STYLE AND STRUCTURE IN THE

SHORT STORIES OF KHUSHWANT

SINGH. A CRITICAL STUDY.

Summary
Submitted to M.J.P. Rohilkhand University,
Bareilly in Partial Fulfilment of
Ph. D. Degree in English

2007

Under the Supervision :

(Dr. Amit Bharadwaj)
Rani

Lect. In English
R.BA. Govt. Degree College
Gajraula (J.P.N.)

By:
Miss Vinita

SUMMARY
Khushwant Singh was born on Feb. 2, 1915 at Hadali
in West Punjab (now in Pakistan). He is the second son of
Sir Sobha Singh and Lady Singh. He attended public schools
in Delhi and Lahore. He was admitted to St. Stephen's
College, Delhi in 1930. He attended King's College, London
in 134. He was called for the Bar in 1937. He was married to
Karal nee Malik, daughter of Sir Teja Singh and Lady Raj
Malik on Oct. 30, 1939. He was appointed information officer
of the government of India at Toronto and Canada and press
attached and public relations officer for the High Commission
of India in the United Kingdom and the embassy in Ireland in
1948-50. In 1950 The Mark of

Vishnu was published. He

attended UNESCO Sixth General Conference in Paris in

1951as member of the Indian delegation. During 1952-53 he
edited periodicals of the Government of India. IN 1956
Mano Majra (Train to Pakistan) was published and he received
Award of the Grove India Fiction Prize. The voice of God
and Other Stories was published in 1957 and then followed
his second novel I shall Not Hear the Nightingale in 1959. In
two volumes A History of the Sikhs was published in 1963
and received Rockefeller Foundation grant for extensive
travel and research on Sikh history

and religion. He got

teaching and research assignment at Princeton in 1966. The

2

collection of his third stories. A Bride for the sahib and

Other Stories was published. He was made visiting Professor
at Swathmore College, Pennsylvania and later joined as chief
editor of The Illustrated Weekly of India, Bombay. As a
journalist he was written on a variety of themes on the
world of fact,
distinguishes

men and affairs. His narrative

ability

his writing from that of the other

leading

journalists of India.
Khushwant Singh has a successful career as a writer.
His published works are two volumes of sikhs history,
several novels -- Train to Pakistan, I shall NOT Hear The
Nightingale,

Delhi and

the company of women besides

translated works, nonfiction

books on Delhi, Nature and

Current Affairs.
There is a tinge of irony in the title, "The Mark of
Vishnu". According to the Hindu belief, Lord Vishnu is the
Preserver of life on earth. The devout followers of this creed
smear their forehead with a 'V' mark in sandalwood paste. It
is ironic that the snake bites Gunga Ram just below the 'V'
shaped smear on the forehead, the symbol of the Preserver.
"On his forehead were little drops of blood. These, the
teacher wiped with his handkerchief. Underneath was the 'V'
mark where the Kala Nag had dug his fangs." Shahane
3
comments that "the ironic meaning emerging from the two
levels of meaning of the title is the principal motif of the

story." The larger irony, according to Khushwant Singh, is

that religion is no more a preserving institution; it either
divides the people as shown in "The Riot" or makes them
feeble- minded and superstitious as in "The Mark of Vishnu"
and ultimately brings about havoc and misery.
Apart from irony, we have the mischievous humour of
the school boys. They indulge in their characteristic pranks
and tease the superstitious old servant Gunga Ram. To cite
an example, Gunga Ram warns the boys that if they kill the
Kala Nag, all the hundred eggs laid

by it

will become

cobras and the house will be full of them. After sometime

he says that it is a hooded phannyar (the male snake).
Calling him a liar, the boys say :
The phannyar is the male, so it couldn't
have laid the hundred
have

laid the

eggs. You must

eggs yourself. The party

burst into peals of laughter 'Must be

Gunga Ram's

eggs.

We'll soon have a

hundred Gunga Rams.

