants for 150 odd Indians held hostage in hostile territory? There can’t be an iota of truth in his statement that he knew nothing about Jaswant’s mission till it was over. Advani once described Manmohan Singh as ‘nikamma’ – useless. It so happens that Manmohan is still very much in use, whereas Advani’s own erstwhile collegues have pronounced him of no use any longer.

The personality of L. K. Advani as described by Singh stands in stark contrast with that of Mohammed Ali Jinnah whom our great populace mistakenly believes to be instrumental in Partition. Here are a few lines taken from the excerpts of his speech.

..he urged Muslims not to look upon the Hindu majority as a bogey, saying: ‘This is a bogey which is put before you by your enemies to frighten you, to scare you away from the cooperation with the Hindus which is essential for the establishment for the self-engagement.’ 

The Good, The Bad and The Ridiculous: Profiles was his last book. After the book was released in October 2013 Khushwant Singh retired from his writing career. I recommend this book not only as alternative history but also for the unique literary style of Khushwant Singh that was a blend of journalism and fiction.

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Three Men on Motorcycles: The Amigos Ride To Ladakh

Book Review of Three Men on Motorcycles: The Amigos Ride to Ladakh by Ketan Joshi

Three Men on Motorcycles: The Amigos Ride to Ladakh by Ketan Joshi is about the adventure of three best friends who decide they should ride to Ladakh on their Royal Enfields. Ketan, in his lucid, witty and extremely humorous style, explores the historical and cultural richness of the places he visits during the ride. Three Men on Motorcycle: The Amigos Ride to Ladakh by Ketan Joshi is the funniest travelogue I've ever read. The other two travelogues that I read and found exceedingly humorous were Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad and J. K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat. The Innocents Abroad had some serious doses of History, that as an Indian I didn’t find much interest in. The same goes with the description and histories narrated in Jerome’s classic.

Unlike the two classics I just mentioned, Ketan Joshi’s Three Amigos Ride to Ladakh made me feel at home. There were pilgrims marring the scenic beauty, the indecisive and adamant officer at a border check post, tourists polluting mountain lakes, the lazy and incompetent goods clerk, and not to mention the police trying to find an excuse to extort money – all these make us Indians feel very much at home. Then comes the most important part: the destination is Ladakh.

I’ll tell you how I came across this book. I first borrowed it from Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited, read it and then decided I should have it in my collection. So I bought it – not the ebook of course – but the hardcover. There are a few books that you read a number of times in your lifetime. You had a terrible day in your office, you had a break up, you’ve shifted to a new town and missing your old buddies – all you need is a book that can make you love your life again. That book shouldn’t be an ebook. Hell, no!

The first thing you notice about Three Men on Motorcycles by Ketan Joshi, is its intimate style of narrating things. The whole thing is extremely informal. Though it certainly comes under the travel genre, this book is more about the kind of relationship you have with your best friends. You swear at each other, you insult and make fun of each other, you are downright mean to each other, but despite it all, you can’t live without each other. Three Amigos are just like that. They drink rum together, smoke weed together, but most importantly, they ride their Royal Enfields together. If you have even one friend like them, you should consider yourself extremely rich.

Alright! Now there is a fourth person, Bharathi, who though physically not present with the amigos, keeps guiding them through cellphones, emails and sometimes when there’s no network, through her minions. “UTHO REY. UTHO REY.” They say. That drives them into ‘perpetual motion’ besides driving them crazy. I must mention something here though. The idea of Bharathi taking possession of humans and animals and controlling them remotely, her getting inside Ketan’s mind and making suggestions therefrom – they were doubtlessly funny. But I also found them interfering into and sometimes obstructing the smooth flow of the story. The idea was good when it started, then it was used again and again. By the time I reached the end of this book, it became so dull that I actually started to skip anything written in all-caps because they were supposed to be related directly or indirectly to Bharathi.

There is hardly anything that’s still or static in this book. It’s like a motion picture. It’s like The Motorcycle Diaries, only less philosophical. But that is because the three friends are in ‘perpetual motion’. There is history, there are descriptions, but they are brief and humorous. Even reading the history will make you smile. There is hardly a paragraph in this book that you read without laughing out loud. The literary style is lean. There is nothing that is unnecessary. If there’s anything that isn’t related to Three Amigos, then probably it’s never mentioned in this book. I read a lot of contemporary literature. The verbosity scares me. Not even once in this book had Ketan Joshi overridden the law of brevity. Comparing this book with The Adventures of Dipy Singh Private Detective by Ketan Joshi, will give you some idea about the giant leap he has taken in quality of his compositions. 

Do present Three Men on Motorcycles: The Amigos Ride to Ladakh to your son on his 18^th birthday.

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Book Review: An Indian Spy in Pakistan

Book Review of An Indian Spy in Pakistan by Mohanlal Bhaskar (Trans: Jai Ratan)

An Indian Spy in Pakistan is the true account of an Indian spy, Mohanlal Bhaskar, who was betrayed by one of his own agents and was arrested by the I. S. I. He was tortured for years before being released through a prisoner exchange program between India and Pakistan. Skip the preface and read the first chapter of An Indian Spy in Pakistan by Mohanlal Bhaskar and you’d think it’s a thriller. Well, it’s not. It’s a true story of an Indian Operative on a mission to find out about the Atomic Energy Commission of Pakistan. The book not only leads you through the risky and hapless life of a spy but also provides an accurate insider's view of Pakistan as a country.

In Indian Spy in Pakistan, Mohanlal Bhaskar writes in vivid details of the sorry state of Pakistan under the clutches of Martial Law.

