Obituaries: Death at My Doorstep

Khushwant Singh (1915-2014) was born in Hadali in pre-Partition Punjab. Educated at Government College, Lahore, and at King’s College and the Inner Temple in London, he practised at the Lahore High Court for a few years. In 1947, he joined the Indian Ministry of External Affairs. Diplomatic postings took him to England and Canada. This was followed by a stint at the UNESCO in Paris that he cut short to return to India. In 1951, he embarked on his career as a journalist with All India Radio.

A much-revered journalist and columnist, Khushwant Singh was an accomplished historian (History of the Sikhs, Vols. I & II), and an award-winning novelist (Train to Pakistan, Grove Press Award, 1954). His vast oeuvre included translations, joke books, books on Delhi, women, nature and current affairs. Awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1974, Khushwant Singh returned the decoration in 1984 to register his protest against Operation Bluestar—the Union Government’s siege of the Golden Temple.

Khushwant Singh was a member of Parliament from 1980 to 1986.

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FOR JAYA THADANI

whose letters sustained

my spirits in my later years

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

PREFACE

Part 1: on death and dying

The Dalai Lama on Death

Fear of Dying: Acharya Rajneesh

Have You Ever Thought of Death?

Be Prepared

On the Hit List

Nearing Death: Old Age

Death as a Houseguest

Experience of Death

Learning from the Dead

Life After Death

Coping with the Death of a Loved One

Part 2: after life

Z.A. Bhutto: From the Death Sentence to the Gallows

Sanjay Gandhi: Young Dictator

Tikka Khan: ‘Butcher of Bangladesh’

M.O. Mathai: Nehru’s Nemesis

Mountbatten: Lord of Baloney

Rajni Patel: Marxist Millionaire

Gurcharan Singh Tohra: Be-Taaj Badshah

Dhiren Bhagat: Gone at 30

Prabha Dutt: Boss’s Boss

Hardayal: A Tribute to the Great Revolutionary

RGK: Paradigm of Self-effacement

Remembering Mulk, the Pioneer

The One and Only Nirad Babu

Balwant Gargi: The Naked Triangle Fetched Him More Foes Than Friends

R.K. Narayan: Malgudi No More

Ali Sardar Jafri: The Poetry of Burning

Faiz Ahmed Faiz: Marxist, Lover and Poet

G.S. Fraser: Poetry of the Adi Granth

A Requiem to Domsky

Kishan Lal: Poetry with Dahi Bhallas

Yogi Bhajan: Khalsa Flag at Half Mast

Protima Bedi: She Had a Lust for Life

Nargis Dutt: Mother India

Amrita Shergil: Femme Fatale

Chetan Anand: On Losing a Friend

Dharma Kumar: Women Like Her Do Not Die...

P.C. Lal: Air Chief Marshal (1917-1984)

Jack Wilberforce Burke Peel: My English Bhai

Manzur Qadir: The Role Model

Knowing Bhisham Sahni

The Palam Air Crash: 1973

Penny-pinching Zinkin

Daadimaa: The Portrait of a Lady

Chajjoo Ram of Raj Villa

Simba: Family Favourite

EPITAPH: KHUSHWANT SINGH

INDEX

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The idea of putting together a book on obituaries was suggested by Pramod Kapoor of Roli Books. It appealed to me immensely, and after giving it some thought, I decided to name the book Death at My Doorstep : it gave me the opportunity to spell out my views on death and dying which I felt was appropriate for a man in his 90s—besides other people’s obituaries, I could also write my own.

Most of the spadework for Death at My Doorstep was done by Dipa Chaudhuri of Roli Books. She painstakingly went through a considerable body of my writings including past issues of The Illustrated Weekly of India, New Delhi, The Hindustan Times and The Tribune, as well as my collection of short stories The Mark of Vishnu (Saturn Press and Ravi Dayal), where some of these pieces had first appeared, and selected what she liked. But for her this book would not have seen the light of day.

Sunset and evening star

And one clear call for me!

May there be no moaning of the bar

When I put out to sea…

…Twilight and evening bell,

After that the dark!

And may there be no sadness of farewell

When I embark.

—ALFRED LORD TENNYSON

PREFACE

We do not talk of death lightly—it is regarded as tasteless, illmannered and depressing. This is the wrong way to look upon an essential fact of life which makes no exceptions: It comes to kings as well as beggars, to the rich and the poor, to saints as well as sinners, the aged and the young. You simply cannot turn a blind eye to it and fool yourself into believing that death comes to other people but will spare you. It will not. It is best to prepare yourself for it and when it comes, welcome it with a smile on your lips.