The unity of impression in The Mark of Vishnu is struck in
the symbolic reference to the hood of the Kala Nag. The hood
of the cobra appears to be a symbol of strength and safety just
4
as the V mark on the forehead of Gunga Ram is a symbol of
his faith in the Omnipotent Preserver. But in reality, the
natural hood proves to be a dangerous one and the artificial

V mark a

superstitious habit and a symbol of illogical

reasoning. More dangerous habit and a symbol of illogical

reasoning. More dangerous the animal, the more devoted
Gunga

Ram was to its existence. Hence

the regard for

snakes, above all the cobra, who was the Kala Nag. In the
end, he pays a heavy price for his belief. With deliberate
irony, the author makes the cobra squishy squashy leaving
its hood undamaged. This he does in order to prove that the
big hood, the symbol of the king cobra, subverts the V mark,
the harmless hood of Gunga Ram. The authors intention of
communicating his impression or idea of the illusion of
Indian

religiosity and other worldlines is accomplished

through the hood symbolism.

"The Voice of God",

the title story in the second

collection, is a satire on the corrupt practices indulged in at

the time of electioneering in India and the inevitable outcome
-- the most underserving and notorious among the candidates
winning with a thumping majority. "The
hypocrisy

and the

deception that

pretentiousness,

underlie the actual

working of electioneering and vote-catching devices are thus

5
effectively brought out by Khushwant Singh with telling
irony."
When the story opens one finds the otherwise peaceful
atmosphere at Bhamba and Bhamba Khurd Villages in the

Punjab disturbed

by gusty

Ganda Singh, a big

political winds. Sardar Sahib

landowner who was

Government in smashing

up the

peasant

behind

the

and Congress

Movements and also a patron of thugs, begins to canvass vote

as a candidate approved by the British Government; and also
he claims himself to be the candidate sponsored by the Sikh
community. Sardar Kartar Singh, a city lawyer backed by a
wealthy and corrupt tycoon and a nominee of the Nationalists
is another contestant. The third candidate, Baba Ram Singh,
is a kisan leader and a selfless worker who has spent a
considerable part of his life in prison fighting for just and
right causes. The villagers though they find justice on the
side of the kisan leader during the election campaign, end up
voting for Ganda Singh under the influence of hot liquor
and the Zqaildar and the Lambardars. Ganda Singh wins the
elections with an overwhelming majority and the saintly Baba
Ram Singh even forfeits

his deposit. "The people

had

spoken. The voice of the people is the voice of God" as

decided by the British administration.
6
"The Black Jasmine" is, no doubt, a bawdy story, which
betrays Khushwant Singh's predilection for the risque. Yet, it
offers one of the best illustrations of comic irony reinforced by
irony of situation. When the protagonist of this story
Bannerjee was in Sorbonne pursuing higher studies, a

curvaceous African girl Martha Stack became friendly with

him. Since

she was

quite a

smasher, the

other

male

students were almost envious of Bannerjee. One day in a

highly romantic mood she offered herself

but

ironically

Bannerjee, who had wasted many hours on daydreaming the

way he would seduce her, falled to seduce her. Nearly thirty
years after this incident Martha who is "one enormous mass
of hulky flesh" comes to India as a tourist and meets an old
and worn- out Bannerjee. Ironically, Bannerjee now decides
to make up for the earlier failure. The missed passion warms
up his limbs under the influence of liquor and overwhelms
his senses.
Khushwant Singhs remarkable technical skill is evident
in Black Jasmine which deals with a single passion of
unromantic sexual exploration. The whole story centres on the
single character Martha. The one and only action that
Bannerjee undertakes is to seduce Martha and this he
accomplishes at an unexpected moment. There is no
7
digression or diversion. As a result, there is no flagging of
interest.
This

story

much

criticized

on

grounds

of

its

pornographic overtones has an excellent symmetry of design.

