Khushwant Singh on Women, Sex, Love and Lust

by Khushwant Singh

  There are not many books of prose which I can think of having read with enjoyment more than once. Poetry, yes I get more out of re-reading it than I did the first time. Also some plays like Shakespeare’s, Goethe’s and C. B. Fry’s because large chunks of them are in fact poetic. Prose, generally no. If it is a narration of events as in novels or short stories, I seldom read a second time. It may have some nice turns of phrase, some witticisms, some beautiful descriptive passages, but rarely anything more. The only exceptions are a collection of pensees or aphorisms which compel one to ponder over them. My two top favourites of this genre are Andre Gide’s Fruits of the Earth and The Unquiet Grave by Palinurus. Gide’s work I have often referred to in my writings. I wish to re-introduce Palinurus.

  I can’t recall when and how I came by my copy of The Unquiet Grave. It lay among my books for a couple of decades before I persuaded myself to open it. My reluctance to do so was my being under the impression that it was a work of some ancient Greek dead long before the advent of Christ. Palinurus was a character in Greek mythology, a sea pilot who drowned in his sleep but recovered after three days only to be murdered by natives of an island where he found shelter. When I read the book, I found in it many references to Pascal, Flaubert, Goethe, Baudelaire, Chamfort and a host of other French, German and English writers. Whose nom de plume was Palinurus?

  As is my habit, when a book really excites me, I force it on my friends. It never comes back. My heavily underlined copy of The Unquiet Grave disappeared, as if for ever. By chance I happened to mention it to my friend Croom Johnson, then head of the British Council in India. He knew all about it. The real name of the author was Cyril Connolly (1903-1974). He was a product of Eton and Balliol, editor of Horizon, columnist, literary critic and author of several books. The Unquiet Grave were jottings in his diary kept during World War II when he was in a mood of extreme despair because his marriage was on the rocks and he could not get to Paris which he loved above all other cities. He talks about the breakdown in his personal relationships in his first essay: ‘There is no pain equal to that which two lovers can inflict on one another. This should be made clear to all who contemplate such a union. The avoidance of this pain is the beginning of wisdom, for it is strong enough to contaminate the rest of our lives and since it can be minimized by obeying a few simple rules, rules which approximate to Christian marriage, they provide, even to the unbeliever, its de facto justification. It is when we begin to hurt those whom we love that the guilt with which we are born becomes intolerable, and since all those whom we love intensely and continuously grow part of us, and as we hate ourselves in them, so we torture ourselves and them together. The object of loving is a release from love. We achieve this through a series of unfortunate love affairs or, without a death-rattle, through one that is happy. Complete physical union between two people is the rarest sensation which life can provide – and yet not quite real, for it stops when the telephone rings.’

  I go along with him but I am not sure if he is right when he says: ‘We love but once, for once only are we perfectly equipped for loving: we may appear to ourselves to be as much in love at other times – so will a day in early September, though it be six hours shorter, seem as hot as one in June. And on how that first true love affair will shape depends the pattern of our lives.’

  Again I am uneasy with his analysis of marriage. He says: ‘Two fears alternate in marriage, of loneliness and of bondage. The dread of loneliness being keener than the fear of bondage, we get married. For one person who fears being thus tied there are four who dread being set free. Yet the love of liberty is a noble passion and one to which most married people secretly aspire – in moments when they are not neurotically dependent – but by then it is too late; the ox does not become a bull, nor the hen a falcon.’

  Connolly appears to be hooked on the notion that first love is the real thing and being so, likely to be disastrous. He also makes a sharp distinction between love and marriage:

  ‘First love is the most worth having, yet the best marriage is often the second, for we should marry only when the desire for freedom be spent; not till then does a man know whether he is the kind who can settle down. The most tragic breakings-up are of those couples who have married young and who have enjoyed seven years of happiness, after which the banked fires of passion and independence explode – and without knowing why, for they still love each other, they set about accomplishing their common destruction.’

