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.