There are a few people I have been corresponding with for some years without ever having met them. The rarest among them is Deepak Tandon, who lives in Panchkula (Haryana). He must be the most erudite man in the country, a human encyclopaedia. He seems to know about writers in all languages, and about all world events. There seems to be nothing he does not know. A sample of his knowledge of Mata Hari, about whom I had written in my columns some weeks ago, is given below. I reproduce his last letter to me: “From your weekly piece on Saturday, July 30, I am pained to learn that your hands have started shaking, and that you will not be able to send replies to the letters you receive. My hands, too, have been shaking for over two decades as a consequence of personal shock. This is the reason I have always been sending you typed letters. In the aforesaid piece you have observed that Mata hari is ‘the stereotype of a woman spy’.

‘Mata Hari is the stage name of Margaretha Geertruida née Zelle (1876-1917). She was a Dutch exotic dancer, a courtesan, and an accused in France for espionage for Germany during World War I. She had a lavish early childhood, being the eldest of four of her parents’ children. After her marriage to a Dutch colonial army captain, Rudolf MacLeod, she moved in the Dutch upper class. They went to the island of Java in the then Dutch East Indies. Her marriage was an overall disappointment, her husband being an alcoholic. In Indonesia, she joined a dance company and took her artistic name, Mata Hari, which in the Malayan language means ‘sun’ or the ‘eye of the day’. After moving back to the Netherlands, the couple divorced in 1907. She now moved to Paris as an exotic dancer. Promiscuous, flirtatious and openly flaunting her body, she captivated her audiences and was an overnight success. She elevated exotic dance to a more respectable status. She was also a successful courtesan. She had relations with high-ranking military officers, politicians and others in influential positions, including the German crown prince. During World War I, the Netherlands remained neutral. She frequently travelled between France, the Netherlands and Spain. While travelling to Spain, she was arrested at the English port of Falmouth, was brought to London on the charge of espionage for France. Though the French and British intelligence suspected her of spying for Germany, neither could produce definite evidence, but she was charged as a double agent and was executed in a firing squad in France. Her body was not claimed by any family member. Her biographer, Russell Warren Howe, in 1985 convinced the French government that Mata Hari was innocent of the charge of espionage.”

Precious Lola

Romesh Singh is a bearded, turbaned sardarji who lives in Frankfurt. He was married to a German, Ella, who was in the women’s fashion business. Every autumn, when European dress-makers exhibited new designs, she bought the best and brought them with her to Delhi. She got Indian darzees (tailors) to make exact replicas using Indian textiles. She sold them in Europe at handsome profits. She married Romesh Singh. They had no children but they adopted a parrot they thought was female and named her Lola. They lived in a spacious apartment in Frankfurt. The other floors were occupied by their staff. Their sole companion was their parrot: she would sit on Romesh’s turban and then on his shoulder to tweak his beard. A few years ago, Ella died and Lola became Romesh’s sole companion. He stopped coming to Delhi in the winter months to meet his relatives and friends. He could not leave Lola alone. “After Ella died, I lost the love of living and would have happily ended my life except for the fact that I could not desert Lola,” he told me. “The only reason I go on living is for the sake of Lola. The day she goes, I will also go.”

Going bonkers

One night, when I was trying hard to fall asleep, the word, hungamus, came to my mind. I was not sure if such a word existed, and if it did, what it meant. I would have liked to consult my dictionary, but that is always next to my armchair in my sitting room. Next morning when my daughter, Mala Dayal, came to ask if I had slept well, I told her that I needed a pocket dictionary in my bedroom. A couple of hours later, she bought a pocket dictionary from Khan Market and gave it to me as a “birthday present”. I looked for hungamus. It was not there. Later in the afternoon, I looked for it in my larger dictionary. It was not there as well. I came to the conclusion that with age, I have gone bonkers.