Burial at Sea

Khushwant Singh

Description

In this, his fifth novel, one of India s most widely read authors returns to territories he knows best: twentieth-century Indian history, bogus religion and sexuality. After Nehru, Victor Jai Bhagwan is Mahatma Gandhi s favourite Indian a brilliant young man with the temperament of a leader and fiercely committed to his country. Though Victor adores and respects Gandhi, he disagrees with the Mahatma s vision for the future of India. He returns from university in England determined to bring the benefits of modern industry to the subcontinent, and within a few years of India s independence, becomes the country s biggest tycoon. But this is not the only ideal of Gandhi s that he defies: facing a midlife crisis, he falls passionately in love with a tantric god-woman (who keeps a tiger as her pet and has a dubious past). She introduces him to the pleasures of unbridled sexuality, but also becomes the reason for his downfall. Comic, tender and erotic by turns, Burial at Sea is vintage Khushwant Singh.

Informations

• Publié par: Penguin Books Ltd
• Date de parution: 01 septembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9788184750485
• Langue: English

Extrait

‘[KHUSHWANT SINGH] IS A LITERARY VERSION OF OSHORAJNEESH... [THE] RUMBUSTIOUS, RABELAISIAN BLACK SHEEP OF THE FLOCK’— THE TIMES OF INDIA
In this, his fifth novel, one of India’s most widely read authorsreturns to territories he knows best: twentieth-century Indianhistory, bogus religion and sexuality.
After Nehru, Victor Jai Bhagwan is Mahatma Gandhi’s favouriteIndian—a brilliant young man with the temperament of a leaderand fiercely committed to his country. Though Victor adoresand respects Gandhi, he disagrees with the Mahatma’s visionfor the future of India. He returns from university in Englanddetermined to bring the benefits of modern industry to thesubcontinent, and within a few years of India’s independence, becomes the country’s biggest tycoon. But this is not the onlyideal of Gandhi’s that he defies: facing a midlife crisis, he fallspassionately in love with a tantric god-woman (who keeps atiger as her pet and has a dubious past). She introduces himto the pleasures of unbridles sexuality, but also becomes thereason for his downfall.
Comic, tender and erotic by turns, Burial at Sea is vintageKhushwant Singh.
Cover photograph: ‘An Idea of Three’ by Laurent Goldstein
Cover design by Bhavi Mehta


PENGUIN BOOKS BURIAL AT SEA
 
 
 
Khushwant Singh is India’s best-known writer and columnist. He has been founder-editor of Yojna , and editor of the Illustrated Weekly of India , the National Herald and the Hindustan Times . He is also the author of several books, which include the novels Train to Pakistan , I Shall Not Hear the Nightingale, Delhi and The Company of Women ; the classic two-volume A History of the Sikhs ; and a number of translations and non-fiction books on Sikh religion and culture, Delhi, nature and current affairs. His autobiography, Truth, Love and a Little Malice , was published 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 by the Indian Army.






Burial at Sea

 
 
KHUSHWANT SINGH




PENGUIN BOOKS Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi 110 017, India Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Group (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published in Viking by Penguin Books India 2004
Published in Penguin Books 2005
This edition published by Penguin Books India 2010
Copyright © Khushwant Singh 2004
All rights reserved

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to any actual person, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
ISBN 978-01-4341-514-5
This Digital Edition published 2011. e-ISBN: 978-81-8475-048-5
Digital conversion prepared by DK Digital Media, India.
This e-book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser and without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above-mentioned publisher of this e-book.


