Not A Nice Man To Know

Khushwant Singh

Description

The essential Khushwant Singh collection. In an essay in this anthology, Khushwant Singh claims that he is not a nice man to know. Whatever the truth of that assertion, there is little question about his skill as a witty, eloquent and entertaining writer. This book collects the best of over three decades of the author s prose including his finest journalistic pieces, short stories, translations, jokes, plays as well as excerpts from his non-fiction books and novels. Taken together, the pieces in this selection (some of which have never been published before) show just why Khushwant Singh is the country s most widely read columnist and one of its most celebrated authors.

Informations

• Publié par: Penguin Books Ltd
• Date de parution: 14 octobre 2000
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9789351182788
• Langue: English

Extrait

Khushwant Singh
Not a Nice Man to Know
The Best of Khushwant Singh
Edited and with an Introduction by Nandini Mehta Foreword by Vikram Seth
PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents
About the Author
Dedication
Foreword
Introduction
Columns
Seeing Oneself
Why I Am an Indian
Farewell to the Illustrated Weekly
The Haunted Simla Road
Me and My Filthy Lucre
On Old Age
Happy Families
Prepare for Death While Alive
Profiles
Amrita Shergil
R.K. Narayan
R.K. Laxman
Manzur Qadir
Prabha Dutt
Mother Teresa, Apostle of the Unwanted
Phoolan Devi, Queen of Dacoits
Nirad C. Chaudhuri, Scholar Extraordinary
My Days with Krishna Menon
Shraddha Mata: The Making of a Holy Mother
Articles, Essays and Non-Fiction Book Excerpts
Doomsday in Yogiland
Holy Men and Holy Cows
Going Gaga over Yoga
Why I Supported the Emergency
The Hanging of Bhutto
The Sikh Homeland (From A History of the Sikhs )
The Monsoon in Indian Literature and Folklore
April in Delhi (From Nature Watch)
Worship of the Ganga
Village in the Desert
Simba
Kasauli: My Mini Baikunth
The Romance of New Delhi
On Happiness
On Great Talkers
Billo
Translations
Shikwa
Bara Mah
The Exchange of Lunatics
The Death of Shaikh Burhanuddin
Fiction
A Bride for the Sahib
The Portrait of a Lady
Posthumous
The Mulberry Tree
Train to Pakistan
I Shall Not Hear The Nightingale
Delhi
Lodhi Gardens (From The Sunset Club )
Play
Tyger Tyger Burning Bright
Jokes
What s So Funny?
Heard this One?
No Offence Meant!
Hindlish
Paki-Bashing
With Due Disrespect
Punchline
Acknowledgements
Copyright
About the Author
Khushwant Singh is India s best-known writer and columnist. He has been founder-editor of Yojana, and editor of the Illustrated Weekly of India , the National Herald and the Hindustan Times. He is the author of classics such as Train to Pakistan, I Shall Not Hear the Nightingale, Delhi, The Company of Women. His latest novel, The Sunset Club , written when he was ninety-five, was published by Penguin Books in 2010. His non-fiction includes the classic two-volume A History of the Sikhs , a number of translations and works on Sikh religion and culture, Delhi, nature, current affairs and Urdu poetry. His autobiography, Truth, Love and a Little Malice , was published by Penguin Books in 2002.
Khushwant Singh was a member of Parliament from 1980 to 1986. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1974, but returned the decoration in 1984 in protest against the storming of the Golden Temple in Amritsar by the Indian Army. In 2007, he was awarded the Padma Vibhushan.
Among the other awards he has received are the Punjab Ratan, the Sulabh International award for the most honest Indian of the year, and honorary doctorates from several universities.
To Sadia Dehlvi Who gave me more affection and notoriety than I deserved
Foreword
For Khushwant: An Acrostic Sonnet
King of the columnists and prince of hosts, Hero of cats (twenty at least) who feed Under your aegis, trencherman of toasts- Scotch, naturally, not French-God knows we need Humour and courage, tolerance and wit When hope is scarce and murder s blessed by prayer, And every bully, oaf, and hypocrite Nurtures his flock on hatred and hot air. Threats to your life have not made you less bold. Sexcess can t spoil you. May you scatter your words inimitably on for decades more- No less amused and generous than your old Grandmother, standing by the courtyard door, Halting her prayers to feed and chide the birds.
Vikram Seth
Introduction
I first met Khushwant Singh as a college friend of his daughter Mala nearly fifty years ago. Khushwant Singh had already published the first volume of his scholarly and much-acclaimed History of the Sikhs , but nevertheless his public image was that of an irreverent iconoclast, and his second novel, I Shall Not Hear the Nightingale , had, according to the university grapevine, some damn sexy passages, yaar (Mala extracted a promise from all her friends not to read Nightingale , otherwise she would be mortified each time we met her father. I kept my word, and read the novel for the first time only when selecting material for the first edition of this book, in 1992).
But to get back to that first meeting and that first impression almost fifty years ago . . . Khushwant Singh was engrossed in a book and looked none too pleased at being disturbed when we walked in. He quizzed us sharply on our Ancient Indian history syllabus, quickly plumbed the depth of our ignorance on the subject of Asokan edicts and, with a dismissive shrug, went back to his reading. My first impression was that of a bookish and rather strict paterfamilias, with little time to waste on small talk-definitely not a hearty Sardarji.
