The Hindu Business Line : A second Train to Pakistan!

I first read Khushwant Singh's controversial novel, Train to Pakistan way back in the late 1950s when it was prescribed as a text for my seniors in the MA (final) `Indo Anglican Literature' paper of the Gujarat University. There were protests in academic circles and a demand to ban the `dirty' book before it could corrupt young minds.

My seniors told me that the gentleman who handled this paper never discussed the book in class. "It is a novel, you can read it for yourselves," he said. But it was obvious he would have been embarrassed to discuss the book in class, which had a dozen girls. In those comparatively peaceful days, there were no demonstrations against the book, nor were any copies burnt. The Sardar was less well known then and hence no one thought of making his effigy and burning it.

For a paperback, I paid around Rs 3 for the book and found it terribly coarse. The theme was important — the partition of India, the slaughter of millions of Hindus and Muslims, and the efforts of a few good people who tried to save innocent lives. I was too young to detect any literary merit in the book, Khushwant Singh freely used ma-bahen gallies (abuses) and lovemaking scenes were described in clinical precision. I was quite familiar with erotic literature, but the coarse Hindi, Punjabi words Singh used for the coupling scenes jolted my young mind.

But the book was an important milestone; it was set in a difficult era for India and Pakistan. It was too early to produce a history on the subject, but a fictitious account was possible. Now the book has been reissued by Roli Books priced Rs 495, with photographs by famous Life magazine photographer Margaret Bourke-White, who covered our freedom struggle and was close to Gandhiji.

Originally titled Mano Majra, the book was completed in just three months. The images of Partition were fresh in Singh's mind and he had just quit a diplomatic stint at the London Indian embassy. He agrees that the book was more of documentation than a novel. We do not remember the characters for long, but the atmosphere in which they lived, loved and died could not be forgotten easily.

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A second Train to Pakistan!