  His conclusion about the end of love will evoke sad memories in the minds of those who have been through the ordeal: ‘When a love affair is broken off, the heaviest blow is to the vanity of the one who is left. It is therefore reasonable to assume that, when a love affair is beginning, the greatest source of satisfaction is also to the vanity. The first signs of a mutual attraction will induce even the inconsolable to live in the present.’

  26

  Obscenity, Pornography, Erotica

  Much is said about pornography tending to ‘deprave and corrupt’ society, particularly the young. This has never been proved to be so. On the contrary, there is plenty of psychological evidence to prove the contrary.

  I have often been charged with vulgarizing literature. I plead guilty on purely etymological grounds; vulgarization, as the word is used in French, is closer to its original Latin meaning, popularization, bringing it closer to the people. But when the charge is extended to obscenity or pornography or erotica, I enter a mild protest. My traducers do not know what these words mean and lump them together under a favourite portmanteau Indianism: ‘indecent’. Let me analyze these concepts and clear some of the cobwebs from their minds.

  Pornography derives from the Greek porne meaning harlot and initially referred to the influence of harlots in the government of Rome in the 10th century A.D. Obscenity is from the Latin obscensus meaning repulsive, filthy or loathsome. Erotic from Eros, another name for Cupid, the god of Love; hence erotica includes literature, painting or sculpture on themes of love or sex. Although usage has blurred distinctions between the three, we must be clear in our minds what we are talking about and whether their use has a detrimental effect on society.

  Erotica has become an artistic concept. Artists who express themselves in erotic sculpture (Khajurao, etc) or painting (e.g. tantric and Rajasthani miniatures) and have explicit portrayal of the sex act cannot and never have been accused of pornography. You can pick up any number of books on the subject without fear of the censor. It is the same with writing. If Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Lolita, etc, can be allowed in books, there is little logic in coming down on similar writing in magazines.

  Pornography does not have literary or artistic pretensions. But it exists more in the mind of the beholder (‘groin of the beholder’ would be a better expression) than in itself. It is designed to exploit or titillate the senses – ‘books you read with one hand’. You don’t have far to go to find titillation if your mind is on the lookout. Present day ads for cigarettes, cosmetics and textiles are specifically sex-oriented. As Shaw said: ‘Pornography can be found in any book except the telephone book.’ And the puritan can discover impure things which nobody else can discover. However, there is pornography which is low down and pornography which is not. In the classical age of Greece, porniar were the lowest class of prostitutes (tawaaif) giving sex for money; anletriades were courtesan-entertainers. The first were looked down upon; the second respected.

  In the ultimate analysis, what a person regards as porno is determined by his intention and, since his definition inevitably reflects his own interest, no definition can be satisfactory. ‘You can recognize pornography by the insult it offers, invariably, to sex and the human spirit,’ wrote the author of Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

  Much is said about pornography tending to ‘deprave and corrupt’ society, particularly the young. This has never been proved to be so. On the contrary, there is plenty of psychological evidence to prove the contrary – that like prurient day-dreams it provides escape into a world of
fantasy. Free and easy availability of pornographic literature instead of increasing crimes of sex is known to reduce its incidence.

  Besides, I observe certain finesse in the exploitation of nudity and language. I am reminded of a bet taken by a man that he would use the unmentionable vulgarism for the rectum three times in the presence of his very sedate Victorian hostess. He apparently knew that there would he soles for breakfast. ‘Ah soles!’ he exclaimed as he saw them on the table. ‘Are soles in season? They are soles, aren’t they?’

  27

  Oodles of Love

  A new phenomenon is intrusion of lust in expressing love: ‘You stimulating lovable troll.’ And this to ‘Adorabella who is peerlessly precious, deliciously desirable and wantonly worshipful.’

