K N Malik: An Autobiography

By K N Malik

An Autobiography offers an account of the remarkable life of one of the most daring journalists of his time— K N Malik. His has been a life informed by strong friendships, unforgettable experiences, and a fearless dedication to finding and publishing facts even when threatened by people in power. No one was exempt from the author' s fierce drive to uncover the truth— not media tycoons, not the doyens of Indian aviation, not even Presidents or Prime Ministers. This is his story in his own words, depicting an unpredictable yet wonderful life spread over nine decades, beginning from his childhood spent in the town of Sheikhupura (now in Pakistan), the days of his youth spent helping the refugees during the Partition, to his emergence as an eminent journalist while working at The Times of India, and his eventual migration to London. K N Malik believes in high standard of professionalism and warm friendships. He has come out with his much-awaited account that begins with the Partition and the India story that has been unfolding ever since. A gentle humour, at times sardonic, runs along his readable narrative.' -H K DUA Former Editor, Hindustan Times, The Indian Express, and The Tribune. Media advisor to Prime Minister of India, Ambassador, and Member of Parliament Friendships, a warm heart, and a sharp mind guided veteran journalist K N Malik as he broke story after story for The Times of India in the days when editors still decided what made a good story for the front pages. A very readable autobiographical journey of a ninety plus journalist from Sheikhupura in Pakistan to New Delhi and London gathering friends and valuable contacts along the way.' -USHA RAI Senior Journalist

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fingerprint Publishing
• Release date: Feb 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9789358566970

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

Early Childhood

I was born on 17th May 1929 in Sheikhupura, a city in the north of what is now Pakistan. Named after the Mughal Emperor Jehangir, who founded the settlement in 1607, it lies 23 miles north-west of Lahore. And in the early twentieth century at the time of my birth, the city was home to some thirty thousand people. Though life here was simple and its pace measured, it had its own rhythm and quirks—not to mention the dark and turbulent days it would face later.

I was part of a large family of seven children, comprising three boys and four girls. In order of descending age, there were my elder sisters Raj and Shama, and my older brother Ram, followed by me right in the middle, born fourth in the sibling hierarchy. I was followed by two younger sisters Vinod and Sukesh, and finally a little brother named Shiv.

So, there I was right in the middle, the second son, with three older and three younger siblings. Carrying this position in the family hierarchy meant that I was neither the little one to be pampered nor the big brother who could be in command. And the age spread between us fell in such a way that by the time I grew up, my elder sister Shama and brother Ram were already at college in Lahore, and my eldest sister Raj was married and had moved to Hafizabad, a small town in the Gujranwala district.

The figure of seven siblings was in truth and practice more of a subtotal, as the number of our family was increased further due to unforeseen and unfortunate circumstances. My father had two elder brothers, both of whom sadly lost their wives prematurely. Eager to help their loved ones, my parents invited them to live with us. One of my uncles moved from Layalpur (which has now been renamed Faisalabad), a city about three to four hours away by train from Sheikhupura, while my second uncle sent his three school-going sons, Jai Dev, Baldev, and Harish, to live with us. The seven children of the Malik household became ten.

Such was their integration into our family, thanks to the upbringing of our parents and their boundless love for all the ten children, that we didn’t know they were cousins. It wasn’t till I was well into my teens and high school that I discovered the truth. We always thought we were a family of ten siblings and not seven. We were raised by our parents to view the extended family as our own. We still are a big extended family with a lot of love and concern for each other. My mother and father were busy people but did whatever was necessary between them to keep the family unit tight and close. They ensured that every child they raised imbibed the right values they themselves practised.

We lived together in a sprawling bungalow in Civil Lines in Sheikhupura built by our father and it made for a bustling childhood filled with happy times, mischief, and pranks. There was never a dull moment.

My eldest sister, Raj, played an unusually important role in my early years due to my mother’s eczema on her hands, preventing her from handling me properly as she wanted to ensure it wasn’t passed on to me. Therefore, most of my ‘hands-on’ raising was accomplished by Raj, who took to me as a young one does to a doll. This didn’t reduce the importance of my mother in my upbringing—far from it. But it did result in a slightly different balance to my upbringing than one might usually expect. My eldest sister consequently occupies a special place in my heart and memory.

My father was a leading lawyer, which enabled us to live well. Our bungalow complex was spread over three wings, housing five rooms each. Each wing was expansive, and the large number of rooms were used for a variety of purposes. However, in the usual course, the three wings were treated as distinct entities, with one designated for the exclusive use of the family, and the others for guests, friends, my father’s clients, and for formal occasions.

Though the house was large, the family had expanded to occupy it. This was helped initially by inviting the extended family and later some friends to live with us.

