I have piles of letters to answer before the day dawns. So wish you joy in 2000.
Love
Khushwant
***
11.1.2000
Dear Khushwant Singhji
In the early days, when the furore over my infidelity was at its acme, my mother had prophesied that ‘such women turn to god later in life’ as if I was some sort of a modern Amrapali or Protima Bedi. I might heed her advice later on in life but meanwhile I wish she would allow me to eat my ‘nau sau chuhe’ in peace.
I have read Protima Bedi’s autobiography and I do not think that she was full of the joy of living. She was a rebel who spent a lifetime trying to prove a point. Her defiance was an attention-seeking device. As for being a nymphomaniac – it is not insatiable sexual hunger; it is because she is unable to attain sexual satisfaction that she flits from man to man. Such women are to be pitied not envied. Health is defined as a state of physical, mental and social well-being and not merely an absence of disease. Perhaps Protima Bedi’s anti-establishment stance was a manifestation of social maladjustment.
Penguin has finally returned my manuscript. I am trying to take the rejection in my stride. Neither have I sunk to the depths of the ‘I am no good’ phase nor have I derided the publisher for not knowing better than to reject a potential bestseller. Now what?
Love
Amrinder
***
14 Jan. 2000
Dear Amrinder
I am sorry Penguin said no. It may have nothing to do with the merits of your book; they have too many books accepted in the pipeline and often turn down later arrivals because they have no hope publishing them in the next two years. I suggest you try HarperCollins – somewhere in Daryaganj – telephone nos ****185 and ****165. The boss is Renuka Chatterjee, who was once with us (Penguin). Take the dedication to me off (for the time being) and do not mention that you just tried Penguin. If they also say no – then work on the novel again. Fifteen days solely devoted to revising and rewriting should do it. Never give up.
I would have written a longer letter but my mind and my home are in turmoil. Last Sunday my wife slipped and fell in the bathroom. Two fractures were detected in the spinal cord. She is in pain. Past 84. In depression and showing symptoms of Alzheimer’s. She requests not to have a nurse or an ayah. So it is my daughter who bears the load – and her daughter. I drown myself in reading, writing and Scotch.
Love
Khushwant
***
21.1.2000
Dear Khushwant Singhji
I have already tried Renuka Chatterjee. She told me not to send the manuscripts as they were heavily booked for fiction for the next couple of years. This then is the plight of the unknown writer. Never mind, I will come up from underwater sooner or later with the buoyancy of a cork and try again elsewhere.
My son has returned from America for a brief holiday – with his head shorn. My father-in-law somehow holds me responsible for it. The old man created quite a furore; forgetting his years, even let go of his walker to beat his breast!
I am sorry to learn about your wife’s fall. I know everything turns topsy-turvy when you have an invalid at home. Thank heavens her fractures have not led to permanent disability. I have a permanent invalid at home, which is yet another reason why I can’t disappear with my manuscript for a fortnight – much as I would like to. My mother-in-law is above 90 and a full-fledged case of Alzheimer’s. She is bedridden with a broken hipbone and is totally incontinent. Thanks to her my Keralite nurses have learnt the choicest Punjabi swear words. She makes patterns with her own shit on the wall (a new art form?) or throws it on whoever ventures near. I have my hands full and thankfully little time to brood.
Love
Amrinder
***
26 Jan. 2000
Dear Amrinder
Strange behaviour – the publishers’. Renuka Chatterjee is coming to see me on Thursday, 27th – I’ll ask her. She was with us (Penguin) a couple of years ago. She is a competent, likable woman – a divorcee (Christian). Her father was with me in college and again in England.
Having a son cut off his hair can be quite traumatic in a Sikh home. Despite being an agnostic I was quite upset when my son did the same. I said nothing to him. Nor about his living with a Parsee girlfriend who has been with him for 20 years.
Keep in touch. We are both busy people but a letter once a month will not be a bad idea.
Love
Khushwant
16
7.2.2000
Dear Khushwant Singhji
You were right after all. I am a sentimental fool who lays her heart down for anyone to trample upon – and hurt unbearably when they do so. The latest to join the list of tramplers is my elder son. He had come on a three weeks’ holiday from America but hardly had any time for me. All I got out of his visit was this wretched poem that I suffer you to read.
HE CAME …
He came to my part of the world,
He came to my home and hearth,
He came to his old familiar room
But he did not come to me.
He ate at Indian restaurants
The Indian meals he missed.
I waited with his favourite foods
But, he did not eat with me.
He breezed in and out of doors,
He breezed all over town,
But all that I got of him
Was a whiff of aftershave.
I heard him talk on the phone,
I heard him sing in the bath,
I heard him click the computer keys
But I hardly heard him speak.
I saw him in things strewn about.
In scattered shoes and clothes.
I saw him in the gifts he got
But I hardly got to see him.
He is a promiscuous brat, a prize stud, very much in demand. With the AIDS scenario fearfully out of control, I fear for his life. He has everything going for him – youth, looks, intelligence and a future to look forward to. I hope and pray that his dissipation does not catch up with him like with Dorian Gray, the famous Oscar Wilde character. I seemed to have reduced you to a priest at a Catholic confessional. Kindly bear with me.
Love
Amrinder
***
13.2.2000
Dear Amrinder
It is a beautiful poem. It should have been addressed to an errant lover, not an errant son. Don’t worry too much about him. We all have our private hells, which no one can share. So never wallow in your misery. Self-pity is the worst form of indulgence. Stick a rosebud in your hair and smile at the next man who catches your fancy.
I am a little tired. Otherwise I would have written a longer letter.
Love
Khushwant
***
28.2.2000
Dear Khushwant Singhji
If only I did not have this intolerable hunger for fame, I’d be happy chewing the cud of my mediocrity with the rest of the herd. But it flutters like a wounded bird in my breast that knows no peace, gives no peace.
I feel that I am a mighty peepal who had the misfortune to germinate in the crevice of a cement wall. If only someone would transplant me into rich, nourishing soil so that my full capabilities are realized. Could you be that kindly baghbaan?
Love
Amrinder
Included in the letter was a poem about my tormented soul that hungered for recognition. When I got no reply, I began to worry that I might exasperate Khushwant Singh by my constant badgering and hurriedly sent him another epistle:
9.3.2000
Dear Khushwant Singhji
I have put you off once again with my grovelling – perhaps that is why you haven’t replied to my letter. Thankfully, you have not asked my uncle to get me off your back this time. I am sorry for troubling you.
On one hand I talk big of being a mighty peepal and on the other hand I cling to you like a spineless creeper. Please don’t mind me. If my boo
k has to see the light of the day it will – with you, despite you. Please do not stop communicating with me on this account. You do not know what your letters mean to me. As of now, I even find it in me to write a satire on my present situation.
Consign your manuscripts to the flames,
Your ideas to the morgue,
I advise ye writers to stop writing
Till publishers, finish with the backlog.
Don’t knock at doors that never open,
Don’t bleed your knuckles white.
You are but a nobody – yet,
At the mercy of their might.
Publishers have their mouths full
With more than they can chew,
They only gorge on familiar foods,
Afraid, to experiment with dishes new.
Perhaps our work is uninspiring,
For, we have yet to make a name,
But why do they lack originality
Why do,
All rejections sound the same?
Bottle your genius in a capsule,
Bury it deep beneath the earth,
‘Reincarnate’ as a publisher and
Publish it in your next birth!
Love
Amrinder
***
15.3.2000
Dear Amrinder
Don’t be silly. I never don’t answer a letter and I do not betray confidences. By all means cling to me; make it warmer. I may use your piece on rejections in my column for HT or the Tribune. Both are picked up by over a dozen papers.
What you don’t realize while wallowing in self-pity is that with your other pre-occupations (love and delivering babies) you do not pay full attention to your writing. Your prose could be a lot better – your letters make better reading than your novel.
Love
Khushwant
***
24.3.2000
Dear Khushwant Singhji
I was mulling over the bit you wrote on Urdu poets in your column. You wondered whether the ‘bahar’ they waxed eloquent upon meant Spring or Autumn – describing the blooming of flowers alongside the fall of leaves. Well, the two do occur simultaneously in our country. A jamun tree in our front yard carpets the ground with leaves in March even as new leaves of a tender green replace the old so that the branches are never bare. Indian trees, like Indian women, cover themselves with a fresh set of clothes even as they remove the old. You will understand what I mean if you have observed a labourer wash herself at the tube well – unravelling the wet sari even as she wraps a dry one around her without showing an inch of flesh not meant to be seen. Foreign trees, quite like foreign ladies, drop their clothes unabashedly, exposing their beauty to anyone willing to look.
I will be delighted to have my poem published in your column.
Love
Amrinder
17
My manuscript hung like an albatross around my neck. I knew that a good salesman could market even a bad product, but I did not know how to promote myself. I had heard of literary agents who got manuscripts published for a commission. I selected a few randomly from a website and sent them the necessary details. My ‘quaint Indianness’ impressed them not and I hit rock bottom.
What if I died before the manuscript got published? I must remember to mention in my will that it be used to light my funeral pyre. It was only right that it went up in flames with me. Why did I invest so much emotion in a mere book? Was I going out of my mind? It was all very well for Khushwant Singh to say that self-pity is the worst form of self-indulgence, but when one writes, one longs to be read.
And when expectations had almost ceased, hope arrived in the form of an innocuous envelope with a foreign stamp. A literary agency agreed to represent my work! They had sent an exclusive contract for 120 days for me to sign. During this time, they would represent my work to at least twenty-five top publishing houses in the US, but there was a rider – $200 to be precise.
Was this just another organization out to swindle gullible authors desperate to see their work in print? Was it worth it? A new set of questions – for which I had no answers – raced through my mind. So I rang up Khushwant Singh, who asked me to come over.
I would be seeing Khushwant Singh after ages and my heart fluttered. His welcome was cordial to say the least – with a good old Punjabi hug and a kiss smack on the cheek which I returned with equal enthusiasm.
‘All crisp and virginal white! I cruelly made you drive across town on this hot summer afternoon.’
‘The need is mine.’
After going over the contract and asking me to go ahead, he asked his standard ‘and how is your personal life going’?
‘Same as ever. I am still wife to one and mistress to another.’
‘Mistresses depend upon their lovers financially. You are an independent woman, which makes you his girlfriend.’
‘The only time I feel like one is when he loads me with diamonds. Not that I am complaining. The fact that I am capable of inspiring a man to spend three lakhs on me at this age boosts my ego.’
‘Three lakhs?’
‘Here, look at this.’ I showed him an obscenely huge rock that I wore on a chain around my neck.
‘You shouldn’t be wearing it around like this. It is dangerous.’
‘I wanted to show it to you.’
‘Then let me see it properly.’
I leaned forward and held it out for him.
‘It flashes fire. Doesn’t your husband say anything?’
‘I always bought jewellery myself. Moreover, despite my indiscretion, he needs me to look after his children and his bedridden mother. The arrangement suits me fine. Once it sank in that there would never be a divorce, I have become adept at sailing in two boats.’
‘So you are having the best of both worlds?’
‘I am not so sure.’
‘Why do you say so?’
‘Well, I am no longer enamoured of SP, the diamonds notwithstanding. He is not the type of person whom I can introduce to people of my class. In fact I would be ashamed to bring him here. The sheen has worn off and I do not like what lies underneath.’
‘Apparently he still loves you.’
‘Yes. It has been twelve years now and we have been through a lot together. It took me six years to give in to him, but he would not take no for an answer. There existed a vacuum in my marriage and I finally succumbed to his animal appeal.’
‘What if he tires of you?’
‘I don’t know. As of now, I am tiring of him. In fact I have made several attempts to sever ties, but he won’t let go.’
‘Is there a new lover in the wings?’
‘No! For all my wantonness, I am very middle class at heart. I would be mortified to undress in front of yet another man. And SP, unlike my husband, will not suffer another person meekly. Why, he is even jealous of you.’
‘Me? Why?’
‘Remember you had generously offered to let me spend some time in Kasauli to rewrite my book in solitude?’
‘Yes.’
‘More than my family, he was not willing to let me go. When I asked, “What can Khushwant Singh do at this age?” he said that you could make me do things to you.’
This amused Khushwant Singh mightily.
I had taken along a copy of The Company of Women and requested him to sign it for me.
‘My book is sexier than yours,’ he said naughtily, referring to my manuscript that I had given him to read.
‘Not by far. You did not read mine till the end.’
‘What have you written?’
‘I’ll send you a copy of the raunchy parts by post,’ I promised.
‘You write good poetry. Why don’t you stick to it?’
‘As you said, poetry does not sell.’
At that moment, a nurse brought his wife in – stilted, a pale relic of her former self.
‘What about her Alzheimer’s?’ I asked, staring at her.
‘Worsening. We have to keep nurses round the cl
ock. A neurologist is coming to see her today.’
‘It is of no use. Nothing helps except nursing care till they fade away. With all of us around, my mother-in-law is lucky to have doctors, nurses and a nursing home at her disposal 24/7.’
‘Let me know how your manuscript progresses. I might go to Kasauli for a few days if I can get my daughter to take over the care of her mother.’
I realized that my time was finally up. He accompanied me to the door and saw me off with yet another peck on my cheek.
4.6.2000
Dear Khushwant Singhji
It was good seeing you after such a long time – nine months to be precise. A visit to your house is fraught with possibilities. At times I am taken into the fold like a long-lost relative and at others I am as welcome as a stray mongrel. The warmth of this visit I will hold to myself like a khangri on a winter night. Thank you so much for going through the agreement for me. I only hope that it proves fruitful and my book gets to see the light of the day.
Provoked by your comment ‘my book is sexier than yours’, I am sending a few raunchy pages of my book. Please tell me if you think they are too explicit or in bad taste. Speaking of books, I got a gift voucher of 2000 rupees to buy books from Crosswords. What books would you recommend? I have read Ancient Promises by Jaishree Misra and at present I am reading Jhumpa Lahri’s Interpreter of Maladies. I would also like to buy the latest Booker Prize–winning book, Disgrace. What else should I buy?
Have a relaxing holiday at Kasauli.
Love and regards
Amrinder
***
13.6.2000
Dear Amrinder
Read your raunchy piece. I had mild disturbance in the middle. I wish I had what Rajan has. With me it was always ‘wham bam, thank you ma’am’.
Books – Disgrace is first-rate. Also recommended Mohsin Hamid’s Moth Smoke. It is set in Lahore. Very witty. His heroine liked to be on top. I think it is much more fun.
The Afternoon Girl Page 7
