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In the company of father
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This is one family where pride does not ever wear thin. Meet Khushwant and Rahul Singh, the charming father-son duo, each with a way his own, notes ANJANA RAJAN.
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Rahul Singh flankedby portraits of his parents in New Delhi.
THEY CERTAINLY live life on their own separate terms. Khushwant Singh's is a name so identified with the celebrity journalist and author that anyone else with that name would look willy-nilly like a feeble impostor, while that of the son, Rahul, though borrowed from Gautam Buddha's son, is one among a great ocean of Rahuls across the country. If the father has been on friendly terms with the Nehru-Gandhi family and, into his ninth decade in life, continues as one of Delhi's most famous citizens, still revelling in making ribald remarks or churning out pulp fiction laced with a touch of sub-continental history, the son is a Mumbaiite, with a quieter, less sensational manner, but not in the least cowed down by his father's star status. Why should he, after all?
Let's not forget, it was the father who followed the son into journalism - even joining the same paper, The Times of India, as the son left to take over as The Reader's Digest's first Indian editor. Anyway, says Rahul, whose "Khushwant Singh - In the Name of the Father" brought out by Roli Books hits the stands shortly, "One point I think I should make is that since the age of 18 when I went abroad (to Cambridge University for his degree in History) I've been living on my own. My first job was in Bombay in 1963. Ever since, I've been there except for three years in Chandigarh when I was with The Indian Express."
So, although he visited his parents regularly, he's been his own man. And if the father's is an illustrious career that started with diplomatic postings and later led to his becoming arguably the most successful and famous editor of the Illustrated Weekly of India, a historian and novelist, the son's is no less noteworthy. Associated with some of the most respected publications in the country as well as briefly with the Khaleej Times, and the United Nations, as a consultant for which he authored "Family Planning Success Stories" about population control in eight countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, Rahul says, "One of the things that greatly interested me was the social sector, especially population." He is still associated with the concept of social marketing of contraceptives and is President of the Board of Trustees of DKT India.
A family picture from "In the Name of the Father".
The book on family planning, released at the Population Conference in 1991, took him travelling over two years. Since then he has been mostly freelancing. His straightforward approach and prolific writing notwithstanding, for Rahul to pen his father's biography was not easy, but the historian in him was attracted to the Roli Books project of compiling archival histories - using photos, letters, mementos and the like - of great personalities. As he comments at the beginning of the book, this approach is rarely found in India, to "trace the story of a remarkable individual's life by highlighting the turning points and influences that shaped it."
You could put it down to his cosmopolitan outlook that Rahul is not a turbaned Sikh and cut his hair as a young man in Britain despite its importance to followers of Sikhism, but as he describes it in the biography, there were other reasons, and his parents, despite his father being a declared agnostic, were hurt by it.
But that is in the past. Father and son exemplify living by their decisions, and figuratively too, seem to stay out of each other's hair. Rahul says, "I like to go out, socialise, meet people. My father thinks I do too much of it," but categorically denies discussing his father's writings with him. He hasn't even read many of his books. "I've not read `Delhi: A Novel' because it got bad reviews - though he dedicated it to my girlfriend," he remarks, adding on a more serious note, "`Train to Pakistan' was a great novel. I think he's a one novel man. People will remember him for that and for his `History of the Sikhs' and the biography of Ranjit Singh. I think these will live after him." Khushwant Singh is also "a great communicator," points out Rahul, and can get his message "right from the President down to peasants."
With his characteristic frankness, Rahul adds, "I can communicate with the President and the PM but not with the villagers. Most of us urbanites can't."
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