The main bungalow housed four large bedrooms, with a huge dining hall which itself connected to another hall. Beside this interconnecting hall was a gallery, which was the meeting point of the two verandas, one outside and the other inside the house. In addition, there was another large and luxuriously furnished drawing room which was used on formal occasions.

The second wing contained four guest bedrooms, which housed some interesting guests; this was later rented out and the tenants too mingled freely with the family.

Touching the three wings of the house was an open courtyard inside, which was large enough for us children to play football. With a tennis and badminton court also in the house, we were never short of activities to keep us busy, and this was before you even considered the expansive gardens and the outhouses for domestic helpers.

Besides all this, there were storerooms and small rooms to accommodate the linen of the household for the family and guests.

The exterior veranda, which ended in our father’s library-cum-office, was usually used by our father’s clients. In the absence of the visitors, we children loved to play there and recline luxuriously in the rocking chair we called arāmkursi (chair for resting).

Our prayer room occupied a special place in our house and hearts. This was where my mother would read and recite chapters of the Sikh scriptures, Guru Granth Sahib. It was known as the Darbar Sahib room.

There were two kitchens, one used for vegetarian food by our mother and the other for non-vegetarian food by the males of the household. During those days, in the average Hindu household, mutton was cooked usually by the men of the house. I remember mutton and chicken could be cooked once a week on Sundays, and usually, our uncles would come and cook it for us. I cannot remember an occasion when I ever went into the kitchen to cook. I only started cooking non-vegetarian dishes much later when I was posted to London, where I discovered that I had inadvertently imbibed from my uncles quite a few recipes during my childhood. Cooking meat on Sundays was quite a ritual in those days, and I remember the glee when I and my younger sister Vinod vied with each other to scrape out the last bits of mutton masala left at the bottom of the cooking container.

We didn’t enjoy the modern trappings you might expect of a well-to-do home of today, like a telephone or a car. In Sheikhupura of 1930s, there were only four or five cars and telephones in the town, and the roads were clogged with horses and carts. Most people had no choice but to make a trip to the telephone exchange to call family or friends in the metropolitan cities like Lahore, Layalpur, Delhi, Bombay, or Calcutta.

Our way of life was simple. For instance, in the 1930s, our bungalow’s sewage and wastewater systems were primitive at best. We had toilets that possessed a rudimentary flush, but in terms of any kind of modern plumbing, drainage, and waste management, there was little.

The bungalow was blessed with a varied, beautiful, and constantly explored garden which had us enamoured as children. It was akin to having adventure at our fingertips. At the rear of the house, there was an orchard in which grew all sorts of trees (mulberry, other berries and almonds, etc.) and many other plants. We were blessed with a number of fruit trees too, and we were always climbing trees, plucking and tasting fruits such as mangoes, oranges, bananas, and limes. There was also a vegetable garden within the orchard, and consequently, the house was quite self-sufficient in terms of growing much of its own produce.

At the front of the property lay a sprawling lawn, framed by perfectly manicured hedges and beautiful flowerbeds. A long driveway snaked through the grass to the house from the road beyond, with a separate entrance and exit. Despite the absence of automobiles in the region—for we were rarely visited by one—we had the facility to accommodate those who were fortunate enough to own an automobile. There was a porch at the front, which was an alighting point for the rarely seen cars or tongas (horse carts) used by visitors and the family.

In the side garden, we grew cattle fodder. We always had at least one buffalo and one cow for milk, but sometimes we stretched to two of each. The gardeners used to milk the animals as part of their additional duties, providing the supply needed for the kitchens. In the mornings, some of the milk was converted into yoghurt (dahi), and some churned into buttermilk and a large cupful of white butter. Much of it was donated to others who cared to visit us for this purpose. As kids, we used to stand verily to one side while the gardener milked the cows, only for him to suddenly point an udder at us to spray raw milk at our face and mouth, which I didn’t like. I still remember the taste and even now I cannot drink milk.

It was, all things told, a lovely life surrounded by simple pleasures and the delights of nature, listening to the cuckoo birds vying for musical dominance with the nightingales, a song which would permeate the evening air and lull us to sleep.

There were two outhouses to accommodate the domestic help, gardeners, sweepers, and their families. They too were like family members who helped to keep the house clean, run the kitchens, and maintain the gardens. Their children were our friends and playmates. Our staff and their families became as much a part of the family as others in the house, and the important role they played in our day-to-day life and particularly later on during the Partition, has never been lost on me and the family. We were instructed to treat them with equality and respect, and we lived together in a cohesive, happy atmosphere. Our parents ensured that as children, we didn’t know who a Muslim was, or a Christian or a Hindu. Friends were friends and all of them deserved to be equally loved and respected, irrespective of their status in life and religion. This secular practice inculcated by our parents has stayed on with the family.

