Khushwant Singh on Women, Sex, Love and Lust

by Khushwant Singh

  Dr. Cleave’s book The Saccharine Disease propagates the consumption of bran, roughage and bananas as a regular part of human diet and the banning of refined sugar and cyclamates. When released in late seventies it became a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic. The doctor quotes the Bible in support: ‘When the sound of grinding is low, the doors shall be shut in the streets’ (Ecclesiastes). Grinding, the learned doctor interpreted as the sound of teeth crunching fibrous food; and the doors as the anal orifice. So the next time you want to take on a young, lusty maiden or sink a battleship, remember bran is best, better than Spanish fly, kushta, or any other electuary and more potent than a 16 mm recoilless gun.

  31

  The Right to Go Nude

  I dare not suggest that we too go in for nude bathing to attract foreigners, but let us not be too prudish when they wish to expose themselves to our sun, sea, sands and our gazes.

  It was more than forty years ago that I was first exposed to people exposing themselves. This was in Sweden. Literally miles of beach with almost everyone from toddlers to octogenarians with not a stitch of clothing on them. I could not oogle at all the nubile nineteen-year-olds as I would have liked to. I was almost drooling in the mouth when my hosts suggested that we all strip and refresh ourselves in the sea. The drooling stopped; my throat went dry. My Indian inhibitions against self-exposure were too strong to overcome. I couldn’t even raise my eyes to take a good look at my hostess and her three college-going daughters. I tried to analyze my nudo-phobia and came to the conclusion that I was more scared of taking off my turban and exposing my long hair than I was of taking off my pants and exposing … you know what. I was even more scared of my natural reactions: of showing obvious pleasure at seeing what I was seeing without having to say so. The visions of that sunny Sunday afternoon near Stockholm has troubled many of my midnights and my noons’ repose.

  Since then I have seen a lot of nudity on the beaches of Hawaii, Cote d’Azur and Sydney. I am an unashamed voyeur and liked it all. In the late seventies I was delighted to learn that stodgy old England was about to legalize stripping. As one might expect of a nation of shopkeepers, it was not for the sake of health or for the aesthetic pleasure of seeing beautiful people as God made them, but to make money. The issue had then come up before the Brighton City Council dominated by conservatives. While the lady members were in favour of shedding clothes, the men had certain reservations. A lady member who also ran a lodging house proved her bona fides by circulating her own photograph in a topless bikini. The reactions of the other members to this form of canvassing is not known. But a male member opposed to ‘flagrant exhibition of mammary glands’ was warned by his wife that if he continued to be obdurate she would release his photograph taking a sauna bath in mixed company. She clearly had her eye on the cash register. She said: ‘I am not a woman of immoral character, I’m one of the most old-fashioned girls. I do not take the pill or go to bed with men, but I believe in this beach. Let’s face the facts – we want European tourists, and we want their money. So let’s give the sort of facilities they’re used to.’

  The lady perhaps got far more than she bargained for. But even the stodgiest of the councillors conceded that she had a point. He admitted that sometime ago when he chanced upon a couple taking off their clothes, he was struck by the beauty of the well-endowed woman and suddenly thought ‘that all those years of tedious committees had been worthwhile.’ To wit:

  There was a brave damsel of Brighton

  Whom nothing could possibly frighten.

  She plunged into the sea

  And, with infinite glee,

  Was taken for a ride by a Triton.

  That brings me to the subject of incentives to tourism in India. I dare not suggest that we too go in for nude bathing to attract foreigners, but let us not be too prudish when they wish to expose themselves to our sun, sea, sands and our gazes. Take it from me that nothing will add to the beauty of Calangute or Kovalam more than a shapely teenager streaking across the palm fronds against the setting sun.

  32

  Dirty Monsoon Musings

  All men are born voyeurs preferring the childish delights of stumbling on a scene of unsuspecting nymphs unclothed rather than stage-managed acts of striptease.

  Comes the monsoon and something happens to my ageing heart. It can no longer suffer politicians and their protestations of love for the poor or their denunciations of each other. I cannot read newspapers which laud the wit of men in power. So I decide to write a definitive thesis on love and lust: which came first, the desire or its fulfillment? To my dismay I discover I have nothing new to say. Nimbus clouds stretch across the heavens, a cool breeze blows across my balcony, a gentle shower brings the fragrance of the earth to my nostrils. And I am sick and desolate of a passion which I cannot put in words.

  Once I wrote an analysis of the phenomenon of love – why two persons are drawn towards each other, what happens when they translate that attraction into love. And why it so often goes awry. I based it on the theory that ‘everyone is deeply lonely within himself and is equally motivated to share that loneliness as well as to preserve it against trespass. We express our liking by denuding ourselves, by laying open our hearts and inviting the person we like to trespass into our inner solitude. Then comes a stage when the desire to preserve that inner solitude becomes stronger than the desire to share it and we say to ourselves and to the person we think we love: ‘Thus far and no further.’ That writes finis to that escapade and we are ready to launch into another. Love is transitory: one dies, a new one burgeons with each new monsoon. Lust abides till we can lust no more.

