This Above all
How to cope with anxiety
KHUSHWANT SINGH

INDEED why do people spend so much of their time worrying about the future? It is a waste of time and robs one of peace of mind. J.M. Rishi of Jalandhar sent me an article on Epicurus’ thoughts on the subject of anxiety. He maintained that people worried unnecessarily about many things: their health, fear of dying, concern for people close to them, losing wealth they had painstakingly accumulated by being robbed — and much else.

Worrying does not help in overcoming worry, he said with confidence. If you are sick (he suffered acute pain from gall-stones in the bladder in his later years), learn to live with it. Worrying about death does not defer it; it comes when it comes, and when it happens, you are no longer able to worry about it. And so on.

Anxiety has been the concern of Indian teachers from olden times. A popular Sikh hymn runs as follows:

(Our Master is only one, He is our protector

He knows the inner secrets of our hearts

Sleep without worry, awaken without worry

He pervades the universe — here, there, everywhere.)

So we continue to advise others chinta mat karo (don’t worry) fikr ki koi baat nahin (there is nothing to worry about) — but worrying about something or the other is integral to our existence. The best one can do is to contain it within reasonable limits. One can do it by preoccupying one’s mind by doing things which need to be done: office-work, looking after one’s family, pursuit of hobbies like gardening, painting, music, reading, writing and whatever else which needs concentration of mind. Nothing else, not even prayers are an antidote to anxiety.

Namesake

I first read Anita Rau Badami’s second novel Heroes Walk and promptly declared it among the 10 best works of fiction written by an Indian. Others thought her first novel Tamarind Mem was the better work. Both novels were based in South India. She has been living in Montreal (Canada) with her Indian husband for the past many years. As could be expected her latest novel Can You Hear The Nightbird Call ? (Knopf) is about both India and Canada.

It is on a theme close to me as I spent some years researching on the Sikh diaspora, especially in the west coast of Canada, beginning with ill-fated voyage of the Kama Gata Maru in 1914, the Ghadar movement and Sikh disillusionment with the British Raj. After the Canadian Government relaxed its laws against coloured immigrants, a sizeable community of Sikhs grew up around Vancouver and others of Indian origin grew in number in Toronto and different cities.

Canada also became a base of Khalistani activists which led to the senseless criminal act of blowing up of Air-India’s Boeing 747, Kanishka, killing over 300 passengers, including more than 30 Sikhs. It has all the ingredients to make a great historical fiction. However, I got stuck halfway through because of a trivial detail which other readers will find laughably juvenile: one of the principal characters bears my name.

In Badami’s novel, there is a strapping one-eyed sardar, a woodcutter working in a lumber mill in Duncan, near Vancouver. This kaana (one-eyed) fellow comes to Punjab, seeking a suitable bride. He finds a very pretty one in a village which later falls on the border of India and Pakistan. In August 1947, it is wiped off the map and all its Sikh inhabitants barring the girl-bride in Canada are massacred. It is a lively story but the name Khushwant Singh does not fit in with the time. Badami used it because we met once and got on famously.

To the best of my knowledge there was only one other man with the same name as mine. He was an eminent Hindu physician Khushwant Lal Wig, who like me migrated from Lahore to Delhi on Partition. My name is self-manufactured and meaningless. As customary among Sikhs, when I was a month or so old, I was taken to the village gurdwara, the Guru Granth Sahib was opened at random and the first letter on the left page turned out to be khakha (in Hindi Kha). So my name had to begin with Kh. It could have been Khota with a soft meaning, donkey, or khotaa with a hard meaning, spurious. It could have been khurak (noise) or khem (peg). My grandmother opted for Khushal (prosperous). I came to hate the name.

At school in Delhi, boys shortened it to Shaalee and lampooned it in doggerel "Shaalee shoolee, baagh dee molee". Molee is a radish in the garden. In one’s childhood that sort of thing hurts. So I changed my name to rhyme with my elder brother Bhagwant’s and became Khushwant, meaning nothing and only marginally less palatable than Khushal. I continue to hate it.

Till 1947 there were only two Khushwants in the Delhi telephone directory. Now there are six: three journalists, one on trial for manslaughter and the last one a shopkeeper. I do not know any of them, nor do I want to. I dislike their names as I do mine. Why did Anita Rau Badami have to pick on me? It has delayed my reading of her novel to the end and writing about it.

Haryanvi economy

A miserly Haryanvi, wanted to save on the obituary advertisement when his father died. Thus he combined Chautha and Uthala in one word and the advertisement ran like this: "Chauthala of my father will be held on October 28 in Rohtak Arya Samaj Hall."

(Contributed by Jai Dev Bajaj, Pathankot)

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