My mother was named Vidyawati and is best characterised as a spiritual disciplinarian. She was much preoccupied with social duties, care-giving, and religious discourse. She played an active part in Sheikhupura in the local revolutionary movement of the time to oust the British from India, particularly in 1929 when I was born. As a successful lawyer’s wife, she had the ideal platform to pursue her mission. She was unquestionably a proactive revolutionary, involved in the creation of the slogans of the era and other such local initiatives for the independence movement.

She was, by trait and habit, a very spiritual person. She was passionately dedicated to reading, reciting, and living the teachings of Darbar Sahib as she was attracted to its liberal, secular, and universal teachings and lessons. She believed they were valid instructions for living a happy and worthy life.

After the recitation from Guru Granth Sahib every morning, she would read the Bhagavad Gita, the sermon given by Lord Krishna to Arjuna in the Mahabharata, which is still considered as one of the most sacred of the Hindu scriptures. Since my mother had faith in the Arya Samaj, a reformist movement of the Hindus, she would also perform the ancient fire ritual of havan, which was undertaken in order to purify the environment and one’s soul and self. It was performed in the presence of fire contained within a vessel called a havankund. Right across houses in India and out into the world at large, there are still groups practising this ritual. This practice is so prevalent amongst the devout Hindus that wherever there is a large Indian community, havan is usually performed—including in the major cities of the modern United Kingdom, like London, Birmingham, and Manchester. She was president of the Arya Samaj in our town for many years. My mother carried this routine until she died at the age of 96 in Delhi.

After her passing away, my elder brother took care of the Guru Granth Sahib, and years later my youngest sister, Sukesh, took it to Washington in America. It was finally handed over to a Gurudwara, a Sikh temple, in the United States.

Our parents’ multi-religious and multicultural faith and respect have played a major role in our family imbibing secular beliefs. This has also been helped by the thorough knowledge and scholarship of our father in many languages like Sanskrit, Hindi, Urdu, Persian, and English.

My mother was the disciplinarian of the family, but more than that, she was the glue that kept the family together and strong. Discipline was necessary for running a large household, raising three boys and four girls of her own, and three boys of our uncle. We were scared of her gaze. One look from her and we would be shuddering in our half-pants, which is what we boys wore at that time.

Her sense of discipline didn’t merely extend to just the family—she sought adherence to principles everywhere she went. Often, we used to travel by bus to Lahore, a journey which would take approximately an hour. My mother couldn’t tolerate anybody smoking on the bus, and if anyone had the nerve to start puffing away, she would ask the driver to stop the bus and order the smoker to stop smoking, or, if that failed, remove the said smoker from the bus altogether.

She was imbued with a deep sense of fairness and she gave our lives backbone and structure, which in turn helped us grow and develop. She is one of the principal influences in my life and I inherit a great number of characteristics directly from her—not least in the genes, which have me still attempting to write a book in my nineties. Perhaps, I also owe to her my strong determination, grit, and courage in the face of huge odds and my habit of pursuing the truth and doing what I think is right in the circumstances, no matter what.

While it was my mother who maintained discipline in the house, and ensured it ran like clockwork, my father dedicated himself to his work; he was the breadwinner. My father was Malik J R D Malhotra. He was a reputed and respected lawyer in Sheikhupura and surrounding regions, which included Lahore, the state capital of as yet undivided Punjab. Lahore itself was a hub of education, with a well-known university and several schools, and was an epicentre of university life in Punjab. He used to practice in the high court in Lahore as well as in the district courts in Sheikhupura, which kept him constantly busy.

My father’s days were dominated by a routine that was often so set, it bordered on a ritual. In the early morning, when we were sleeping, a voice would echo through the halls and courtyard: ‘Malik Saheb.’

This was the formal, respectful way of hailing my father and it was his colleague, Lala Kanshiram Chawla, another lawyer who would come daily to meet him. Much later, Kanshiram’s granddaughter, Juhi Chawla, became a popular actress in Bollywood. They would go for an early morning walk to a nearby canal, chewing the branch of a tree that was used as a toothbrush, and discussing the main points of the day’s cases fixed in the court.

My father was already up and ready, and off he went with a walking stick in his hand. The canal was usually popular and busy with other walkers—and is incidentally the place where I had my one and only swimming lesson, after my uncle pushed me from the bridge. I swam for my life and, consequently, learned to swim pretty quickly.

After his walk, my father would sit in his office and meet his clients. He would be joined by two munshis, who were essentially his legal assistants. They would look up the files, maintain, and arrange them for the day’s cases in the courts. My father would then spend some time sitting quietly, looking through the documents in preparation and thinking through his arguments and strategy.

