Malicious Gossip

by Khushwant Singh

  In his own home he was always very considerate. There was his old-fashioned mother, who spoke nothing but the Malwa dialect of Punjabi, a younger relative and the inevitable bottle of Scotch. I was sure that his mother disapproved of his heavy drinking. To ingratiate myself in her favour, I asked her, “Maji, why don’t you curb his drinking? Don’t you see it’s doing him no good?”

  She replied by asking me: “Puttar, what can I do when he has friends like you, who come to see him only to drink his whisky?”

  DISCOVERING INDIA

  “There are as many reasons for taking your holidays in India as there are for taking them elsewhere. For Bharatvarsha, all said and done, is your Bharatmata and you should get to know her better. She is vast and has everything that any other country or continent can offer. It will take you many Bharatdarshan tours to discover her infinite variety. Mountains, snows and skiing in Kashmir and Himachal; exquisite mountain scenery with snow-capped hilltops, lakes and torrents extending from the Pir Panjal range in the north-west to the rain-soaked forests of Meghalaya, Nagaland, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh. Excellent country for mountaineering, trekking, bird and beast watching, butterfly-hunting, or just gaping at the scenery. If you are too old to take heights, there is the vast Indo-Gangetic plain with its historic temples, mosques, forts, palaces, mausoleums, broad rivers and desert wastes. All more colourful than the best colour film can capture. The Deccan and the south have a beauty of their own—ancient caves with frescoes, old temples with styles of sculpture not to be seen in the north, the ghats with thousands of miles of golden sand beaches fringed by coconut palms, areca, and massive banyans. The people are different: darker, brighter-eyed, fuller bosomed and more articulate. Their variety ends at Kanyakumari where the waters of three oceans mingle. As the Bengali song goes, ‘Emon deshti kothao khujey paabey na ko tumi’: search wherever you may, you will not find a country such as ours.”

  Snake River

  The more I see of my country, the more I realize how much remains unexplored. And how infinitely more beautiful it is than I had imagined. My youth was spent on flat, dusty, desert lands; they had a monotonous charm of their own. But it takes mountains, rivers, and lakes to make a landscape truly beauteous. When in addition to these it has forests abounding with wild animals and exotic birds, you wonder whether there was anything more to paradise from which God expelled Adam and Eve. Last Christmas I discovered one such place. It is tucked away in the south-western corner of our peninsula along the Arabian Sea from where the Western Ghats begin their northward range and the Cauvery has its birth. It stretches across Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. I saw its Karnataka part which is about two hours drive off Mysore and has 600 square kilometres of mountains, dense forests, rain-fed streams, and a vast stretch of water made by damming the Kabini, a tributary of the Cauvery. It is named after a stream, Nagahole (Snake river), which runs into the Kabini as the Nagahole National Park.

  We arrived at the Kabini Jungle Lodge in the afternoon. It used to be the Maharaja of Mysore’s private hunting ground. Many Viceroys of India, including Mountbatten, when he was ADC to the Prince of Wales, had been here. It probably had more game at the time but could not have been as beautiful because the Kabini dam and the lake came up only fifteen years ago. Today its waters stretch across the valley into the mountains of Bandipur Tiger Sanctuary.

  The boss of Kabini is Bihar-born John Wakefield. He is a pukka Brit; a big, hulking Colonel Blimp with a handlebar moustache. He is as fluent in his Hindustani and Kannada as he is in Her Majesty’s English. The staff recruited from the surrounding villages including their Tamilian supervisor, Annapoorna Mudaliar, address Wakefield as Papa.

  Kabini Jungle Lodge has only fourteen rooms. To preserve this mini-paradise from becoming a picnic place, a honeymoon resort, a country club or a tourist spot, Papa Wakefield has persuaded the Karnataka Government not to add to its accommodation. Kabini is strictly meant for lovers of nature and friends of wild animals. They are a small elite fraternity who know what they want. They will get it at Kabini; creature comforts of five-star hotels without their meaningless luxuries, but a lot more that no hotel can offer. At Kabini you dine by an open campfire alongside a lake shimmering in the moonlight. For music you have an orchestra composed of crickets, owls, and nightjars with wild elephants occasionally playing the trumpet.

