Mustard Fields in Singpaore

This article first appeared in Business World

Writing snuck upon me in the guise of a tai tai, a Chinese colloquial term for a woman of leisure. Perched atop a Singapore highrise, I was to take a sabbatical from the life of a corporate road warrior and indulge in some ‘me’ time. And do what expat wives did when their spouses relocated overseas: languorous coffee mornings, salon sessions with girlfriends, retail therapy - the options were beguiling. 

I was on my way to realizing this barmy prospect in sunny Singapore when the plains of Punjab collided with me. Rather, its fields. That grew mustard and wheat and rice and, for a period in the eighties, militants. Which made my little town on the Indo-Pak border a militant hotbed. And images started to swim up, of a time that I had left behind, or so I thought ...

Strapping burly Sardars wrapped in lois - a wool blanket that doubles up as a shawl in the Punjabi countryside - huddled in the lawn of our home, waiting for my father to start work. Or a late-night ringing of the doorbell, my father hurriedly summoned, then disappearing to return at dawn, his face drawn with what even my childish self could fathom was more than just fatigue. Newspapers with redacted text. Black tea served with leftover malai because the milkman’s delivery was interrupted, again, by curfew.  Frequent abrupt school closures. Despite which my vocabulary grew: TADA, separatists, communal ...

I tried to resist. After all, I was jobless - by choice, unburdened by motherhood - daughter yet to arrive, in a shiny first world city - ready to explore!, but the neat white Ikea table in my newly-set-up study drew me in repeatedly. There I’d sit after my husband left for office, with my second cup of tea, and memories that rose unbidden, like the fragrance of raat ki rani, the night blooming jasmine in the garden of our home in Ferozepur. All right, I determined, I would offload those memories onto my PC and be done with them. I was naive. One memory led to another, then another, a labyrinth opening up for me to wade in. That period of my life came back to me with the kind of hi-fidelity reproduction enthusiasts wax about. 

It was the eighties, Khalistan movement was at its peak, Punjab Pulce - as the police is routinely, and with some deprecation, called - was hunting down Sikh militants and notching up its tally of arrests, and men like my father - criminal lawyer by profession, Sikh by faith, Punjabi by nature/upbringing/birth? - got accustomed to being roused by bewildered parents whose sons had been whisked away from homes in the night.

Those strapping Sardars, whose forefathers had changed the course of mighty rivers to transform a scrubland into the fertile Punjab of today, who had fought the marauding hordes of Nadir Shah and Abdali, whose toil fed an entire nation, were left hapless in the face of this new adversity: Encounter deaths.

To make sense of those memories I started asking questions. My research into the Khalistan movement took me back into time and it was the national library, not any salon, that became my haunt. 

The writing of what became my second published book, The Long Walk Home, took me seven years. Meanwhile, I wrote my first, Earning the Laundry Stripes, a tongue-in-cheek look at a woman executive in an all-male corporate world. I emailed a few publishers in India and found one right away. Eventually I found the right home for my first as well. As the first fictional examination of the turbulent 20th century history of Punjab, it was a tough sell but it went on to win praise from Gulzar and Khushwant Singh - say not the struggle naught availeth!

Over twelve years of writing, I have written four novels but cannot afford to pay my bills. What I have is a nest egg from a decade of corporate work and a supportive spouse. But writing is lonely business - its only reward is the writing itself. And writers live on their conviction that yes, one day, their work will yield sufficient cold cash.

Each of my novels has a strong historical narrative woven into the story. I owe it, I guess, to Ferozepur, my town that straddles the Indo-Pak border, Janus-faced. My upcoming thriller, The Hunt for Kohinoor, Book 2 in the Mehrunisa trilogy after the bestselling The Taj Conspiracy, weaves a spy story against the backdrop of contemporary Indo-Pak history of internecine warfare and our shared Mughal history. 

What can I say? When you grow up in a border town, history is in your veins. And as Faulkner said, There is no was.

