My Personal Memories of SK Singh Shilendra Kumar Singh, Governor of Rajasthan and former Foreign Secretary of India, passed away on 1 December 2009 at the age of 77.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shilendra_Kumar_Singh I wrote this tribute to him the same day itself, within six hours of his passing away. Anyone may reproduce this freely in any medium, in any location, on a non-exclusive basis, after informing me. Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad Tel: {91} 99 90 265 822, 98 118 36 331 Emails: p @ r67 . net r @ 50g . com =============================== My Personal Memories of SK Singh By Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad Tuesday, 01 December 2009 Politicians and diplomats will remember the many contributions made by Shilendra Kumar Singh as a diplomat, scholar, and governor; as an expert on the Islamic world; as a scholar of Persian and Arabic; as a confidante of the Shah of Iran and Yasser Arafat; as ambassador to Pakistan, Afghanistan, Jordan, and Lebanon; and as spokesperson of the Indian government, especially during the Bangladesh war. But I would like to remember a perpetually jolly person who brought much fun and laughter to our family. SK was our next door neighbour when my younger brother and I were very small. He was a bachelor, and my parents frequently invited him over for dinner. SK would give us piggyback rides, and tell us lots of stories and jokes. He was the prince of a kingdom in Uttar Pradesh, and would hold us spellbound recounting thrilling anecdotes about his ancestors, historical tales of various Rajput royal families, of battles fought, of blood feuds lasting for centuries, of murders and intrigues. My brother and I were constantly in and out of his house, playing with his dog Banka Singh, and relishing delicious tidbits cooked by his Malayali cook, Karunakaran. SK was the target of all our childish pranks, which he bore with good humor. He often made fun of himself, and of his weight. Salman Haider’s son, Nadeem, then aged about five, offered to share a piece of his favourite chocolate with SK. SK replied: “Beta, I am not allowed sweets, give me some namkeen instead”. Nadeem came back after a few minutes, and told SK: “So you like namkeen and not chocolate, huh? Close your eyes and open your mouth”. SK did so, and Nadeem dumped in a huge fistful of salt. And to avoid hurting Nadeem’s feelings, SK swallowed it all, though it would have wreaked havoc with his blood pressure. SK’s colleagues and legions of friends used to frequently tease him about his bachelor status and his reputation as a playboy. My mother would telephone SK, disguise her voice pretending to be a young woman infatuated with him, and invite him for various trysts. SK would often help us with our homework. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of history and English literature, and would never need to look up any references. He would rant and rave about the numerous mistakes in the NCERT school textbooks, especially on his pet subjects of history and literature. My brother and I always topped our classes and SK would throw a celebration for us whenever we received our school exam results. He would proudly boast to us that he had always topped all his school and university exams, and that his records at both Agra University and Cambridge had still not been broken, and probably never would be. SK had arrogated to himself the task of being my mentor and role model. Indeed, he frequently provided my father valuable guidance for navigating the bureaucratic maze and avoiding falling into traps laid by the permanent civil servants. He thought my Gandhian parents were hopelessly impractical in worldly and financial affairs, and would tell us: “When you grow up, you should be like me, and follow in my footsteps, and emulate me”. And he gave me wonderful advice when I was a teenager, borne from his long practical experience: * “Get entangled with many women simultaneously, in order to avoid getting entangled by one.” * “Before you make advances to a woman, plan your retreat very meticulously.” * “Your attitude towards women should be that you can take them or leave them – and you should do both.” * “Always remember, it is better to have your hands on a woman than a woman on your hands.” For all his playboy image, SK worked incredibly hard, often to the point of exhaustion. Once he had a date with a girlfriend for a late night movie just after he had solved a complex international crisis. He fell asleep during the movie, and the lady walked out in a huff. SK was fast asleep when the theatre’s chowkidars locked up for the night without noticing that he was still inside. SK played a major role during Indira Gandhi’s tour of Latin America in 1967, working round the clock. When they were leaving one capital, as the prime minister’s aircraft was about to take off, they found that SK was missing. The host country’s president had come to see Indira Gandhi off. The head of her security, Frank Devars, was a person of great tact and presence of mind. He gave the president and Indira Gandhi the excuse that there was a technical snag in the aircraft. Devars quietly contacted the head of the host country’s police and told him to launch a search for SK. The police confirmed that SK’s hotel room was empty. Two to three hours passed, and the president and Indira Gandhi were getting restive. Frank Devars kept concocting one excuse after another, and both the president and Indira Gandhi started getting suspicious. Finally SK was located. He had fallen asleep in the hotel’s elevator immediately after checking out of his room (he had been working non-stop for over eighty hours). When he was brought to the airport, Indira Gandhi told SK in an exaggeratedly sweet voice: “I am sooooo very sorry that our departure schedule has interfered with your siesta. Too bad you were not in the arms of a seductive senorita”. Indira Gandhi had longed to visit Machu Pichu since her childhood but had not been able to do so. SK used all his diplomatic contacts to get the government of Peru to extend an invitation to her. But as her plane was to land in Lima, they got the news that the Peruvian government had been overthrown in a coup, and in the nick of time, her aircraft was diverted to another country. SK was toying with the idea of resigning from the Foreign Service and contesting the 1971 elections on a Congress ticket. But he sensed that the mood in his constituency was anti-Congress. Over dinner, he asked my father: “What if I sink?” With all the brashness of a ten year old, I butted in: “You are too fat to sink”. He pinched my cheek and remarked: “You are getting to be just as wicked