Author: Khushwant Singh
Publisher: Penguin
Year: 2002
Language: English
Pages: 269
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0143028278
Description
Khushwant Singh has spent a lifetime waging a war against hypocrisy, humbug and intolerance. This new collection brings together his essays and articles on themes as varied as God, the afterlife, the banning of books, caste, prostitution, crank calls and pets.
Khushwant Singh has spent a lifetime waging a war against hypocrisy, humbug and intolerance. It has made him India’s most provocative and popular columnist. This new collection brings together his essays and articles on themes as varied as God, the afterlife, the banning of books, caste, prostitution, crank calls and pets.
His skills as a raconteur and journalist are used to brilliant effect in his sketches of Gandhi, Raj Kapoor, Vajpayee, Phoolan Devi, Zia-ul-Haq and the Dalai Lama, as also in his travel pieces on Nagaland and France, among other places. ‘The Vintage Sardar’ ends with a frank and introspective autobiographical piece.
Contents
Acknowledgements
THE WRITERLY LIFE
Journalist bashing
A London-Glasgow diary: Authors, Poets etc.
Our Indo-Anglian mistress
Banning Rushdie
Polyglot poetry
Sir Penderel Moon
Honoring an editor
THE FAMOUS AND THE INFAMOUS
Raj Thapar
The Prophecy
Shri 420
Akbar’s Love Life
Zia-ul-Haq
The Edwina-Nehru affair
Phoolan Devi
Amrita Shergil
The one and only Nirad Babu
India’s man of destiny
DEATH AND THE AFTERLIFE
Pen versus the SLR 20
Old age and retirement
Life after death
Experience of death
The Dalai Lama on death
Fear of dying
Learning from the dead
THE QUESTION OF FAITH
Not in the name of Allah
The power of silence
Human face of God
Dialogue with the Dalai Lama: How life began
Dialogue with the Dalai Lama: Is there a God?
Dialogue with the Dalai Lama: Why bad thing happen to good people
Why the fast of Ramazan?
God incarnate
Magic in the toe
Deepavali Gods and prayer
Neither Marx nor God
Let us clean our temples
‘Sati’ and Hindu-Sikh psyche
‘Sants’ and Saints
Worship of the Ganga
WATCHING NATURE
How it all began
Mango fool
Songs of the monsoon
Dog control
Burial more patriotic than cremation
Billo
TRAVELLER’S TALES
Monsoon in Hyderabad
Spanning Kaushalya
As others see us
Discovering the Assamese
Bhubaneshwar
Dateline Dhaka
The French connection
Nagaland on Christmas eve
A London-Glasgow diary: Rioting in London
The heart of India
SPEAKING OF SEX
Kama to Rama
Heard of korophobia?
Author-MP and prostitute
Hand of the Potter
Living longer: Making love to the last
STRAY THOUGHTS
Indo-Pak ‘bhai-bhaism’
Telephonic exchange of abuses
The bathing pool
The task of seeing oneself
To each his own grief