 
 
 
 
 
To Poonam Khaira and Karan Sidhu
for the gift of friendship
 
 
 
 
 


Contents
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Acknowledgements


1

For two days and nights his embalmed body lay in the Darbar Hall of the Governor’s palatial residence overlooking the Arabian Sea. Raj Bhavan had been thrown open to the citizens so they could pay homage to the man who perhaps had done more for their country than anyone else in living memory. Though few people knew him personally, he had become a legend; the line of homage-payers bearing wreaths and flowers stretched over a mile beyond the entrance gate. Protocol had been set aside. The police merely ensured that the mourners kept moving past the bier on which he lay with a triumphant, even defiant, look on his dead face. Those who lingered, hoping to get a glimpse of his daughter and heir to his vast fortune, were disappointed. Only his ageing sisters could be seen in the hall, receiving important visitors.
In his will, published in the papers the day after he died, he had bequeathed all his property to his only child Bharati and also instructed her to have him buried at sea, close to the spot where his yacht Jal Bharati was usually anchored between the Gateway of India and Elephanta Island. He had spent half his life on his yacht from where he got a splendid view of Bombay’s skyline without having to put up with the city’s noise and foul odours, and that was where he wanted to end his final journey. He had also specifically mentioned that no religious rites were to be performed at his funeral.
Bharati was the boss of the show. She told the Governor to arrange for the gun carriage bearing her father’s body to leave Raj Bhavan at 10 a.m. sharp. It would go along Marine Drive, making a ten-minute halt at Jai Bhagwan Towers, the thirty-storeyed building named after her father that was the general office of his many enterprises, so that the staff could bid their last farewell to their employer. It would then proceed towards the Gateway of India where Jal Bharati was anchored. Only five cars were to follow the cortege. Bharati would be alone in the first one; her aunts, their husbands and children in the next two; the fourth was for her guru and yoga teacher Swami Dhananjay Maharaj; and the last car, an open van, would carry her late father’s confidante Ma Durgeshwari, a tantric god-woman, and her pet tiger Sheroo. Only Bharati, her yoga teacher, Ma Durgeshwari and Sheroo would be allowed on board the yacht.
At exactly 10 a.m. a cannon was fired from Raj Bhavan. Its boom echoed over the city. Flocks of pigeons took to their wings and wheeled around above the buildings before settling back on their perches. Thousands of crows rose in the air cawing angrily. Then silence returned. Faint notes of a military band playing the Funeral March led the procession to the bottom of Walkeshwar Hill at Chowpatty. Crowds lined both sides of Marine Drive. People stood on their balconies showering rose petals on the bier as it passed below them; women sobbed and shed silent tears for a man most of them had never seen but whose presence they had felt around them all their lives.
After the scheduled stop at Jai Bhagwan Towers, the cortege proceeded to the Gateway of India. There was a huge crowd packing the open space and the roads leading to it. Bharati stepped out of her car. She was draped in a white sari and wore dark glasses to hide her swollen eyes. The open coffin was taken off the gun carriage; six soldiers bore it on their shoulders and slowly marched through the massive gate to the yacht. Jai Bhagwan’s sisters and their families bowed to the coffin and turned back like obedient orderlies. Swami Dhananjay Maharaj, tall and statuesque, clad in a white muslin lungi and a length of similar cloth wrapped round his torso, walked on beside Bharati. As did Ma Durgeshwari, in a tiger-skin skirt and a saffron silk kurta, leading Sheroo on a silver chain. As they disappeared from view the crowd broke into loud slogans: Jai Bhagwan zindabad! Jai Bhagwan amar rahen! (Jai Bhagwan be praised! May he be immortal!)
The small party boarded the yacht. It pulled away slowly from its mooring and headed for the open sea, grey-green under an overcast sky.
~
What transpired at the spot where Jai Bhagwan’s body was lowered into the sea is known only to Bharati, Swamiji, Ma Durgeshwari, and possibly Sheroo. People made conjectures: if Jai Bhagwan did not want any religious ritual at his funeral, what were Swamiji and the tantric woman doing there? They had heard Swamiji on their radio sets describe yoga asanas and quote shlokas from ancient Sanskrit texts. They weren’t sure what he was all about. How close was he to Jai Bhagwan and Bharati? The presence of Ma Durgeshwari, leading a live tiger, was even more puzzling. Rumour had it that though Jai Bhagwan was an agnostic he had fallen to the dark charms of the tantric woman. But what could a rustic god-woman and a sophisticated tycoon have in common? The questions and conjectures grew with ever