as your parents”. Indeed, SK was a master practitioner of realpolitik, both in the international and the domestic spheres. He had been carefully groomed by his father and uncles from childhood to be a ruler, and he would have thrived even amidst the intrigues of a Mughal court. In his early years, SK modeled himself on his relative Dinesh Singh. Even when he was a Second Secretary in Teheran in his early twenties, SK had become a close friend of the Shah of Iran – they had similar tastes and hobbies, and outlook on politics and international affairs. In later years, Yasser Arafat would turn to SK for advice. SK took great pride in his royal Rajput heritage, and he embodied the Rajput psyche of going to any extent to protect his allies and friends, and to vanquish his enemies. He was a formidable foe, and his rivals and detractors painted him as being manipulative and ruthless, and made snide remarks about his squeaky voice, short stature, his weight, and his love for luxury and for women. In 1974, SK was appointed as Ambassador to Jordan, Lebanon, and Cyprus, to be based in Beirut, which was then in the middle of a savage civil war. My mother was very worried about who would look after him, as well as for his safety. Kusum Haider interviewed SK on Doordarshan, giving it the title “Bachelor Ambassador”. She teased him greatly on national television, telling him that he should find a bride in Beirut. “Are you suggesting that my cook and caretaker should run away?”, shot back SK. He had to leave Karunakaran and Banka Singh behind in Delhi, since the Indian embassy in Beirut was located in a neighborhood which experienced heavy fighting. Within a couple of weeks, SK was back in Delhi. “Which girl has lured you back?”, inquired my mother. “No, it must be a crisis”, said my father. “Crisis is right”, replied SK. “I got a telegram that Banka Singh has stopped eating after I left, and I am missing Karunakaran’s cooking”. He regaled my younger brother and me with stories of the bullets whizzing past his head and the bombs thrown at his car, and took Banka and Karunakaran back with him to Beirut. “Don’t worry, I won’t let Banka Singh get shot”, he reassured us, “the snipers will aim only at my head, and not at the dog at my feet”. My mother wondered what SK would do for entertainment in Beirut since all of its legendary night clubs had closed due to the war. SK replied: “Believe it or not, but there is a circus from Kerala here. Karunakaran has made friends with all the acrobats and clowns, and he gets me a free pass to see the performances almost every night”. But Kusum Haider’s banter came true. Manju Gupta, who came from one of Delhi’s oldest and most distinguished families, was forced to break journey in Beirut en route to USA. Within a few hours, she and SK decided to get married. Using his knowledge of the intricacies of international law which he had mastered at Cambridge, SK performed his own marriage, acting as both bridegroom and magistrate, and signed his own marriage certificate. Next morning, the few staff still left in the embassy were stunned when SK invited them for breakfast and introduced Manju as his bride. Manju’s family in India was totally surprised to receive a brief telegram informing them – all the phone lines were down due to the war. Her brother went to meet the Foreign Secretary, and told him: “I heard that my sister just got married to SK Singh, and can these packets of sweets please be sent to Beirut by diplomatic bag”. The Foreign Secretary called Manju’s brother a lunatic, and threw him out of his office, remarking that SK was the last person on earth to allow himself to be ensnared into marriage. My father got some correspondents who were covering the war in Beirut to check if the news was true. When they found out that the bride was Manju, the wives of the officials in the Prime Ministers Secretariat remarked that SK had chosen well, although he had waited for far too long. “Not merely waited, EXPERIMENTED”, shot back my mother. Manju too became a close friend of my parents, and a target of all their practical jokes as well. She came from an old business family with a track record of philanthropy. She had a shrewd business sense and started several profitable ventures, and she quickly mastered the intricacies of Rajput royal customs and etiquette. My father sent a note to SK, telling him that he had discovered that whenever SK was posted to a country, its government immediately fell, usually through a coup or assassination, and asked if SK had arranged these. As soon as SK was posted to Teheran in 1953, Mossadegh was overthrown; when he went to Cyprus in 1974, Makarios was ousted; the governments of Jordan and Lebanon collapsed amidst war; as soon as SK went to Afghanistan, Mohammed Daoud Khan was killed; when SK returned to India in 1979 as Additional Foreign Secretary, the Janata government immediately fell; as soon as SK went to Austria, Kreisky lost the election; when he went to Pakistan, Zia-ul-Haq got killed; and when SK returned to Delhi as Foreign Secretary, Rajiv Gandhi lost the election. As soon as Vishwanath Pratap Singh took over as Prime Minister, he removed SK from the post of Foreign Secretary. They were related, but had a family feud going back generations, over a trivial breach of protocol by their ancestors. Even SK’s long rivalry with Kunwar Natwar Singh in the Foreign Service had its origins in the Rajput – Jat battles of the early 1800s. Both SK and Manju gave me a lot of advice over the decades, especially regarding my career. I am a hard-core engineer, but SK was of the view that engineers and scientists were too narrow minded, and needed to appreciate history, art, literature, and politics. And he took it upon himself to educate me in these spheres. Their two sons, Shashanka and Kanishka, have also come very close to our family. SK will be sorely missed by all those into whose lives he brought so much joy. By Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad Written on: Tuesday, 01 December 2009, within six hours of the passing away of SK Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad Tel: {91} 99 90 265 822, 98 118 36 331 Emails: p @ r67 . net r @ 50g . com Address Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad 19 Maitri Apts, CIS Officers Society # 19 A – 3, Paschim Vihar New Delhi 110 063 India Tel: {91} 99 90 265 822, 98 118 36 331 Emails: p @ r67 . net r @ 50g . com I wrote this tribute within six hours of his passing away. Anyone may reproduce this freely in any medium, in any location, on a non- exclusive basis, after informing me. -- Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. * Read the latest breaking news, and more.
