Khushwant Singh passed away last week at the age of 99. There is a belief in Hinduism that a person gets moksha or liberation from the cycle of birth, death and rebirth if he lives 100 years.
From what I feel Khushwant Singh was, based on what I gathered from his writing and views, I can safely say he would never have been interested in getting moksha. In his last few days, he had said he was weary of life. In one of his last weekly newspaper columns, he said life had become a drag. He was tired. Someone tired of a journey may want rest, but not necessarily want to never go on another journey after rest.
Maybe Khushwant Singh figured out, through some cocktail of intuition and intellect, that living 100 years would make him lose the desire for life, another birth and another chance to live with word, whiskey, women, wit and wonder. If it is true that 100 years of human life equals moksha, the clever Sardar seems to have played a fine trick with God and his gift of life.
let me explain. Imagine Sachin Tendulkar in his prime, hitting century after glorious century. This is the Sachin of passion. Many tributes paid to Sachin by cricketers who were his teammates or adversaries talk about his hunger for runs. Cricketers of merit who themselves had a lot of passion for the game found the passion of Sachin special enough to talk about. Mention of passion, hunger and desire by them shows that they make a huge difference and Sachin was special because his desire was special.
Now imagine Sachin getting hundred per cent belief in the middle of his career through, say, the pronouncement of a fakir or an astrologer, that he will lose all desire, all passion, all his special hunger for runs, if he ever hits another hundred. Will Sachin want to lose the very energy, the very desire that drives his lifeIJ I think he never will, being what he is. But being the master that he is, what will Sachin then doIJ He will try for a 99 instead of a 100 or more each time he bats. Hunger for runs may take him to 99, but the same hunger will make him strive to get himself out at 99 if he knows that a century will end once and for all the special passion that has been his life and makes him such a special person.
It is this desire for another century, and then another and still another, that makes a batsman turn away from all kinds of comforts and distractions and put in hours and hours of sincerest slogging in the field to make his game better and better. Not everybody will have the desire to be at the nets hour after sweaty hour, day after day, year after year. Those blessed with that desire might find the circumstances to be at the nets and become batsmen. And a batsman with a very special desire to focus on his batting and forget all else for long, long hours will become a special batsman.
This desire or hunger cannot be manipulated. It can’t be ignited and turned off and on at will. Over time, with practice, this hunger translates into visible phenomenon that’s given different names: natural ability, talent, genius, God’s gift, blessing. No wonder people who are great at anything talk about their passion or love for it. Or they say they simply enjoy it. It’s the same thing, for you can enjoy something only if you have passion and love for it.
Sachin’s wife Anjali says she figured out she could not take cricket out of Sachin’s life. So everything else had to come after cricket. lata Mangeshkar says cricket is Sachin’s life, just like music is her life. Imagine such a person facing the prospect of losing his lone, abiding passion, his very life. He will do everything to keep his life, his passion going. like I said above, his passion will make him play till 99 if he is a batsman, but will prevent him from making a hundred if he knows that a hundred will end his desire to play.
Now let’s get back to Khushwant Singh. By all accounts, he was a man in great love with life. A man with a special knack for living, a passion for some very good things of life. His love for the word, whether in the form of a verse of Ghalib or his own writing, sparkling with honesty and insight, got him fame and fortune. Not just monetary fortune, but fortune by way of being sought and loved by both ordinary and extraordinary people. Special people are enigmatic. Special people of the arts like writers even more so. They seem to tap into something mystical, magical, mysterious which nurses their art. They get an aura, a radiance, a halo.
What make special people special is their special loves. The enigma that Khushwant Singh became because of his love affair with the word was enhanced by his other love affairs —with whiskey and women. If his love affairs are summed up, it can be said they all arose from his tremendous love affair with life, his appetite for life. Imagine such a man facing the prospect of losing this appetite. It is appetite, after all, that gives taste to food, makes life worth living. I never met Khushwant Singh but I can say with some confidence that he would rather lose his life than his zest for life. His zest for life will make him live till 99, but if he gets to know that hitting a hundred will take away his zest, he will let go his life to keep his zest alive.
I don’t know if Khushwant Singh knew that a life of 100 years kills all desires, including the desire for another life which results in another birth and creates the cycle and sansaar or world of life, death and rebirth. I don’t know if Khushwant Singh, knowing this, had the power to make his own death happen whenever he wanted. But I know that you get to know a lot of the fine secrets of life, and, thereby, of death, too, if you live pretty long, say, into the 90s. The longer life stretches the more it reveals itself. As life progresses, it reveals with more and more clarity that nothing stays, that things keep coming and going, but finally it’s all perfectly ephemeral. That all kinds of writing, including the one on the stone, is not just a line drawn on water but finally a line of pure imagination etched on the sky with, say, a finger.
Just when life begins to vanish into very thin air like that, a Khushwant Singh can decide to hold on to it by having no more of it. A death wish can prove potent. Khushwant Singh did say in his final days that he did not want more of life. He did live life full. You can’t live till 99 if you don’t live life full. Maybe his no to life was a big, big yes to all that life stood for him.
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