As the comparative brevity of the short story does not permit
the multiplicity of settings and the span of years, the writer

uses the flashback technique with great success. In fact, it is

like a hanging bride with poles of reality at both the ends, and
in between them hangs the bride of thought. The emphasis on
the thought process leads to emotions recollected in tranquility
in an altogether different milieu. More precisely the sexual
exploration that began in Sorbonne finds its consummation
in Delhi. Though the story begins at Delhi, the reader is taken
to Sorbonne where the past incident occurred and then he is
brought back to Delhi in an unobtrusive way. It follows the
traditional format of a beginning, a middle and an end.
The story entitled Paradise begins with the cause
revealed by the heroine Margaret Bloom why she felt bound to
go to India. It was, perhaps, the same reason that compelles
the people from every corner of the world, to come to India,
particularly Europeans, to find peace. Margaret Bloom gives
the real account of the relationship between her parents, My
father was a big-built in an of polish des ent He spoke English
with a guttural, American accent. My mother was of genteel
8
ancestry. She was small and extremely attractive, with golden
brown hair, dark blue eyes and boobs to die for. Why she
agreed to marry my father, who was a coarse man, I was never
able to understand. He was the chief sales manager of a large,
jewish-owned department store; she the personal secretary of a
member of the Board of Directors who wanted her to be his
mistress. The man hounded her, so she told him where to get
off and became the secretary of another member of the Board.

She also agreed to marry my father who had been making

passes at her for a long time.
European women, come to India impelled by different
purposes. Some of them are drawn by the prodigious variety
of the Indian life, the others come for a better knowledge of
Indias Geography, art and culture. Still others come to India
in search of Peace of Mind and Soul. They are attracted by
the Indian saints who, they believe, have the power to unravel
to them the mystery of life and to offer them the light of
truth.
Friend,
he bagan, in this series of lectures you have heard
me talk on various subjects. This evening I will talk
about the way Hindus look at life. The Westerner
views life very differently. Here you are motivated
to achieve material success, which is seen as the
ultimate aim of existence. You are friendly
competitive, you work very hard so that
9
creature comforts last you till the end of your lives.
Your lives are filled with tension, and many of you
consult psychiatrists to help you cope with stress.
You try to drown your worries in high living --drinking, taking drugs and indulging in
promiscuous sex. You think high living and having
fun is the be all and end all of existence. But soon
you begin to feel empty inside and begin to
question yourself, Is this all that life on earth was
meant to be ?

Khushwant Singh has an important place among the Post

Independence Indian English writers. His position as a short
story writer is both secure and abiding. Writing of Khushwant
Singh, P.P.Mehta remarks that his achievement in the field of
novels is no doubt significant but his short stories are superbly
chiseled artistic pieces. Nearly twenty of his stories, which
stand the test of scrutiny, demonstrate the range and quality of
his achievement in this literary form.
It is an indisputable fact that Khushwant Singh has
excelled almost all other Indian English short story writers in
artistry. All his stories have a rounded perfection. The Portrait
of a Lady, The Fawn and A Love Affair in London with
their rich suggestion can stand comparison with any story of
the masters in this field.
Khushwant Singh, like R. K. Narayan, has adhered to the
OHenry-tradition of short story writing. Arthur Vosss
10
comment on OHenry stories is indeed a definition of the
journalistic short story:
Ingeniously and carefully plotted often
culminating in a surprise ending, it
was written more to entertain than to
be taken seriously. Wit and humour,
vivacity and lightness of touch and an
urbane manner and cultivated style
were other principal characteristics.
This is equally applicable to most of the stories of Khushwant
Singh. Almost all the stories included in the first collection
(The mark of Vishnu and Other Stories) were originally

published in literary journals and magazines (Harpers,

Saturday Review e.t.c.) in England and America.
That Khusuwant Singh has consciously cultivated the art
of story writing is evident from the range and variety of his
stories and the impact of the masters of this genre is also
discernible in them. The Portrait of a Lady reminds us of
Gogol. In A Punjab Pastorale and The Voice of God
Khushwant Singh freely draws on the custom and idiom
peculiar to the Land of the Five Rivers (the Punjab) and hence
they are rich in local colour. In fact, he reaches the heights of
Bret Harte in this respect. He comes nearer to Dickens and
Mark Twain in the facile use of the device of exaggeration to
create comic appeal. A love Affair in London is a
Tolstoyesque story.