I remember, every morning he would have his meal at nine o’clock, which was his breakfast and lunch. This was normal, as people didn’t usually have breakfast at that time. If he had to go to Lahore for the high court, he would set off to make the journey. And if he was scheduled to appear at the district courts, he would ride a bicycle to the court. Though he was an affluent lawyer, he never considered it necessary to keep a car or telephone to facilitate his work.

Children either walked to school, which was close by, or somebody would take them on the back of their bicycle. Not to have a car or telephone now sounds extremely archaic, especially for a successful professional, but this wasn’t so back in the 1930s and ’40s. Perhaps, through necessity and lack of an alternative, life ambled along at a leisurely pace.

Between legal cases, my father spent time in the lawyer’s bar room and socialised with his other lawyer friends over tea and snacks. No subject was barred from discussion.

At four or five o’clock, when cases at the district courts had finished, he would cycle back to the house, which was only a mile away. On arriving home, he would retire to his office and sit for an hour and a half, before a friend would arrive to go for an evening stroll along the canal. This would take another hour and when he returned home, he would begin preparations for any important cases coming for hearing the next morning. At about 8 p.m., one or two dinner guests would usually arrive, but often this number would swell to four or five. This routine would be repeated day in and day out.

My father neither smoked nor drank and he did not serve alcohol or cigarettes either, to the guests. I still vividly remember an occasion when a valued client, who had a Chevy in those early days and was staying at our house, was politely refused entry in the night when my father discovered he was drunk. It didn’t matter that the guest in question was a very valued and rich client. My father’s principles were written on stone, though he was a very polite and mild person.

Years later when my elder brother joined the civil service, my father advised him not to hesitate from serving alcohol at official parties, as was the vogue at that time. It seemed a huge contradiction, although my father might have mellowed with the passing of time and changed his views.

My father raised his hand to me only once, giving me the only slap I ever received in my life so far (although now in my nineties I think it unlikely I’ll end up on the receiving end of another). There was a tradition in Punjab at the time, that one should drink a cup of milk before going to bed so as to ease digestion and settle your stomach, but of course, thanks to the gardener and his pinpoint accuracy with a cow’s udder, I hated milk. I despised anything white such as this, including butter, believing it firmly ruined a perfectly decent slice of toast and I avoid it even to this day. The servants would bring us milk for our bedtime drink, but I refused and word got to my father. He tried to persuade me but I insisted, and he gave me one open-handed slap on the cheek. And so, the only time I was slapped in my life was because I wouldn’t drink my milk, though beating children often in the India of 1930s was a common practice. As a side note, I never slapped my own boys—never so much as raised a finger to them.

A man who understood the value of thought and the written word, my father took a great interest in our education, helping us and pushing us often. He started to teach my older brother, Ram, about the law with the firm idea that he would eventually follow in his footsteps; and I remember when I went to college, my father asked me to write a letter to him every week. I did that, and each week he would send it back to me by post with a corrected version of my English. He himself had a distinguished academic record in Sanskrit and English, in which he was a gold medallist from his college. After a couple of weeks, I stopped writing to him. On being asked why, I told him this was because of his constant corrections.

I remember my older siblings through the unique lens of a child. My eldest sister, Raj, married a man called Suraj Prakash Kapoor, an aristocrat, who I always regarded fondly. He served later on the Olympics Committee for the Indian hockey team and he was the general secretary of the Punjab Hockey Association for about fifteen years and many Olympians, including the hockey wizard Dhyan Chand, India’s Captain Balbir Singh, and others, would come and stay at his house. He was a connoisseur of food and soon arranged for a well-known chef in Lahore to come to their home and teach my sister how to cook to a standard he would be happy with, with the idea that she in turn would teach their servants. He was such an affable character and even when I was in Delhi working later in my life, he would ring me up and sign off the conversation by telling me he’d definitely be visiting me on Monday . . . or Tuesday . . . or Wednesday. Either way, he seldom came.

I was too young a child to remember the wedding of Raj, but I do remember that of my sister Shama, after she had finished her graduation from Vidya Mahavidyala, Lahore. The wedding took place at our home in Sheikhupura. Shama married Dr. D P Kapoor, a malariologist who sadly died far too young in San Cristobal in Venezuela whilst on a lecture tour in Latin America. My wife Lily and I were on our honeymoon in Pahalgam, Kashmir, when we received the sad news and flew back immediately. His body was flown to Palam airport and I remember receiving and accompanying it to Jaipur, where he was last posted.

Vinod was one year younger than me. I remember she was very fond of butter. I used to tease her by suggesting that we have run out of butter, which would upset her. I have written about her marriage and our time together in our middle and old age later in this book.

Perhaps I was