THIS ABOVE ALL
Queen who lives by the book
Khushwant Singh

HAVE you heard of a novel which has no romance, love, lust, sex, violence, suspense, purple or lyrical prose, not even a story content in the ordinary sense of the term, and is, nevertheless, put-downable? I came across one a few days ago and read it from the beginning to the end because it is also blissfully short — in fact a novella. It is The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett (Faber). The uncommon reader happens to be Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain and the Commonwealth. She has many libraries in her places — Buckingham Palace and Windsor — stacked with rare books with whole-time librarians to look after them but had never bothered to visit them.

One morning she was distracted by the barking and yapping of her Welsh dogs (she has had 53 of the same breed with her in her long life) and followed them to see what had excited them. They led her to the royal kitchen of Buckingham Palace which she had never visited before. Parked in front was the van of a mobile leading library. One of the dish-washers, a boy named Norman, was a member and the van had come for him to take back a book he had borrowed a week earlier and lend him another of his choice. At his suggestion, Her Majesty became a member of the mobile library and started borrowing books to read at her leisure.

She had Norman elevated from a dish-washer to a page boy so that he could be near at hand. She had to keep her new hobby a secret from others of her staff as reading books was not the done thing for heads of state. Her husband Prince Philip was censorious; her private secretary, Sir Kevin, a New Zealander, thought it was his duty to keep the Queen away from books and focussed on her royal duties. It was of no avail.

The Queen took a book with her when she and her consort drove out to open parliamentary sessions and other state functions. While he dutifully waved to the cheering crowds, lining the roads, she was immersed in her book. She hid it under her cushion when she had to make her speeches to continue reading on her way back home.

Sir Kevin had the book removed on the pretext that it might contain an explosive. Once when he was away from London, he got Norman granted a scholarship to a university so that he could be got rid of. But the Queen continued to order books from libraries. Instead of discussing inter-state matters with visiting heads of states, she talked about books.

When the President of France came on a visit, she asked him about Jean Genet. All the President knew about him was that he was a homosexual and a jail-bird; he hadn't read anything by him. It would be like asking our lady president if she had read Kamasutra. Matters got worse when the Queen started making notes and keeping a diary. Sir Kevin thought this was going too far. So he got Sir Claud, a man in his 90s to come over and talk to her. He had served many English monarchs and knew what was and what was not done.

The old dotard came hobbling on two walking sticks, stinking to high heaven because he never took a bath. He nodded off to sleep while talking and left a damp patch of piddle on the chair he sat on. Ultimately, the Queen discovered that Sir Kevin was behind the crusade to stop her reading and writing. She got rid of him by appointing him High Commissioner to New Zealand.

On her 80th birthday when all the ministers, privy councillors and notables had gathered to drink champagne and sing "happy birthday to you dear Queen", she asked those who had read Marcer Proust to raise their hands. Barely six had done so. I have no idea how much of this novella is based on fact and how much born out of the fertile imagination of the author. Bennett is a renowned dramatist and TV producer. He has succeeded in making Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth a loveable old grandma.

Topsy-turvy world

Our beloved country, which is still counted among the poorest of the world's poor nations because almost half of its citizens can't afford to eat a square meal a day, also has people who think nothing of shelling out Rs 50 lakh to get the best of the limousines. Equally bizarre is the case of Narinder Singh Sawhney. He was trained to be an engineer. He migrated to England. He could not find a job in his profession and instead bought a liquor vend. Today his Whiskey Exchange is the largest in England and has the most expensive collection of Scotch Whiskies, of which 60-year-old Delmar is priced at Rs 30 lakh each bottle—one Patiala-sized swig costs Rs 3 lakh.

There are suckers who happily go in for such wild extravagance. Sawhney is also a professional wine-taster. In autumn after grapes have been harvested and turned into wines, he travels around wine-making regions of Europe, tasting their products and grading them. I asked him if he had sampled some of ours. He gave good marks to Grover, Sula and Riviera. What is somewhat hard to reconcile is that Sawhney is also a devout Sikh and into reading English fiction. Every year he comes on a pilgrimage to India, visits Harmandar Sahib in Amritsar and Hazoor Sahib in Nanded (Maharashtra). He is an admirer of Ruskin Bond and stayed with him in his mansion in a London suburb.

Bus driver

One rainy morning, an obviously anxious mother called the school office to check if her son's bus had arrived. "What's your son's name," the office clerk asked, "and what standard is he in?’’ A giggle followed a pause: "Oh, he's not a student," she said. "He's the school bus driver."

(Contributed by Reeten Ganguly, Tezpur)