  The forest is largely teak and a variety of sal [Terminalia tormentosa), bamboo, rosewood (no relation of the flower, but a tall, hardwood tree) and sandal. In addition there is a baffling variety of scrubs, the commonest being a light, blue-flowered weed, epitarium, which grows in thick impassable clusters. There are few clearances in this thick jungle but quite a few waterholes used by animals. It is near these waterholes that watchtowers have been erected for the benefit of nature-watchers.

  One early evening Papa Wakefield took us in his open jeep on a drive through the forest. A steady drizzle made the going damp and chilly. Two other jeeps carrying other visitors entered the forest from different points. We drove for an hour or more along tracks without sighting a single animal. Was it going to be like my earlier visits to wildlife sanctuaries? Thrice before I had sat up all night hoping to catch a glimpse of a tiger. I was unlucky. Then Papa pointed to a herd of spotted deer on our right. They were obviously used to human beings on jeeps and took no notice of us. But as soon as Sinha (civil servant and wildlife photographer) aimed his telephoto lens on them, they were off in a flash. We saw more herds of the deer family: sambar, cheetal, and swamp deer. We slowed down near an opening round a pond. “Yesterday there were three herds of elephants at this pond,” said Wakefield. Sinha had his camera ready. We were unlucky.

  As we drove on and my disappointment deepened, once again Wakefield stopped his jeep and asked his assistant to go and see if there were any elephants at the nearby water-hole. I followed him in the drizzle. We climbed the two-storeyed observation post. I said a short prayer. The sun had set over half an hour ago; the dusk would soon turn to night. It was now or never.

  The still waters of the pond looked like a sheet of glass. Out of the thick cluster of trees emerged a massive black elephant followed by his harem of three females and two baby elephants. “Not more than three weeks’ old,” whispered my escort as he tiptoed down the observation machan to get the others of the party.

  Everyone has seen elephants. But there is something about seeing them in the wild which makes it an unforgettable experience. They look a different species from the ones you see marching in processions with the mahout jabbing their heads with an iron spike, making them kneel like slaves and raise their trunks in salutation. In its state of freedom a wild elephant, by its awesome presence, makes you realize that he is the monarch of the jungles. This one filled his trunk with water and sprayed it over his body. Majestically he walked out of the water, followed by his family, and came back into the pond. If he suspected our presence, he didn’t give a damn. Only once did he pause in his royal preoccupation with his harem—that is when he heard another elephant trumpet in the distance. He raised his head and bellowed out his response. The still waters of the lake and indeed the entire forest shook as if rocked by an earthquake.

  I am not fantasizing. On our way back past a Korba encampment we saw two more elephants. They were in chains. The larger one, when on heat, had been let loose in the jungle. She had been duly serviced and was pregnant. The other awaited her time to come on heat and be likewise impregnated. Domesticated male elephants become impotent; female elephants in need of sex have to seek the service of males who breathe the fresh air of freedom.

  For me the experience was worth the 2500-mile journey by air and car. I saw more varieties of deer and herds of bison than ever before. By the camp-fire dinner that evening, an Australian couple who had spent a week there with their children claimed to have seen over 100 elephants, herds of wild pigs, sloth bears, wild cats, leopards and even a tiger. Not to be outdone, I rattled off names of all the varieties of birds I had spotted. I hadn’t
seen them at Nagahole but having seen one family of wild elephants, felt that I had seen all that there is to be seen in the world of nature.