Near Adamkhel Pass and in the vicinity of Kair beyond Peshawar, they deal in the currencies of all countries. It is a straightforward business at rates varying from 25 to 50 percent. Pay with one hand and receive double the amount with the other. The forged notes look so genuine that even banks accept them without raising an eyebrow. One can get all currencies there – the Indian rupee, the American Dollar, the Russian rouble. You ask for it and they have it.

On the soil of Pakistan, Mohanlal Bhaskar was betrayed by one of his own agents, Amrik Singh. He was instrumental in the arrest of Mohanlal and some other Indian spies along with him. The interrogation followed. The rest of the pages are filled with description of that interrogation process that will send a chill to one’s spines. Sometimes he was hung upside down and beaten with rod. Some other time they will lay him on a slab of ice. There was no limit to the sadistic methods one was subjected to.

But there are good souls too. There are wardens, high officials of Pakistani Army who was kind to Mohanlal.  Chaudhir Nisar of Naulakha Police Station knew Mohanlal’s father from the days before Partition. Chaudhri Sahab treated him with great affection and took care of him while he was in his station.

I wished I could bring the Hindu fanatics to show them that even among the Muslims there are pious souls whom they do not know and do not hesitate even to regard them as their worst enemies. Such souls are even nobler than angels. Nobody knows how long these walls of hatred will stand between the Hindus and the Muslims. It is the doing of the Pandits and Mullahs who disgorge their venom through vicious propaganda. The leaders of RSS and the Muslim League inflame our passions in order to hold on to their seat of power.

He was kept in Naulakha Police Station for about a fortnight. Then he was transferred to Lakhpat Jail at Lahore on the order of the magistrate. While he was leaving Naulakha Police Station Chaudhuri Nisar went to him and said, “May Allah be with you my boy. Don’t lose heart. Allah will set everything right.” Then he fondled Mohanlal’s head. The incident was quite touching.

There was also a mention of Raja Gul-Anar Khan who was the first to give Mohanlal the news of his wife giving birth to his son.

On 1^st March, 1969 Raja Saheb came to me early in the morning “Congratulations, Bhaskar!” he said. “You have become the father of a son.”“Janab, who has given you this information?”“Our own man, who had been to Ferozpur. He brought me information. Don’t you believe it?”“Janab, there’s no question of not believing you. But your poor enemy has no means of regaling you on this occasion. I’ve no sweets to offer.”“But I’ve brought the sweets. Here, have them. You must celebrate the birth of my nephew.”I was deeply moved; it brought tears to my eyes.

He patted me on my back. “Be brave. Don’t cry. He may prove lucky for you. You may go back home.”Although he was trying to console me I saw tears in his own eyes. He left abruptly.  I am not capable of describing my condition at that time.

Though theoretically no class difference is acknowledged in Islam, there are several religious factions in Pakistan and their relationship is often fraught with tension. Clashes between Shias and Sunnis during Muharram are not uncommon. Sometimes things go out of control and army has to be called. Sunnis express their disapproval by throwing stones at the Muharram procession and immediately knives, lathis and guns come out. Mirzai Musalmans are held with contempt by both Shia and Sunnis. In 1968 government was forced to proclaim that no Mirzai would be given a government job, nor would be entitled to exercise his franchise. The condition of Deendar Muslims is worse. They are the sweepers and water-carriers. Their children are forced to follow their traditional vocation. Then there are Syyed Muslims against whom any protest is regarded as a rebellion against the Holy Prophet himself.

Creating beforethem the illusion of an imaginary Heaven they loot these illiterate people with both hands, making their lives worse than hell.

In An Indian Spy in Pakistan, Mohanlal Bhaskar also reveals the truth about Kashmir conflict and how other countries are taking advantage of this conflict to fulfil their own selfish needs.

They told us that the Azad Kashmir government had established secret cells in all important towns of India with the help of CIA. Every year the Azad Kashmir government spent millions of rupees to create political unrest in Kashmir, inciting people against the Indian forces stationed in Kashmir. Through Pakistani pockets they smuggled into Kashmir such material as firesarms, explosives, spying cameras, watchlike radio transmitters and propaganda material, including cassettes, calling Indians blood-suckers of the Kashmiris. These cassettes were sent from Pakistan along with tape-recorders. Some of these cassettes were in Urdu and others in Kashmiri. These tape-recorders were distributed free among Kashmiris.

For two and a half years Mohanlal Bhaskar was tortured in various Pakistani prisons. He never changed his statement for once. There was no incriminating evidence found against him. Before Court Martial he wanted to contest his own case. He proved that testimonies given by all the witnesses can’t be depended upon. Despite the lack of evidence against him, the court sentenced him a 14 years. However, before completion of his sentence they decided to free him and some other Indian prisoners through a prisoner exchange program.

After returning to India another shock awaited him.

I sought an interview with the then Prime Miister, Shri Morarji Desai and I met him accompanied by my elder son, Jhalkeshwar Bhaskar. I pleaded with Morarji Desai that the India Government should adequately compensate the Indian nationals who had rotted in Pakistani jails and had sacrificed their lives for their motherland.

And this was his reply:

Why should we suffer for your mistakes commited in Pakistan? Do you mean to say that if Pakistan government had kept you in jail for twenty years then our government should have compensated you for the same number of years?

As he had already taken a job as a school teacher by then, he was in no dire need of money. But the insult he received from Morarji Desai roused this man. It was also due to the fact that he had personally known Mr. Desai who had written him scores of letters prior to 1967. On his return, Mohanlal Bhaskar burnt all those letters.

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