Khushwant Singh: Laughter and a life without love

One of the most well known, well loved men and writers of South Asia passed away at 99 who made a career telling the world what he thought of the world and himself. He was India's most read who also lifted the veil on matter of sexuality earning the title, "dirty old man". He brought laughter and wit to many, showed how to write in simple language which earned him great popularity. His work on the history of the Sikhs was a major contribution to knowledge making. He even went to the Parliament apart from reinventing magazine journalism from the staid to the saucy. Yet in his private he was a complex and complicated man whose words never fully expressed that he had lived a life without love in almost his entire married life.

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Khushwant Singh came from what is now Pakistan. His family were builders who built large parts of Delhi and were rich and his father was knighted. He went to study in England while trying to be a lawyer and in one of his books mentions his affair with his Indian school teacher and a few other liaisons including with a sex worker. It was also here that he began to be serious about Kanwal Malik, a lovely lady two years younger than him, and with many suitors. He didn't have much hope since her father was an important officer in the very department his family would line up for contracts but to his surprise they agreed and Kunwal and Khushwant were married in 1939 in a wedding attended by 1500 people including Md. Ali Jinnah. It was a grand affair.

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But Khushwant never got into a profession and by the time he went to London, he had picked up both whiskey and making passes at beautiful ladies. His duties included handling the press which published pics of Nehru and his lover Lady Mountbatten in their nightdress when he was visiting London. There were other references to sexual life and Kushwant was already without perhaps knowing it himself was branding himself, a surprising lack of self esteem which he overcame with overt sexual gestures and words. His wife would be very jealous but he went on and in fact welcomed the interest of their mutual friend Mangat Rai who regularly visited their home and wrote long love letters to his wife. But it soon became a little more than a fling for her and for Khuswant it was the beginning of a new factor in his life which he tolerated and suffered through.

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So when he returned and was offered a job to resuscitate the Illustrated Weekly of India he was right on. He basically redid the magazine format in India by bringing in pictures of voluptuous women, semi nudes using whatever excuse was possible and racy writings that took the reading public by storm. Illustrated Weekly raced to the top and Khushwant Singh became a household name in the English reading world of India. His writings — funny, accessible and not taxing to the brain was very popular and even as he edited the Magazine he also created Khushwant Singh. If he had said there was only one formula to make a magazine a hit — sex — it was a half truth. What mattered was packaging and dressing up the rag and he knew how to do that better than all others. By the time he left full time editing, Indian magazine world had changed beyond recognition.

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He was an agnostic, a secular person and a democrat but his identity as a Sikh was dear to him. He wrote a multi volume history of the Sikhs which still ranks as an excellent work and he considered that his crowning glory. His novel 'Train to Pakistan' was on the partition of Punjab and he often wrote about this subject. His books were not considered masterpieces but very much read. 'The Company of Women', 'Delhi' and others were excellent crafted works. He was not just a journalist or a fiction writer but someone who was trying to put into print his public and private thoughts too. To that end he was one of the most open writers, admitting no falsity about himself and his world. His columns in his later life were of that genre and the last thing he would try to do was seek false glory or pity. In the end he had perhaps stumbled upon the secret of being a stoic who made others laugh.

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But there was no such laughter in his personal life. His son Rahul Singh has written that his mother seriously considered leaving Kushwant for Mangat but the possible trauma to the children prevented her.

Does the key to understanding Khushwant lies here? In his autobiography and interviews he talked about it particularly after his wife passed away from Alzheimer's. "Their relationship carried on for about 20 years and this was something that affected me deeply, snapping something inside me, changing something within me forever,"

Singh did not react to the wife's relationship with Mangat Rai, married to one Champa but in love with Kunwal who reciprocated. Even though it made him very unhappy, he did not want to interfere. He says he never thought of having affairs himself. He found that he could no longer respond emotionally and had nothing left to give. He was emotionally bankrupt.

Singh sounded more and more like a tired, broken old man. "He admits to dalliances with women, but looked at those sorties as source material for his writing. They contributed to the love-making scenes and passages in his stories and novels. They were good while they lasted but invariably he moved on. In the instances where the women persisted, he withdrew after a point. He cherished his space and never wanted anyone to get too close to him emotionally. He never had any close friends. Writing is a solitary task and he was more comfortable being alone."

"While holding forth on sex, Singh says he never really had the time, nor the inclination, for romance. In his view, romantic interludes take up a lot of time and are a sheer waste of energy, for the end result isn't much. Sex is definitely more important, though with the same person it can get boring after a while. A partner, however good-looking, becomes a bore once bedded. Coming from a man who spent much of his life without love, that is understandable." (Khushwant's Uncertain Liaisons by Suveen K Sinha).

Yet his writings remained fresh and humorous. The man who is synonymous with wit, jokes and laughter all over South Asia was perhaps a man who was one of the unhappiest and loneliest men around. He didn't share laughter; he was creating it for others even when his heart didn't laugh.

And that is why his work is so significant for in the end, having trudged through 99 years his stamina to go on had conquered it all.

RIP Khushwant Singh, you deserve it all.

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Afsan Chowdhury is a journalist, activist and writer.