A Tribute To Khushwant Singh

Where the funny man of India, The great joke master, A talker so great, A conversationalist unique, blending the old with the new, The new with the old And remixing to present, So epigrammatic, So witty and ironical, So full of caricature, Overtones and undertones, Sometimes boxing below, An old guy dyeing beautifully To look smart and handsome Failing even the youngsters? A Punjabi, he could tell of the Punjab jointly, The East and the West of the Punjab, Heer and Ranjha, The folktales doing the rounds, The robust culture and diet of his, Tandoori and tadaka; He could the history of the Punjab and Sikhism, A researcher researching to reveal, One telling about the painful Partition And the pathetic sequence of it, History, culture, politics and philosophy; Yoga, bhoga and health fitness, Age and ageing And growing with it, Morning walkers and their jogging. He could dwell upon whatever it came to his mind And used to take to As for a delving and delineation Even the slightest things, The trivial things of life and society, Please and thank you to goodbye, Why but and put are different in pronunciation Though the spelling almost alike, Why the South Indian names longer To be written To shayari, ghazal and thumri And quawalli, The purdahwalli to nautch girls. A bottle of wine on the desk, He taking it And the mood colouring And he taking the things in his stride With the flight of imagination, Colour and romance, Writing about rum, Scotch, beer, whisky, Brandy, vodka, champagne And their tastes, The new bottles with old wine, Just the labels new, The old and new heroines And their affairs jokingly, Who had been with whom? To make the people laugh, Burst into a laughter Had been the credibility of his, A writer so witty, ironical and light-hearted, So serious and controversial, So bold and daring, Even the man criticized used to laugh After hearing him, As such had been the man, The writer Khushwant Singh, Sometimes wanting to translate The Gayatri mantra, Sometimes striving to search for The meaning and the vibration of Om.