Sex,Scotch and Scholarship

by Khushwant Singh

  ‘Not at all!’ replied the Sikh. ‘Khalistan will protect your north-western frontier from Muslim invaders.’

  ‘How?’ demanded the Hindu.

  ‘By providing a duffer state.’

  A Traveller’s Diary

  I am a muftkhora - a free liver. I have been round the globe dozens of times and visited almost every country in the world but rarely, if ever, paid for my travel or hospitality. But with the years I have also become an aaramkhor -luxury loving. And that is not always available to me. Every time I set out of my home for the Indira Gandhi International Airport, I ask myself: ‘Is this journey necessary?’ I resolve never to accept a foreign invitation again. At my age, I share Samuel Johnson’s sentiment: Worth seeing? Yes, but not going to see.’

  Australia: Lone Land of Magnificent Distances

  On the afternoon of 24 March 1977, Morarji Desai was sworn in as prime minister of India. The next day I am on my way out of the country. My friends say: ‘You are running away because Mrs Gandhi and Sanjay are out and Morarji bhai will put you in jail.’

  I am sorry that Indira is out. But I am also glad that it is Morarji who is in and nobody else. Although I don’t like his self-righteous sermonizing, I know he is a good, honest and able man. And I don’t care if he rams neera down other people’s throats, I hope he won’t ram it down mine. If I want to drink lattha and kill myself, I will drink lattha and kill myself. However, I am on my way to Australia.

  The first thing Danny Lewis asks me as we are airborne is: ‘Would you like a drink?’ Morarji bhai is of the opinion that journalists can’t afford to buy drinks and when they get them free they do not tell the truth about those who give it to them. It is true Air-India is offering me the drink free, but it is not true that I cannot tell the truth about Air-India. It is much the best of the world’s air services that I have flown. Their staff is the most courteous and their food delectable. And they murder the English language as any patriotic Indian would like to murder the language of a race that ruled us for two hundred years. At one time linguicide was performed by our pretty air hostesses; now it is performed with greater efficiency by the captains of our air fleet in the few seconds they use the internal communication system.

  I spend the first hour listening to music over the plane’s stereo system. I switch on to Zubin Mehta conducting Bach and Beethoven. But I am already nostalgic about the country I am said to be fleeing and switch on to Hindi film songs. How many can tell whether ‘Raina beeti jaaye’ and ‘Jaaiyey aap kahan jayenge’ is sung by Lata or Asha? I can. And how many have heard Vani Jairam sing the soul-uplifting ‘Bol re papihara'? I have heard it a hundred times and a hundred times has my soul been uplifted. And how many can tell the voices of Kishore Kumar, Mohammed Rafi, Mahendra Kapoor and Yesudas from the voice of P. Sushila? I can. I am 100 per cent lowbrow Hindustani. Mukesh keeps reassuring me that though my shoes are Japani and my jacket Englistani, my head is wrapped in a Finlays turban and my heart is very, very Hindustani.

  Five hours after my flight from my native land, we descend on a very brightly lit Singapore. I find myself in the transit lounge with rows of duty-free shops run by Indians and Chinese. Indians steal the show in more ways than one. They put out all their stock of toys: tail-wagging, yapping puppy dogs; chimps bashing away cymbals; miniature aeroplanes with blinking lights going in circles. It is the Indians, not the Chinese, who solicit custom. They do it in Tamil, Arabic, English and ungrammatical Hindi: ‘Kya mangta?’ I buy a bottle of eau-de-cologne from one store and go into the next. ‘How much you pay for that?’ asks the shopman. I tell him. ‘I give you five dollars cheaper.’ I am dismayed. Bargaining for standard products at an airport shop! I discover only the Indians do it - not the Chinese. Fellow Indians, if you happen to be in the transit lounge of Singapore airport, avoid your countrymen like the plague. The Chinese are more honest.

  I reboard the Emperor Akbar. Four and a half hours later I wake up in Perth. Two Australians fumigate the plane with insecticide. One can never be sure of disease-carrying Orientals, can one? Once sterilized, the Australians are not bothered with what else you are carrying. I step out into a pitch-black, wind-blown darkness where the heavens are studded with stars I have never seen in the Northern Hemisphere. I spot the Southern Cross, the emblem of Australia.