The next time I met him was as a junior member of his editorial staff at New Delhi magazine. Khushwant Singh had installed a special black glass partition between his office and the hall in which we worked and through this, he informed us triumphantly, he could see what we were up to, though we couldn t see him! A constant stream of visitors went in and out of his room every morning-comely ladies with literary aspirations, elderly men pushing a worthy cause or an obscure book for review; politicians and godmen; starlets and film makers; and every foreign writer or journalist who visited Delhi. Loud guffaws issued forth, and tantalizing whispers of gossip, while we strained our ears to overhear. Here then was Khushwant Singh as the Sardarji-in-the-Bulb, raconteur par excellence of ribald jokes and malicious gossip.
And then there was Khushwant Singh as Boss-kindly, avuncular, incredibly generous in the help and encouragement he gave younger journalists, and cheerfully taking the rap for all our mistakes. He also had, as we soon discovered, an enormous appetite for work-and no patience with shirkers.
But which is the real Khushwant Singh? The inspired translator of Guru Nanak s hymns or the irreverent chronicler of human foibles and vanities? The erudite historian who has written some of the most enduring books on the Sikhs and Punjab, or the best-selling author of full-blooded novels and short stories (many of them with damn sexy passages)? The sensitive, observant nature-watcher and animal-lover, or the intrepid reporter on the trail of saints and sinners? The reflective introvert or the exuberant extrovert?
As this collection bears out, he is, of course, all of these; but through all his different avatars run several common threads-his total lack of humbug, hypocrisy and prudishness (the sexy passages are, I am sure, part of his long-running crusade to rid Indians of their prudery and inhibitions); the vivid, lively style which makes him compulsively readable on any subject; and above all, the hugely infectious zest for life, for living and learning, that infuses all his work.
One of the aims of this anthology is to introduce the Complete Khushwant Singh to his readers, many of whom, alas, know him only through his weekly Malice column. For though it is the most widely-read column in India, and guaranteed to give a hefty boost to the circulation of any journal that carries it, it simply does not do justice to the range and depth of Khushwant Singh s talents and interests.
A typical Malice column would contain an entertaining vignette from Khushwant Singh s latest freebie junket abroad ( In the last thirty-five years I have not spent a single naya paisa of my own either towards travel or hospitality, he confesses gleefully); a provocative comment on something in the news that week; a pithy book review; an indulgent plug for some young woman s artistic or literary endeavours; an obituary (perhaps speaking ill of the dead); an Urdu couplet and a Punjabi joke. But as I discovered when working with Khushwant Singh at the Hindustan Times, this weekly offering is like a tray of hors-d oeuvres that he dishes up quickly and easily, even as he labours long and hard over a rich and substantial main course-it could be a long personality profile, an essay on religion or literature, or a new novel.
So while pieces from the Malice column have, of course, been included (among them a couple of obituaries to die for), the greater part of this book consists of selections from other genres. One of them is a lively play, Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright which lay buried and unpublished among piles of old manuscripts at Khushwant Singh s home, until he suddenly remembered it and dug it out when I was selecting material for the first edition of Not a Nice Man to Know. Inexplicably, it has never been performed, though there are plans for its stage debut to mark his ninety-sixth birthday in August 2011. The fiction selection also includes four short stories and excerpts from four novels -Train to Pakistan, widely accepted as one of the great novels on Partition; I Shall Not Hear the Nightingale; Delhi, and his most recent one, The Sunset Club. All of them bear eloquent testimony to Khushwant Singh s mastery of the art of story-telling-his narrative skill; his unerring ear for dialogue; his ability to create authentic, memorable characters; and his powerful evocation of time, mood and place. They also reveal a writer of depth.
Then, there are excerpts from his translations. Khushwant Singh professes to being an agnostic but his interest in religion has given rise to some fine translations, notably of Iqbal s Shikwa and Guru Nanak s Bara Mah which, retaining all the poetry and passion of the originals, for the first time bring these works to life in the English language.
The selections from Khushwant Singh s longer articles and essays for journals and newspapers cover a wide range of subjects-from the hanging of Bhutto (he was the only Indian journalist in Pakistan on that fateful day), to a profile of Mother Teresa, written under somewhat bizarre circumstances. Some time in the eighties, when Mother Teresa lay critically ill in a