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LIFE LESSONS | BOOKS | INDIA
Life Lessons from a Very Old Man
(Khushwant Singh, 1915–2014)
It has been exactly ten years since the eminent writer, critic, commentator, and enjoyer-of-life Khushwant Singh passed at the ripe age of 99. I still miss him dearly, like one misses a friend.
There is so much I learned from him. To name one thing, when I started reading Urdu it was always a bit of a chore and at times I really had to put up some arduous little fights with the Shaitan in my mind to keep going. I’m just being honest. But KS taught me the ease and smoothness and intimate pleasures of the most beautiful language in the world. And the love.
He was so extremely well-read, he could quote any verse without even thinking twice — be it Kabīr or Dādū Dayāl, Rūmī or Hāfez, Iqbāl or Ghālib, or the immortal Faiz Ahmad Faiz, who was sent away and from Indian became a Palestinian, where crying out loud can be done anonymously because the pain is so overwhelmingly everywhere. He even quoted from the Quran and the Hadith.
To name another, KS was clairvoyant. Ostensibly. Here is what he wrote, for instance, in 2010:
My biggest worry is intolerance. How narrow-minded and intolerant we Indians have become. We allowed fascism to dig its heels in our courtyard. We let…