  During one of my periodic bouts with The Times (London) crossword puzzles, my eye fell on St. Valentine messages printed alongside. There were six full columns with almost a hundred professions of love in each column. I was disappointed to find what little progress lovers had made in expressing their affection. More than 500 messages said no more than the three words, I love you, or repeated the old doggerel: ‘Roses are red, violets are blue, dizzie darling, I love you.’ A fair proportion could not even do that and exhausted themselves in a series of Xs presumably expressing desire for labial contact. There were many which were totally inane, to wit: ‘Hee hee tee hee turn tee, did I say I love you?’ And: ‘Heffalumpus for breakfast, Heffalumpus for tea, Heffalumpus for ever, when this week you marry me.’ Lots use private language: ‘Baby bear loves horrid hedgepig.’

  Indian emigrants have also found entree in England’s love letters. One addressed to a Shrimati reads: ‘You sweet gulab jamun of my most delectable dreams!’ And this from a Shriman: ‘Adorable Penny! If you don’t know what to do, lie back and think of your Indian’ Many languages are used, even Persian: Ba hazaran Boseh (with a thousand kisses).

  A new phenomenon is intrusion of lust in expressing love: ‘You stimulating lovable troll.’ And this to ‘Adorabella who is peerlessly precious, deliciously desirable and wantonly worshipful.’ Then there is a lady with the pseudonym Nancy Thunderthighs to whom passion is conveyed as follows: ‘A bee likes to suck a flower; you are my flower but I am no bee. I like to…’

  When it comes to borrowing other people’s flowers, it is still Shakespeare or Browning.

  Love, the tolling of a bell

  Love, the mesmer of your spell

  Love blind, seldom kind

  Love fickle, sharp as sickle

  Love jealous, zealous

  Love fraility and fealty

  Who said: ‘My love for you is like a pineapple, sweet, rare and indefinable?’ And who wrote: ‘Love for you is even more beautiful than the call of the bull moose?’ The only entry which caught my fancy was: ‘Thou art fairer than the evening’s air, clad in the beauty of a thousand stars.’

  I have my own personal anthology of this genre of poetry. There is much Shakesperiana ranging from ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’ Othello’s explosion on receiving Desdemona: ‘If after every tempest come such calms my soul hath her content so absolute that not another comfort like to this succeeds in unknown fate.’ Recent additions to my repertoire are lines from Donne:

  All other things to their destruction draw,

  Only our love hath no decay,

  This, no tomorrow hath nor yesterday,

  Running, it never runs from us away,

  But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day

  At one time my favourite used to be Dowson’s Cynara with its nostalgic reminder of faithfulness in his own fashion: ‘when the feast is finished and the lamps expire, then falls thy shadow Cynara! The night is thine. And I am desolate and sick of an old passion.’

  I have now stumbled upon something better:

  Words are so weak

  When love hath been so strong

  Let silence speak

  Life is a little while and love is long;

  And after harvest a long time to sleep

  A time to sow and reap

  But words are weak.

  28

  The Language of Love

  Whatever its limitations, whatever its frustrations, love is the greatest, the most exhilarating experience of life.

  No subject has been more written about in every language known in the world than love. And yet love has eluded definition because it embraces a wide range of emotions which have little in common with each other save passion. A mother’s love for her child, the child’s for its mother; a man’s love for God, his guru and his country are quite distinct from love that envelops men and women and craves for consummation in physical union. It defies differences of age, race, wealth, learning and looks.

  In love there is no calculation; no concern with social norms or consequences. ‘Of all forms of caution,’ wrote Bertrand Russell, ‘caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.’

  Love can produce agony and ecstasy, fulfilment and frustrations, uncertainty, anguish and jealousy and extreme hate. All these have found expression in prose and poetry.

