Pleasurable read

Whenever young people toying with the idea of starting a publishing house come to consult me, I tell them, ?if you do not have government patronage to publish text-books for schools or colleges, your safest bet are books on religion and sex. Begin with, the Gita and stories from the Mahabharata and Ramayana. It will earn you respectability and since there is no copyright or royalties to pay to anyone, the profits will come to you.? There will always be buyers for religious texts. Though few read them, they like keeping them lying about their homes so that visitors think they are god-fearing, good people.

The same is true of ancient texts on sex ? Indian, Chinese, Japanese or Arabic. No copyright, no hassles with authors dead and gone for centuries. They are pretty unreadable but since they have assumed the status of classics or shastras (kama and koka), men will buy them to appear learned. They are without exception poor erotica and throw-away garbage. It is quite different with writings of recent times beginning with Miller?s Tropic of Cancer, D.H. Lawrence?s Lady Chatterley?s Lover. Both were banned for many years as pornography. In the last 20 years erotica and pornography have lost their under-cover appeal: just about every other novel has plenty of both. And if it is lucky enough to be banned by the government, it will become a best-seller.

From extensive reading of this genre of literature (if it can be so called), I have come to the conclusion that women are better at erotic writing than men. Quite a few of them were prostitutes with a flair for writing. They included their day-to-day (that should read night-by-night) experience, which made compelling reading. Take for example, The Adventures of Fanny Hill. Their main shortcomings were that they were semi-literate women unable to handle the language with finesse.

It is different with the latest on the literary scene: Call Girl: A True Account by Jeanette Angel. Here we have a lady with doctorate in social anthropology and a professor at a university deciding on her own to become a part-time prostitute. A couple of assignments a week earn her more money then her month?s salary as a professor. And no emotional hassles of any kind. She proves that sex can be fun without love being a part of it.

Society has double standards about judging men and women who engage in sex for the money it earns. Men who pay for it go unscathed: women who receive the money are condemned as harlots. I go along with Angel?s opinion printed on the jacket: ?I am appalled, even now, at the ideas and misconceptions concerning prostitution and women?s participation in it, I am baffled by and angry at the common assertion that men who enjoy prostitution are normal but that the women who engage in the trade somehow are not.? In short, there is nothing to choose between the whore and the whore-monger.

Call Girl is readable pornography. When you go to buy the book, be sure to take some brown paper to wrap it in. You won?t want to let your wife, children and friends see what you are so engrossed in reading.

A separate faith

He never went to school or college; instead he sat at the feet of pundits, maulvis, ustads, lawyers and other men of learning and became a scholar of Sanskrit, Persian, Guru mukhi, law and musicology. His genius was recognized by Maharaja Hira Singh of Nabha whom he served for 32 years in different capacities from private secretary, minister, judge of the high court and appeared as the state?s counsel before the privy council in London. He was the chief collaborator and mentor of Max Arthur Macauliffe, helped him to understand and translate hymns in the Granth Sahib which were published under the title, The Sikh Religion, in six volumes, by Oxford University Press in 1907. Macauliffe assigned the copy-right of his volumes to him. This extraordinary man was Bhai Sahib Bhai Kahan Singh of Nabha (1861-1938) whose 60th death anniversary falls on November 23.

Kahan Singh?s four volume Mahankosh, an encyclopedia of Sikhism, was published in Gurumukhi in 1930. It took him 15 years to compile it and remains the standard book of reference on all aspects of Sikh history and religion. Since then it was never translated into English, nor brought up to date. This was the principal reason for Professor Harbans Singh to produce his four volume The Encyclopedia of Sikhism in English in 1998. He relied heavily on Kahan Singh?s work.

Another work by Kahan Singh which remains untranslated is Guru Martand on Sikh ritual (maryada) in two volumes published in 1938. For good reasons the one book associated with his name is a slender volume entitled, Ham Hindu Nahin Hain (We are not Hindus), published in 1898. He took great pains to establish that Sikhs were not simply keshdhari Hindus but a community apart from the Hindus. It was a daunting task since the Sikh sacred scripture, the Adi Granth, is largely devoted to the praise of gods mostly with Hindu names: Hari, Ram, Govind, Madhava, Murari, Prabhu, Bhagwan, Vitthal and others. The same is true of the Dasam Granth, compiled by the last Guru Gobind Singh in which, apart from invoking Shiva to grant him the boon of courage ? Day Shiva bar moi ehai ? there are praises of goddess like Chandi and Durga.

What Sikh scholars of today are unwilling to accept is that while Sikh theology is basically Hindu, it evolved a parallel tradition of the militant Khalsa which is the only thing which gives it a seemingly separate identity. As long as the debate on whether or not Sikhs are Hindus goes on, the name of Bhai Sahib Bhai Kahan Singh of Nabha will remain in peoples? minds.

Holy coke

Banta: ?Why do you consume so many bottles of soft drinks??

Santa: ?Because I want to be an expert on ?Coke Shastra?.

Banta: How is your dhaba doing?

Santa: It?s not a dhaba, I am running a big fast-food joint.

Banta: How come you are in the fast-food business?

Santa: I managed to get a ?frenchie? of Mr Burger.

(Courtesy, Viney Vedvyas, Chandigarh)