I am now over 90 years old and am aware that the hour of my tryst with destiny is drawing near. I have given a lot of thought to it. Being a rationalist, I do not accept irrational, unproven theories of life-death-rebirth in different forms as an unending process till our beings mingle with God and we attain nirvana. I do not accept the belief that while the body perishes, the soul survives. I do not know what the soul looks like; neither I, nor anyone has seen it. Nor do I accept the Hebrew, Christian and Islamic belief in the Day of Judgement—heaven and hell. I go along with the poet Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib when he said:

Hum ko maaloom hai Jannat kee haqeeqat leykin,

Dil kay khush rakhney ko Ghalib, yeh khayaal achha hai.

(We know what the reality of paradise is;

but it is not too bad an idea to beguile the mind.)

As far as I am concerned, I accept the finality of death; we do not know what happens to us after we die.

I have put my views as well as those of others on the subject as honestly as I could. I have also added obituaries of people I met—some were well known, others humble non-entities. Many of these were published in the two syndicated columns I have been writing every week for many years: ‘This Above All’ in The Tribune and ‘With Malice Towards One and All’ in The Hindustan Times.

I have never subscribed to the belief that nothing bad should be said about the dead. If people were evil in their lifetimes, death does not convert them into saints. Such falsehoods may be condoned when inscribed on tombstones but not in obituaries which should be without bias, and truthful. I have written lots of obituaries about people I admired and loved; I have also written about people I detested and loathed. I did my best to be as even-handed as I could about all of them. I was accused of maligning people who could not hit back or take me to court for libel. It is true that there are no provisions in our law for friends or relatives of a dead person to take an author to court on a charge of libel unless that libel hurts their reputations. But I have written scathing profiles of eminent men including governors of states. Two of them took me to court and the Press Council. In both cases, the matter was settled by compromise requiring me to say that I did not intend to hurt their feelings—which in fact I did.

I have written obituaries of myself. The first entitled Posthumous was written when I was still in my twenties and appeared in a collection of my short stories, The Mark of Vishnu published by Saturn Press in London. I take the liberty of reproducing it here to prove that death need not necessarily be a matter to cry over and can be a subject of jest as well.

* * *

Posthumous

I am in bed with fever. It is not serious. In fact, it is not serious at all, as I have been left alone to look after myself. I wonder what would happen if the temperature suddenly shot up. Perhaps I would die. That would be really hard on my friends. I have so many and am so popular. I wonder what the paper would have to say about it. They couldn’t just ignore me. Perhaps The Tribune would mention it on its front page with a small photograph. The headline would read ‘Sardar Khushwant Singh Dead’—and then in somewhat smaller print:

We regret to announce the sudden death of Sardar Khushwant Singh at 6 p.m. last evening. He leaves behind a young widow, two infant children and a large number of friends and admirers to mourn his loss. It will be recalled that the Sardar came to settle in Lahore some five years ago from his hometown, Delhi. Within these years he rose to a position of eminence in the Bar and in politics. His loss will be mourned generally throughout the province.

Amongst those who called at the late Sardar’ s residence were the P.A. to the Chief Justice, several Ministers, and Judges of the High Court.

In the statement to the press, the Hon’ble Chief Justice said: ‘I feel that the Punjab is poorer by the passing away of this man. The cruel hand of death has cut short the promise of a brilliant career.’

At the bottom of the page would be an announcement:

The funeral will take place at 10 a.m. today.

I feel very sorry for myself and for all my friends. With difficulty I check the tears which want to express sorrow at my own death. But I also feel elated and want people to mourn me. So I decide to die—just for the fun of it as it were. In the evening, giving enough time for the press to hear of my death, I give up the ghost. Having emerged from my corpse, I come down and sit on the cool marble steps at the entrance to wallow in posthumous glory.

In the morning I get the paper before my wife. There is no chance of a squabble over the newspaper as I am downstairs already, and in any case my wife is busy pottering around my corpse. The Tribune lets me down. At the bottom of page 3, column 1, I find myself inserted in the little brackets of obituary notices of retired civil servants—and that is all. I feel annoyed. It must be that blighter Shafi, Special Representative. He never liked me. But I couldn’t imagine he would be so mean as to deny me a little importance when I was dead. However, he wouldn’t keep the wave of sorrow which would run over the province from trickling into his paper. My friends would see to that.

Near the High Court the paper is delivered fairly early. In the house of my lawyer friend Qadir it is deposited well before dawn. It isn’t that the Qadirs are early risers. As a matter of fact, hardly anyone stirs in the house before 9 a.m. But Qadir is a great one for principle and he insists that the paper must be available early in the morning even if it is not looked at.

As usual, the Qadirs were in bed at 9 a.m. He had worked very late at night. She believed in sleep anyhow. The paper was brought in on a tray along with a tumbler of hot water with a dash of lime juice. Qadir sipped the hot water between intervals of cigarette smoking. He had to do this to make his bowels work. He only glanced at the headlines in bed. The real reading was done when the cigarette and lime had their effect. The knowledge of how fate had treated me had to await the lavatory.

In due course, Qadir ambled into the bathroom with the paper in one hand and a cigarette perched on his lower lips. Comfortably seated, he began to scan it thoroughly and his eyes fell on news of lesser import. When