  From the twenty-second floor of my hotel window I get a view of Perth. The grey light of the dawn unfolds neon-lit, wide, empty avenues, and colonial bungalows amidst handsome skyscrapers, expanses of lawns and beyond them the blank nothingness of the Swan River.

  Perth has a population of some seven lakh souls. Of these, about three thousand are Indians or Pakistanis, mostly in the civil services or in professions such as teaching or medicine. There are said to be over thirty thousand Anglo-Indians in the region who have completely obliterated the Oriental part of their heritage and become ‘dinum’ Aussies (good Australians).

  I spend the morning window-shopping with Krishen Malik of Air-India. All the major stores, arcades, etc., are located within a radius of a quarter mile. The rest of Perth is just pavements without pedestrians and wide roads with too many cars. The vegetation is familiar - hibiscus, palm, banyan, cacti - but every one of them bigger and healthier than in India. In the governor’s residence there is a hibiscus tree over fifty feet high and in the park alongside, a massive yucca tree with more than a dozen candelabra-like clusters of flowers at different points. The birds, except for the common mynah, are alien to me. Parakeets are a peacock blue, bright and slate-grey crows wear white waistcoats. Other birds I cannot recognize at all.

  I return footsore to the hotel lobby and espy a figure in a sari. It is Raj Sahni (nee Chawla), once a journalist, now a businesswoman. She exports garments and handicrafts to Australia.

  Hand-stitched clothing, textiles (mainly from Bombay Dyeing) and steel are all that the Australians buy from us in exchange for the massive quantities of wool and wheat we buy from them. A country with a population of thirteen million sells us food and winter clothing. Disgraceful!

  By Saturday afternoon, the little evidence of life there is in the streets is gone. Perth looks like a wilderness of cement and glass and long stretches of asphalt roads lined with eucalyptus swaying to the breeze. Perth is the third windiest city of the world. I turn in to watch television. There are only two channels, both very clear and colourful, both devoted to sport - soccer, rugger, motor-racing. Physical fitness is an obsession with the Australians. They have a high incidence of skin cancer caused by exposure of their bare bodies to the sun.

  In the evening, Shaikh Maqbool Ahmed, an Amritsar-born Pakistani, now an Australian citizen, comes along with his wife and sister-in-law. As a young man he acted as Mr Jinnah’s personal bodyguard. He was soured with the dictatorship of Ayub and Yahya and decided to emigrate. He’s done well for himself. A lovely bungalow at City Beach, three cars, a Pakistani servant, a son studying in Hong Kong, two daughters in school and a collection of rare Persian manuscripts including a copy of the Ain-i-Akbari. More valuable than all those, a heart of gold which knows no distinction between Pakistani and Indian, Muslim, Hindu or Sikh.

  I leave for my dinner date with local journalists. It is in a motel known for its gourmet food. I run into a wedding reception. Most of the guests are in high spirits. The newly married couple are on view kissing and pawing each other. They can hardly wait to get into bed. Their friends tell them how to go about it in the bawdiest language. We get down to the dinner. As usual, I count up the cost of the meal and compare it to what the same fare would cost in India. My order of oysters (much smaller than ours), dhufish - a local favourite which tastes like a poor relative of our pomfret - and apple Strudel comes to eighteen dollars. Australian wine adds another twelve dollars to the bill making it thirty dollars per head. This is Australia’s middle-class fare.

  Next morning, Krishen Malik drives me over to City Beach to Shaikh Maqbool’s villa for breakfast. The atmosphere is very Indo-Pakistani. The men eat, the begamat cook and s
erve. And there is the dulcet voice of Farida Khanum singing ‘Jab se hue hum kalam, Allah Allah!’

  We drive back through King’s Park overlooking Perth and the Swan River. It is a magnificent sight of blue water and green hills. There is also a massive trunk of a 334-year-old eucalyptus, 230 feet high. I didn’t know eucalyptus could grow to such dimensions and live so long. Australia has over 300 varieties of eucalypti - they call them gum trees.

  Farewell to Perth and on to Melbourne. Two airway companies operate the route, one owned by the state, the other by a private company. I take Ansette, the private line. Healthy effects of competition are apparent. Buttons of carnations for the lady passengers; continuous service of tea, coffee, cookies, beer and spirits - a massive five-course lunch with wines thrown in free of charge. Every single seat in the aircraft is occupied.