  Ludhiana: The Filthy Rich

  Ludhiana must be the richest town in India. It is also the dirtiest. When the British first garrisoned it in the 1840s in preparation for their war against the Sikh kingdom, it had the largest population of prostitutes of any town in northern India. It has cleansed itself of prostitutes but has acquired a formidable number of public defecators who take good care to see that it remains the dirtiest city in India. Railway tracks have some magic quality of moving human bowels. Hence you see them lined along railway lines on either side as you approach any village, town, or city. The approach to Ludhiana railway station is through miles of sprawling suburbs with stagnant ponds of slimy, fetid water running alongside the rail track. Here the wheat-eating Punjabis come morning and evening to relieve themselves in full view of rail passengers and wash their bottoms with filthy water. Not a very edifying sight. I was told that Ludhiana has a corporation headed by a senior IAS officer. He has probably never travelled by train to the city he rules. Or maybe he is himself one of the thousands of defecators. I was in Ludhiana for only one night. Even in those few hours I could get an idea of its explosive prosperity as well as its unbelievable squalor. Also the distance that has grown between Hindus and Sikhs in the last two years. I was a guest of the Ludhiana Rotary Club. In the audience of about 300, my escort pointed out over 50 millionaires. Rare brands of Scotch (one bottle was auctioned for Rs 3,000 for charity), bejewelled Rotariannes in gorgeous sarees and a gourmet feast to follow. That was the meyyur of their hospitality and the pleyyur they derived from my presence. Most of the talk was about the verdict handed down by the Sessions Judge in Lala Jagat Narain’s murder trial. Did Bhindranwale’s nephew really deserve the benefit of the doubt? When there were no extenuating circumstances, why was the main assassin not sentenced to be hanged? Opinions varied according to whether you were Hindu or Sikh. One of the leading industrialists bemoaned: “I am a Hindu lala but read the Granth Sahib every day. My mother says her prayers at the Sikh gurdwara and not a Hindu temple. Now these fellows make us feel unwanted. We don’t want to set up any more industries in the Punjab. My son is putting up a new plant in Tamil Nadu. Brij Mohan Lai of Atlas Cycles is putting up his motorcycle factory in Faridabad.” And so on.

  It rained through the night. In the morning the roads looked like muddy rivers in spate. The seven-mile route to the airport was littered with abandoned cars and buses standing axle-deep in water. Ludhiana has no drainage system. They told me again it had a corporation with a senior IAS man as mayor. He could not be blamed for the chaos on the roads: it was morning time and he was probably performing by the rail track with his chaprasi holding an umbrella over his head.

  Why Isn’t Aditi Married

  “Plenty of rice, fish and feni. What more can anyone ask for in this world?” he asks. Appa Pant is a man of many enthusiasms. It used to be Pandit Nehru, Panchsheel, Soekarno, Nasser and Black Africa. It turned to Mahayana Buddhism and mysticism. Of late he has shed some of the cares of the world and is researching on cancers that are eating into the vitals of society and has discovered a palliative in Surya Namaskar. His latest enthusiasm is Goa. He repeats: “What more does a man require when his belly is full of fragrant rice, fresh prawn curry and a glass of cashewnut feni?”

  “I can think of a few more items in a man’s list of requirements,” I reply. Appa Pant’s eyes sparkle with understanding. “Plenty of that too in Goa,” he assures me. Being somewhat of a prude, he changes the subject. He points to well-appointed villas that line either side of the road from the airport to the hotel and remarks: “One has a cross: Christian. The next has a tulasi: Hindu. No tensions, no problems.” He points to the succession of wharves where flat-bottomed iron barges are being hammered into shape. “All these have come up in the last ten years to carry manganese and iron ore. In Goa, business is booming.” He points to muddy fronds with egrets hunting for frogs: “Time to transplant paddy, they produce good quality rice.” He points to hillsides lush with coconut palms and cashews. “Cashews have been harvested. Coconuts are there round the year.” There is no stopping Appa Pant when he is on to one of his enthusiasms. He notices the boredom on my face and turns to the driver, Joseph Fernandes. They converse in Marathi. I can only catch the drift of their conversation: that Joseph has eight grandchildren; that Appa Pant visits Goa at least twice every year. Why? His eldest child, Aditi, works in the National Institute of Oceanography. She’s been there eleven years. Joseph asks him something which Appa Pant regards silly enough to be translated for my benefit. “He wants to know why Aditi is not married.”

  “What did you reply?”

  He doesn’t answer. I repeat: “And why isn’t Aditi married?”

  He pretends he has not heard me and fixes his gaze on the Goan countryside of green hills, seas, palm-fringed fronds, churches and bungalows. I will have to find out the answer for myself when I meet Aditi.

  We arrive at Cidade de Goa, a fake Hollywood version of the sixteenth-century Portuguese mansion: orange-coloured walls with sentries and their shadows painted on them. Loos are marked cavalheiros (gentlemen) and senhoras (ladies); rooms are quartos, restaurants Alfama and Lagoa Azul; the bar, Taverna Latina; the open-air barbecue, Estoril. Fresh sea-breeze blows through spacious patios, the roar of sea waves provides piped music round the clock, the shrimps are saucy and succulent, the vino is truly veritas.

