Everyone has their favourite story of Khushwant Singh, writer, editor, satirist, novelist, historian and so much more. Mine goes back to 1997 when we found ourselves travelling in Italy together as part of a group invited to mark the 50th anniversary of Indian independence.
Although never part of the many who regularly visited the ‘grand old man of Indian literature’ I nonetheless knew Khushwant Singh because of a close connection with various members of his family and because his son-in-law, Ravi Dayal, had once been my boss.
In Italy, Khushwant joined many of us in using our spare time to eat Italian food and shop for friends and family – in those days we did not live in quite such a globalised world as now. He noticed that I was searching (unsuccessfully as it turned) for a particular kind of chocolate for my young nieces.
Unknown to me, he made several visits of his own to supermarkets, managed to track down the sweets, and at the airport summoned me to the first class lounge and handed me a bag full of Kinder joy (widely available in India today) saying, ‘tell the girls an old uncle sent them.’
Since then, this one singular act of kindness remained as a bond of great affection between us. Perhaps this is the only way in which many of us will remember him – by the particular connections he made with each one of us.
A life in letters From the early days when art, literature and journalism rubbed shoulders to his lifetime of writing and his singular column where anyone and everyone could send jokes that the ‘sardar’ then included, to the many, many books he wrote, Khushwant Singh could be characterised as malicious, witty, acerbic, critical, kind, ribald, frank, courageous – all of this and so much more.
Among his many books, my favourites have always been Train to Pakistan , a moving story about Partition, and the two-volume history he wrote of his people, the Sikhs.
Written with a journalist’s pen and a historian’s eye, this is a history that does any bookshelf it graces proud.
The world of literature will be the poorer for his passing: not only because the literary salons he held and the hospitality he extended, at his home every day, became part of the daily routine of so many people, not only because of the encouragement he gave to new and young writers, but also because in his prodigious literary production – over 30 books of different kinds – he embraced a range of forms and genres with an ease and comfort in each one.
Lasting legacy Khushwant Singh showed that you can be a writer of fiction, non-fiction, journalistic writing, jokes, that you can describe characters you know, create those you don’t, write both good and bad sex, and still make a stand for your politics as he did after 1984 when he returned his Padma Bhushan (awarded to him 10 years earlier).
A life that well lived deserved the gentle and peaceful passing he had. Perhaps then the most fitting tribute to this giant of the journalistic and literary world in India would be to raise a glass to him and wish him well, wherever he is now.
Urvashi Butalia is Editor, Publisher and Director of Zubaan