Manreet Sodhi Someshwar is the author of four novels, including the acclaimed The Long Walk Home and the upcoming thriller The Hunt for Kohinoor

Meeting the Man with Malice Towards One and All

Admittedly, there isn't any Indian over the age of ten who doesn't know Khushwant Singh; know him in one of his various avatars: the Sardar in the lightbulb, the writer behind the slim seminal defining work on Partition, the editor behind Illustrated Weekly, the columnist whose trenchant wit was evident weekly, the self-anointed dirty old man of journalism... 

Similarly, I have known him since the age of seven or eight when my father started passing on the newspaper to me with the instruction that I read his column, it would improve my English. Same with the Illustrated Weekly of India - that cheeky, salty newsmagazine with its defining cartoons that was helmed by Khushwant Singh for several years - the reading of which was prescribed to hone English language skills. Over the years I was to discover his other avatars... 

I came late to 'Train to Pakistan' - the historical novel published in 1956 which tells the monumental story of India's division through the lives of residents of Mano Majra, a village located on the border between India and Pakistan - during a career sabbatical in early 2001. It taught me more about the partition of the subcontinent than my cumulative history lessons. Serendipitiously, I had just started to write , and having grown up in a border town which was labelled a "militant hot bed" by the media during the Khalistan movement, at that time was struggling with a story around the Khalistan movement. Suffice to say that Mr Singh's novel unlocked my creative juices and pointed me in a direction which was to take me seven years before the first fictional examination of the 20th century history of Punjab, The Long Walk Home, was published.

The narrative arc of The Long Walk Home starts pre-Partition and comes all the way to the present. The research took me deep into an understanding of the Sikh faith, its origin and growth, where his 'A History of the Sikhs' was my veritable Bible. 

Upon the book's publication in July 2009, I was very keen to meet with Khushwant Singh and my editor tried to arrange a meeting. However, during the Delhi launch Mr Singh was off to Simla for his summer retreat. I rued that missed opportunity to meet the man who had strongly influenced my writing. Imagine my surprise, therefore, when a week later, he reviewed the book in his weekly column and gave his nod of approval! I remember telling my husband that after Mr Singh's review, none other really mattered.

Come 2012 and my third novel, The Taj Conspiracy, was released in June. The book's cover carries a blurb from Khushwant Singh: a gifted writer of great promise. The Delhi launch was scheduled for 7 June. Once again, I was seeking an opportunity to connect with him, if possible, for Mr Singh, at 98 years, has practically retired from public life though he continues to write daily and his weekly column is syndicated across several Indian newspapers.

My Publisher was trying to arrange a meeting and I was checking my inbox till the moment the flight took off, but no luck. In Delhi the next morning as I checked my mail I discovered I was finally getting lucky. Apparently, a very resourceful person at my Publisher's had sent across to Mr Singh copies of The Long Walk Home and The Taj Conspiracy along with a print -out of his review of the former and he had granted me a half hour window, 4-4.30 pm.

The day passed in some kind of surreal haze as I met retailers and booksellers before heading to Sujan Singh Park, the residential complex built by Khushwant Singh's father, where he lives. As I entered his living area, a high-ceilinged cavernous room lined with books, I sighted him in one corner, grey and hoary in his armchair from which he watched us approach.

As I wished him Sat Sri Akal, the traditional Sikh greeting, and introduced myself, he replied, "Tusee Guru-ans hoye" - Guru-ans are descendants of the Sikh Gurus and my father's family traces their lineage back to the 3rd Sikh Guru. 

Thereafter, we conversed for a half hour, in a mix of Punjabi and English, and few conversations before this have packed so much in such little time. We discussed Ghalib, jointly recited Bulleh Shah, chatted about the '62 Indo-China war, Hong Kong people and HK cuisine, family, memory, Sikh Gurus, sohni kudis and old men! 

When it was time to take leave I requested him to sign my copy of The Taj Conspiracy. Sign it he did, with the Sikh blessing: charhadi kala vich raho. Have a buoyant spirit! 

Sir, if I have an ounce of your erudition, wisdom or wit when I am 98, I'd have lived well. Besides all that we talked, the grace notes of that mellow afternoon in your study will always stay with me. To THE Sardar! 

Khushwant Singh on The Long Walk Home: Literary star on the horizon

This, coming from the man of letters himself, is both overwhelming and exhilarating. I can truly claim I know now what it means to float mid-air :-)