  At 7.30 p.m., we assemble at the Taverna—Raja Rameshwar Rao (ten years in the Lok Sabha) and his cousin Pratap Reddy; Babu Ganga Saran Sinha (countless years in the Rajya Sabha) and Princess Bhuvaneshwari Kumari of Patiala; Subba Rao and yours sincerely. Appa Pant and Aditi join us. Appa Sahib is a T.T. and orders fresh coconut juice. Rameshwar asks Aditi what she would like. She smiles, and says with a straight face: “If I have to foot the bill, I will have a feni; if you are paying for it I’d like Scotch and soda!” Rameshwar orders Scotch-n-soda. I ask Aditi to sit beside me and probe her about her research at the Oceanographic Institute. While she is telling me of zoo-planktons and other marine life and the plants from which they draw their sustenance, I am trying to unravel the secret of her spinsterhood. She is young, attractive, accomplished (M.Sc, Hawaii, doctorate from London), blue-blooded (ruling family of Oudh) and with a mind as sharp as that of any Chitpavan Brahmin. She guesses what is on my mind and says: “I meet few people interested in my work. You must visit our institute.”

  I am roused by the shrill call of a white-breasted kingfisher perched on the palm outside my window. It is 5 a.m. I go out on the balcony. Across the Zuari river-cum-Indian Ocean glitter the lights of Vasco. A full moon reclines westwards; in the east, a grey dawn silhouettes the palm-cashew-covered hillside; overhead, the morning star shines brilliantly amidst a tumble of black clouds. I tiptoe out of the sleeping hotel to the beach. I go barefooted on the wet sand, forwards and backwards along a 200-yard stretch till the sunlight outdazzles the morning star and the moon. The tide is coming in fast:

  The waves with their little white bands

  Erase the footprints from the sands.

  The tide rises.

  The tide falls.

  It is time to have breakfast and find out why Aditi is not married.

  We are taken into the office of the Director, Dr V.V.R. Varadachari. For an hour he drones on and on—the importance of the oceans and what his institution is doing. Seventy per cent of the earth’s surface is saline water; it has more life per square kilometre than land; carefully husbanded, it can feed us for years to come, provide energy and minerals. He tells of the four expeditions to the Antarctic, the two research ships Gaveshant and Sagar Kanya (the most sophisticated ocean research vessel in the world). He tells us that it would take us more than a day to meet all his staff of 600 (67 per cent of them scientists) to find out what they are doing. He does not tell us why Aditi is not married but asks us who we would like to meet
and what we would like to see. We opt for nodules, the Antarctic expeditions and sea-serpents said to be a hundred times more poisonous than cobras.

  For those not engaged in research, laboratories are not very exciting places to visit. They are a succession of rooms with shelves full of bottles and test tubes, walls covered with charts, tables littered with microscopes with researchers peering through them. They have no live sea-serpents and their two research vessels are out on the high seas. We end up in the office of Hassan Siddiqi, who was a member of the First Antarctic Expedition and is to be the next Director of the Institute. On one table are laid out nodules picked up from the bottom of the ocean bed. Their sizes range from that of ping-pong balls to unshapely masses of ten kg—all soot black. “Invaluable source of minerals, nickel, cobalt, copper and manganese,” he assures us. “We’ve staked our claim to the ocean bed as we have occupied space in the Antarctica,” he adds proudly. We watch the communication centre through which they keep in touch with the thirteen scientists left in the Antarctic. We can not only hear them but see their encampment with the Indian tricolour flying in the icy breeze.

  In the evening, Appa Pant and Aditi join us for dinner at the Coqueiros in Dabolim—a favourite haunt of the gourmet. Once again I ask Aditi to sit next to me. She wants to know about the visit to her Institute. “Infinitely boring. No sea-snakes, no whales, no sharks, no penguins; only miles of test tubes and endless talk. You tell me about your two months in the Antarctica.” (There were only two girls amongst scores of male scientists.) “Look, we scientists like to keep a low profile. We don’t like publicity. It does more harm than good to our working as a team.”

  I refuse to be snubbed by her and blatantly ask for her picture to go with this article. “I do not have one,” she replies adamantly. “I am not important. My work is.” So this piece appears without Aditi’s picture and without her permission. But I am sure I have the answer to the question why she is not married. She has found something more fulfilling than looking after a man and bearing his children.