Khuswant Singh

The more suppressed a society, the more it seeks outlets in what that society forbids. Salman Rushdie is absolutely right in holding that “pornography exists everywhere, of course, but when it comes into societies in which it is difficult for young men and women to get together and do what young men and women often like doing, it satisfies a more general need... while doing so, it sometimes becomes a kind of standard bearer for freedom, even civilisation”. He chose Pakistanis obsession with pornography on the internet. I look forward to reading his essay ‘The East is Blue’. I expect the East includes India.

What is true of Pakistan is equally true about India. I cannot write as well as Rushdie, but I know both India and Pakistan better than him. Pakistan has had long periods of military rule when freedom of expression was severely suppressed. It produced more literature (including bawdy verse) and underground humour (including bawdy jokes) against its rulers than during short intervals of democratic rule. Likewise in India when Indira Gandhi imposed the Emergency and gagged the press, it gave birth to a corpus of anti-Mrs G stories which did the rounds all over the country. My favourite one was about Mahatma Gandhi in heaven ruing the fact that no one in India remembered the founding father. He sent for Pandit Nehru and asked him what he had done. Replied Nehru, “Bapu, I had the place where we cremated you turned into a national monument. On your birthdays and anniversaries of your martyrdom, people gather and sing your favourite hymn. I did my bit for you.” Next Gandhi sent for Lal Bahadur Shastri and put the same question to him. Replied Shastri, “Bapu, I had a very short time as PM. But even in that short time I had your writings and speeches translated in all our languages and published. I had your statues put in cities, towns and villages. What more I could I do?” Finally, Bapu sent for Mrs Gandhi who was then ruling over India and asked her the same question. “Bapu”, replied Indira, “I have done more to perpetuate your memory than either my father or Shastri. I have made all Indians like you. I have deprived them of everything except their langotis (loincloths) and danda (stick).” Bapu was horrified. “Beti Indira, this is wrong. The people will rise in rebellion against you.” An unfazed Indira replied, “Bapu, I have taken care of that. I have tied their hands with their langotis and put the danda in their bums.” (The Hindi version is more earthy). Humour is one outlet, pornography is another. The more you segregate men and women, the more they get together in their fantasies. Where there is a strict purdah, there is more incest and child abuse. Where there are strict laws against pornography, there is more pornography. It is as simple as that. Translating Faiz I am engaged in translating some of Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s (1911-1984) poetry into English. He was a few years senior to me in Government College, Lahore, but I did not get to know him as I was not admitted to the select coterie of Urdu savants at the time. It was during 1939-45, when he was a Lt. Colonel in the British Indian Army, that I was able to persuade him to come to my home.

He was a kindly, soft-spoken man and a heavy drinker. I have not known another man drink from sunrise to sunset, without showing the slightest sign of drunkenness. After Partition, I saw a lot more of him when I visited Rawalpindi. When he happened to be in Delhi I managed to get him to spend an evening in my home. By then, I had read quite a bit of his poetry in the original and the excellent translations done by Victor Kiernan. He had been put in prison many times for his trenchant criticism of dictatorial regimes and wrote some of his most moving poetry from prison. He had ardent admirers who included his jailors and their wives. I have no doubt they took good care of him. Another enigma about him was while he lived in princely comfort himself, most of his poetry was devoted to highlighting the abysmal poverty of the downtrodden masses exhorting them to revolt and claim their God-given right to a better life. A line of doggerel about him went somewhat like this: Faiz ik baraa shair hai, chaman mein reh kar maarey veeraney kee gaand. (Faiz is a great poet, he lives in a garden and buggers the wild wastes.) As in the case of many other great poets, so in Faiz’s case, it was after his verses were put to music and sung that they gained popularity. My friend, the late Kingsley Martin, editor of The Statesman and Nation, told me that once when he was visiting Lahore Faiz took him to the prostitutes’ quarters, Hira Mandi. There the girls sang Faiz’s ghazals and instead of asking for money loaded Faiz with gifts as they chucked them under his chin. The most famous lines of Faiz which appear first in all his compositions run as follows: Raat yoon dil mein teyree khoee huee yaad aayee Jaisey veeraaney mein chupkey say bahaar aa jaaye; Jaisey sehraaon mein hauley sey chaley baad-e-naseem Jaisey beemaar ko be-wajah garaar aa jaaye Last night your memory stole into my mind As stealthily as spring steals into a deserted wilderness As in desert wastes a gentle breeze begins to blow, As in the sick beyond hope, hope begins to grow. Illiterates The head of the mathematics department of Delhi University was travelling by Toofan Mail to Mumbai. The dinner bell was sounded. He left his seat and walked down the corridor to the dining car taking with him a book that he was reading. When he sat down at the table, he found that he had left his reading glass in his compartment. He called the dining attendant, pointed to a footnote and asked, “Be good enough to read this for me.” “I am sorry, sir,” said the attendant, “like you I cannot read or write.” (Contributed by R.N. Lakhotia, N. Delhi) Brevity, the soul of wit When I was in college, we had a competition of making a joke with the least number of words. The following joke in seven words was judged the best: “Geography of a woman tells her history.”