Queen’s Garments, Khuswant Singh And Me- A Poor Fauji 1. Khuswant Singh used to spend his summers at Kasauli, this I knew even before I landed at its Station HQ on temporary duty for four months. Staying alone in the Brigade Officers Mess, I used to pass my off-duty time by taking long walks in mornings and in evenings . During these walks I used to see many people, walking, mostly alone. I used to wish some of those whose faces had become familiar. 2. Kasauli is a small beautiful hill station in Himachal Pradesh, en route to Shimla. It is not crowded or commercialised like nearby Shimla or Mussoorie and has been able to maintain its beauty by virtue of most of its land being under Army’s control. There are some old British era bungalows whose grandeur is intact as no change in their plinth area and basic design is permitted. Such exclusiveness at a beautiful hill station attracted many big shots like former diplomat and governor BK Nehru (Pdt Jawahar Lal Nehru’s cousin), Amrita Shergill’s relatives, British film director David Lean’s fourth wife, former senior govt officials and many other famous personalities staying there. Khuswant Singh inherited ‘Raj Villa’ from his in-laws’ side who had bought it from a departing British couple. Occasionally I used to walk in front of these houses admiring them enviously. Then of course Lawrence School Sanawar (the oldest co-educational residentail school in world, established in 1847 for British soldiers’ orphan children, but now a famous public school) was nearby. There were many influential big wigs who desperately wanted to have property at Kasauli. And some of them were building up a case for relaxing the Cantonment rules by having vested interest articles and news planted in media. These used to be countered in turn by those who were already in. So there was pressure on us at the Station HQ and by and large we used to avoid being friendly to outsiders. 2. After few days I started seeing an old Sikh gentleman with specks, wearing a turban and sweater, having slightly drooping shoulders also walking. You could not fail to recognise him as Khuswant Singh. Generally he used to walk alone lost in his thoughts and his looks made it clear that he did not want to be disturbed. So I did not. Once in a while I used to go to Kasauli Club in evenings, to catch up with my reading and to draw books from its library. I saw him again there reading. I confirmed his being Khuswant Singh from the club staff. 3. One day, I observed that he was smiling and almost laughing while reading something and seemed to be in good mood. So I gathered courage and went to him and after wishing him introduced myself. He asked me to sit down in a chair next to him .He made some small talk which probably was a signal from his side for me to now go away but it made me bolder and I said “Sir I have read your books and stories and liked them”. He just said “Hmmm...”. I again started chirping “Sir I used to read The Illustrated Weekly Of India regularly when you were its editor”. He now looked at me carefully and said “Major Sahib you must be very young then. Do you really used to read it or just see the photos?” . I was caught lying. So I smiled and said “Sir honestly, we used to mainly see the photos”. With a mischievous twinkle in his eyes, probably to amuse me, he asked me to tell him which photographs of The Weekly I remember. I said “ Sir the one showing British Queen’s behind with her skirt blown up due to strong wind at the tarmac of an Australian air force airfield and carried under the caption ‘Even royalties have ill fitting underwear !’ “. 4. He laughed and said “No...no...that wasn’t the Queen. That was some other minor princess. Had it been the Queen, the British would have attacked Australia with their navy for the crime of taking such a photograph of their biggest tourist attraction”. I, who was enjoying my hour of glory quipped “Sir then we could title that photograph as ‘The Ass That Launched Thousand Ships’ “. He laughed again and seemed to really enjoy my brainwave and said “This is good one”. 5. But this was not a good one for my boss at the Station HQ whom I narrated the incident casually during the tea time break next day hoping that he would also enjoy the joke. He got annoyed with me for fraternising too much with local population and admonished me for it. He then took away the land cases files from me and assigned me to look after the Army Holiday Home which in effect became a blessing as I made unofficial personal reserves of some suites by getting them placed under the category of ‘repairs’ and was able to oblige my friends and Regimental Officers at Chandi Mandir and Amabala Cantt who otherwise were not getting the accommodation due to their requests being received late. So that was the only meeting of mine with that great personality as thereafter I started going to the library only in mornings after finishing off my work at the Holiday Home.
Posted on: Sun, 23 Mar 2014 16:42:35 +0000
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