In the company of women

Just finished reading 'In the company of women' by Khushwant Singh. Although the book came out in 1999 , I had failed to read it then and bought a copy when I found one. The reason I wanted to read the book was not to find out about Singh's inclinations to write about sexuality in his late eighties but to check how good the material and storyline really were.

I was not suitably impressed by the book , partly due to its tendency to sound both banal and mythical at the same time. Mohan Kumar the protagnist is shown as an extremely brilliant individual who wins a scholarship and goes abroad to study in princeton. He is also shown as being handsome , more than six feet tall and a compulsive womaniser. He beds a lot of American girls and becomes a known stud because he incidentally also has the---hold your horses- the biggest Organ seen by women who he has bedded.

The book keeps on meandering through the life of Mohan Kumar who comes to India , becomes a successful businessman and also bears an unhappy marriage. While all this is OK , Singh's narrative style is least engrossing and focuses more on eroticising the book . "Erotica" has a certain value in writing and when written with an unselfconscious style can be engrossing, a case in point is 'John Updike'. Though the only book of real substance written by Singh is 'Train to Pakistan' , it is imperative to note that the author is more known as an accurate and worthwhile historian than a fiction writer.

"A history of Sikhs" is a Vivid description of Sikh history down the years and Khushwant is also known to have popularised Guru Gobind Singh's image as a great poet. Very few have read the tenth Guru's 'Bichitar Natak' . Read it and you will realise the intellect and vision of Sikhism's great hero. Khushwant Singh, has contributed in his way as a virtual encyclopedia on Sikh History and literature , and this is where he should have drawn a line. While I have no problems with his brand of writing , it somehow diminshes his achievements wherein the general public view him as nothing but a 'randy Sikh' who is somewhat of a buffoon.

That is the precise reason for my not liking 'In the company of Women ' for while there is nothing wrong in writing about sex , it should not be the be all and end all of any literary work. Character development , however was never a strongpoint of Khuswant Singh's where excluding his first work he fell into a realm of mediocrity.

Engagement Mithais

I have never clearly understood the reasons for distributing sweets , whenever a person gets tied in Conjugal bliss or the ceremony preceding that. I got engaged this month itself and my office staff was bending over themselves to congratulate me. Fine enough , I thought --though what exactly made them so enthusiastic was still to come. So! exclaimed my Boss where is the Mithai ----. Implying and later accusing how I had conveniently forgotten this sacrosanct regimen of distributing sweets. Finally bowing to peer presssure , I bowed down and distributed sweets.

This curious phenomenon of sweets is not really explained by the rich tradition of Indian mythology and story telling combined. Now-- agreed the person undergoing the ceremony is expected to be reasonably happy. Though whether this translates to making everybody happy around you is reasonably suspicious, anyway I went ahead and did the usual routine of making people happy by distributing Mithai-- that great Indian conduit transferring happiness to mankind.

Mobile Mania

A layman can always wonder at the habits of his co-dwellers in this place we call earth. Well !people have this innate habit of chatting. Even before the mobile was invented we have seen people gossiping , though admittedly in a restricted way. There are a lot of points, I have noticed while observing people on their mobiles however, sample the most humourous :

The top ranking goes to girls who are foerever pressing the instrument to their ear talking in whispers which you can only hear if you have some superhuman power of hearing . If you travel in the Delhi Metro , than you can come across this species of teenage , college going and young lasses in their twenties speaking on the mobile as if plotting the downfall of the Pentagon. How do their 'boyfriends' decipher the mumbo jumbo is beyond my comprehension. Then again , maybe comprehension is not a necessity when the rustle of whispers is what matters.