AT the mere age of 28, when he was still a briefless barrister in Lahore, Khushwant Singh wrote his own death notice. Besides his grieving family, he left “a large number of friends and admirers.”
Among the visitors to the residence were “several ministers and justices of the high court”. He would have been shocked to know that, when he actually died, the President of India, Sonia Gandhi of the Congress party, Narendra Modi of the BJP and a broad selection of editors sent their condolences.
For by then he had also written his own epitaph: Here lies one who spared neither man nor God Waste not your tears on him, he was a sod. For 42 years, as editor of the Illustrated Weekly of India and then as a columnist for theHindustan Times, Mr. Singh seized India by the collar and shook it. His was the most unbuttoned voice in the whole English-language press.
In the 1970s he turned the Illustrated....
