To read or not to read- Khuswant Singh

There was a time when I made it a point to read every book which gained wide publicity either because it had won the author the Nobel, the Booker or the Pulitzer prizes or its author had been given an advance royalty running into millions of dollars. I no longer do so because many of the books turned out to be second-rate. I extended my prejudices to books which were launched with great fanfare at cocktail parties in five-star hotels with impressive guest lists including former prime ministers, the diplomatic corps, litterateurs and the expected quota of gate-crashers.

That was my initial reaction to the launch of Navtej Sarna’s We Weren’t Lovers Like That (Penguin). Although he is the son of a much respected Punjabi writer, I had no intention of reading his book. I asked Ravi Singh of Penguin, who had edited it, if it was worth my while. He assured me it was and gently reprimanded me for my biases against big launches.

Sarna’s novel makes good reading. Although the story content is thin, it does not seem to matter. It is about a middle-aged man ditched by his wife, who takes herself and their son to shack up with her lover. He is double-crossed by a senior colleague in a private company, resigns from his job, and decides to return to Dehra Dun where he had spent the happier days of his childhood. Although he takes the Rajdhani Express from Delhi, it is a slow journey with brief halts at Saharanpur, Roorkee and Haridwar. During his journey he lets his mind wander over the past years spent in different parts of India. He recalls friends of his younger days, girls he had made love to, who’d left him for better lovers, whores he had taken turns with his friends — one episode followed by another, stories within one story held together like beads of a rosary.

Sarna writes with rare sensitivity with an eye for detail in a lucid prose totally free of cliches and Indianisms. It is evocative, nostalgic and gratifying. I give just one example of the way he handles the language. His unfaithful wife had a fetish for blue. He is reminded of it as the Rajdhani Express rumbles across the iron railway bridge over the Yamuna:

“The same blue, not quite pale, not quite turquoise, is touching up the morning sky now beyond the river. The river should have been blue. But under the heavy girders of the railway bridge, I can only see grey tired water, burdened with sewage, moving helplessly down, curving in disinterested eddies and swirls. The river is blue when it is young. I have stood where it comes out of the hills and rushes past round white stones, unaware of the filth lying ahead that it is destined to carry. Everything is beautiful and innocent when it is young. I shut my eyes. I don’t want to see east Delhi waking up in concrete cooperative complexes, buying milk, going to school, trudging to jobs, hanging on to crowded buses. It is an ugly sight and I hunger for beauty.”