Chasing the good life: On being SINGLE
Edited by Bhaichand Patel,
Penguin, Rs 325

In “Leap before you look”, written in 1940, W. H. Auden pointed out the difficulties of a solitary existence: “Much can be said for social savoir-faire,/ But to rejoice when no one else is there/ Is even harder than it is to weep”. Seldom does absolute self-sufficiency triumph over the need to be desired, liked and needed. “Tough-minded men get mushy in their sleep,” Auden declares wisely. Yet, a “sense of danger” is inescapable, for the single as well as the attached. Either must be prepared for uncertainty, compromise and conflict, and must forego the “dream of safety”.

The obverse of this profound, but bleak, wisdom is the celebration of single life as an excuse for selfish hedonism. If ‘singleness’ is not made a virtue out of necessity, if one is financially independent, interesting to as well as interested in other people, and lives in an enjoyable city, then living alone could be an eminently pleasurable rather than a harrowing experience. Being happily single in India, however, is a rarity.

“There is more to chasing the good life than debauchery,” writes Bhaichand Patel in the introduction to this bizarre pot-pourri of essays, ranging from the seriously belletristic to the flippantly autobiographical (sometimes perilously close to narcissistic).

There are, however, certain common factors which hold this hodgepodge together. Nearly all the contributors are either Delhiites, or have spent a considerable period of their lives in the city. Many have also lived abroad for several years. They are all professionally successful men and women, their lives have been interesting enough to be written about, and they share a certain social space and ambience: “[They] meet often for pot luck, have drinks at the India International Centre, and go dancing at the Delhi Gymkhana on Saturday nights”. Their “lifestyles have changed for the better…thanks to more spending money.”

Their personal lives are enviably glamorous: “We date sometimes but mostly we hook up.” They are, most certainly, not whiners. Many trials of single life, including single parenthood, are valiantly countered by the authors. In the editor’s words: “They don’t deny things can be hard, but if you’re looking for sob stories, you’re looking in the wrong place.” And all of them happen to be straight. Gay men and women are conspicuously kept out of the volume, although, the editor believes that “there are probably more gay men with wives in India than the rest of the world put together”. What happened to the others is anyone’s guess. Since living alone qualifies as single, according to the editor, the absence of gay men and women suggests the heartening prospect of all of them settled in some form of conjugal arrangement. This should win them widespread social approval, since Indian society is unqualifiedly suspicious of single men and women. This suspiciousness, usually a product of largely envious malice, is directed at single young people — particularly women — most often by their landlords. Those who are blessed with affluence, therefore, have more chances of ensuring non-interference in their lives. There are paeans sung to globalization and liberalization in this volume, with Radhika Jha thanking Manmohan Singh, in her essay, for the economic changes of the Nineties. Admittedly, nothing eases a messy divorce or a souring relationship more than money.

There are some who are not single by choice, but have singleness thrust upon them. While Namita Gokhale writes movingly about coming to terms with life after her husband’s death, Khushwant Singh revels in the simpler pleasures of living alone as a widower, primarily in the freedom to fart uninhibitedly.

Others have it less easy. Humra Quaraishi is gently helped along by God and Kahlil Gibran, while Varsha Das relies on Buddhism, to get along all alone. Sita Wadhwani laments, with singular lack of irony or humour, the absence of a “bonfire in our world where young people can just be together without being answerable for what’s going on”. She substantiates her indignation by summarizing, at length, “a sensitive book by Verrier Elwin” which is “a study of the Muria tribe[’s] attempt at liberating love and sex and respecting their purity”.

Suhel Seth’s “bachelor’s guide to surviving Delhi” (“perhaps one city where there are as many women as there are hungry dogs”) is a Casanova’s manual, although he considers Bengali men and “all men who marry Bengali women” lousy seducers, “whipped into domesticity by their wives”.

The most impressive essays are by Farrukh Dhondy and Sheela Reddy. Dhondy addresses the presumptions of Indian society (“single = sexless”) most directly, and conveys the historical flavour of growing up before the bohemian Sixties. Reddy’s interesting piece on her long-distance marriage is curiously silent on sexual fidelity.

This could have been an important study of urbanization in India, but it scarcely merits even a frivolous reading.