  I consult the writings of great lovers and my belief is confirmed. From Chaucer and Shakespeare to Whitman, D. H. Lawrence and the versifiers of today; from Kalidasa, Bhartrhari down to Iqbal and Faiz, the songs of love are anaemic but songs of lust are full-blooded and earthy. ‘When spirit and body interanimate (a very apt concoction) each other,’ writes Stamford, ‘they produce that lyrical experience: fulfillment.’ But when the trafficking between them is unequal; when they are speaking as it were, in different tongues, then as T. S. Eliot wrote: ‘Between conception and creation, between emotion and response, between desire and the spasm, between potency and existence, falls the shadow.’

  It is the ‘shadow’ that frustrates both love and lust and explodes into bawdiness stored up in the minds of poets. All men are born voyeurs preferring the childish delights of stumbling on a scene of unsuspecting nymphs unclothed rather than stage-managed acts of striptease.

  The male ego is unconcerned with response. Who would suspect the gentle Whitman of lust to sire a whole nation?

  … you women, I make my way,

  I am stern, acrid, large,

  Undissuadable, but I love you,

  I do not hurt you any more

  Than is necessary for you,

  I pour the stuff to start sons and daughters

  Fit for these States.

  My favourite for the mystic experience of sex is Shelley:

  … and over all.

  A mist was spread, the sickness of a deep

  And speechless swoon of joy, as might befall

  Two disunited spirits when they leap.

  In union from this earth’s obscure and fading sleep

  And Rossetti (the male Rossetti) for the calm that follows consummation:

  And as the last slow sudden drops are shed

  From sparkling caves when all the storm has fled.

  So love finds its ultimate destiny in lust, or it ends up like a sea voyage on which you get only mal de mer.

  Somewhat confused thinking. But that’s what happens to me at monsoon time. It is the season of bhang.

  33

  Confusions About Marriage

  Marriage is essentially a dialogue between man and wife. And if it is carried on different wavelengths, when communication breaks down then it is best not to persist in it.

  As one who has been in and out of love man
y times but married only once, I am often asked by young people in love whether or not they should get married. My advice varies with what I know about their past and their temperaments. Some, like me, are forever falling in and out of love and would remain misfits in any monogamous union. Others who appear more steady and are marrying types tend to be possessive, jealous and more often than not, bores. So what advice am I to give them?

  The commonest prevalent illusion is that people fall in love only once in their lifetimes. In the words of the poet Coventry Patmore from his poem Revelations:

  Love wakes men, once a lifetime each;

  They lift their heavy lids, and look;

  And, lo, what one sweet page can teach,

  They read with joy, then shut the book.

  And some give thanks, and some blaspheme

  And most forget; but, either way,

  That and the Child’s unheeded dream

  Is all the light of all their day.

  Cyril Connolly subscribes to the one-life-love theory. He writes: ‘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.’

  Connolly is right in his analysis of real love: ‘The object of loving is release from love… 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.’ Connolly’s telephone is metaphorical. What really happens is that the blissful physical union can never be repeated with the same person and the craving to experience it again tempts men and women to try it out with other people. They begin to fall apart. One or the other looks for excuses for misunderstandings that creep in; they begin to lie to each other; they pretend that their new attachments are platonic or emotional and not physical. That is the time for the wiser of the two to put an end to the relationship because the one who wishes to prolong it in the hope that it may be restored to its initial intensity, is the one who is going to be hurt. I agree with Connolly when he says: ‘When a love affair is broken off, the heaviest blow is to the vanity of the one who is left.’ So my advice to those in love, who begin to suspect that their affection is no longer being reciprocated in the same measure, is to take courage and be the first to say: ‘Go to hell - or in the arms of your new lover. Leave me alone, I do not want to have anything to do with you.’

  With love being so chancy, is it sensible to go ahead and marry the person you love? Connolly thinks it is inadvisable: ‘… Every love affair must reach a point where it will attain marriage, and be changed, or decline, or wither.’ He advises that marriage is an experience everyone should go through and then live his own life. This amounts to advocating adultery to preserve a marriage. He is confused because a few pages later he condemns adultery as a token form of murder: ‘We do not murder the rival husband or wife but we murder their image.’ He thinks that two fears alternate in marriage, loneliness and bondage: ‘The dread of loneliness being keener than the fear of bondage, we get married.’

