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With malice to some

Straight arrow Khushwant Singh minces no words

Trust Khushwant Singh to call one of India’s most revered writers in English, R.K. Narayan, “tedious”. He explains that though he liked Narayan “very much as a man,” he found him “a strange mixture of outward humility and incredible arrogance.” Once, says Singh, they were both invited to an event where authors were to read out their work. “Narayan made the condition that his fee had to be one rupee higher than anyone else!”

While the 93-year-old Singh’s remarks are piquant as ever, his unapologetic stance unwavering, there does seem to be one issue he opts to clarify. At least, so it would seem from the title of his latest book, just published by Penguin Viking: “Why I Supported the Emergency — Essays and Profiles”.

The title is designed to bring the veteran journalist’s admirers and detractors alike swooping down on the book, especially now while the country is in the throes of the General Elections On the one hand he writes of Sanjay Gandhi as “a lovable goonda.” On the other, he notes the “selective and eccentric” nature of the press censorship that was imposed, and mentions the names of members of the famous caucus that had control of the country — including Sanjay’s “kitchen cabinet comprising his wife and mother-in-law”, “the Rasputin figure of Dhirendra Brahmachari”, the “two pretty women, Ambika Soni and Rukhsana Sultana” and others.

In the essay he numbers the stories of forced sterilisations among “the wildest canards”. Just canards?

Another point he lists in favour of the Emergency is that trains and buses ran on time. Is that not like recommending the proverbial sledgehammer to crack walnuts?

Speaking of the rod, the former editor of the Illustrated Weekly of India, the National Herald and Hindustan Times, has a verbal whack for today’s newspapers. With no love lost for “this mixture of Hindi-English-Urdu” and the surfeit of Bollywood, he declares, “They’re asinine. It’s the only word I can use.”

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