  Everyone who has been in love has his or her own favourite quotations. I have taken excerpts from Love Letters, an anthology chosen by Antonia Fraser, Love, compiled by Walter de la Mare, The British in Love by Jilly Cooper, The Body of Love edited by Derek Stanford and Poems from the Sanskrit translated by John Brough. But most of this chapter is based on my personal anthology of Urdu (the most persuasive language of seduction), Sanskrit, French and English love poems.

  What exactly is this phenomenon called love? How does it emanate? How does it find expression? Each one of us has his or her own theory based on personal experience and knowledge of others. I have my own. And it is this…

  The basic cause which makes us seek the love of another person is because we are extremely lonely. Gertrude Stein called this void inner loneliness. I prefer to describe it as the inner solitude – the feeling of being all alone in the world. At times we feel this solitude with great poignancy and it is almost like physical pain. It can come upon us suddenly and without warning – as in the early hours of the morning. It can be brought on by the wail of a locomotive as it speeds through the black of the night not knowing where it has come from or where it is going; it may be brought on by the sight of a heron – just one – in a vast sky at dusk. This inner solitude is something of a paradox. At one time it is like an aching void begging to be filled by the warmth of affection of another; at others it becomes a walled fortress with a notice bearing the warning: ‘Keep out’. What happens when two people meet can be best illustrated by depicting human beings as a series of concentric circles one inside the other – the innermost circle may be described as the circle of inner solitude. When two people meet and happen to like each other, they invite each other to trespass towards this innermost circle, to share this inner loneliness. The two sets of concentric circles begin to overlap.

  In actual life this invitation to trespass is expressed in exposure, baring of oneself emotionally and physically. ‘Love desires that its secret be revealed,’ said the thirteenth-century Persian poet Jalaluddin Rumi. ‘If a mirror reflects nothing what use is it?’ The ideal equation is, of course, when the two sets of circles completely overlap, when the integration between two human beings is emotionally and physically complete. This ideal equation seldom takes place as in the process of getting to know each other (trespassing towards each other’s inner solitudes) conflicts may arise. One may not like the other’s political or religious views; one may be irked by the other’s mannerisms, dress, body odour, halitosis – just anything. Then there arises the desire to preserve one’s inner solitude and the people concerned begin to put up their defences with the notice: ‘Thus far but no further’. They may even expel the intruder outwards. To the extent to which a person allows another to trespass towards his or her inner solitude, to that extent he or she is emotionally involved or in love with the other. There is no such thing as tot
al, all-consuming love. We are in different stages of love with different people.

  Whatever its limitations, whatever its frustrations, love is the greatest, the most exhilarating experience of life. Said Nur-ud-din Jami, the fifteenth-century Sufi mystic: ‘The heart which is exempt from sickness of love is not a heart; the body deprived of the grief of love is only lemon and water. It is amorous disquietude which gives to the universe its eternal movement, it is the dizziness of love which makes the spheres turn around.’

  To the West, love’s paradigm is man’s perpetual quest for Helen. In the Orient the same is expressed in the immortal tale of Laila and Majnun. Majnun was seen one day sifting sand with his hands. ‘What do you seek in the grains of sand?’ someone asked him. ‘I seek Laila,’ replied Majnun. ‘And do you expect to find Laila in this way? Would a woman of such peerless beauty be found in this dust?’ he was asked. ‘I seek Laila everywhere,’ replied Majnun. ‘I seek her everywhere in the hope of finding her somewhere some day.’

  How Love is Born

  William Shakespeare was certain that people fell in and out of love through their eyes:

  Tell me where is fancy bred,

  Or in the heart or in the head?

  How begot how nourished?

  Reply, Reply,

  It is engendered in the eyes,

  With gazing fed; and Fancy dies

  In the cradle where it lies.

  An Urdu couplet supports this view:

  Hota hai raaz-i-ishq-o-mohabbat inheen say faash

  Aankhein zubaan nahin hain, magar bezubaan nahin.

  (The secrets of desire and love are revealed by the

  eyes.

  Eyes have no tongue but they are not without speech.)