  Having quoted all there is against marriage, what do I tell young people embarking on the venture? By all means take the plunge but do not expect too much out of it. If you discover that it may not work out in good time, that is, before a child is on its way, have the courage to call it off and not corrode each other’s existence. Marriage is essentially a dialogue between man and wife. And if it is carried on different wave-lengths, when communication breaks down then it is best not to persist in it. Therefore it is wise not to start having a family before you have known each other at least five years. But once you have children, you have to learn the art of appearing to them as being good parents. They must never be exposed to angry disagreements, and if you feel a compelling need to engage in extramarital relationships, make sure your children never get to know about them.

  34

  Love is Dumb

  While a man’s approach to the woman he likes is casual and unburdened with future responsibilities, a woman, perforce, has to be more choosy in the choice of her mate.

  Two things differentiate humans from other creatures when it comes to love and mating. One, humans do not have mating seasons as animals, birds, and insects do. Humans can mate round the year, while other creatures have to wait for the right time of the year for their sexual desires to be roused and to become capable of being consummated. Two, humans are the only species which can communicate through speech. Other creatures have to communicate their physical desires through courtship dances, emitting smells, and making mating calls. Their approach to members of the other sex is explicit; among humans it is subtle.

  Though speech gives humans many advantages over animals, they find it very difficult to express their emotions – it takes a lot for a man or a woman to utter the three simple words, ‘I love you’, to each other. We often envy animals and birds who do not have to say anything, but get on with the job. Yet, aspects of our animal ancestry still manifest themselves in our behaviour patterns which are human variations of animal courtship rites – not spoken, but communicative of desire. This is speechless flirtation by gestures. The most prevalent and primitive is winking an eye.

  Studies in human behaviour show traces of animal-like behaviour in the approach towards the other sex. The first move is to attract attention. The male may do so by turning out smartly dressed, puffing out his chest as he strides past a group of women with macho steps. A woman will do so by wearing a dress which accentuates her physical assets, and walking with a seductive, hip-swaying gait.

  After the ‘notice me’ act is over, the next step is to convey a message of availability. This is achieved through what Dr Givens, a specialist on the subject, says is a ‘I am harmless’ message. Charles Darwin called it ‘submissive displays’. Such behaviour is common among monkeys.

  Patterns of flirtation were the subject of research of Dr Eibl-Eibesfeld of Germany’s Max Planck Institute. He went round the world, studying the approaches of couples towards each other, and taking photographs without their noticing him. He tabulated five gestures of submission: placing hands with upturned palms on the knees or a table, shrugging shoulders, tilting the head, behaving like a child, and, finally, yielding to each other.

  It has been noticed that men are more drawn towards women who are plain to look at but convey the impression of availability, than towards beautiful women who play difficult to get. Differences between men’s and women’s approaches towards each other are also traceable to their animal past. It has less to do with love or romance and more with their biological functions.

  For a man, it can be one act of copulation, at times repeated with different women; for a woman it may entail nine months of pregnancy, almost a year of breast-feeding, and perhaps another three or four years during which a child is more dependent on its mother than its father.

  Consequently, while a man’s approach to the woman he likes is casual and unburdened with future responsibilities, a woman, perforce, has to be more choosy in the choice of her mate. If she senses that the man of her choice may ditch her, she will feign withdrawal. She expresses herself by being coy, coquettish, and difficult to get till her man is driven to frenzy and more willing to commit himself.

  No words need be exchanged; gestures and behaviour are eloquent enough. Dogs, cats, donkeys, and deer behave in the same way. In short, though humans can put emotions in words, we prefer to express ourselves the same way as our ape ancestors: by speechless conduct.

  35

  Love Letters

  … all the very best love poetry is addressed by men to women – and not the other way round. A woman cannot praise a man’s beauty because manly men are not beautiful.

  I had a friend who specialized in writing love letters. Since he was constantly falling in and out of love, he gained considerable expertise in this profession. He became
so adept in the art that rather than seeking the company of the lady who had infatuated him, he actually looked for excuses to go out of town so that he could write to her. And even after receiving favourable response, the best he could do when in her company was to read out drafts of letters he intended to write to her. It was no surprising that after having a surfeit of being compared to a summer’s day or how she walked in beauty like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies, the lady in question sought the company of males whose words of praise were reinforced by action. My friend felt terribly let down, penned a few more letters chiding her for being unfaithful to him and turned his attention to other starry-eyed lasses.

  I only saw a few of these epistles addressed to a lady who had preoccupied my friend’s mind for sometime and was not able to compare their contents with his earlier or later compositions addressed to other women. He had a sizeable repertoire of love poetry but I am pretty certain that much of what he wrote to one lady must have been repeated to the other. I came to this conclusion from the opening gambits he made at cocktail parties. A hardy perennial was culled from Matthew Arnold’s Dover Beach: