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K. Natwar Singh’s book Yours Sincerely is a compilation of letters. Excerpts... Mulk Raj Anand My dear Natwar, This to to wish you a good New Year full of much writing and I hope we will be able to meet, next time you come to India. I had thought that our dear friend, Morgan, taught us to value friendship and it was my conviction that you had imbibed this gospel more than all of us, because of your nearness to him. It seems that your eminent position in the foreign service involves so much hard work, that you cannot adjust your travel to go out of your way if only to allow me to weep on your young shoulders.
I don’t know what has made you suddenly remember me as a writer. But I welcome the order for Untouchable you have put through to Balraj Bahri of Bahri Sons. Since the last few years, I have been cheated successively by various publishers. The latest of these who are unconscionably corrupt are Orient Paperbacks. So, I have been cutting my contacts with them steadily and have decided not to allow them to do any more of my eight paperbacks. A very good and seemingly fairly honest south Indian publisher, Prof Sathyanarayana Rao, of Geetha Book House, New Statue Circle, Mysore, has brought out a fine edition of Untouchable, with an Afterward by Damodar Rao and a note on the genesis of this novel by me. I would like Bahri Sons to purchase the 110 copies which you wish to have of the paperbacks from Geetha Book House, through your bookseller. I have taken the liberty to write to Balraj Bahri yesterday, asking him to do this if possible, as the edition in Untouchable of Orient Paperbacks was brought out against my advice, with a terrible cover and with indecent haste to flood the market in Mysore. I may be suing Orient Paperbacks as they have confessed to their crime anyhow. I hope that my letter to Bahri will be in time and he will accept my advice to purchase the copies from Mysore. It is a glorified ‘textbook’ edition, but as my definition of textbook novel is different from anyone else’s, I have not allowed notes and questions and answers to appear and simply left it pure with the essays thrown in as Afterwards. It is a quite lovely production, designed by Dolly Sahiar. And the price is the same as the Orient Paperbacks, perhaps a little less. I went to Delhi after eight months of sulking, to deliver a lecture to the Iran Society on the Heart renaissance of the fifteenth century, with special emphasis on Bihzad, the great Persian Ustad. The drawing rooms are full of gossip, one can’t catch a bus from anywhere to anywhere, taxis are extortionate, but the sun shines nimbly on the Lokayata and I am trying to restart my school for gardeners. I daresay that things might improve a little, but after working in a village in Maharashtra, I find that everything conspires to make for disillusionment. Still, I have found that some old friends are still there, to touch, every now and then and Iam still writing my long seven-volume novel. I don’t think you ever had the patience to read The Confession of a Lover, though news of it got to Canada and the USA and the UK and it has got the first E.M. Forster Award. Perhaps, one day you will be bored enough with office work and will read the new novel The Bubble, when it comes out, sometime this year. Do write to Bahri to take my advice and order the Geetha Book House edition, if they have not already purchased the black-market edition of Orient Paperbacks. With warm regards, Yours sincerely,
Raj Bhavan My dear Natwar, I have been meaning to write to you for some time but life has a habit of becoming confused and one is constantly involved in time-consuming activities that pay no dividends. At the end of the day, I am conscious of many wasted hours and yet I have not been unoccupied a single minute. This is the answer to your question as to why I wish to leave this post. The people who drafted our Constitution naturally could not think of everything in that moment of elation. Cutting the Governor’s powers to a certain extent was a good thing, but making the Governor into a mere figurehead has reduced the value of the post. I was not cut out to be ‘The Hostess with the Mostess’. It is becoming meaningless and boring. I have been advised to stand for Parliament and this appeals to me. There is no seat available at the moment as I do not wish to go to the Rajya Sabha but probably something will materialise in the course of the next few months. When I was in Delhi three weeks ago, a rough itinerary for my visit to West Africa was being drawn up. I am supposed to attend a meeting of the Dag Hammarskjold Foundation in Stockholm on June 23-24 and the African visit was to be linked up with this. However, in the usual manner of our Ministry, no final letter has come to me and I am wondering if they want me to go at all. I had asked that you should be permitted to accompany me on the ground that you were dealing with Africa and this would be a valuable experience for you. I like your idea of attending the Security Council Debate on Apartheid and will get in touch with the PM. Unfortunately, your letter arrived just after he had left. It seems natural that I should be associated with this Debate but the thinking of the Government does not always coincide with mine. The AICC is just over and I must say it was conducted in a more businesslike fashion than i had hoped. Speeches were good and to the point and the Prime Minister spoke on two occasions firmly and well. His main difficulty now is getting around as his left leg is weak and I doubt if it will get much better. But for this he has improved and one hopes that his progress will continue if he is careful to take sufficient reset. The burning topic of the day in India is Sheikh Abdullah’s release and passions are deeply involved. So far, he has merely been letting off steam and I suppose this is natural after a decade’s incarceration. I wonder what tune he will play on his return from Pakistan. Except for the Swatantra Party — and even they are not unanimous on this point — the whole of India is united in pressing the Prime Minister not to give way on the matter of Kashmir’s accession. The new Prime Minister, Sadiq, had lunch with me today. He is a quiet little man, but firm and, I think, as well able to handle this intricate business as anyone else in Kashmir. One thing in his favour is that he does not talk. I met Rajan briefly in Delhi. She was full of the success of her tour and ready almost to start on a new one! She came home to find Anu rather ill but, fortunately, the girl is quite well again — just needs a little nursing. The Hutheesings are as usual — sometimes up and sometimes down. Amrita is still waiting for her baby, which is expected in July. I will write again as soon as there from Delhi. Affectionately,
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