The Good, the Bad and the Ridiculous by Khushwant Singh Read Free Book Online Page A

actor. When he turned from acting to directing films, in which he cast himself in the main role, I formed an even poorer opinion of his histrionic talents. When he ran out of ideas, he descended to shocking people. In one film (I think it was Five Rifles ), he had his own daughter appear bare-breasted on screen. I don’t recall how he got around the censors. His wife, Rama, was disillusioned and divorced him to marry a cousin named Harbans and opened a health cum beauty parlour in Delhi. She was even more disillusioned with her second husband, sold her business and returned to Bombay. Her son had by then become a dope addict. Her daughter made a disastrous marriage with an Englishman who abducted their only child and smuggled him away to England. Johar had by then had many liaisons.
    Rama took on the job of the manager of the health club at the Taj. She regained her youthful vitality and good looks. Since I went to the club every day for exercise and a sauna bath, I became very friendly with her. She even persuaded me to take facial massages, which I found deliciously sensuous. Rama had by then resumed some kind of undefined relationship with her first husband. Johar had a keen eye for publicity. Rama used to visit him once every week. When Johar discovered that she had befriended me, he asked her to bring me over to his apartment in Lotus Court. I was then editing The Illustrated Weekly of India . For many months, I was a weekly dinner guest at this set-up.
    After my sauna bath, Rama and I would proceed to Lotus Court. Rama then rang up Johar, who was at the Cricket Club of India, playing bridge. She told him to bring some Chinese food from the club restaurant. I played with his miniature Penkingsee bitch named Pheeno, ‘the snub-nosed’. Snub-nosed she certainly was, and very cuddlesome. Rama would sometimes open the drawers of Johar’s bedside table (he always slept on the floor) and pull out stacks of pictures of young girls in bikinis—or less. They were of girls looking for jobs in films. Johar would arrive carrying cartons of Chinese dishes and get out a bottle of premium Scotch for me. Neither he nor Rama touched alcohol. I had my quota of three drinks before we ate dinner. Then Rama dropped me at my apartment and went home. I never got to know where she lived. All I was able to gather was that she had ditched her second husband, but I was not sure whether or not she had patched up with Johar. I often pulled her leg about being the only Indian woman I knew who could claim to have two husbands at one time.
    Johar sent me the manuscript of his autobiography for serialization in The Weekly . It was difficult to tell how much of it was factual, how much the creation of his sick fantasies. In any case, there was more sex in it than was permissible for journals at the time. If Johar was to be believed, he started his sexcapades at the age of twelve. He was spending his vacation with his uncle and aunt who had no children of their own. One night, he had (or pretended to have) nightmares and started whimpering in his sleep. His aunt brought him to her bed. He snuggled into her bosom and soon had an erection. He tried to push it into her. She slapped him and told him to behave himself. The next morning, he was afraid he would be scolded and sent back home. However, his aunt was sweetness itself. After her husband had left for his office, she offered to bathe him. While she was soaping him, he again got sexually aroused. This time his aunt taught him what to do with it. It became his daily morning routine. Nevertheless, Johar confessed that in the years of his adolescence what he enjoyed most was being buggered by older boys.
    The autobiography did not mention Rama. But in the years after their separation, he wrote of a starlet (who later became a star I won’t name) whom he set up in a flat in Malabar Hill. Whenever he felt like it, he would drop in on her, have a drink or two and then bed her. One evening, he was in a