Sahibs Who Loved India

Khushwant Singh

yan 2011 · Penguin UK

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A rare collection of essays that invites the reader to revisit a vanished era of sahibs and memsahibs. From Lord Mountbatten to Peggy Holroyde to Maurice and Taya Zinkin, Britishers who lived and worked in India reminisce about topics and points of interest as varied as the Indian Civil Service and the Roshanara Club, shikar and hazri, the Amateur Cine Society of India and the Doon School, Rudyard Kipling and Mahatma Gandhi. Selected from a series of articles commissioned by Khushwant Singh when he was the editor of the ‘Illustrated Weekly of India’, these delightfully individualistic and refreshingly candid writings reveal a fascinating array of British attitudes, experiences, observations, fond memories, the occasional short-lived grouse and, above all, a deep and abiding affection and respect for India.

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Khushwant Singh was born in 1915 in Hadali, Punjab. Today he is India’s best-known columnist and journalist. Among the works he has published are a classic two-volume history of the Sikhs, several novels (the best known of which are Delhi, Train to Pakistan and The Company of Women) and a number of translated works and non-fiction books on Delhi, nature and current affairs. His autobiography, Truth, Love and a Little Malice was published in 2002. * Bhisham Sahni was born in 1915 in Rawalpindi (now in Pakistan). His first collection of short stories, Bhagya Rekha (Line of Fate) was published in 1953. Since then he has published five novels, eight collections of short stories, three plays and a biography of his late brother, the actor and writer Balraj Sahni. Many of his books have been translated into various languages. His most famous novel, Tamas, was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1975. * Saadat Hasan Manto widely regarded as the world’s greatest short story writer in Urdu was born on 11 May 1912 at Samrala in Punjab’s Ludhiana district. In a literary, journalistic, radio-scripting and film-writing career spread over more than two decades, he produced around 250 stories, scores of plays and a large number of essays, many of them, controversial. He was tried for obscenity half a dozen times, thrice before and thrice after Independence. Two of his greatest stories—‘Colder than Ice’ and ‘The Return’—were among works considered ‘obscene’ by the Pakistani censors. He also wrote over a dozen films, including Eight Days, Chal Chal Re Naujawan and Mirza Ghalib. The last one was shot after Manto moved to Pakistan in January 1948. Manto’s greatest work was produced in the last seven years of his life, a time of great financial and emotional hardship for him. He died several months short of his forty-third birthday in January 1955 in Lahore.