Twice a Week

Yesterday my car had an appointment for grooming with the Service Station. Knowing how much time these beauty sessions take, I carried some old magazines along to give me company. The Service Station has a nice air conditioned waiting room for the car owners to relax while their beauties get scrubbed and shampooed. A large TV set was on and the news channel was showing the latest antics of...you know who. So I started thumbing through one of the magazines and got interested in an article which took me almost half a century back.

The article was on Ayn Rand- remember the 700 page 'The Fountainhead' and a 1000 page 'Atlas Shrugged'? Some already known and some yet unknown facts and anecdotes made that article an interesting reading. I re-learnt that this proponent of, what came to be called 'Laissez-faire capitalism', was a Russian born in St. Petersburg who later migrated to the USA. What I did not know was that 'Ayn' in her name is pronounced as 'Ien' as in, say 'dine'.

But the most spicy and bizarre anecdote in the article informs us about her meeting, when she was 45, a bright young person of 19 and how the two became very close intellectually. But wait, the spicy part follows. At 50 she and her young friend ' received their partners' permission to meet for sex twice a week'. One wonders if this arrangement helped or hindered Ayn's flow of writing.

But it surely is an interesting thought to stop at!

(Article referred to is "Back in Business" by Andrea Sachs, Time, October 26, 2009.)

Sunday, January 16, 2005

Nehru’s refreshing humour K.J.S. Chatrath Reading about the release of a new edition of Pandit Nehru’s letters to his sister has brought back an interesting episode to my mind. Searching for a book in the Orissa Government Secretariat library about a decade back, I chanced to see an old book. The book was Nehru’s Letters to His Sister (Krishna Nehru Hutheesing). This book gave me an amazing insight into Nehru’s personality. Panditji was very fond of his little sister. There was a considerable age difference between the two and as Hutheesing herself explained in the "Introduction", she was treated more like a daughter, both by Panditji and his wife. The letters of Panditji address her affectionately as "Betty", Beti and, sometimes, as "Bets". What struck me was that a good number of these 93 letters in the book had been written from various prisons where Panditji had been detained — Almora, Bareilly, Dehra Dun, Naini, Calcutta and Ahmadnagar. Some of the letters were written from his ancestral home Anand Bhavan in Allahabad. The first letter in the collection written from Delhi, dated February 21, 1931, gives the address as I, Daryagunj. Two letters, written in 1947, give the address of 17, York Road, while there are some letters which just say "Delhi". Only in the letter dated July 20, 1955, the address is given as "Prime Minister’s House, New Delhi". Almost every letter introduces us to some aspect of Nehru’s humour. This subtle sense of humour comes even while mentioning the place from where the letter is written. The letter, written on June 30, 1945, notes the place of writing as "Running Train", while another letter that he wrote from a ship while returning from Ceylon records it as having been written from "S.S. Something". There is a nugget in the letter written from the ship which is worth quoting, "Kamla has often been taken for my daughter. But what do you say to Indu being taken for my mother? This has happened repeatedly." This shows the ability of Nehru to laugh at himself and his family. When he got the news of the birth of a baby son to his sister, Panditji sent a lovely telegram on February, 2 1935, from Almora Jail. He wrote, "Cheerio get well soon darling and bring the howling infant here for display and criticism — love Jawahar". In his letter dated October 12, 1943, he jokes at the Nehrus. He writes, "November seems to have been a favourite month for the Nehrus to be born in". He was referring to the fact that he was born in November and so were Krishna Hutheesing and Indira Gandhi. This delightful humour is also evident in his letters from the prison. From the Ahmadnagar Fort Prison on February 25, 1945, he wrote: "This is likely to be my last letter to you from Ahmadnagar Fort. Today we complete 960 days here — a long chunk of one’s life. But the longest lane has a turning somewhere and we turn to — another prison". In his letter written on July 12 1953, from Delhi, when he came to know of a little accident his sister had met with and had injured her nose, he remarked tongue-in cheek. "I am glad to know that you are safely back with more or less a complete nose". He reports in his letter dated January 17, 1943, that a bottle of honey sent to him had broken down in the box during transit. "I gazed awestruck at the mess just one bottle of honey could make when given the chance to do so..." Two books in the box had also got covered with honey. And reaction of Panditji to it was sharp and sweet, "There was Zimmern’s book, but this Zimmern is and has always been a sticky person. And Lewis Carol? Was it a new adventure for Alice to float about in honey?" There is a wonderful mix of humour and finality of views in his letter written from "Somewhere in India but not at Anand Bhavan, Allahabad" on September 18, 1942. He wrote, "I am horrified to learn that Raja (pet name of Krishna Hutheesing’s husband) is growing a beard. This is wholly inexcusable and you must tell him so." Yes, Panditji’s brand of humour was unique and refreshing.

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