  Australia is a big country. It takes a jet five hours to traverse it from one end to the other. We take off from Perth at noon and land at Melbourne three and a half hours later. The sun has beaten us by another two hours and it is 5.30 p.m. The sky is overcast and squally. ‘We need the rain,’ Les Zellner of Air-India informs me. ‘Look how dry it has become,’ he adds, waving to a stretch of dried grass. Zellner is a Romanian who opted for Australia twenty years ago and has never looked back. And of Australia’s cities, Melbourne, the second largest after Sydney, remains his favourite. But he resents its sudden growth (three million), its changing landscape of skyscrapers and the evils that beset large cities - dope, prostitution, young thugs (Larrikins) and bad manners. It is not surprising that he has booked me in the old-fashioned Hotel Windsor rather than the flashy Southern Cross. My room faces the stately multi-columned House of Legislature and a two-spired cathedral.

  An hour after my arrival, there is a reception hosted by the very colourful Captain Peter Jansen. He looks a somewhat smaller version of our Kabir Bedi. Although he shows no great interest in women, he is a fast man, being one of Australia’s ace car-racers. That afternoon he was racing in Sydney. He took a helicopter to fly back to Melbourne for the party. His apartment sprawls over the entire roof of the hotel. Every room is cluttered with paintings, prints and photographs taken by him. He has a wine loft and fourteen beds in odd corners at different elevations. He has a twenty-year-old blonde lass and an eighteen-year-old youth as his girl-boy Friday. He makes a short speech of welcome (in a very British la-di-da accent), presents me with an autographed picture of himself with Fateh Singh Gaekwad of Baroda and retires to his study to enjoy his Scotch in peace.

  The guests are largely Indian. Melbourne has nearly a hundred Indian doctors and some students in its three universities. The ‘foreigners’ include Mellhuish who was once Australian consul-general in Bombay. Among the many guests are the Sklowskys whom I had befriended forty years ago on a skiing holiday in the French Alps. Geisha was Polish Jewish; Celia (nee Weigall) as Nordic as any Aryan maiden after Hitler’s heart. They fell in love, married and settled in Melbourne. They have aged gracefully. He sports a rabbinic beard; she has greyed as handsomely as Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit. We step out of the party to talk about our children and grandchildren.

  I turn in to catch up with some reading on Australia.

  Australia has been aptly described by one of its leading writers, Henry Lawson, as ‘... the lone land of magnificent distances and bright heat; the land of reliance and never give-in, and help your mate.’ And so it is: vast stretches of desert growing grisly, stunted bushes and shadeless eucalypti where only lizards survive; it has some oases round waterholes where thirsty kangaroos, wallaby s and Galah parrots come to quench their thirst. Here the miserable Indian pyedog has run wild and as a Dingo, hunts in packs like wolves; camels let loose by Baluchi camel drivers who came to lay railroad tracks have also run wild; and so have their buffaloes which have acquired the size and ferocity of bison. No wonder even human beings have become bigger, stronger and suspicious of their neighbours. The fierce competition of the earlier days has left its scars. An unfriendly Aussie can be meaner than anyone else - so mean, goes a saying, that ‘he would not let even his dog drink from a mirage’.

  In a country which puts a premium on ruggedness, the man who robs, kills and gives away is the paradigm of virtue. The great hero of the Australian bush is Ned Kelly, a cattle thief who was a kind of Robin Hood and William Tell rolled into one. He murdered three policemen and was hanged in 1880. He proved to be somewhat of a prophet. When the judge, Sir Redmund Burry, passed the sentence of death on him, Kelly responded, ‘When I go to the great beyond, I will see you there.’ Kelly was hanged on 12 November; Sir Redmund died eleven days later.

  Australians set great store by physical prowess. Next to the heartless thug, they admire the record-breaker in the world of sport. In the 1840s there was a baker, William King, who walked 192 miles nonstop in 48 hours. Hence the adoration of fast bowlers who make double hat tricks or the Bradmans who hit multiple centuries.

  It is an Aussie illusion that, despite adulation of men of violence and physical endurance, he is ease-loving, lazy, phlegmatic and difficult to provoke. ‘The Lord made Australia at His leisure, and the cornstalk is the chosen people.’ The cornstalk is a slow-to-move day-dreamer. But once roused he can be terrible.

  Much has been written about the Australian’s language. There is now a dictionary devoted to its new vocabulary.

