Free The Good, the Bad and the Ridiculous by Khushwant Singh

future.
    But being human, Nehru had his human failings. He was not above political chicanery. Having accepted the Cabinet Mission Plan to hand over power to a united India, he reneged on his undertaking when he realized that Jinnah might end up becoming prime minister. Nehru had blind spots too. He refused to believe that India’s exploding population needed to be contained. He refused to see the gathering strength of Muslim separatism, which led to the formation of Pakistan. He failed to come to terms with Pakistan and was chiefly responsible for the mess we made in Jammu and Kashmir. He was also given to nepotism and favouritism. And his love affairs with Shraddha Mata and Lady Mountbatten are well-known. I have been often asked whether the central character of my novel Burial at Sea was based on Nehru—you could say that the inspiration for the character was Nehru.
    I first met Nehru in London, when I was a press officer at the Indian Embassy, and my first impression of him was that he was short-tempered. He could also be ill-mannered. I once had to host a lunch so that the editors of leading British newspapers could meet him. Halfway through the meal, Nehru fell silent. When questions were put to him, he looked up at the ceiling and did not reply. He then proceeded to light a cigarette while others were still eating. To make matters worse, Krishna Menon fell asleep. It was a disastrous attempt at public relations.
    Another time, Nehru arrived in London past midnight. I asked him whether he would like me to accompany him to his hotel. ‘Don’t be silly,’ he said. ‘Go home and sleep.’ The next morning, one of the papers carried a photo of him with Lady Mountbatten opening the door in her negligee. The photographer had taken the chance of catching them, if not in flagrante delicto, at least in preparation of it, and got his scoop. The huge caption read: ‘Lady Mountbatten’s Midnight Visitor’. Nehru was furious. On another occasion, he had taken Lady Mountbatten for a quiet dinner at a Greek restaurant. Once again, the following morning’s papers carried photographs of them sitting close to each other. Our prime minister’s liaison with Lady Edwina had assumed scandalous proportions, and I knew I was in trouble.
    I arrived at the office to find a note from Krishna Menon on my table, saying that the prime minister wished to see me immediately.
    I gently knocked on the prime minister’s door and went in. He was busy going through some files.
    ‘Yes?’ he said, raising his head.
    ‘Sir, you sent for me.’
    ‘I sent for you? Who are you?’
    ‘I am your PRO in London, sir,’ I replied.
    He looked me up and down. ‘You have a strange notion of publicity,’ he said curtly.
    I thought it best to remain silent.

KRISHNA MENON
(1896–1974)
    After the Partition, I found myself back in London with a job as an information officer with the public relations department of India House. I was to stay with Arthur and Sheila Lall in Knightsbridge until my family arrived and we found a place of our own. Arthur was very taken with Krishna Menon. He assured me that Krishna Menon was the finest brain he had ever met and compared favourably with Stalin (who was not known to have a particularly fine brain). I had briefly met Krishna Menon in my college days and had not detected any signs of genius in him. He was a sour-tempered barrister without briefs and spent his energies building up his India League and paying court to Pandit Nehru whenever he was in England. His appointment as high commissioner was badly received in India and the Indian community in England; people considered it gross favouritism. But after hearing Arthur go on about him, I thought I had perhaps been wrong in my estimate of Menon, or perhaps he had matured into a better man.
    I reported for work at India House and introduced myself to Sudhir Ghosh. He didn’t seem very pleased to see me. Beneath the glass slab of his working table were a number of