In an essay in this anthology, Khushwant Singh claims that he is not a nice man to know. Whatever the truth of that assertion, there is little question about his skill as a witty, eloquent and entertaining writer. This book collects the best of over three decades of the author’s prose, including his finest journalistic pieces, short stories, translations, jokes, plays as well as excerpts from his non-fiction books and novels. Taken together, the pieces in this selection (some of which have never been published before) show just why Khushwant Singh is the country’s most widely read columnist and one of its most celebrated authors.
Catagory: Non Fiction
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Absolute Khushwant
I would like to be remembered as someone who made people smile.’ One of the great icons of our time, Khushwant Singh, 95, is a man of contradictions. An agnostic who’s well-versed in the holy scriptures; a vocal champion of free speech who supported the Emergency; a ‘dirty old man’ who sees ‘the world in a grain of sand and beauty in a wild flower’. Born in 1915 in pre-Partition Punjab, Khushwant Singh has been witness to almost all the major events in modern Indian history and has known most of the figures who have shaped it. In a career spanning over six decades as writer, editor and journalist, his views have been provocative and controversial, but they have also been profound, deeply perceptive and always compelling. Khushwant Singh has never been less than honest. In Absolute Khushwant, India’s grand old man of letters tells us about his life, his loves and his work. He writes on happiness, faith and honesty. And, for the first time, about his successes and failures, his strengths and weaknesses, his highs and lows. He tells us what makes him tick and the secret of his longevity; he confesses his deepest fears and what he holds dear. He writes about sex, marriage, worship and death; the people he’s admired and detested. With personal anecdotes and rare photographs, Absolute Khushwant is uncompromising, moving, and straight from the heart.
Truth, Love & A Little Malice
Born in 1915 in pre-Partition Punjab, Khushwant Singh, perhaps India’s most widely read and controversial writer has been witness to most of the major events in modern Indian history from Independence and Partition to the Emergency and Operation Blue Star and has known many of the figures who have shaped it. With clarity and candour, he writes of leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi, the terrorist Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, the talented and scandalous painter Amrita Shergil, and everyday people who became butchers during Partition.
Writing of his own life, too, Khushwant Singh remains unflinchingly forthright. He records his professional triumphs and failures as a lawyer, journalist, writer and Member of Parliament; the comforts and disappointments in his marriage of over sixty years; his first, awkward sexual encounter; his phobia of ghosts and his fascination with death; the friends who betrayed him, and also those whom he failed.
Sources of Indian Traditions
An accessible yet thorough introduction to Indian civilizations
Sources of Indian Traditions is an indispensable and essential selection of primary readings on the social, intellectual, and religious history of India from the decline of Mughal rule in the eighteenth century to today. It details the advent of the East India Company, British colonization, the struggle for liberation, the partition of 1947, and the creation of Pakistan, Bangladesh, and contemporary India.
Divided thematically, it begins with a chapter on eighteenth-century intellectual and religious trends that set the stage for India’s modern development. Nineteenth-century debates over social reform, featuring the leaders of reform and revival movements, follow. Chapters on Gandhi and his reception both nationally and abroad, and different perspectives on and approaches to partition, precede a section devoted to the drafting of the Indian constitution, the rise of nationalism, the influence of Western thought, the conflict in Kashmir, nuclear proliferation, minority religions, secularism, and the role of the Indian political left. The last two sections portray Pakistan and its struggle for national identity, and Bangladesh and the controversies over the fruits of freedom.
The Cousins Thackeray
They are first cousins twice over, but have had widely divergent political trajectories. One, an abrasive, fire-breathing demagogue, was seen as his uncle’s political heir whose behavioural traits he cultivated. The other, an introvert, is at his best when plotting strategies on the drawing board rather than the rough-and-tumble of street-corner politics that his party is known for in India’s financial capital.
Starting out as brothers-in-arms, they had a bitter falling out over inheriting the party mantle. The younger cousin branched out on his own, hijacked the populist, ethno-centric plank of his parent party, putting his cousin-turned-political foe on the defensive. A series of miscalculations later, the boot seems to be on the other foot. The elder cousin has managed to keep his flock together and cemented his position as his late father Bal Thackeray’s political heir, while the other, one of the most popular crowd-pullers in Maharashtra, is itching for an electoral comeback.
The Cousins Thackeray evaluates the political careers of Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray and Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray. It also examines questions about identity politics, and the social, cultural and economic matrix that catalysed the formation of the Shiv Sena and the MNS from it. Above all, it is a look at what makes the Thackeray cousins so integral to the politics of India, Maharashtra and Mumbai.
The Shooting Star
Shivya Nath quit her corporate job at age twenty-three to travel the world. She gave up her home and the need for a permanent address, sold most of her possessions and embarked on a nomadic journey that has taken her everywhere from remote Himalayan villages to the Amazon rainforests of Ecuador. Along the way, she lived with an indigenous Mayan community in Guatemala, hiked alone in the Ecuadorian Andes, got mugged in Costa Rica, swam across the border from Costa Rica to Panama, slept under a meteor shower in the cracked salt desert of Gujarat and learnt to conquer her deepest fears.
With its vivid descriptions, cinematic landscapes, moving encounters and uplifting adventures, The Shooting Star is a travel memoir that maps not just the world but the human spirit.
Temptations Of The West
In Temptations of the West, Pankaj Mishra brings literary authority and political insight to bear on journeys through South Asia, and considers the pressures of Western-style modernity and prosperity on the region. Beginning in India, his examination takes him from the realities of Bollywood stardom, to the history of Jawaharlal Nehru’s post-independence politics. In Kashmir, he reports on the brutal massacre of thirty-five Sikhs, and its intriguing local aftermath. And in Tibet, he exquisitely parses the situation whereby the atheist Chinese government has discovered that Tibetan Buddhism can be “packaged and sold to tourists.” Temptations of the West is essential reading about a conflicted and rapidly changing region of the world.
Butter Chicken In Ludhiana
In Butter Chicken in Ludhiana, Pankaj Mishra captures an India which has shrugged off its sleepy, socialist air, and has become instead kitschy, clamorous and ostentatious. From a convent-educated beauty pageant aspirant to small shopkeepers planning their vacation in London, Pankaj Mishra paints a vivid picture of a people rushing headlong to their tryst with modernity. An absolute classic, this is a witty and insightful account of India’s aspirational middle class.
India In Mind
This superb anthology, edited and with an introduction by Pankaj Mishra, gives us some of the finest writings on India by foreigners over the past two centuries. From Mark Twain’s puzzled fascination with Indian castes and customs to J.R. Ackerley’s delightful recollections of his visits with an eccentric gay Maharajah, here are pieces that will amuse, charm and surprise.
An End To Suffering
Is the Buddha still relevant today and, if so, in what way? Pankaj Mishra tries to answer this question as he travels through poverty-ridden South Asia to gilded Europe and America. Along the way he discovers how Buddhist thought has flowered even in a materialistic world, and reveals the parallels between the age of the Buddha and the contemporary world. A rich, challenging and deeply contemplative work, An End to Suffering is regarded as many to be Mishra’s masterpiece.