  Tis the everyday Australian

  Has a language of his own,

  Has a language or a slanguage

  Which can simply stand alone,

  And a ‘dickin pitch to kid us’

  Is a synonym for ‘life’,

  And to ‘nark it’ means to stop it,

  And to ‘nit it’ means to fly!

  And a bosom friend’s a ‘cobber’

  And a horse a ‘prad’ or ‘moke’,

  While a casual acquaintance

  Is a ‘joker’ or a ‘bloke',

  And his ladylove’s his ‘donah’,

  Or his ‘clinh’ or his ‘tart’,

  Or his ‘little bit o’ muslin’,

  As it used to be his ‘bait’.

  Most Australian place names reflect the nostalgia of the early emigrants for the mother country, England. Just about every English town, street and square is represented: King’s Cross, Hyde Park, Picadilly, Leicester Square, Brighton, Camberwell - you name it, Australia has it. There are a few which encapsulate experiences of the early comers: near Sydney there are Pinchgut (where convicts were hanged) and Ultimo from the use of the word in a document; Dripping Valley from food given to convicts or when the ration was only onions ‘Fossicks Dinner’. Some are highly original, for example, Katamite does not derive from the pansy who plays the female role in a homosexual act but from a drunk who was forever asking his wife: ‘Kate, am I tight?’ Miepoll comes from a magistrate whose takia kalam was ‘my poll says’. Advale from Mrs Ada Stevens who lost her veil crossing a creek, Tinaroo from the discovery of a tin mine ‘Tia hurroo’. Then there are Jackeroo and Jilleroo, Australian counterparts of a cowboy and cowlass. The more attractively mouth-filling are aboriginal names, some listed in verse:

  I like the native names, as Parramata,

  And Illawarra, and Wooloomooloo,

  Nandowara, Woogarora, Bulkamatta,

  Tomah, Toongabbie, Mittagong, Meroo;

  Buckobble, Cumleroy and Coolangatta,

  The Warrangumby, Bargo, Burradoo;

  Cookbundoon, Carrabaiga, Wingecarribee.

  The Wollondilly, Yurumbon, Bungarribee.

  The most famous of Australian vocabulary are the pejoratives used for the Englishman. At one time the old settlers were ‘currency’, the new arrival ‘sovereign’. How the sovereign became a ‘pome’ is not known. One theory says it is an acronym of Prisoners of Mother England. Nor do we know why the word bastard came to be attached to it. But last time the English cricket team played a test match against Australia in Sydney, many Aussie lasses expressed their contempt in bikinis - across their bras was printed POME and on
their brief backsides BASTARD - and at times right across the T-shirt: F...YOU!

  It is the 28th day of March and though the beginning of autumn in the Southern Hemisphere, the weather is very much like spring in England - cool, cloudy, squally. I have a breakfast date with the Sklowskys. I take a cab to Camberwell.

  In Australia, you sit with the driver and discuss world affairs. I give him a ‘silver’ rupee as a tip. We breakfast on bacon and eggs. Geisha drives off to his office. Celia shows me her recent paintings. I hope she will present me with one: she gives me photographs. (That’s what being married to a Jew does to you!) However, she drives me to Alexandra Park, a botanical garden with a rich collection of cacti, oak, cedar and auricana (monkey puzzle).

  I pack up and join Zellner and Bhupinder Singh for lunch at a very ye olde restaurant in downtown Melbourne. Fortified with lobster and white wine, I face a gruelling cross-examination over my support for Sanjay Gandhi from Chakrapani of Australian Broadcasting. I sound even more enthusiastic about whatever Sanjay did than ever before.

  So to my last assignment in the city. I face a packed hall at the Indian Studies Centre of Melbourne University now eight years old under the stewardship of a somewhat asthmatic Dr S.N. Ray (Indian Studies in Australian universities are dominated by Bengalis) and a very gentle Dr Desao. The questions are all about the Congress debacle, Indira Gandhi and Sanjay. The encounter is followed by a sherry party in the very British academic tradition. Among the guests is the lovely Mrs Bruce Grant whose husband was the Australian high commissioner in India till the fall of Premier Whitlam. The Grants were close friends of Mrs Gandhi. She rewards my loyalty to the Gandhis by an unexpected but wholly welcome hug and two kisses on my beard. What a wonderful finish to my sojourn in Melbourne!